Before the war, German military intelligence assessment of other countries was handled by the individual country and specialist departments of the Great General Staff. So, for instance, the Third Department covered France and Britain. Any coordination of these assessments was handled by officers above departmental level, meaning the Chief of the General Staff and the assistant chiefs [Oberquartiermeister].
On mobilisation in August 1914, an Intelligence Department was established in Supreme Army Headquarters [Oberste Heeresleitung, usually known as OHL]. The department was initially given the title Nachrichtenabteilung, but was renamed Foreign Armies Department [Abteilung Fremde Heere] in May 1917 to avoid confusion with the similarly-titled signals troops.
When established in August 1914, the department had only five officers, at least three of whom came from the peacetime Third Department; they were supported by two military officials. Even by 1917-1918, there were only 21 officers and seven military officials. They were backed up by some personnel in Berlin, but nevertheless this was still a very small number to handle the huge workload.
I’ve written about the department’s work in Chapter 5 of my book Holding Out. In this research paper, I list the department’s officers I have been able to identify and I also provide some prosopographical analysis. I’m gradually adding potted biographies here; and see also this snapshot of the department’s staff in May 1917.
Because of the small size of the department, the 45 officers I’ve identified so far probably account for the great majority of those who served in it. But there will undoubtedly be gaps, and anyway my information is incomplete – particularly on dates.
So, all further contributions are very welcome!
Prosopographical analysis
General. The list of officers has 50 entries rather than 45 because 3 officers served two terms in the department and so appear twice (Rauch, Reiche and Rothkirch), and one served three terms (Hessig).
Arm of service. 31 officers from the infantry, 4 cavalry, 6 field artillery, 2 foot (i.e. heavy) artillery and 2 engineers.
Contingent. 39 officers from the Prussian army, 2 Bavarian, 3 Saxon and 1 Württemberg.
General staff. 26 had attended Kriegsakademie [staff college], of whom 5 had not completed the course by August 1914. 7 had been transferred into the general staff before the war, and a further 6 seconded on probation, 2 of whom had not attended Kriegsakademie.
Guards. 7 officers were from the Guards. Of these, Major Leopold von Rauch, the head of department from early 1915 till the end of the war, and 3 others were from the army’s premier regiment, 1st Garde-Regiment zu Fuß. In addition, another 2 officers had served in the Guards for a short time (so total 9 with Guards connections, and a 10th who had served in a Badenese Guards-equivalent).
Intelligence experience. Wilhelm Schubert is said to have had pre-war experience in the military intelligence service IIIb, and to be a Russian expert. Little evidence on the others, but any who had been transferred into or seconded on probation to the country departments of the Great General Staff in peacetime are likely to have had experience of intelligence assessment at least.[1] As an example of round pegs in round holes, Rauch had been head of the French section of the Great General Staff’s Third Department before the war; was deputy head of the Intelligence Department when it was formed on mobilisation; and then head from early 1915 till the end of the war. Ernst von Reiche had passed the Russian interpreter’s exam while at Kriegsakademie; served as a desk officer in the Russian Section of the Intelligence Department in 1915 and then became head of the section till summer 1918.
Length of commissioned service. Excluding Planck (reservist), Becker and Egloffstein (commissioned 1915), Hentsch and Rauch (the two heads of the department), on average officers had 10 years service by 1 Aug 1914. 29 of this group were Hauptleute/Rittmeister [captain/cavalry captain] on arrival in the department, and 10 Oberleutnants [lieutenants].
Nobility. 19 of the officers were nobles (16 x von, 2 x Freiherr, 1 x Ritter).
Wounded. I’ve added the column on wounded/invalided to the list because I’m struck by the numbers. 16 officers had been more or less seriously wounded before joining the department, and a further 5 invalided for health reasons – 3 of them more than once. The joint total represents very nearly half the officers who served in the department during the war, and these are the ones we know about so the real proportion may have been higher.
Later careers. 13 of the officers became generals – Cochenhausen, Detmering, Gallenkamp, Hanneken, von Krause, Kuntze, Marcks, Neidholdt, Reiche, Rothkirch, Friedrich Schmidt, Schubert and Voigtländer. Marcks and Schmidt were killed in the Second World War; after the war, Kuntze was imprisoned and Neidholdt executed, both for war crimes. Of non-generals, Egloffstein became a prominent Nazi, Planck was executed for resistance.
You can find the list of officers here.
[1] Lukas Grawe, Deutsche Feindaufklärung vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg: Informationen und Einschätzungen des deutschen Generalstabs zu den Armeen Frankreichs und Russlands 1904 bis 1914 (Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2017), passim.