Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle was a German special commission that was created by German High Command in November 1942, in response to the capture of two leading members of a Soviet espionage group that operated in Europe, that was called the Red Orchestra (German:Rote Kapelle) by the Abwehr. The Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle was an internal counter-intelligence operation run by the Abwehr and the Gestapo. It consisted of a small independent Gestapo unit that was commanded by SS-Obersturmbannführer Friedrich Panzinger and its chief investigator was Gestapo officer Karl Giering. Its remit was to discover and arrest members of the Red Orchestra in Germany, Belgium, France, Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy during World War II.
While some documents on the "Rote Kapelle Special Commission Commission" are available, others for example, from the Military Historical Archives in Prague and Moscow have not been examined. At the same time, none of the former Gestapo or Abwehr personnel made reports after the war, for obvious reasons. This means that the history of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle is only partially complete.
The name Rote Kapelle was a cryptonym that was used by the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the security and counter-espionage part of the Schutzstaffel (SS), which referred to resistance radio operators as "pianists", their transmitters as "pianos", and their supervisors as "conductors". The Rote Kapelle was a collective name that was used by the Gestapo, the German secret police, for the purpose of identification, and the Funkabwehr, the German radio counterintelligence organisation. The name of Kapelle was an accepted Abwehr term to denote secret radio transmitters and the counterintelligence operation against them.
The Sonderkommando was small organisation of around 12–15 investigators that included two typists. When it moved to Paris, it was located in the third floor in four rooms (335-339) of the French ministry of the interior at 11 Rue des Saussaies. As a unit, they did not outwardly present themselves as Gestapo officials. Instead they wore suit and ties to work to enable them to operate clandestinely, with the demeanour of businessmen. In March 1944, the unit moved to rooms on the Rue de Courcelles next to Avenue Hoche due to a disagreement between Heinz Pannwitz and the (BdS). It was also a matter of convenience as it was closer to where the staff were headquartered.
On 26 June 1941, a radio transmission was intercepted that had been detected by the Funkabwehr, the German radio counterintelligence organisation in Brussels. This was the first of many. In August 1941, when the Abwehr realised the nature of the signals, they created a counterintelligence operation with the name Rote Kapelle that was started by Abwehrstelle Belgium (Ast Belgium), a field office of Abwehr IIIF. In October–November 1941, Abwehr officer Henry Piepe was ordered to take charge of the investigation. Piepe became the liaison between the Sonderkommando and the IIIF.
By September 1941, over 250 messages had been intercepted. On 30 November 1941, close range direction-finding teams moved into Brussels and as a result of Piepe's work, almost immediately found three transmitter signals. Piepe chose a location at 101 Rue des Atrébates, that provided the strongest signal. The house was raided by the Abwehr on 12 December 1941 where they found Soviet agent Anatoly Gurevich's transmitter and arrested radio operators Mikhail Makarov and his assistant Anton Danilov. On the 30 July 1942, the Funkabwehr identified a further house at 12 Rue de Namur, Brussels and raided it As well as arresting Soviet agent and radio specialist Johann Wenzel, two messages that were waiting to be encyphered were discovered in the house that contained details of such startling content, the plans for Case Blue, that Henry Piepe immediately drove to Berlin from Brussels to report to German High Command.
The start of the Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle cannot be precisely established. Walter Schellenberg, recorded details in his memoirs of an agreement that came about between Fritz Thiele, Wilhelm Canaris, Heinrich Müller and himself in the summer of 1942, to establish a "special commission" to investigate the problem. German counter-intelligence spent months assembling the data and finally Wilhelm Vauck, a cryptanalyst in the Abwehr succeeded in decrypting around 200 of the captured messages. On 15 July 1942, Vauck decrypted a message that was dated 10 October 1941. and addressed to Kent, (Anatoly Gurevich) that gave the addresses of several individuals of German nationality. This resulted in another meeting between Schellenberg, Thiele, Canaris and Müller where it was decided that the investigation should include Germany and that the Belgium and the Low Countries investigation would continue to be carried out jointly by the Gestapo and the Abwehr, while the German investigation would be carried out only by the Gestapo. In July 1942, the investigation was transferred from Ast Belgium to Section IV. A.2. of the Sicherheitsdienst. After the arrest of Leopold Trepper and Anatoly Gurevich, a small independent Gestapo unit, known as the "Sonderkommando Rote Kapelle" was established in Paris, France in November 1942. The unit was led by Friedrich Panzinger and the investigation was led by Heinrich Reiser. The Belgium investigation was conducted by Karl Giering of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) department AMT IV A 2. The Berlin unit was led by Horst Kopkow.
The unit had to work in occupied French territory but not under the command of the BdS but instead was commanded by the RSHA.
In Berlin, the Gestapo was ordered to assist Henry Piepe and they selected Giering, who took what reports Piepe had and took over the investigation in Brussels Giering's investigation linked the name Carlos Alamos with GRU officer Mikhail Makarov, who had been arrested during the Rue des Atrébates raid. On Giering's instructions, Makarov was taken to Berlin to undergo interrogation. Instead of being sent to Breendonk or a concentration camp, he was taken to Giering's home, where Giering hoped the homely environment would make him talk. However, Makarov never exposed any details of the network and he was sent back to Saint-Gilles prison in Brussels.
Giering then turned to Rita Arnould as the new lead in the investigation and she identified the Polish-Jewish forger Abraham Rajchmann. Rajchmann was an informer to the Belgian Police Judiciaire des Parquets (Judiciary Police) and it been him who had been forging identity documents in the secret room of 101 Rue des Atrébates. Rajchmann in turn betrayed Soviet agent Konstantin Jeffremov who was arrested on 22 July 1942 in Brussels, while attempting to obtain forged identity documents for himself.
Jeffremov was to be tortured but agreed to cooperate and gave up several important members of the espionage network in Belgium and the Netherlands. Eventually Jeffremov began to work for the Sonderkommando in a Funkspiel operation. Through Jeffremov, contact was made with Germaine Schneider, a courier who worked for the group between Brussels and Paris. However, Schneider contacted Leopold Trepper, the technical director of Soviet Red Army Intelligence in western Europe, to warn him. Trepper advised Schneider to sever all contact with Jeffremov and move to a hideout in Lyons. Giering instead focused on Germaine Schneider's husband Franz Schneider. In November 1942, Franz Schneider was interrogated by Giering but as he was not part of the network he was released from protective custody as he was not arrested. Schneider managed to inform Trepper that Jeffremov had been arrested.
Rajchmann was arrested by Piepe on 2 September 1942 when his usefulness as an informer to the Abwehr was at an end. Rajchmann also decided to cooperate with the Abwehr resulting in his betrayal of his mistress, the Comintern member Malvina Gruber, who was arrested on 12 October 1942. Gruber immediately decided to cooperate with the Abwehr, in an attempt to avoid interrogation. She admitted the existence of Soviet agent Anatoly Gurevich and his probable location, as well as exposing several members of the Trepper espionage network in France.
As part of the routine investigation, Harry Piepe discovered that the firm Simexco in Brussels was being used as a cover for Soviet espionage operations by the Trepper network. It was used as a means to generate monies that could be used in day-to-day operations by the espionage group unbeknownst to the employees of the company and at the same time provide travel documentation and facilities for European wide telephone communication between group members. Piepe was concerned about the large number of telegrams the company was sending to Berlin, Prague and Paris and decided to investigate it. Piepe visited the Chief Commissariat Officer for Brussels, who was responsible for the company. In the meeting Piepe showed the two photographs that had been discovered at the house at 101 Rue des Atrébates, to the commanding officer who immediately identified the aliases of Leopold Trepper and Anatoly Gurevich. As part of a combined operation with Giering in Paris, Piepe raided the offices of Simexco on the 19 November 1942. When the Gestapo entered the Simexco office they found only one person, a clerk, but managed to discover all the names and addresses of Simexco employees and shareholders from company records. Over the month of November, most of the people associated with the company were arrested and taken to St. Gilles Prison in Brussels or Fort Breendonk in Mechelen.
On 25 July 1942, the Dutch agent Maurice Peper was arrested by Piepe in Brussels. Between late 1940 and July 1942, Peper worked first for Gurevich and then Jeffremov as courier who operated between Johann Wenzel in Brussels and Anton Winterink in Amsterdam. He was betrayed by Jeffremov, who informed the Sonderkommando of a covert meeting, known as a treff that was to take place in a Brussels street by Peper and Hermann Isbutzki. Peper agreed to work for the Sonderkommando after being tortured and revealed that he was to meet Anton Winterink a few days later in Amsterdam. Piepe escorted Peper to Amsterdam who allowed Peper to attend the meeting. On 18 or 19 August 1942 (sources vary), Winterink was arrested by Piepe at the meeting in cafe in Amsterdam. A total of 17 people from Winterink's group were arrested and a radio transmitter was seized from Winterink's apartment. Winterink was taken to Brussels where he was tortured for two weeks before he agreed to work for the Sonderkommando. On 22 September 1942, Winterink began a funkspiel operation under the name "Beam Tanne.
Peper also betrayed Auguste Sésée, the reserve radio operator in the Jeffremov network, who was arrested in August 1942. He was initially sent to Saint-Gilles prison in Brussels and then taken to Berlin where he was beheaded in January 1944.
In Berlin, the Gestapo had been monitoring the movements and telephone calls Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen as well as Greta and Adam Kuckhoff along with Arvid and Mildred Harnack since July 1942 and had their telephones tapped. Horst Heilmann had been in contact by telephone with Harro Schulze-Boysen and Waldemar Lentz to warn them that they were likely being watched and this hastened the start of the Gestapo operation to arrest the group. Harro Schulze-Boysen was the first of the Berlin group to the arrested on 31 August 1942 and he was taken under "house arrest" (Hausgefängnis) to the Gestapo HQ at 8 Prinz Albrecht Street where he was interrogated by Kriminalkommissar . Strübing used the typical gamut of Gestapo techniques for interrogation that included physical threats, blackmail, flattery, the presentation of fake and real evidence of wrongdoing and torture.
On the 5 September 1942 Heilmann was arrested and shortly after on the 8th, Libertas Schulze-Boysen was arrested. Gestapo Kriminalsekretär Alfred Göpfert was assigned to interrogate Libertas Schulze-Boysen. Göpfert used subterfuge in the form of Gertrud Breiter, a Gestapo secretary who worked in Department IV E-6 to befriend Schulze-Boysen and then inform on her. Breiter used deceit to convince Schulze-Boysen that she was hostile to her superiors and that Göpfert didn't have any serious evidence against her and due to her family connections with Hermann Göring, her life would be safe. Schulze-Boysen began to believe that Breiter was a friend. She confided in her many details of the resistance but also tried to use Breiter to warn her friends, which sealed her fate.
The next couple to be picked up by the Gestapo were the Harnacks, who were arrested on 7 September 1942 while they were on holiday in the Preila on the Curonian Spit. The Harnacks were interrogated by Kriminalinspektor Walter Habecker. Habecker was an older officer, a bald-headed thug of the old school who was under the command of Horst Kopkow, who was 17 years younger. He had been ordered to use "Enhanced interrogation", (Verschärfte Vernehmung) on prisoners and if that was not effective he had been ordered to take further necessary action as needed. Habecker was known for using two particularly brutal torture techniques. The first was known as "Hanging", where the prisoner had their hands tied behind their knees and then they were hung on a ladder and then whipped. The second was known as the "Tibetan Prayer Windmill" where pencil-sized pieces of wood, that he called "chopsticks", were inserted between the fingers and the fingers squeezed together. It was said to cause intense pain.[1] Habecker would go on to interrogate Rudolf von Scheliha,, Günther and Joy Weisenborn and many others including Erna Eifler and Wilhelm Fellendorf
After the first six arrests the Gestapo had obtained sufficient information to begin an operation to arrest as many as possible. Between 12 and 16 September 1942, another 35 people were arrested and taken to either the prison at Gestapo HQ or to the city jail on Alexanderplatz. In this operation, house searches were conducted to look for evidence that could be used to expand the search. For example, when Hannelore Thiel was arrested on 16 September 1942 the search found an amplifying device for a Volksempfänger radio, a KPD pamphlet Organisiert den revolutionären Massenkampf gegen Faschismus und imperialistischen Krieg ("Organize the revolutionary mass struggle against fascism and imperialist war") as well as several books that included Das Kapital by Karl Marx. When Helmut Roloff was captured 17 September 1942, the first radio transmitter built in a suitcase, which was non-functional was recovered by the Gestapo.
The interrogations followed a standard process. Prisoners were interrogated several times in the first few days and their confession recorded onto an auto recording device, for example the Lorenz Textophon. Several days or weeks later the prisoners would be visited by General Judge of the Luftwaffe Manfred Roeder who conducted a shorter, formal interrogation. The prisoner's final statement would then be recorded: "I stand by my statements to the Secret State Police. They correspond to the truth and I make them the subject of my judicial hearing today" The interrogation by Werner Krauss, Heinrich Scheel and Günther Weisenborn were the exception to the standard process as he largely dictated their confession. By the time of the interrogation phase, the Gestapo already knew many of people's names.
The torture and interrogation would often last a particularly long time, even to determine the smallest detail. For example, Wilhelm Guddorf was asked to provide details of three communists that he had met in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in November 1939, while he was imprisoned there. His torture lasted from 15 October to 16 October at 4 a.m.
By the end of October 1942, more than 100 people had been arrested and final reports were being prepared. The Sonderkommando then moved to Hamburg on 15 October 1942, when the RSHA sent Walter Habecker to lead a new investigation using the leads they garnered from the interrogations. Erna Eifler was the first to be arrested on the 15 October. Due to the German tradition of Sippenhaft, the term for the idea that a family or clan shares the responsibility for a crime or act committed by one of its members, meant that many other people who were only tangentially linked were arrested and charged as well. For example, when Eifler was arrested, Heinz Priess who hid her in Hamburg and his mother Marie Priess were also arrested.
The Abwehr in Brussels and the Sonderkommando had full control of the Red Orchestra in Belgium and the Netherlands well before the end of 1942 and the Funkspiel was in operation. There is no clear indication as to when Giering, Piepe and the Sonderkommando moved to Paris, although various sources indicate it was either mid-September 1942 or October 1942. Gilles Perrault reports it was later summer rather than early autumn. When the unit moved, it relocated to offices in the French ministry of the interior at 11 Rue des Saussaies. Before leaving, Piepe and Giering agreed that Rajchmann would be the best person to take to Paris and find Trepper. When they arrived in Paris, Giering sent Rajchmann out to visit all the dead letterboxes that he knew about, while leaving a message to Trepper to contact him.
However, Trepper never contacted Rajchmann. Giering then tried to establish a meeting with a contact, using information from the correspondence between Simexco and an employee of the Paris office of the Belgian Chamber of Commerce. That ultimately proved unsuccessful, so Giering turned back to investigating Simexco. Since he had begun monitoring Simexco Brussels, he had been suspicious of the large amount of business telegrams the company had exchanged with Simex. However, only an examination of the companies register would provide the evidence that Trepper working under the codename Gilbert was involved in the company. Giering decided not to contact the French economic police, for fear of informers. Giering visited the Seine District Commercial Court where he discovered that Léon Grossvogel was a shareholder of Simex. He had been informed by Jeffremov that Grossvogel was one of Trepper's assistants. Giering and Piepe decided to approach Organisation Todt to determine if they could provide a way to identify where Trepper was located, instead of approaching Simex directly. Giering obtained a signed certificate of cooperation from Otto von Stülpnagel, the military commander of occupied France and visited the Todt offices. The director of the Todt offices in Paris was shown the photograph found in the Atrebates raid and immediately confirmed that the man was Monsieur Gilbert, the alias that Trepper was using in his dealings with Simex.
Giering and Pipe decide to try a simple ruse to trap Trepper by posing as Mainz businessmen seeking to buy 1.5million marks worth of industrial diamonds, using a well-prepared and well-researched back story. They hoped the large size of the trade would expose Trepper, who would endorse the large trade by signing the contract, in a gesture of goodwill. However, the ruse failed. Giering decided to start arresting employees of Simex. On 19 November 1942, Suzanne Cointe, a secretary at Simex, Alfred Corbin the commercial director of the firm and Vladimir Keller, the Simex translator were all arrested. Keller was immediately tortured using a rope tied around his legs and tightened with a stick, but failed to provide any information. Corbin was interrogated but failed to disclose the location of Gilbert, so Giering decided to send for a torture expert. Both Keller and Corbin were then sent to Fresnes Prison. However, on 24 November 1942, Corbin's wife told the Abwehr that Corbin had given Trepper the name of a dentist, as he had been suffering toothache. After being tortured, Corbin provided Giering of the address of Trepper's dentist. Trepper was subsequently arrested on 24 November by Giering, while he was sitting in a dentist's chair. On the 24 November, Giering contacted Hitler to inform him of the capture of Trepper.
Both Trepper and Gurevich, who had been arrested on 9 November 1942, in Marseilles were brought to Fresnes Prison. They were treated well by Giering, who led the interrogation of Trepper. After his initial interrogation at Fresnes, Trepper was imprisoned on a third floor room on the Rue des Saussaies in Paris where further interrogations would take place.[2] He offered to collaborate with the Abwehr, who subsequently treated Trepper leniently in the expectation that he would serve as a double agent in Paris.[3] He was allowed to take daily walks and go into town to buy necessities, but always accompanied by two Sonderkommando guards. Trepper informed Giering that his family and relatives in the USSR would be killed if it became known to Soviet intelligence that he had been captured. Giering agreed that should Trepper collaborate, his arrest would remain a secret.
According to Piepe, when Trepper talked, it was not out of fear of torture or defeat, but out of duty. While he gave up the names and addresses of most of the members of his own network, he was sacrificing his associates to protect the various members of the French Communist Party, whom he had an absolute belief in. Unlike Trepper, Gurevich refused to name any agents he had recruited.
The first person that Trepper betrayed was Léon Grossvogel who was arrested in November 1942. During the search of Léon Grossvogel's apartment, Trepper's passport had been discovered and when Giering showed it to Trepper, he admitted that that was his real name. At the time, Trepper was worried that Giering would discover his code name "Domb" that he was known in French Communist Party groups. The Sonderkommando sent an agent to Nowy Targ, to enquire after Trepper's family. While he was being interrogated, he was read a report that detailed how all his family, 48 members in total, including his mother, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins had been sent to the gas chamber and it was now considered judenrein by the Germans. Even the family cemetery had been destroyed and ploughed up. Hillel Katz was the next lieutenant that Trepper betrayed, and was arrested on the 2 December 1942. Over the next several days many members of the espionage network in France and Belgium were betrayed by Trepper and arrested. These included many employees and people associated Simexco in Brussels including the banker, Charles Drailly, the salesman Jean Passelecq, Simexco shareholder Robert Jean Christen, the accountant Henry Seghers, the secretary Erich Nutis and the company secretary Jeanne Ponsaint, who hadn't been rounded in the initial raid on Simexco. The people associated with Simex in Paris were also betrayed along with their families. When many of the most senior people in the espionage network had been arrested, Trepper turned to exposing his closest associates in the smaller networks that made up the main group in France. The first of these were Anna Maximovitch who was arrested with her brother Basile Maximovitch on 12 December 1942.
It was important for the Sonderkommando to move quickly, so that Soviet Intelligence didn't discover that the network had been compromised. Both Grossvogel and Katz had refused to divulge any information, even though they were subject to enhanced interrogation, so the unit had to turn to other leads in the investigation. The investigation progressed with the arrest of Fernand Vion, who was responsible for centralising intelligence for transmission for the French Communist Party (PCF) as well as being responsible for the technical apparatus in the PCF. Vion was in contact with Robert Giraud, who was the main liaison between the Trepper network and the PCF and he was arrested on 12 December 1942. Through Giraud, the Sonderkommando discovered a radio transmitter that included details of the cipher keys used by the PCF. These keys enabled the Sonderkommando to start the funkspiel operation for Trepper's radio transmitter on 17 December 1943, which was successful. The arrest of Vion and Giraud, led to the arrest of the courier Käte Voelkner on 7 January 1943.
Trepper was provided with paper, pencil and a dictionary by Giering, in the hope that Trepper's writings or scribbles would prove useful. Trepper had managed to save a piece of paper that he hid in the leg of his bed frame. For months before his capture, Trepper had been trying to warn Soviet intelligence of the existence of the Sonderkommando but had failed and he planned to use the paper to record a report, that should he escape could be passed to the Soviets to warn them. In minute detail, he recorded his arrest, his interrogation, details of the Sonderkommando staff, records of his time in Fresnes prison and a list of agents who believed had already been captured. The secret report was written in Hebrew, Yiddish and Polish in the forlorn hope that should the report be discovered that it would take three translators to read it fully. Trepper needed to employ subterfuge to ensure the report reached Soviet intelligence. He started by trying to convince Giering that it was important that he met with French resistance fighter and PCF agent Juliette Moussier, while he was in custody to prove to Soviet intelligence that he was still free and enable the funkspiel operation to continue. Moussier was the liaison between Trepper's network and the French Communist Party via Fernand Pauriol, the director of the PCF communications. However, Giering decided to send Rajchmann instead and she pretended not know him. The reason for this was that Trepper had instructed her beforehand not to recognise anybody from Trepper's network, apart from Trepper himself.
Once Trepper learned that Katz has been arrested, he suggested that Katz should go to meet Moussier. During his imprisonment, Trepper had become friends with Willi Berg, a Sondekommando officer who was his guard and he used this to his advantage. Trepper managed to convinced Giering, with the help of Berg, that Katz needed instruction on how to approach Moussier and suggested speaking to Katz in Yiddish, a language that the Sonderkommando translator was capable of understanding, since he didn't know French and Katz couldn't speak German. By speaking Yiddish, Trepper was able to relay secret instructions to Katz, simply to tell Moussier that he had a report and needed to pass it to Jacques Duclos for transmission to Soviet intelligence, without the Sonderkommando guards, translator or Giering knowing what he was doing. Katz made two visits to Moussier, all the while under heavy surveillance by the Sonderkommando but was allowed to enter the apartment of Moussier and speak to her along without the presence of a Sonderkommando guard that was a fatal mistake by Giering. On the first visit he instructed Moussier to contact Duclos. On the second visit, Moussier confirmed that she had made the contact, and instructed Katz that Trepper should make the visit. At the time, Giering was extremely suspicious that Trepper was setting some kind of trap but couldn't discern what it was, but finally agreed to it. On 23 May 1943, Trepper received permission from Giering to contact Moussier., In early June 1943, Trepper met Moussier and passed a message from Giering, supposedly from Trepper to inform Soviet Intelligence that the French Rote Kapelle was still functioning, as well his own report and a letter instructing Duclos to send the report to Soviet intelligence as soon as possible. Trepper suggested to Giering that the transmissions should cease for a month, to give the appearance of the network being reorganised, to which he agreed. However, when the Sonderkommando returned to confirm with Moussier whether the message was sent, she was missing. Trepper had instructed her to disappear immediately and not reveal any details of the meeting. Moussier went into hiding. During the summer, Moussier's main contact Fernand Pauriol, visited Moussier and her husband Milo in Beugne l'Abbe, west of Luçon and arranged for the couple to disappear.
On 7 July 1943 the first part of the message was transmitted to Soviet intelligence by Jacques Duclos. The second part followed on 10 July.
The following month, Giering received the reply from Soviet intelligence indicating that they had received his message, proving to Giering that Soviet Intelligence believed that Trepper and Gurevich were still at large. It also enabled Heinrich Himmler to order the establishment of the Funkspiel operation for Trepper and Gurevich in Paris, which started in late December and continued until the end of the war. Over the next eight months, Giering commanded the Sonderkommando in Paris, where the practical work of running the Funkspiel was managed by Gurevich.
The investigation into why Moussier was missing was still ongoing.
As the months past, Giering became ill with throat cancer and Giering's deputy, Gestapo officer Kriminalkommissar Heinrich Reiser, took over command of Sonderkommando in Paris in June 1943 but the investigation was still under the control of Giering. Reiser formerly took over command of the unit in August 1943, when Giering's throat cancer reached an advanced stage and he had to retire. Reiser was an ineffective officer and was ordered to return to Germany to work at the Karlsruhe police station, and he was replaced by Kriminalkommissar Alfred Goepfert, a Gestapo officer. Heinz Pannwitz was employed August 1943 to take over direction of the Sonderkommando investigation operation in France as team leader. Pannwitz had been working in Gestapo HQ in Berlin since the spring of 1943 in the investigation of the Red Orchestra.
While in Berlin, Pannwitz had read Giering's reports and was disinclined to believe that Trepper had exposed his colleagues for any altruistic reasons. Trepper stated of the change:
"..that he was glad to see Giering leave and replaced by Pannwitz because, "Giering, with his great skepticism of a policeman, thought that the Jews were not worth more than the others. [Whereas] Pannwitz believed they were worth less than the others"
Pannwitz believed that the Funkspiel had achieved its objectives by gaining the Soviets trust and wanted to initiate a more direct approach with the Soviets, in essence an attempt to sow distrust between the allies. He suggested to Himmler that an envoy who was specially selected by Trepper could be sent to the Soviet Union, to discuss matters of exceptional interest, however Himmler rejected the idea. Instead, Pannwitz reversed the idea, by transmitting a long message to Soviet intelligence that described a powerful group of anti-nazis who favoured the Soviet Union and who wanted to talk to a representative from the country. The rendezvous was arranged to take place at Hillel Katzs' old apartment at Rue Edmond-Roger. When Pannwitz and Trepper attended the rendezvous, they were surprised to discover Rajchmann staying in the apartment with no sign of Soviet intelligence.
On 13 September 1943 Leopold Trepper escaped the Sonderkommando. When Pannwitz informed Heinrich Müller of the escape, he persuaded Müller not to tell Himmler.
When Pannwitz took over the unit, he changed the work ethos of the unit, such that the political aspect of the investigation was developed at the expense of the operational investigation.
In April 1945, the Sonderkommando unit moved to the Bregenz area of Vorarlberg in Austria. At that point the unit consisted of eight SS officers and men along with twenty French and ten Flemish agents. According to Gestapo officer, Friedrich Berger, Pannwitz planned to continue the war against the allies by staging a comeback, through the assassination of prominent allied individuals including Winston Churchill, although how could be achieved was not disclosed. However, Pannwitz was arrested on 3 May 1945.