Karl Giering (17 August 1900 – 9 November 1945) was a German police officer. He was SS-Hauptsturmführer and Criminal Councillor in the Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt Berlin (Gestapo) and later Head of Department IV A 2 (Defence against Sabotage) in the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA). Giering is regarded as one of the most dangerous persecutors of the communist resistance against the Nazi regime. He commanded the Gestapo to smash the apparatus of the Betriebsberichterstattung (BB) of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and conducted investigations against the Soviet espionage network known as the Red Orchestra while part of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle.
Life Giering was born on 17 August 1900 in Skwierzyna. He was the son of a farmer, Reinhold Giering, who was also head of the local municipality. From 1907 to 1914, Giering undertook his early education at the primary school in Wiejce. Afterward, he was active in his father's official affairs and also worked on the farm. On 14 June 1918, he was drafted into the 50th Infantry Regiment in Rawicz. However, he did not take part in active service, as the war ended with the armistice. After his discharge from military service, he became a member of the Lüttwitz Freikorps on 25 March 1919. On 1 April 1920, he began service in the Reichswehr in the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin. He left the Reichswehr on 5 November 1923 due to illness and then took up a job in plant security at the Osram company in Berlin. Between 1924 and 1925, he worked for the Viking League.
On 1 April 1925, Giering joined the preparatory service of the criminal investigation department in Berlin. After passing his probationary period, he was taken on as a civil servant. He then took up his service in the political police department I Ad II at the Berlin police headquarters where he remained until 1933. When the Nazis seized power in 1933, he was transferred to the Secret State Police, i.e. Gestapo. He then worked in Department II A 1 of the Communism Department, which was responsible for investigating members of communist resistance and espionage organisations. Giering lived in an apartment at Gervinusstrasse 12, close to the S-Bahn station in Charlottenburg, Berlin.
As a policeman, Giering preferred the use of psychological methods and a careful investigation.
Early investigations On 27 February 1933, the Reichstag was burnt down. The Nazi government interpreted this event as the beginning of a communist conspiracy against the regime. The Nazi regime regarded this event as the starting point of a political manoeuvre aimed at taking over the judicial apparatus and thus eliminating the political opposition. Further, this was intended to gain the support of the bourgeois-national conservative parties in the Reichstag to ensure the necessary majority to pass the Enabling Act of 24 March 1933, in order to then disempower the parliament.
A police search was made for the leading communist functionaries. However, the chairman of the Reichstag faction of the KPD, Ernst Torgler, thwarted the search, as he voluntarily surrendered to the authorities. This amazed the Gestapo. He wanted to protest against the false accusation of arson. In the trial that followed, Torgler was acquitted because he had collaborated with Nazi regime in prison.
Karl Giering was involved in these searches as the leader of the Investigative team B in Berlin. Following a denunciation, the chairman of the KPD, Ernst Thälmann, was arrested on 3 March 1933. On the following day, Giering searched the accommodation where Thälmann was hiding. Since Giering was able to show that investigations against the KPD had been very successful even before 1933, he was also assigned to the interrogation of Thälmann. Giering probably proceeded with great violence during the interrogation. To this day there is no proof that Giering was able to force a confession from Thälmann, that there had been a conspiracy against the Nazi regime. In this respect, the prosecution in the Reichstag fire trial, as with Ernst Torgler later, remained unsuccessful.
Search for Herbert Wehner Central Committee of the KPD member Georg Schumann, was arrested in June 1933. The name Wehner appeared in the Gestapo interrogation transcript on his case, along with his political function in the KPD. As a result of the interrogation, the Berlin Gestapo discovered that Herbert Wehner was responsible for the organisation of the last cadres of the KPD in Germany. Wehner had barely escaped arrest in Berlin on 3 March 1933, after trying to warn KPD members at the Wittenbergplatz, the location of the KPD headquarters.
From that point forward, Wehner was hunted by the Gestapo. To ensure he was not captured, he moved from place to place and made sure that no KPD members knew where he was staying. If he felt he was in danger, he would move to another location. Giering was the senior Gestapo officer who conducted the search for Wehner. To ensure he was successful, Giering employed Alfred Kattner a one-time confidant of Ernst Thälmann who had been arrested in March 1933, tortured and then persuaded to gather information for the Gestapo and then released with the task of infiltrating the KPD leadership as an informant. However, Kattner failed to locate Wehner's address. On the 5 February 1934, Giering had to state in his report: "Despite an ongoing search, it was not possible to arrest W. He turns up wherever new instructions are issued in organisational matters, but he knows how to disguise himself so well that it is not possible for his closest colleagues to give any information about his actual whereabouts. While all other illegal party functionaries are provided with illegal offices and quarters by the quartermaster (called Iduna), Wehner procures these himself and thus completely encapsulates himself from his employees."
Destruction of the communist resistance From 1933 onwards, Giering persecuted members of the Betriebsberichterstattung (BB Apparat), the industrial espionage organisation of the KPD. The investigations were also directed against the KPD's AM-Apparat. During his interrogations, Giering used all means of cunning, deception, enticement, blackmail and false promises. Giering wanted to obtain a confession from the arrested persons under all circumstances. Thus he did not shy away from the use of the most serious acts of violence, known as aggravated interrogation.
Giering tortured Walter Benzmann, a forger of passports for the KPD. On the 6 March 1936, Ewald Jahre, an employee of the BB Apparat, committed suicide after being interrogated by Giering. Werner Schneider, another KPD employee, was no longer able to bear Giering's abuse and hanged himself in his cell on 6 January 1937. Herbert Hopp, a KPD functionary, collapsed while being interrogated by Giering on 12 August 1935. Hopp managed to throw himself to death from an open window on the 4th floor of Gestapo headquarters.
However, Giering achieved numerous arrests with a skilful use of undercover agents, that were known in Germany as V-Mann, short for Vertrauens-mann. (German:V-Mann, plural V-Leute). They were arrested prisoners, whom he committed with this spying activity by promising severe punishment such as the death penalty, if they refused.
During the month of July 1937, Giering used seven informants, in this manner. Giering also did not shy away from acts of deception against the judiciary, if he wanted to ensure that his investigation was to be a success. In a letter dated 28 December 1937, he deceived the Reich Attorney at the People's Court, the Chief Public Prosecutor Wilhelm Huhnstock, when it came to the status about technical draughtsman Herbert Kleina, who had been sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for treason but had become an undercover agent for the Gestapo.
Munich In 1937, Giering attended a course at the Führerschule der Sicherheitspolizei in Berlin. In the following two years he fell ill and withdrew from active duty for many months. When the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler was carried out in Munich in November 1939, Giering was involved in the investigation of the crime. This brought him the benevolent attention of Adolf Hitler, to whom he was personally introduced in this context towards the end of 1939. In 1940 he fell ill several times and visited a spa in April for one month, to recuperate.
Moscow executions After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, there were still reciprocal supplies of goods between the Soviet Union and the Nazi regime, with the Soviet Union supplying mainly oil and ores. In return, the Nazi regime supplied armaments. However, the Soviet side insisted on receiving deliveries of the latest developments, such as the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter plane. In return, the representatives of the RSHA demanded the extradition of German Communists living in Moscow. Representing Reinhard Heydrich, Giering negotiated the agreement in Moscow in February 1940. The opponent of this agreement was the responsible NKVD chairman Lavrentiy Beria. In the negotiations, Giering insisted on having a certain group of German communists extradited. But Beria demanded that they should remain in the Soviet Union. In April 1940 or one or two months later, eight RSHA members were able to shoot about 30 German communists south of Moscow. Except for one individual, they had all previously been in the service of the Soviet GRU.
Red Orchestra
Brussels On 26 June 1941 a radio transmission was intercepted, the first of many, by the Funkabwehr. In August 1941, the operation was given the name Rote Kapelle and the nature of the Soviet espionage network was first realised. By September 1941, over 250 messages had been intercepted, but it took several months for the Funkabwehr to reduce the suspected area of transmission to within the Belgium area. On 30 November 1941, close range direction-finding teams moved into Brussels and almost immediately found three transmitter signals. The Abwehr chose a location at 101 Rue des Atrébates, that provided the strongest signal and on 12 December 1941 the house was raided by the Abwehr. Inside the house were courier Rita Arnould, writing specialist and radio operator Anton Danilov as well as Soviet agent Sophia Poznańska. The radio transmitter was still warm. The women were trying to burn enciphered messages, which were recovered. Two photographs were also recovered. The Germans found a hidden room holding the material and equipment needed to produce forged documents, including blank passports and inks. While Arnould became an informer, Poznanska committed suicide in Saint-Gilles prison after being tortured. The next day radio operator Mikhail Makarov turned up at the house and was arrested. On 30 July 1942, the Funkabwehr identified a further house at 12 Rue de Namur, Brussels and Abwehr officer Harry Piepe arrested GRU radio operator, Johann Wenzel. Coded messages discovered in the house contained details of such startling content, the plans for Case Blue, that Abwehr officer Harry Piepe immediately drove to Berlin from Brussels to report to German High Command. His actions resulted in the formation of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle It was created by RSHA Amt (department) IV (Gestapo) section A2 (Sabotageabwehr), during September 1942, and was initially led by Friedrich Panzinger. It grew out of a 1942 agreement between the Funkabwehr, Abwehr and the Gestapo to identify members of the Red Orchestra resistance group.