Brandenburg Commandos
.... Hippel had tried to avoid people of the Aryan race, and recruited men of ethnic groups disliked by the Nazis, as the men had to blend in with the enemy, to actually be the enemy to perform acts of sabotage or espionage. In early 1939, Hitler was organizing to start his Fall Weiss, a code name for the invasion of Poland (Breuer 6). The goal: to first go behind Polish lines with a large force to protect bridges and make way for the Panzer tanks, destroy key facilities, and to create confusion. Hitler gave the responsibility of infiltrating the defense to the Abwehr. In a few weeks, Hippel had collected a large number of volunteers and had trained them. To disguise the true intent of the company, it was named the Special Duty Training and Construction Company No. 800. In mid-1939, the company got its first taste of action. The men started to infiltrate mines, power stations, and factories in Poland. On August 31, one day before World War II officially started, a group of German commandos were ordered to capture the port of Danzig, a port that was rewarded to Poland after World War I so that it can refrain from being a landlocked nation (Breuer 7). In just 24 hours, they had captured the port, and asked the Polish government to surrender. The polish government obstinately refused to comply. Elsewhere in Poland, these commandos captured the crucial Vistula bridges, enabling the German armies to flow into Poland. After just twenty-seven days, Poland was conquered by the Germans, mainly due to the successful operations done by the Brandenburg Commandos (Breuer 7). The Brandenburg commandos continued to grow and were active in many other operations. By 1942, it had reached division size, with a marine battalion and paratroop battalion (Dear 156). It had guarded the rear of the retreat of the German army from the Caucases and it played a significant role in the capture of the islands Cos and Lerros from the British in the Balkans (Wheal). It had also captured the bridge over the River Dvina at Daugavpils in Latvia, the Belt Bridge in Denmark, secured the bridge on the Varder River in Yugoslavia, and protected oil facilities of Ploesti in Romania during the Balkan campaign, and captured the bridge over the River Maas near Gennep in the Netherlands (Gilbert). After the fall of France, Hitler turned his attention more to the Eastern front, where the most spectacular success took place for the Brandenburg Commandos. On August of 1941, a group of 62 commandos under the command of Baron Adrian von Fölkersam was on a mission to secure the oil fields at Maikop, Russia (The Brandenburg Commandos: Germany’s Warrior Spies). Sliding past the Russian defense by wearing Red Army uniforms and driving their army trucks, they came upon a group of Russian deserters. Instead of moving out of their way or staying out of site, they mingled among them, and persuaded the deserters to return to the army. As the commandos arrived at Maikop with the deserters, Fölkersam spoke with the Russian general and got a tour of the city’s defenses. They continued to stay as sleeping agents at Maikop until the German army was ready. Finally, when the German army was only 12 miles away from Maikop, Fölkersam simulated an artillery barrage by throwing grenades to destroy the communication center . Without the communication center, the soldiers at Maikop were cut off from the rest of the Red Army, and so Fölkersam made his final m...