When Walter Schellenberg moved to Frankfurt in 1934, he recalled meeting an SS-
Oberführer, who explained to him the mission of the SD; he was told the following, which he wrote in his memoirs: ::The SD was the chief organ of the intelligence service of the party. Its task was to inform the top Party leaders of all opposition movements and forces at home and abroad. It covered the administration, the Party, industry, the theatre, journalism, the police—in fact there was no sphere that was not under the watchful eye of the SD, no place where it did not seek out the first signs of opposition among movements or individuals 'hostile' to the state'. In March 1938, Schellenberg traveled with Himmler and Heydrich to Vienna for the impending
Anschluss with Austria. One of the reasons for their journey was so the SD could "confiscate Austrian secret service material." During the trip, Schellenberg allegedly saved Himmler from a potential mishap when he noticed that the aircraft door that he had been leaning against was not properly secured. Throwing Himmler aside in the process, Schellenberg earned the gratitude of the
Reichsführer, who promised to reciprocate the favor if the chance ever presented itself. Following the exuberant reception of Hitler when he arrived in Vienna, Schellenberg later wrote, "'never...have I seen such tremendous, enthusiastic and joyous crowds." Much like Austria, the Nazis set their sights on the
Sudetenland of
Czechoslovakia, a region with over three million ethnic Germans which they wanted to incorporate into the Reich; more than that, Hitler once told his generals that he desired for Czechoslovakia to "disappear from the map". In the summer of 1938, the
Gestapo and
SD-Ausland, which had taken control of the Secret Service in Czechoslovakia, helped the Sudeten Nazis from the
Sudetendeutsche Partei infiltrate regional and local organizations, veterans groups, musical societies, sporting associations, sailing clubs, and cultural societies—which gave them insight into the economic, political, and military situation there. So thorough was the Nazi penetration in much of the Sudetenland, that Schellenberg stated later it was necessary to establish two telephone transmission stations along the frontier to communicate with Berlin. Eventually after strained negotiations with the West, Hitler acquired the Sudetenland when the
Munich Agreement was concluded. Following this event, Schellenberg accompanied Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich into Prague on 15 March 1939 and reported that Himmler was so pleased with the performance and racial makeup of the Czech police, that he incorporated them into the SS. In November 1939 Schellenberg played a major part in the
Venlo Incident, which led to the capture of two
British MI6 agents,
Captain Sigismund Payne-Best and Major
Richard Stevens. Schellenberg posed as a "Major Schaemmel" claiming to be part of an anti-Nazi group of officers planning a coup against Hitler. At Schellenberg's third meeting with Stevens and Best in the German-Dutch border town of Venlo, the trap was sprung; the two British agents were captured. Hitler awarded Schellenberg the
Iron Cross for his actions. Success in this operation helped the SD acquire greater leverage in foreign policy and gave their police Attachés access to foreign networks through the diplomatically immune offices of the German embassies abroad. The operation also damaged British morale and inclined them to mistrust the opposition in Germany. In 1940, Schellenberg was sent to Portugal by Heydrich at Foreign Minister
Joachim von Ribbentrop's request to intercept the
Duke and Duchess of Windsor and try to persuade them to work for Germany (
Operation Willi). Ribbentrop believed that the former King Edward VIII, was open to making peace with the
Reich in exchange for being allowed to regain his throne. The duke of Windsor was scheduled to leave Lisbon for the Bahamas where he had been appointed governor. Schellenberg was supposed to offer them 50 million Swiss francs to go to neutral Switzerland. However,
Winston Churchill dispatched an attorney,
Walter Monckton, an old friend of the Duke's, to convince them to leave Portugal. Schellenberg planned to repeat the same operation used in Venlo to kidnap the duke and duchess of Windsor which added with "psychologically adroit influence" would in Schellenberg's view cause the duke to declare himself for peace with Germany. Under Schellenberg's plan, the duke and duchess would be invited to go hunting near the Portuguese-Spanish border, and then a corrupt Portuguese border official would allow a German team to cross over the frontier to kidnap the Windsors. The plan failed when the duke of Windsor declined the offer to go hunting. When it became clear that the duke of Windsor was going to leave Lisbon to take up his post as Governor of the Bahamas, Schellenberg tried hard to keep the duke from leaving. Schellenberg sent a bouquet of flowers to the duchess of Windsor along with a death threat, saying she and her husband would die if they went to the Bahamas. Schellenberg sent the duke of Windsor a list of all the Jews who would be sailing on the same ship that was to take him to the Bahamas along with a signed statement from the chief of the Portuguese counterespionage police that he could not guarantee the duke's safety if he sailed on that ship. Finally, Schellenberg bribed the duke's British chauffeur to talk to him about how dangerous it would be for him to go to the Bahamas. Despite all of Schellenberg's efforts, the duke and duchess of Windsor left for the Bahamas. In the end, the mission was a failure; Schellenberg managed nothing more than a delay of the Duke's baggage for a few hours. In June 1940, he was charged with compiling the
Informationsheft G.B., a blueprint for the occupation of Britain after a proposed invasion by Nazi Germany. The preparations for invasion, known as
Operation Sea Lion (
Unternehmen Seelöwe), were ultimately abandoned. He based his work on the interrogations of British agents Best and Stevens, along with his own "preconceptions". Part of what he prepared was described as "a handbook for German troops and officials as a guide to the British institutions they would encounter." The extent of his direct involvement in compiling the book and its supplement, however, has been disputed. The supplement was the "Special Wanted List, GB" (
Sonderfahndungsliste G.B., also known as "The Black Book"), which was a list of 2,300 prominent
Britons to be arrested immediately after the successful invasion of Britain. Both Schellenberg and Heydrich perceived Great Britain as a country run by "Freemasons, Jews, and a small public-school-trained elite." Despite the poor opinion of Britain shared by both men, their full attention was turned there when on 10 May 1941, Deputy Führer
Rudolf Hess made his infamous flight to Scotland. Subsequently, SD Chief Schellenberg informed Hitler that Hess had been long under the influence of the British Secret Service and German collaborators. Upon further investigation, Schellenberg also reported to Hitler that Hess made his flight under the advice of an astrologer, which incited the activity of Heydrich who promptly arrested as many mediums, psychics, and astrologers he could round up in Berlin. Besides reactive intelligence reports like those he provided concerning Hess, Schellenberg arranged numerous plots of subterfuge and
intelligence gathering, including the
bugging of
Salon Kitty, a high-class Berlin brothel. Some of the Nazi regime's upper echelons even visited this brothel unaware at first, such as Foreign Minister
Joachim von Ribbentrop. However, intelligence collection efforts at Salon Kitty were essentially a failure as they never revealed anything significant. Direct access to Himmler also made Schellenberg privy to some of the Reich's most sensitive material. For example, Schellenberg knew early on about the arrangement between Germany and the Soviet Union concerning the partition of Poland, an agreement that presaged the military invasion. Once the Nazis invaded and occupied Polish territory, Schellenberg was entrusted with securing the rear areas by Himmler and Heydrich, which meant he oversaw the deployment of special commandos from the SD and Gestapo, units which carried out brutal measures against the Poles. Another one of his areas of responsibility was counter-espionage, both within Germany and the occupied territories—a task for which Schellenberg seemed well-suited given his penchant for intrigue. Operating as an intelligence adviser to Himmler in Poland meant Schellenberg was at the front edge of the spear, but this did not mean he was incapable of being surprised. In fact, he was particularly shocked at the utter devastation wrought by the Wehrmacht in Poland and commented in his
Memoirs upon seeing it that, "Until then I had no real conception of what total war meant." In March 1940, he helped convince Hitler that Dutch military intelligence was working closely with the British intelligence services, which Hitler used as a pretext to attack the Netherlands "for violating their neutrality." In February, 1942, after the 1941 German attack on the Soviet Union had stalled, Schellenberg conceived and implemented a large-scale spy operation designed to penetrate into the Soviet Union, an initiative known as
Operation Zeppelin (
Unternehmen Zeppelin). Using anti-Communists selected from the many thousands of POWs captured by the Germans, he soon had anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 potential candidates in training, who were accordingly indoctrinated. Only between 2,000 and 3,000 completed the training, and as little as a few hundred of them were ever committed to the operation due to insufficient numbers of aircraft and radio communication equipment. What started as a large-scale effort by Schellenberg, quickly became a precision one with very limited success. Most of them produced little to no useful intelligence and/or were killed once deployed. One German intelligence officer commented that if losses "were not over 90 percent, we were satisfied." In March 1942,
Heinz Jost was fired as RSHA Chief of Amt VI,
SD-Ausland (SD foreign intelligence). In his place, Schellenberg was appointed chief of
SD-Ausland by Heydrich. Sometime in mid-1942, Schellenberg had been involved in planning operations in neutral Ireland including
Operation Osprey: a plan involving No.1 SS Special Service Troop. Knowledge that Germany might lose the war prompted Schellenberg to open communication channels during the fall of 1942 with the Swiss intelligence chief, Colonel
Roger Masson. He even went so far as providing Masson with a list of all the
Abwehr (military intelligence) agents operating in Switzerland with the intention of "having them expelled." When the Allies invaded Italy in 1943, Schellenberg went to great lengths to ensure the safety of
Amin al-Husseini, the anti-Semitic and anti-British Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who was residing in Rome, by having him transported away to Berlin. As the Red Army repulsed the Germans and began driving them back to the west, the German General Staff began planning a retreat into Fortress Europe—which included the incorporation of Switzerland into the defensive operation. Using his previous channels to Schellenberg, the Swiss intelligence chief Masson, who was privy to this plan known as "Case Switzerland", contacted Schellenberg as to whether or not an attack on Switzerland was imminent. By asking Schellenberg this question, Masson naively revealed to Schellenberg that a leak existed within Hitler's headquarters, but it also meant the Germans lost the opportunity for a surprise attack against Switzerland. To further ingratiate himself to the Swiss, Schellenberg claimed that he had convinced the German high command of the needlessness for such an operation. Despite having direct contacts to Schellenberg himself, the Director in Switzerland of the
OSS,
Allen Dulles, expressed deep concern about the possible intelligence leaks between Masson and Schellenberg. Signals intelligence intercepts alerted the Gestapo and SD to
the "Red Orchestra", the Soviet spy ring in Germany. Schellenberg led extensive efforts over many months to identify the participants. 116 were arrested by the Gestapo, half of whom were executed following intense interrogations. By this time, Schellenberg had become a general (
Brigadeführer) in the
Allgemeine-SS (General-SS). The operation was a major victory for the RSHA at the expense of the
Abwehr, who had been oblivious to the Soviet operation. Historian Klaus Fischer asserts that Schellenberg's "only major success was smashing the Red Orchestra."
Control of all intelligence operations Reportedly, Schellenberg and
Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the
Abwehr, were friends. They would go horseback-riding together in Berlin's wooded Grunewald, where they discussed the future of Nazi Germany. Often present at these equestrian outings were Heydrich and
Werner Best. Their alleged friendship aside, Canaris was careful around Schellenberg, a man whose ambitions included controlling all intelligence for the Reich. Like Heydrich, Schellenberg ultimately envisioned a centrally directed "all-embracing security system" and a singular "Greater German Intelligence Service" under direct Nazi control (unlike the
Abwehr, which was part of the Wehrmacht). Nonetheless, there are indications that Schellenberg preferred to deal with Canaris'
Abwehr over the Gestapo, particularly since he distrusted its chief,
Heinrich Müller. However, after the
attempted assassination of Hitler on 20 July 1944, the
Abwehr was dissolved and the SD was given additional powers over intelligence across the Reich. Canaris was arrested on 23 July 1944 on the basis of the interrogation of his successor at military intelligence,
Georg Hansen. As a result, sections of the
Abwehr were incorporated into RSHA Amt VI
SD-Ausland and therefore placed under Schellenberg's command. Assumption of these powers made Schellenberg the "absolute master" of Nazi intelligence". He was infamous for his "office fortress" desk, which had two automatic guns built into it that could be fired by the touch of a button. According to the memoirs of SS intelligence officer Wilhelm Hoettl, Schellenberg was very suspicious of Gestapo Chief Müller, whom he claimed to have evidence against by way of radio surveillance recordings (allegedly revealing Müller's plans to work with the Soviets); when he informed then RSHA chief
Ernst Kaltenbrunner of possessing proof to that end, he was ignored. Kaltenbrunner disliked Schellenberg, perhaps due to his direct access to Himmler, and complained about him in particular on a number of occasions. Despite Kaltenbrunner's animosity towards Schellenberg, the latter's soothing manners kept him in good graces with Himmler and allowed him to "retain the ear of the SS overlord".
Operation Modellhut Allied military intelligence documents have been unearthed linking French couturier
Coco Chanel to espionage activity in concert with Schellenberg, who reportedly was also one of her romantic liaisons. In 1943–1944, Operation Modellhut (
Operation Model Hat) was conceived to capitalize on Chanel's long-standing associations with British aristocracy and her friendship with Winston Churchill. Schellenberg recruited Chanel to act as an intermediary in a plan (proposed by Chanel) whose goal was to broker a separate peace between Nazi Germany and Britain independently of other Allied powers; Operation Modellhut failed. ==Peace negotiations and capture==