Gottfried Schapper was a German listening specialist, before and during World War II. Schapper was an Signals intelligence officer, who was known for having the original idea for the Forschungsamt signal intelligence agency. Schapper had worked in the Reichswehr Ministry cipher bureau from 1927 to 1933, which would later form part of Luftwaffe signals intelligence unit, had been dissatisfied by both the scope of monitoring and intercept work and the incompetence of the methods employed there. He along with some colleagues, including the convinced Nazi, Hans Schimpf, proposed to Hermann Göring that a separate signals office be created that would be free from department ties.