Page initiated on 22 December 2018
Current Status: 27 December 2018
On aspects of "Rote Kapelle"
and some on the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler.
Based on interrogation reports covered within the British
National Archives:
On: Horst Kopkow
and
On: Richard Rolf Werner Richter
Both men once members of the
R.S.H.A. linked police organisations
Why focussing our attention on these fearing men?
Because they acted, at crucial moments in history,
on field where not much is known about:
"Rote Kapelle" was mainly interlinked with Communist sympathisers opposing Nazism.
Albeit, that we deal this time mainly with which took place in France and a bit in Belgium;
and some on the 20th July 1944 attempt in Germany.
But "Rote Kapelle" actually concerned, in someway or another, espionage.
Some names who will be noticed, among quite many others, are:
Schulze-Boysen, Trepper, Kent ...
But, please bear in mind: That the Rote Kapelle complex covered: Germany, Holland, Belgium, France and Switzerland mainly; and thousands had once been involved.
Kopkow also dealt with some aspects of the R.S.HA*. response on the assassination attempted on Hitler of 20 July 1944.
This latter fact is quite brief, but hardly one will have known it from the German police operational side.
Glamorous stories have been told, but these documents are showing it from the first hand perspective.
* R.S.H.A. (RSHA) meant: Reichssicherheitshauptamt
Though, again the question: what is the connection with the objectives of our Foundation?
W/T communications!
I did afterwards a search on Kopkow on Google and came across a Wikipedia contribution,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horst_Kopkow of which I would like to quote aparagraph:
MI5 interrogated Kopkow heavily for the next four years to find out his methods against Soviet espionage. Kopkow cooperated and dictated notes to his former secretary Bertha Rose. British intelligence sheltered him from war crimes investigation and made him available only for three times in war crimes trials. They announced his "death" to War Crimes Group in London in January 1948. According to partially declassified MI5 documents released 2004 in the British National Archives, MI6 hid Kopkow in order to utilize his knowledge further. They released him in West Germany in 1949 or 1950 as a textile factory worker in the British occupation zone. Later he gave just two statements to the West German police when they were investigating the disappearance and death of Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller.
Quoting his personal data:
Horst Kopkow (29 November 1910, Ortelsburg, East Prussia, Germany (now Szczytno, Poland) – 13 October 1996, Gelsenkirchen, Germany) was a Nazi German SS major who worked for German Security police and, after the war, was concealed by British intelligence to use his knowledge during the Cold War.
I tried the same in respect to Rolf Werner Richter:
The only serious evidence I traced an indication that he had been engaged within the - US sponsored - Gehlen Organisation, the forerunner of the Bundesnachrichtendienst.
By Arthur O. Bauer