The Defection of Erich Vermehren and The Dissolution of The Abwehr
Among Kiep's close friends were Erich Vermehren and his wife, the former Countess Elisabeth von Plettenberg. Vermehren, by profession a lawyer from Hamburg, was prevented from taking up a Rhodes scholarship in Oxford in 1938 because he repeatedly refused to join the Hitler Youth. Excluded from military service because of a childhood injury, he managed to get himself assigned to the Istanbul branch of the Abwehr. He also managed to get his wife to follow him, despite the Gestapo's efforts to detain her in Germany as a hostage.
When Kiep was arrested, the Vermehrens were summoned to Berlin by the Gestapo to be interrogated in connection with their friend's case. Knowing what would be in store for them, they got in touch with the British Secret Intelligence Service in February, 1944, and were flown to Cairo and thence to England.
When the news of the defection broke – courtesy of British propaganda – it became the talk of Berlin. Although the Vermehrens did not bring any documents of any intelligence value or ciphers to the Allies, it was believed that they absconded with the Abwehr's secret codes and handed them over to the British. This proved to be the last straw for Adolf Hitler. On February 18, he ordered that the Abwehr be dissolved and its functions taken over by the RSHA, under Himmler's jurisdiction. The disintegration of the Abwehr caused the resignation of hundreds of officers who took up positions elsewhere rather than serve the SS.
While the demise of the Abwehr was an unexpected but welcome boon to the Allies, it also deprived the German armed forces of an intelligence service of its own, and was a further blow to those among the anti-Nazi conspirators against Hitler who had also used the Abwehr's resources.
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Famous quotes containing the words defection and/or dissolution:
“The most dangerous follower is the one whose defection would destroy the whole party: hence, the best follower.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“We are threatened with suffering from three directions: from our own body, which is doomed to decay and dissolution and which cannot even do without pain and anxiety as warning signals; from the external world, which may rage against us with overwhelming and merciless forces of destruction; and finally from our relations to other men. The suffering which comes from this last source is perhaps more painful than any other.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)