Front Aufklärungs Kommando

[peterak]

Hallo
Does anyone have any information about the deployment of FAK 205 and FAK 206 in Slovakia in 1944/45 ? In principle, every Information or source would help me.

[Tamari]

Hi Peterak,

I'm still working myself through all the documents and secondary literature about the Frontaufklärungskommandos. At the moment I have some information about the personnell of FAK 205 and FAK 206 available.


FAK 205
After the establishment of Leitstelle für Frontaufklärung II Südost in Vienna, FAK 205 was subordinate to its Referat FA 1 under the direction of Leutnant Heinz Thuemmler and was entrusted with operations related to Bulgaria and Macedonia. The FAK 205 was later relocated to the German satellite state Slovakia.

FAK 205 had also beared the cover-name Vermessungstrupp 410.

Members:
Major Karl Hellwig Kommandoführer (until September 1944)
Major Friedrich Brandt Kommandoführer ()
Leutnant Dr. Günther Schlegelbeger (son of secretary of Justice Franz Schlegelberger) =>
viewtopic.php?f=45&t=80130&p=2294714&hi ... r#p2294714
Leutnant Dorbath
Leutnant Helmut Sallaba (a Brandenburger, member of Sonderverband Bergmann and later a stay-behind asset of the CIA in Germany)
Leutnant Hagleitner
Leutnant Deposch????

Unternehmen Sirius
Recruits of these trainings efforts were send to FAT 217 which had also conducted operations in Slovakia => Source: Sûreté de l’Etat Allemands recherchés JB (AA 1312), DM/AB/6.VI.1996, S. 47

FAK 205 ran also the training camp Camp Hubertus at Malachy in Slovakia which was led by Major Friedrich Vatter. Twenty men were trained there until it was dissolved in March 1945. Source: Biddiscombe "The SS Hunter Battalions" page 117

Vatter, Fritz (Major)
Vatter was born in 1881 and came from the Sudetenland. He had served in the Austro-Hungarian Army and was awarded the Austrian Medal of Bravery in Gold. At the beginning of 1941 he led the V-Mann Kompanie of the Brandenburgers established in the spring of 1940, which was initially based in the Meseritz Regenwurmlager and, after being merged with the 1st Company in May 1941, was based at the previous location of the 1st Company in Brandenburg an der Havel.

In a interrogation by the US Army CIC, Vatter stated that he was a member of the NSDAP, the German Labor Front (RAD) and the SA and held a rank comparable to that of a lieutenant.

Sources about Fritz Vatter:
Paterson, Lawrence: „Hitler’s Brandenburgers“, S. 71 und S. 89 -90
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom ... 6_0097.pdf


FAK 206
Hauptmann Kurt Reinhardt Kommandoführer (a well experienced Abwehr officer, he had led the Finnish-Estonian diversion-group ERNA. He was executed after the war by the Soviet-Union)
Oberleutnant König
Leutnant Curtius
Leutnant Hormann
Leutnant Katz
Leutnant Günter Schlegelberger
Sonderführer Zink

Feldwebel Karl Peters
Feldwebel Wenner

Unteroffizier Fritz Beute
Unteroffizier Gassauer
Unteroffizier Arthur Heitze
Unteroffizier Georg
Unteroffizier Erwin Zieschank

Obergefreiter Josef Drozdeck
Obergefreiter Joseph Ott
Obergefreiter Walter Langer
Obergefreiter Karl Schleese
Obergefreiter Hans Schroeder
Obergefreiter Siegel
Obergefreiter Matthias Steinmetz
Obergefreiter Ernst Tiebau
Obergefreiter Bruno Ziemssen

Gefreiter Cornelius Andres
Gefreiter Josef Aschenbrenner
Gefreiter Johann Baumgartner
Gefreiter Friedrich Burle
Gefreiter Kraus

Oberschütze Gerhard Nikolei

Schütze Johann Janowitz
Schütze Lorenz Jung
Schütze Albert Roemer
Schütze Dr. Werner Sark

Gefreiter Cornelius Andres

Are you also interested in the partisan-warfare of Frontaufklärungskommandos or Frontaufklärungstrupps in Slovakia?
In this context it is noteworthy that in this situation, FAT 218, under the leadership of Major Graf Erwein von Thun-Hohenstein, was directly subordinate to the Leitstelle für Frontaufklärung II Südost in Vienna and was entrusted with the implementation of the so-called Trupp "Edelweiß". => source: KV-2/2138_2 Murad Ferid, page 17

TRANSLATED BY GOOGLE
In November 1944 he was commissioned to set up a special unit to fight partisans in Slovakia. The Slovak national uprising had just failed there and many members of the army had joined the partisans. The unit over which Thun-Hohenstein received command was called FAT 218 "Edelweiss". It was around 300 strong and consisted of Slovaks, Caucasians, Cossacks and Germans. Thun-Hohenstein used the code name “Benesch” because of its resemblance to the president of the Czech government in exile, Edvard Beneš.
FAT 218 was subordinate to Leitstelle für Frontaufklärung II Südost.
Abwehrgruppe 218 is believed to have been responsible for numerous crimes in the last months of the war in Slovakia. Mainly one operated against partisans, but the persecution of Jews was also part of their activity. The Thun-Hohenstein unit is said to have killed around 300 Slovak partisans and captured 600. Most were taken to concentration camps.
A member of Abwehrgruppe 218, Ladislav Nižňanský, was indicted in Munich in 2004 for the Ostry Grun massacre in Slovakia. The role of Thun-Hohenstein was also examined during the trial.
Abwehrgruppe 218 was also involved in the arrest and extradition to the Einsatzgruppen of the security service of a group of Anglo-American liaison and reconnaissance officers. They were deposed in Slovakia as part of a joint operation by the English SOE ("OPERATION WINDPROOF") and the American OSS ("MISSION DAWES") and were supposed to support the partisans. The English and American officers were later deported to Mauthausen, tortured and shot.
At the end of the war, Thun-Hohenstein, now with the rank of major, was taken prisoner by the Soviets. On January 18, 1946, he was sentenced to death by a Soviet military tribunal. The sentence was carried out on February 12, 1946 with a shot in the neck.

https://austria-forum.org/af/AustriaWik ... ite_note-3

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abwehrgruppe_218

https://ww2ondeadline.com/2021/01/24/jo ... s-mission/

I will hopefully be able to add further information on this topic in the next days.


Sorry for this rather messy post, this was all which I was able to fix together in a small amount of time.

Best regards
Robert

[peterak]

Hi Robert,

Thank you for the sent info, it is very interesting, especially the resources. Do you have any information that personnel would be sent from the Sirius training camp to FAT-217 ? I am very interested in this FAT-217 and also FAT-201, as not much is known about them. Ferid spoke about them, but only marginally. I think that there was intensive cooperation in Slovakia between FAT-218, FAT-217 and FAT-201. In addition to Sonderunternehmen Edelweiss, was also Sonderunternehmen Schneewittchen. Did you hear about that?

Best regards

Peter

[Tamari]

Hi Peterak,

my pleasure! It is a good motivation to focus more on the operations in Slovakia. In the last weeks I had worked more or less on the vitas of the FAK and FAT personnel.


FAT 201
The FAT 201 worked with the leader of the ethnic Germans in Romania, Andreas Schmidt and with the commander of the Romanian Iron Guard, Nicolae Pătraşcu and the Hungarian fascists of the Arrow Cross.

Members of FAT 201
Hauptmann Schlegel Truppführer ()

Oberleutnant Hirsch
Leutnant Biedermann (until Winter 1944; deserter)
Leutnant Baumann (successor of Leutnant Biedermann)
Leutnant Maurer
Leutnant Wabnitz


Sources: https://wwii.germandocsinrussia.org/de/ ... ect/zoom/6

KV-2/2138_2 Murad Ferid, S. 22


FAT 217
Johannes Scholz was a member of the unit, as was Lieutenant Ruff alias Cassius, who had previously headed Gruppe II of the Kriegsorganisation (KO) in Istanbul.


Leutnant Johannes Scholz
Was a member of Leitstelle für Frontaufklärung II Südost and switched to FAT 217 in December 1944

Sources: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom ... 201691.pdf, S. 22
Possibly BA MA, PERS 6/64517 Oberleutnant Johannes Scholz geb. 06.02.1915


Leutnant Ruff
Ruff comes from the port city of Haifa in Palestine, where he worked as an architect before the war. He, too, was one of the Palestine Germans who were recruited for the Brandenburgers, where he quickly became a sergeant.

Ruff was in charge of all Abw II activities in Turkey uptil 1942. He was stationed with the German Consulate General at Istanbul. While in TURKEY he established a net of Arab agents but was discovered and had to leave the country. During 1942 and 1943 he was with KO BULGARIA, where had used th alias-name Dr.Wolff.
early 1944 with FAT 217/218, and in the fall of 1944 with Leitstelle SO in command of a FAT.

Source for Leutnant Ruff:
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom ... 2_0008.pdf


Unfortunately I never heard of Sonderunternehmen Schneewittchen.

Regarding FAK 205 and FAK 206 in Slovakia, Biddiscombe mentioned on the pages 107-08 the following:
A Sirius training camp was set up in Podhradie, although it was relocated in early 1945 to Senica and a month later transfered to the control of FAK 206.
Under a succession of commanders, Camp Sirius trained at least 36 Slovak volunteers, mainly for guerilla warfare. These men were send to the FAK's outpost and were deployed all of the country but saw possibly never action.

From September 1944 until early April 1945 FAK 205 had buried up to 111 dumps/ weapon caches in order to supply the needs of the future guerillas.
They lack the time to train the volunteers properly.

Best regards
Robert

[peterak]

Hi Robert,

Perfect info and resources again! Thank you ! I see you're working on this units, you have an great overview. I'm going to look at all those sources. If you find anything else on this issue, I will be grateful for any information.

Best regards

Peter

[jmark]

Hi Robert,

I've read this thread with great interest and must say that I am very impressed with your research and knowledge. Well done!

I wonder if I could ask you about FAT 213 and its commander Lt. Weyde. Seems it carried out several behind-the-lines operations while in Red Army uniforms/vehicles.

Many thanks in advance
Jason Mark

[Isee8836]

Hi Robert,

I've read this thread with great interest and must say that I am very impressed with your research and knowledge. Well done!

I wonder if I could ask you about FAT 213 and its commander Lt. Weyde. Seems it carried out several behind-the-lines operations while in Red Army uniforms/vehicles.

Many thanks in advance
Jason Mark

Dear Sir, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I wish to say is that you can find detailed information about FAT 213 in the book "Armoured Warfare in the Battle for Budapest" (by Norbert Számvéber), especially those actions involving the captured T-34s.

[Tamari]

Hi Jason,

thank you very much for your kind reply. One aspect which I hold in high esteems regarding this forum is that here ordinary people like me can have a chat and substantial interaction with real experts on their subjects like you.

Hi Isee8836, I would like to thank you very much for your interesting hint concerning FAT 213 in Norbert Számveber's book. It seems that I should buy the next book

I will collect together some information about these amazing "Unternehmen Jaguar" conducted by Leutnant Eugen Weyde's FAT 213, which has an equivalent in SS-officer Walter Girg's full-cover tank-raids in Pomerania in 1945. Unfortunately my own full-covering research concerning Eugen Weyde and Unternehmen Jaguar is not very well progressed but I will share what I've found in the internet and in some documents until today. The sources are listed at the end of my post.

In Hagen Berger's book "Walter Girg - In Hitlers Auftrag hinter den feindlichen Linien" the author had made at the end of the book a preview about his planned book about "Unternehmen Jaguar" but it seems that it is still not published and will not be published.

Leutnant Weydes FAT 213 and Unternehmen Jaguar

Unternehmen Jaguar was prepared in Cracow by FAK 202 under the then Hauptmann and future Knights Cross holder Dietrich F. Witzel but was send to FAT 213 which was subordinated to FAK 206 under the experienced Hauptmann of Abwehr II Kurt Reinhardt.

Some of the vehicles for Sonderverband Jaguar had been removed from the front lines on the orders of the OB of Army Group Center. Others came from the Panzersammelstelle Braunsberg in East Prussia.
The tasks of the command unit, which was later transferred to Army Group South in Hungary at the end of 1944, included remote sensing and trickery-like operations to unsettle the enemy.
Several T-34s received 100 watt transmitters of German origin. In general, German-made on-board intercom systems were installed ...

It seems that Leutnant Eugen Heinrich Simon Weyde - who had used the cover-name PANKOFF and spokes Russian perfectly - was an extraordinary choice to lead and inspire his mixed full-cover unit of German tankers and Russian and Hungarian volunteers behind enemy lines.

On December 23, 1945, Marshal Tolbuchin ordered the use of fast troops to speed up the breakthrough. The next day the over 300 tanks of the II. Guards-Mech. Corps and the XVIII. Panzer Corps between Érd and Lake Velence the front at a width of 60 and at a depth of 30 km. Another critical situation arose at Székesfehérvár (Stuhlweißenburg), which was held by the XX and XXXI. Guards and by the VII. Mechanized Corps of the 4th Guards Army was attacked.

On the German side, various commando units originally intended for their own offensive were deployed, which were equipped with Soviet uniforms and T 34 tanks (FAT 213). But this also only slowed the enemy advance for a few hours. ... "
"... The perfectly Russian-speaking Lt. Eugen Weyde developed a new dimension in commando operations with the" Sonderkommando Jaguar West of Stuhlweissenburg, three T-34 / 85s and 37 men, including 12 Germans, 18 Russians and 7 Hungarians, operated for six hours behind the Soviet lines undetected and reached the German lines again without losing their own personnel, although they had to use a tank The following successes were to be booked: once the enemy suffered personnel and material losses caused by fire attacks - partly with silenced weapons (MP-40 with Supressor), further misleading the enemy through false information given to Soviet units and bogus orders and finally valuable enemy reconnaissance results for their own Troop that partly se were already communicated over the radio during the mission.

Weyde explained the operation in his book "Die trojanische List" as follows:

The unit was divided into a tank company, a rifle company, a cover platoon and the staff with the supply points. When they were set up, the tank company received medium-sized Soviet tanks of the types T 34 1943 and T 34/85 1944 from the spoils. The units members were former soldiers of the Soviet Army or German soldiers with Russian language skills.
The command unit was intended for use in the rear of the Soviet Army. Since the Soviet tanks ran on diesel oil and could drive around 300 km in the field without refueling, the radius of action and the depth of penetration were considerable.
While German radio sets were built into all tanks to connect the tanks to one another, some tanks received German 100 watt radios for connection to the cover platoon, the other divisions, corps, the army, the army group and to the air force.

An agent radio that was carried along allowed direct radio communication with Berlin even during the mission. The air liaison officer riding in the command tank was able to direct his own aircraft to recognized targets behind the Soviet army with the help of an air radio.

After special training at the Lamsdorf military training area in Upper Silesia in the autumn of 1944, which was carried out in accordance with the command regulations of the Soviet Army, the Wehrmacht command staff ordered the unit to be relocated to Hungary.

After the first successful missions near Budapest, the company received additional captured tanks from Army Group South, to which it was subordinate, including a heavy 46-ton tank of the "Josef Stalin 2" type with a 122 mm cannon. In addition, the Army Group provided an armored rescue train and an armored repair train, which only had to ensure that the FAT 213 remained operational.

In use, the unit represented a very specific part of the Soviet troops. The lettering on the tanks was accordingly. The pay books, letters and other documents carried by the soldiers were produced each time for the use of passport forgery specialists who Berlin had commanded to the front reconnaissance unit. The information had to exactly match the association shown. Every member of the company had to memorize the history of the unit, the names of the commanders in charge and the officers of his unit.

The front reconnaissance unit reached the highest level of imitation of the enemy. When deployed in the rear of the enemy, the unit had absolute freedom of movement. In the event of chain damage, even real Soviet soldiers once helped a repair unit to get the command unit going again.

Returning from the mission became more and more difficult towards the end of the war. The task of the cover platoon to take up the command unit in the German line and to notify the troops in this sector was not easy anyway. When the German front in Hungary collapsed completely in April 1945, Sonderverband Jaguar was disbanded.
[most parts above are translated by google translator from Forum der Wehrmacht; the specific sources can be found there]

One of the German tankers was Unteroffizier Heinz Kittner.

Weyde was proposed for the German Cross in Gold.
After the war he was a leading official in the German Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz's department IV (Counter-Intelligence) under his then superior Richard Gerken (a former Kommandoführer of FAK 213 in the Lower Countries).

sources:
- Eugen Weyde: "Die trojanische List"

- https://www.forum-der-wehrmacht.de/inde ... post126773

- Waffen-Arsenal Special Band 35

- TNA KV-2/3015 Gotthard Gambke Hans Raupach Sergius Peters

- TNA KV-2/2138_2 Murad Ferid

- https://www.forum-der-wehrmacht.de/inde ... #post91226

- https://www.lot-tissimo.com/de-de/aucti ... 1600e7dfd5
(auction of Heinz Kittner's decoration documents)

- https://www.tracesofwar.com/persons/892 ... pp-213.htm

- https://www.archivportal-d.de/item/DWK6 ... Number=201
(birth- and death-date of Weyde)

- Norbert Müller: "Das Amt Ausland/ Abwehr", S. 449

Best regards
Robert

[Tamari]

Hello,

I have forgotten to have a quick look into the comprehensive book of Perry Biddiscombe about the SS-Jagdverbände which also covers many aspects of the Frontaufklärungskommandos and -trupps.

On page 48 Leutnant Weyde and Unternehmen Jaguar are mentioned.

20210528_224036.jpg

I'm little bit confused about Weyde's age of 27 which is conflicting to his birth-date 03.11.1921.

Best regards
Robert

[Tamari]

Hello Jason, hello to all of you

regarding "Unternehmen Jaguar" and Leutnant Eugen Weyde, I would like to add a map from the German Bundesarchiv BArch RW 49/709.

It seems that the operation was supported by II./ PzGrenReg 1.

Lt. Weyde's Unternehmen Jaguar.JPG

Best regards
Robert