Walter Nicolai | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1873-08-01)1 August 1873 |
| Died | 4 May 1947(1947-05-04) (aged 73) |
| Occupation | Intelligence officer |
| Espionage activity | |
| Allegiance |  German Empire Weimar Republic |
| Service branch | Abteilung IIIb |
| Service years | 1906–1919 |
| Rank | General |
GeneralWalter Nicolai (August 1, 1873 – May 4, 1947) was the first senior IC[citation needed] (intelligence) officer in theImperial German Army. He came to run the Germanmilitary intelligence service,Abteilung IIIb, and became an important pro-war propagandist in Germany during theFirst World War of 1914–1918.[1] According to Höhne and Zolling, he helped to found theGerman Fatherland Party[2]in 1917.
Nicolai was the son of aPrussian Army captain and a farmer's daughter inBraunschweig. In 1893, he selected a military career. He studied from 1901 to 1904 at the War Academy inBerlin. Shortly before his appointment as Chief of the Intelligence Service of the German High Command, he is known to have taken trips toRussian Empire and spoke fluentRussian. Nicolai was aGerman nationalist and amonarchist, but otherwise considered to beapolitical.[3]
In 1906, Nicolai began his career inAbteilung IIIb and took command over theEast Prussian news station inKönigsberg.[4] He built up the news station in Königsberg to a major centre forespionage against theRussian Empire. After two years of service in early 1913, he was named the head ofAbteilung IIIb, which helped to inform theAustro-Hungarian Army that Colonel andEvidenzbureau chiefAlfred Redl was a Russianmole.
Nicolai led the German secret service between 1913 and 1919 and directed Abteilung IIIb intensively during theFirst World War. He wrote, "Before each new acquisition, delivery pp. to ask the I.O., what benefits it brings for the war".[5]
Information about Nicolai's employment ofMata Hari (7 August 1876 – 15 October 1917) can to be found in the so-calledGempp Report, which became public only in the 1970s.[6] The papers also contain information from former officers of Abteilung III b about the "Agent H 21", who was Mata Hari. The papers prove that she had entered the service of the German Secret Service in late Autumn 1915. In May 1916, IIIb chief Nicolai had her asked to come toCologne. After a conversation there, he decided to have her trained as an agent and assigned Major Röpell as herhandler. Röpell had taught her "on long walks on the outskirts of the city the basics of the agent's job", and an expert in cipher writing practiced "chemical writing" with her. The "training" took seven days. Mata Hari's mission was to reconnoiter theThird French Republic next offensive plans from Paris, travel through militarily interesting-areas of France and maintain contact with the Kriegsnachrichtenstelle (War Intelligence Office) West inDüsseldorf, whose director was Major Röpell, and the agent headquarters in the German embassy inMadrid, whose director was themilitary attaché Major Arnold Kalle. Mata Hari was later reassigned to Captain Hoffmann, who gave her the codename H 21.[7]
In January 1917, Major Kalle transmitted radio messages to Berlin that described the helpful activities of a German spy codenamed H-21 whose biography so closely matched Mata Hari's that it was patently obvious that she had to be the agent.[8] TheDeuxième Bureau intercepted the messages, and from their content, identified H-21 as Mata Hari. The messages were in a code that German intelligence knew to have been broken by the French, which suggests that the messages were intended to cause Mata Hari to be arrested by the French military.[9] In early 1917, Colonel Nicolai had grown very annoyed that Mata Hari had provided him with no intelligence worthy of the name, but only Paris gossip about the sex lives of French politicians and Generals. He allegedly decided to terminate her employment by covertly exposing her to the French.[10]
Another famous female spy that Nicolai was assigned to wasElsbeth Schragmüller. For many years, she was invariably known as Mademoiselle Docteur or Fräulein Doktor, her actual name being revealed only in 1945 from German intelligence documents captured by the Allies after the Second World War. In 1915, Nicolai, assigned her as the chief of theKriegsnachrichtenstelle Antwerpen.[11]
WhenErich Ludendorff became first quartermaster general at the end of August 1916, there was an expansion of military intelligence for the military police. Nicolai saw himself as having a relentless will to win and as being a military educator, a supervisor and an initiator of patriotic self-discipline. His officers took part in the promotional work for war bonds, and he helped to found the pro-war andmilitaristGerman Fatherland Party.
After the end ofWorld War I, Nicolai retired as a colonel. His deputy and then successor in 1920 was Major Friedrich Gempp. Nicolai published two postwar books about his activities.
He was contacted and summoned to Turkey by theTurkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1925, helped founding ofNational Security Service in 1926 and lectured Turkish officers on intelligence.[12]
UnderNazi Germany, he belonged to the expert advisory board of the Imperial Institute for the History of the New Germany.[13]
After theSecond World War, Nicolai was arrested by the SovietSMERSH under the personal order ofStalin,[14] deported from Germany and interrogated inMoscow. He died in custody on 4 May 1947 in the hospital of Moscow'sButyrka Prison. His body was cremated and buried at the necropolis of theDonskoy Monastery in amass grave. It was only in 1999 that Russian military prosecutors formally exonerated Nicolai of all charges.[15]
Wherever Nicolai saw morale threatened, wherever he sensed a desire for peace, he went into the attack. He was behind the formation of the Fatherland Party with its chauvinistic and reactionary programme of conquest [...].
