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Concept
Walter Nicolai
Summary
General Walter Nicolai (August 1, 1873 – May 4, 1947) was the first senior IC (intelligence) officer in the Imperial German Army. He came to run the German military intelligence service, Abteilung IIIb, and became an important pro-war propagandist in Germany during the First World War of 1914-1918. According to Höhne and Zolling, he helped to found the German Fatherland Party
in 1917.
Nicolai was the son of a Prussian Army captain and a farmer's daughter in Braunschweig. In 1893, he selected a military career. He studied from 1901 to 1904 at the War Academy in Berlin. Shortly before his appointment as Chief of the Intelligence Service of the German High Command, he is known to have taken trips to Russian Empire and spoke fluent Russian. Nicolai was a German nationalist and a monarchist, but otherwise considered to be apolitical.
In 1906, Nicolai began his career in Abteilung IIIb and took command over the East Prussian news station in Königsberg. He built up the news station in Königsberg to a major centre for espionage against the Russian Empire. After two years of service in early 1913, he was named the head of Abteilung IIIb, which helped to inform the Austro-Hungarian Army that Colonel and Evidenzbureau chief Alfred Redl was a Russian mole.
Nicolai led the German secret service between 1913 and 1919 and directed Abteilung IIIb intensively during the First World War. He wrote, "Before each new acquisition, delivery pp. to ask the I.O., what benefits it brings for the war".
Information about Nicolai's employment of Mata Hari (7 August 1876 – 15 October 1917) can to be found in the so-called Gempp Report, which became public only in the 1970s. The papers also contain information from former officers of Abteilung III b about the "Agent H 21", who was Mata Hari. The papers prove that she had entered the service of the German Secret Service in late Autumn 1915. In May 1916, IIIb chief Nicolai had her asked to come to Cologne. After a conversation there, he decided to have her trained as an agent and assigned Major Röpell as her handler.
Official source
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