Hitler's Brandenburgers

by Lawrence Paterson

  The 90th had started life as a ‘special purpose unit’, the Divisions-Kommando z.b.V. Afrika, which had come into being on 26 June 1941 primarily for the purposes of the siege of Tobruk and the expected assault to capture the port city. Over the months that followed, during which the Germans were unable to break the Australian garrison, the unit changed first into Division z.b.V. Afrika and then 90th Light Infantry Division by the time that the Axis forces were beaten back from Tobruk during November 1941 before Rommel’s new counteroffensive. Amongst the division’s units was the 361st Infantry Regiment that had been formed primarily from German ex-French Foreign Legionnaires.

  At 1000hrs on 8 June the first of the day’s two direct assaults on Bir Hakeim was preceded by artillery barrages and a Luftwaffe raid. By the end of the day one French observation post had been overrun and a 75mm gun captured, but both Brandenburger Gefreiters Ernst Schweim and Herbert Vosswinkel had been killed in action. Two days later Gefreiter Manfred Lawicki was also killed during a day’s fighting where the Brandenburgers and grenadiers of the 90th broke into the main defensive perimeter in three direct assaults. By the end of the day’s fighting the French defenders had only a single 75mm artillery shell left. That evening, Pierre Koenig signalled the Eighth Army Commander Major General Neil Ritchie: ‘Am at the end of my tether. The enemy is outside my HQ.’ Ritchie promptly ordered the French garrison to break out that night, issuing the same instructions to the one hundred surviving Jewish troops to the north. The delay they had inflicted on Rommel’s advance had allowed the British Eighth Army to retreat in good order to their new defensive line at El Alamein and their own evacuation began at 2330hrd that same night, involving fierce clashes in the dark with the surrounding Germans. By the end of the battle, the surviving French troops successfully reached Allied lines, they and their supporting units having suffered 141 dead, 229 wounded and 814 captured as well as the loss of 53 guns, 50 vehicles and 110 aircraft. Axis forces had suffered 3,300 dead or wounded, 227 captured, 164 vehicles destroyed – including 52 tanks – and 49 aircraft shot down.

  Meanwhile the remainder of the Gazala Line had crumbled and Tobruk was attacked on 20 June, falling after less than a full day’s fighting. However, the gallant defence of Bir Hakeim had imposed a severe delay on the Axis advance and influenced Hitler’s decision to cancel Operation ‘Herkules’, the proposed invasion of Malta. With time to organise the main defensive line at El Alamein, Rommel would be stopped at the very gates of Alexandria in the first battle, which brought about an uncomfortable stalemate until October 1942. Afrika Korps General Bayerlein later recalled the effect of the French stand:

  We were in a really desperate situation, our backs against a minefield, no food, no water, no petrol, very little ammunition, no way through the mines for our convoys; Bir Hakeim still holding out and preventing our supplies from the south. We were being attacked all the time from the air. In another 24 hours, we should have had to surrender.12

  Count László Almásy and Operation ‘Salam’

  Before their commitment as shock troops in the battle at Bir Hakeim, Koenen’s Brandenburgers had already begun operating in their planned unconventional role. The Hungarian Count László Almásy headed an operation to insert two Abwehr agents behind British lines in April 1942 with the purpose of contacting pro-German Egyptian military officers. Almásy, a veteran of land and air combat from the First World War, was an aristocrat, motorist, desert explorer, aviator and sportsman who had spent years during the 1930s exploring parts of the Egyptian and Libyan desert. After Hungary joined the Tripartite Pact in November 1940, Almásy was recruited into the Abwehr in Budapest by Luftwaffe Major Nikolaus Ritter, chief of the Luftwaffe’s section of Abwehr I and commissioned with the rank of a Luftwaffe Hauptmann. His initial work entailed cartography before his commitment to the plan to deposit two spies in Egypt, codenamed Operation ‘Kondor’.

  Almásy was in North Africa in May 1941 and had already used his flying skill on behalf of the Abwehr, including the retrieval of two Hungarian agents from a landing strip 40km from the Giza pyramids. Ritter requested permission to mount a similar undertaking and land spies by aircraft in Egypt, as reliable information was urgently needed regarding British troop movements to Egypt from Palestine, Iraq and India and information about the flow of supplies through Red Sea ports. In June 1941, he was in Benghazi finalising details of his plan that involved the use of two bombers, one to be piloted by Almásy, the other by Hauptmann Hans Bleich. The Hungarian was to lead the way to the landing ground that he had used previously, though a quarrel between himself and Ritter over the condition of one of the aircraft (the Luftwaffe ground crew reporting a damaged tyre rendering it unfit for landing on an improvised airstrip) led to him resigning from the project, followed shortly afterward by Bleich. Ritter, undeterred, took one aircraft himself, the second flown by a replacement pilot as they carried a 40-year-old Egyptian-born spy named Muehlenbruch and a 45-year-old Jewish spy from Hamburg named Klein towards Egypt.13 Arriving at the area indicated by Almásy, neither aircraft could see the landing zone and were forced to attempt to return without fulfilling their mission. However, through either faulty navigation or an unplanned diversion that was required due to their home airfield being under attack by British bombers, Ritter’s aircraft went miles off its planned course and he ran out of fuel, making a forced landing in the sea nearly 4km from the coast. Though the Egyptian spy was killed, Ritter suffered only a broken arm and was later rescued with the remainder of his complement by German forces. Returning to Berlin, the project was taken from his control and Almásy asked by the Abwehr whether it was feasible instead to insert two spies by travelling overland. Though Ritter was keen to be involved, the Abwehr had lost confidence in him and Rittmeister Hoesch was brought in to take his place as coordinator.14 As far as Almásy was concerned it was eminently possible, the same are having been the subject of an expedition that he had made in 1932, mapping the region that had been previously unrecorded by Western explorers.

  The two agents concerned, Johann Eppler (alias Hussein Gaffar) and Heinrich Gerd Sandstede (alias Peter Muncaster), had been enlisted in the Wehrmacht as part of the Interpreter Company at Meissen, though Sandstede (and possibly Eppler) was also employed by the topographical department (Kartenstelle) of OKW in Berlin working on maps of the areas of Africa that he was familiar with. Eppler had been born in Alexandria, the illegitimate son of a German woman, Johanna Eppler, and a British officer. His mother later married an Egyptian named Gaffar though he was raised between 1915 and 1931 in Germany before returning to Egypt. He left North Africa for Germany once more in 1937 and married a Danish woman, Sonia Eppler-Wallin, the couple living in Copenhagen until September 1940. Eppler had become fluent in German, French, Egyptian and Arabic and possessed adequate English and a smattering of Scandinavian languages. Conscripted into the Wehrmacht, he was first transferred to a supply unit before his linguistic abilities brought him to the Interpreter Company. Sandstede, on the other hand, was a German national from Oldenberg who had lived between 1930 and 1939 in Uganda, Kenya and at Dar-es-Salaam, Tanganyika. He was an office manager for Texas Oil Company, and British authorities interned him at the outbreak of war as a hostile alien but he was repatriated to Germany in an exchange of civilians in January 1940. His linguistic skills included mastery of German, English and Swahili as well as some French and Italian. After attachment to the interpreter service, Sandstede and Eppler transferred to the Brandenburgers’ 13th Company during summer 1941 after being recommended by their NCO, Wachtmeister Odo Wilscher, who would subsequently become Koenen’s adjutant and later transfer to the Brandenburger Fallschirmjäger Battalion.15 Their tenure with the company, which consisted primarily of African-Germans training for deployment to North Africa, was brief before both men transferred back to Berlin and the topographical department; an example of the method by which the regiment was used more as a depot for V-Leute than a military formation.

  The pair were recruited for th
eir mission to Cairo by Rittmeister Ulrich Otto Hoesch in August 1941. Hoesch had also lived in Africa before the war and it was with him that the two prospective agents met Almásy in Vienna’s Grand Hotel. Hoesch departed for a separate mission to North Africa and was later killed in action at Gazalla on 7 October 1941, his role as coordinator of the planned mission being taken over by Abwehr Hauptmann Pretzl, a frequent pre-war visitor to Egypt where he worked as a professor at the Azhar University. Pretzl oversaw W/T (radio communications) training for the two agents at his home in Munich before they attended a four-week Abwehr W/T course in Berlin-Stahnsdorf. Pretzl in turn was killed in a plane crash on the way from Munich to Vienna in November 1941 and Almásy took direct charge of the operation. At the end of December 1941 Almásy and Feldwebel Enthold travelled to Africa to begin preliminary arrangements for their mission, coordinating with the ‘Wido’ station for logistical support. The remaining six men associated with the operation would not arrive until February: Eppler and Sandstede, Unteroffizier Wöhrmann, Vizeadmiral Rolf von der Marwitz (German Naval Attaché in Ankara), Feldwebel Hans von Steffans and Gefreiter Waldemar Weber who would be their radio contact with Rommel’s headquarters. Once in Libya they were joined by Gefreiter Munz and Feldwebel Beilharz and later Unteroffizier Körper and medical NCO Unterarzst Stringmann. The presence of the high-ranking 53-year-old Marwitz is unusual, though the veteran naval officer, who had served in the First World War before diplomatic postings from 1937, appears to have been involved in German espionage in the Middle East as a conduit by which Abwehr agents were paid. Though not a member of the intelligence services, his position in Ankara made him responsible for the embassies in Athens, Bucharest and Sofia and therefore a useful ally for Canaris’ Abwehr. His role in ‘Salam’ was advisory and, perhaps, financial.

  The men were prepared and acclimatised within seven weeks and during April 1942 vehicles were obtained from the Fallschirmjäger ‘Kampfgruppe Burckhardt’ based in Marawah, Libya. Major Burckhardt was returning with his men to Germany after having stood guard duty at an aerodrome located at the Jalu oasis that they had seized from the Allies in a ground assault during February. The transport consisted of two captured British Ford V8 trucks and three Bedford 1½-ton trucks with German markings. This was not to be a covert mission; all men wore German uniforms and the vehicles remained plainly marked, though dust and the relative similarity of desert clothing added layers of obscurity to identifying marks and insignia. At Jalu Almásy’s group proceeded to load water containers for the upcoming operation, only to be told by local Arabs – as British Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) members had been before them – that the water of the Jalu wells was too brackish and would last only three days before becoming undrinkable. A sample sent to the Afrika Korps’ 659th Water Supply Company (Wasserversorgung Kompanie) confirmed this information and Almásy was compelled to travel to Bir Bettafel 20km away to refill their supply.

  The men and vehicles of what was now known as Operation ‘Salam’ were assembled at Jalu and made their first attempt to depart for Egypt on 12 May. While Steffans and Marwitz remained behind, Almásy, the two agents, Wöhrmann, Körper, Munz, Beilharz and Stringmann followed the Kufra track for 60km where Italian military maps suggested the hardened surface was that of a load-bearing gravel desert – a ‘serir’ – before heading into softer sand. After 30km more, a sandstorm created difficulties for the trucks in shifting dunes and one was abandoned with a broken axle. Four of the remaining trucks returned to the Kufra track while Beilharz – who apparently developed the ‘galloping shits’ – and Stringmann retraced their steps to Jalu. After 30km of the Kufra track Almásy swung east along the most northerly of three camel tracks and began to periodically establish supply dumps of fuel and water for use on their return journey. Their expedition continued, crossing the tracks of heavy British traffic bound for the garrisoned Kufra oasis (captured by French troops from the Italians in March 1941) of which Wöhrmann transmitted details to their base. The small column encountered difficulties in finding the correct passes through the Gilf Kebir (Great Barrier), a rugged and remote plateau that marked the boundary between Libya and Egypt. A single vehicle was left abandoned in a wadi in order to extend the fuel of the remaining three. Six derelict British vehicles were found which yielded eight extra cans of fuel, though the ‘Salam’ men did not linger to investigate their find further. Shortly thereafter they encountered a supply dump that Almásy had left during the course of a 1932 expedition over the same ground, containing four canisters of still drinkable water and ten petrol canisters from which the fuel had leaked and evaporated away.

  Their position as far as water and fuel were concerned was becoming desperate as Almásy searched for the correct pass. They possessed insufficient fuel to skirt south of the mountainous range blocking their way and when all hope appeared lost Almásy finally found traces of his 1932 trail, following it between two peaks that had only been committed to cartography during that original exploration that Almásy had made nearly ten years previously. Only approximately 100km short of their destination of Asyut on the banks of the Nile, they left yet another truck behind that had broken down and continued along their way loaded on to the remaining two. At Rommel’s headquarters, Weber acknowledged a wireless message from Eppler, the last transmission he was to receive from either of the two agents. After bluffing their way past British sentry posts and other small units encountered along their path, Almásy and his group reached the area of Asyut and the two agents – codenamed ‘Max’ (Sandstede) and ‘Moritz’ (Eppler) – disembarked to continue their journey alone. They buried their uniforms and one of the W/T sets, marked the spot and headed into Asyut on foot, arriving on the morning of 24 May and taking a train bound for Cairo at 1pm. Their part of ‘Salam’ was now over and their mission reverted to Operation ‘Kondor’.

  Meanwhile, Almásy and his ‘Salam’ men retraced their path to successfully reach German lines once more, whereupon the Hungarian aristocrat reported in person to Rommel. For his successful part of the operation he was promoted to Major and decorated with the EK I before being discharged from the Wehrmacht as per his request and returning to his native Hungary. It had been originally proposed by the Abwehr that if Almásy completed his expedition safely, he take control of Koenen’s half of the 13th Company and train them in the methods of the LRDG, equipping them with captured Bren carriers, Ford V8 trucks, machine guns and mortars and operate in the Kufra region as both reconnaissance and a harassing force against British supply lines. However, as far as Almásy was concerned, he had done enough. His war was over.

  In the end, the remarkable journey that they had made to deliver the two agents was futile. Both men were arrested on 24 July after achieving nothing except the squandering of their supplied fortune (£3,000 in forged pound notes). Early attempts at making wireless contact with Rommel’s headquarters failed and after money became scarce, they met with Viktor Hauer, a German national, though Austrian by birth, working at the Swedish Embassy to administer the interests of interned German civilians with the approval of British authorities. Through Hauer they accessed a transmitter that Hauer had hidden in the embassy basement, disguised as packing crates belonging to a pre-war German archaeological team. The agents transmitted a single message towards Rommel’s headquarters:

  To Section 1 H west of the Abwehr, Angelo.

  Please guarantee our existence. We are in mortal danger (or it is exceedingly urgent, according to Sandstede). Please use the wave-length No. 1 at 0900 hours Tripoli time.

  Max and Moritz16

  There was no reply and unfortunately for the two agents, Hauer was playing a double game and working not just with British approval but in the interests of the Allied intelligence services. While he distracted the pair by introducing them to sympathetic Egyptians, who included Anwar el-Sadat from the Egyptian Signals Corps (later President of Egypt in 1970), Hauer warned the British authorities that he had been contacted by German spies. A staged kidnapping of Hauer
was mounted so that he could be fully interrogated and after British intelligence had learned all he knew he was interned in Palestine ‘for his own protection’.17 Eppler and Sandstede were finally arrested on 24 July 1942, along with the rest of their small network including el-Sadat. The British authorities were less than impressed.

  Both Sandstede and Eppler had a diary; they both claim that these diaries were written to cover themselves if ever they should have to explain their achievements in Egypt to the Germans. A large number of the entries in the diary were true, but many were false … The diaries were written up when it seemed likely that Rommel would arrive in Cairo … In fact, Sandstede and Eppler had, so far as can be ascertained, achieved nothing. This may be accounted for by the fact primarily that their transmitter got no response from Weber, that they were unable or unwilling to make certain contacts which they had been told to make and because they were too intoxicated with the possession of so much money and too intent upon enjoying the fleshpots of Egypt in the form of women and wine.18