Field Post Number 00313
(The Listening Post)
The German Fixed Intercept Station
in Lauf a. d. Pegnitz 1939-1945
By Werner Sunkel
The Lauf Fixed Intercept Station [Feste Nachrichten-Aufkarungsstelle] was one of the oldest and most secret installations in the Wehrmacht. This is why, during the war years, their work and purpose was never talked about The following article shall attempt to clear up part of the puzzle pertaining to the renamed (since 1942) Fixed Intercept Station in Laufer Haberloh.
It is planned that the original documents and photos of the Lauf Intercept Station, as well as the original radio sets, will be displayed for the first time this September [1995] in the municipal savings bank [Laufer Stadtsparkasse]. Additionally, more information, eye-witnesses and documents are still being looked for.
Through many recent investigations and reports, what happened in World War II depended not only on the intuitive fate and fortune of a few determined Generals but, not the least, also on their knowledge of the opponent. We now know that, also in Germany, many military organizations were busy with the production of intelligence, but the interception of enemy radio traffic played a very special role as a leading intelligence tool.
From the low level coded or clear-text traffic of front line troops, the Army Intercept Companies [Horchkompanien des Heeres] were able to determine the intentions of the opponents and, at a lower operational level, make decisions.
Since the First World War, the General Staff of the German Army had already built over 20 fixed radio intercept stations, mostly along the boarders of the former German Reich.
In 1937, it was directed that another radio intercept station should be constructed in Lauf. It was assumed that from here the military radio traffic of Czechoslovakia would be monitored. However, the planning and construction work dragged on for a long time, because of Change Orders, so much so that after the German invasion of Prague, on 15 March 1939, a new "target" had to be found.
So it came about that the Lauf Intercept Station took over part of the mission being handled by the Treuenbrietzen (Southwest of Berlin) Intercept Station of which nothing has been previously written about. With the help of the former Director of Analysis for the Lauf site, and a few of the remaining radio operators and female analysts [Nachrichtenhelferinnen], we have managed to gather information about their work. With their assistance, one of the last secrets of Word War II may be solved, over which only a few vague references may be found in existing archives.
Listening to Diplomatic Traffic
The intercept sites at Lauf and Treuenbrietzen, with out-posts in Madrid and even at the Canary Islands, were subordinate directly to the Cryptographic Bureau of the Armed Forces Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command [Amtsgruppe Chiffrierwesen im Wehrmachts Fuhrungsstab Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht] with the function to intercept, and pass on to Berlin for decoding, short wave diplomatic radio traffic.
The intercept site at Lauf only became operational around Christmas of 1939 so the first interceptions were performed at a radio station located in the Tennelohe military intelligence training area. After the move to Lauf the radio operators and support personnel occupied a four unit city owned apartment, which still exists, living quarters on the Haberloh and the former Customs School on the Hermannstrasse, below the Kunigundenbergs, which were both torn down in 1983. During the war they built a Direction Finding site 200 meters [from the Haberloh] towards the city and, in one of the barracks, added more intercept positions so that 20 positions worked around the clock, in six hour shifts. In the Spring of 1943 some drafted female typists were added. In March and again in October of 1944, females replaced numerous radio operators and DF operators that had been transferred to the front lines.
20 Intercept Positions Around The Clock
The radio intercept workstations in the Operations Building and the barracks next to the DF site were usually equipped with three radios and two Morse tape strip recorders for recording of the encoded traffic. The Morse tape strips were transferred by Technicians into number and letter groups and passed on by teletype, or courier, to Berlin.
In the previously mentioned Cryptographic Bureau the coded intercepts could be partially deciphered and then were distributed in the form of so-called "reliable messages" ["Verläßlicher Nachrichten"] to the highest levels of the Wehrmacht Operations Staff. Monthly, some thousand decoded messages were distributed and mostly ignored as were the other interceptions of the Navy and Luftwaffe. The information contained in them was minimal and usually had no direct influence on the German war effort. However, there was one exception: the Lauf Intercept Station (originally known as H-Site and beginning in 1942 as Fixed Intercept Station) copied the messages of the American Military Attache in Cairo, Colonel Bonner Feller, which revealed the intentions of the British 8th Army. Until July of 1942, when the American codes were changed, these messages were passed on to Berlin, decoded there and transmitted to Rommel, who then received valuable information about the intentions of his English opponent, Field Marshal Montgomery.
At first, there was hardly any contact with the civilian population. This was remedied by public lecture meetings, the distribution of Christmas gifts to the soldier's children and musical gatherings. According to an original poster of "Soldiers and the KdF County Sport Group" [Soldaten und der KdF-Kreissportgruppe] on June 24, 1944, an entertainment evening was organized in the White Horse ["Weißen Roß"] Gasthaus, with the motto "With music everything goes better", during which the Mayor was presented a model of the city built by the soldiers of the "Listening Post" [Horchstelle]. Today the model is located in the entry hall of the City Hall.
The end of the Lauf Intercept Station came on 8 April 1945 when the Americans were already in Bad Mergentheim, Crailsheim and near Schweinfurt. At noon, an American bomber destroyed the barracks beside the DF Site and killed the Analyst Ursula Polzin (she is buried with honor in the Lauf Cemetery). On the same day most members of the intercept site were transported in railroad freight cars to Schliersee, by way of Amberg and Passau, where they arrived ten days later. Other soldiers transported a large part of the equipment there by truck.
Technical Radio Experimental Station
During the American occupation, up until approximately 1950, there was no activity at the site. Supposedly Polish forced laborers lived in the site for awhile, after 1945. After the American occupation, the buildings were converted to a radio laboratory which was operated, until the late-70's, by a business from Munich-Pullach [*]. Today the former intercept site is used by the Technical Training Factory and Workshop [Technische Hilfswerk Betriebsgebeude und Werkstatt].
Not only during the whole war, but even today, nothing is talked about the work that was done at the intercept site. The R”thenbacher Museum for Historical Military Technology will organize, at the Lauf municipal savings bank, in September of this year [1995], an exhibition about the intercept site, compiled from City archives.
More about this article
The previous article was translated from the original German by Ralph and Eda Thadeus with help from the Military History Research Office of the German Army. Because of compound words and sentences used in the original article, the translations are based more on 'meanings' of the sentences rather than a literal translation.
The father of Werner Sunkel (the author of this article) worked as an "analysts" at the Lauf Intercept Station. Mr Sunkel is a contributing author to several books pertaining to the telecommunications technology used in the Hitler's Wolfsschlucht 2 and Adlerhorst Headquarters. He also maintains the Museum for Historical Military Technology at Rothenback an der Pegnitz which is located directly East of Nurnberg. One building is dedicated to the Lauf Intercept Station and can be previewed at his web site: http://www.wehrtechnikmuseum.de/Rundgang/Bau_4/bau_4.html
In the article mention is made to a location called the "Haberloh". This is part of the City of Lauf and is a small area (clearing) on the edge of the forest that boarders on the town.
When the Lauf Intercept Station opened in 1939, the Director of Analysis [Auswertungsleiter Regierungsrat] was Wilhelm F. Flicke. Mr. Flicke was in the "business" for thirty some years both before and after the war.
In a monogram written by Erich Schmidt-Eenboom and published on the web site of the German peace group 'Research Institute for Peace Politics', more information about the Lauf site is published: In 1946 the American CIC 'invited" experts of the Wehrmacht's Intercept Service to Bad Vilbel. The invitation's aim was to persuade them to create and operate intercept sites. [*] Starting in 1952 the CIC operated the updated Lauf site with former veterans of the German Intercept Service. According to Schmidt-Eenboom the Lauf site dedicated 14 positions to the coverage of the Czechoslovakian border guards and state security radio transmissions. Two other positions covered the Polish Army and Internal Security while another two positions covered Hungarian military traffic.