Hans Oster
(1888-1945) Hans Oster was a German Army officer in the First World War, a staff officer during the interwar period, and rose to become the main operations officer of the Abwehr military intelligence agency and a major figure in the German Resistance. He was dismissed for anti-Nazi activities, and eventually executed at Flossenburg Concentration Camp.
Oster committed to subvert the Nazis on 7 November 1939, when he gave the German plans for the invasion of the West to a Dutch military attache. "There is no going back after what I have done. It is much easier to take a pistol and kill somebody; it is easier to run into a burst of machine gun fire than it is to do what I have done." While the information he gave was correct, Dutch intelligence did not take the warning seriously; Hitler changed the invasion date twenty-nine times. [1]He is believed to have been a major intelligence source for the Soviet Lucy Ring, as well as participating in efforts to rescue Jews. [2]
Manfred Roeder, an Army investigator into the Abwehr and the Red Orchestra, first discovered Oster's activities as part of a search at Abwehr headquarters, originally focused on the activities of Hans von Dohnanyi at the Vatican, discovered Oster's activities and forced his dismissal.[3]
References
- ↑ Anne Nelson (2009), Red Orchestra: the story of the Berlin underground and the circle of friends ..., Random House
- ↑ Mark A. Tittenhofer (declassified September 1993), "The Rote Drei: Getting Behind the 'Lucy' Myth", Studies in Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency 13 (3)
- ↑ Anthony Cave Brown, Bodyguard of Lies: The Extraordinary True Story Behind D-Day, pp. 302-304