Johann Wenzel - Knowledge

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He managed to survive in Belgium until allied liberation in October 1944. He made contact with the Soviet military mission in Paris and in January 1945 was sent to Moscow. There he was interrogated and sentenced by a Special Commission to five years forced labour. He was released in the Soviet Union

218:, his assistant, who controlled one those networks. His express mission was to use his new training to set up a radio network in Belgium but the Belgian authorities refused him permission to remain. So, he moved to the Netherlands in late 1936 or early 1937 (sources vary), where he made contact with 308:

were able to identify an illegal radio transmission that came from the home of Wenzel at his Brussels home at 12 Rue de Namur. It took several days to identify the correct location due to the layout of the building and the electric railway that ran through the neighbourhood, but on 29–30 June 1942,

264:'s arrest, Wenzel was invited to re-establish a WT link to Moscow by Jeffremov, after Jeffremov took over Anatoly Gurevich's network, after he escaped to France. In May 1942, Wenzel commenced transmitting important traffic to the Soviet Union. In June 1942, following the capture of 313:, in Brussels. When the Abwehr broke into the apartment in the tenement where Wenzel was located, the Abwehr surprised him and he took off over the rooftops, firing his pistol at the Germans as he tried to escape but he was eventually arrested on 30 June 1942. 733:

and an account of this is contained in the Kesaris, Paul. L, ed. (1979). The Rote Kapelle: the CIA's history of Soviet intelligence and espionage networks in Western Europe, 1936-1945. Washington DC: University Publications of America. p. 384.

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During the search of the apartment, it was found that Wenzel had left a series of coded messages and two messages written in German that were waiting to be enciphered. These messages contained details of such startling content, the plans for

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From December 1940 to July 1942, Wenzel transmitted intelligence by WT to the Soviet Union. In November 1941, on orders from Anatoly Gurevich, Wenzel transmitted messages on information that Gurevich had received from

348:(RSHA) Section IV Subsection 2A, requesting any details regarding Wenzel, and they returned a number of card indexes that were found detailing Wenzel's early communist career and his name was identified in the RSHA 237:. Schneider was a Swiss communist who had connections with Henry Robinson. In 1939, he became a technical advisor on WT procedures and codes to Anatoly Gurevich and trained a number of WT operators in the 864: 387:

Over several months, the guards at Rue de l'Aurore became lulled into a false sense of security and either on the 17 or 18 November 1942, Wenzel managed to escape from the guards of the

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at a house on Rue de l'Aurore in Brussels. The German funkspiel operation was largely a failure. In Belgium, Soviet intelligence was likely given an early warning when

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Wenzel came from a working-class family and was the son of a farmer. After leaving school, Wenzel worked as a locksmith apprentice in a coal mining company in the

363:, due to him being a specialist in radio telephony and its technology. After his torture he was a broken man and he agreed to collaborate with the Germans in a 729:

Harry Piepe working for section IIIF of the Abwehr in 1942, finally identified the correct apartment. He was interviewed in 1965 by the French journalist

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Such was the urgency by the Germans to reveal the communist network that was associated with Wenzel that he was subject to brutal interrogation including

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in 1950. From 1955 he lived in the GDR where he worked as a radio broadcast technician. Wenzel died on 2 February 1969 in East Berlin.

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On 15 November 1939, the French police issued a report that stated Wenzel was working as a saboteur as a member of the Comintern based

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operation using his own radio transmitter that began on 6 August 1942. The funkspiel operated code named "Weide", was controlled by

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under the guise of a student of mechanics and enrolled at a technical school. There he met the Soviet intelligence officers

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a Soviet intelligence officer who was Trepper's assistant, ordered Wenzel to become the WT operator for Trepper in France.

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was banned, forcing Wenzel to flee. In 1935, Wenzel was ordered to report to the 4th Division of the General Staff of the

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In early 1938, Wenzel illegally returned to Belgium and it is likely that he resided with Franz Schneider and his wife,

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and technical director of the AM Apparat for Western Europe in 1940 and director of an espionage network in France.

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The SIGINT secrets: the signals intelligence war, 1900 to today : including the persecution of Gordon Welchman

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Captain Harry Piepe along with some men, including policemen and Luftwaffe personnel, sealed off the street in

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