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Sarah Kieffer Biography & Facts

Hans Josef Kieffer (4 December 1900 – 26 June 1947) was a Sturmbannführer (Major) and the head in Paris of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence agency of the SS during the German occupation of France during the Second World War. Kieffer's headquarters were at 84 Avenue Foch, an address that became well-known because many captured agents of the United Kingdom's clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE) were interrogated there after their capture. After their interrogation, captured agents were sent to concentration camps in Germany, where most were executed. Kieffer was successful in penetrating and destroying SOE networks, which had as their objective fostering and supporting the French Resistance to the German occupation. Kieffer deceived SOE headquarters in London for many months in 1943 and 1944 by sending false wireless messages, a tactic known as Funkspiel (the radio game). In August 1944, Kieffer ordered the execution of five captured Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers under the authority of the Commando Order of the OKW (German military command), which stated that all Allied commandos were to be executed whether or not in uniform. In 1947, Kieffer was hanged by the British. Early life Kieffer was born in Offenburg, Baden-Württemberg, on 4 December 1900. He became a policeman in Karlsruhe, and joined the Nazi Party in the 1920s. After it took power in 1933, he transferred to the Kripo, commanded by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Kieffer was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer on 12 September 1937, and Hauptsturmfuhrer on 14 July 1940. On 27 June 1940, shortly after the German conquest of France, he became a military field police officer, and was later sent to Paris to head the SD (intelligence agency). Kieffer's wife and three children, Hans, Gretel, and Hildegard, remained in Karlsruhe during World War II. Kieffer was described as a "good-looking man" and was short, stocky, and muscular with curly hair. Second World War Kieffer's position as head of the SD in Paris was to conduct counter-espionage activities against the French Resistance and the SOE. In January 1943, Kieffer and his group moved into new offices at 84 Avenue Foch, which became the headquarters of the SD in Paris. Only high-value prisoners were sent to 84 Avenue Foch. Kieffer's assistants included Dr. Josef Goetz, a civilian who was a wireless expert, and Lt. Ernest Vogt, a translator and interpreter who spoke French, English and German. Kieffer spoke only German, and focused his operations on capturing and interrogating Allied agents, escaped prisoners-of-war and resistance fighters. His objectives included turning British and French SOE agents into double agents for the Germans, and transmitting false misinformation to SOE headquarters with wireless sets captured from Allied agents, a process that the Germans called "funkspiel", the "radio game". Kieffer's office and quarters were on the fourth floor of 84 Avenue Foch. The fifth floor had cells (formerly servant's rooms) for prisoners under interrogation. Kieffer's immediate superior was Sturmbannführer Karl Bömelburg, head of the Gestapo in Paris, whose office was next door at 82 Avenue Foch. Most captured SOE agents and other prisoners arrived at Kieffer's headquarters after several weeks of being terrorized by brutal treatment at the hands of the Gestapo and their French collaborators. Kieffer's tactic was to lull his prisoners into a feeling of safety and treat them as gentlemen and even friends. His most effective technique for breaking down a prisoners resistance to providing information was to demoralize them by demonstrating how much he knew about SOE; greeting prisoners by both their real names and code names, which were supposedly known only to SOE headquarters; showing them a wall chart of SOE's organization; suggesting that the Germans and British had a common interest in fighting communism; and planting in prisoner's minds the notion that they had been betrayed by infiltrators in high places in SOE. The experience of the agent John Starr illustrates Kieffer's methods of getting information from the SOE agents he had in his custody. Starr was arrested by the Germans in Dijon on 18 July 1943. He was shot in the thigh and foot while he was trying to escape, and was beaten, tortured, starved, and transferred from prison to prison. Starr arrived at Avenue Foch in late September still on crutches. He was met by Vogt who, like Kieffer and most of his people, dressed in civilian clothes. Vogt gave Starr tea and lunch, and interrogated him in a friendly manner. He introduced Starr to Gilbert Norman, another SOE agent who was also a prisoner, and gave them a few minutes alone to chat. According to Starr, Norman told him that the Germans knew everything about SOE and that there was no point in hiding information. Norman also said that the Germans must have infiltrated SOE headquarters in London. On the second day of interrogation, to bolster Starr's suspicion that SOE in London had been infiltrated and that the Germans knew everything about SOE, Vogt showed Starr copies of correspondence from SOE headquarters and field agents which the Germans had obtained. Starr admitted to a few things that Vogt already knew. Kieffer entered the interrogation at that point, showed Starr a large map of France, and asked Starr to draw a line around his area of operations. Starr did so. He was a graphic artist whose artistic lettering pleased Kieffer so much that he asked Starr to redraw the map. Starr agreed to do so and expanded his own area of operations to conceal the existence of SOE networks near his. Thus began Starr's collaboration with SD for which he was rewarded with a room of his own, permission to eat in the German officer's mess, and gifts of chocolate and cigarettes. Starr later claimed that he had never given any information of importance to Kieffer and had instead been gathering information on SD to provide to SOE. Starr later tried to escape but was recaptured. Kieffer's sources of information on SOE included Henri Déricourt, a double agent who was in charge of arranging clandestine air flights to bring SOE agents to France and to return them to England. Agents gave Déricourt uncoded personal correspondence and official reports to send back by plane to England. He made copies and gave them to the Germans, which provided Kieffer with a wealth of personal information about SOE agents and their work. Kieffer did not permit torture of prisoners at his headquarters, but witnesses described torture of prisoners at a nearby prison under his jurisdiction and by some of his subordinates. Destroying Prosper Kieffer's great accomplishment was the destruction of Prosper (or Physician), SOE's largest and most important network (or circuit) of agents. Based in Paris, Prosper operated from the "Ardennes to the Atlantic" with 30 SOE agents and hundreds of French resisters in its orbit. The three key personnel of Prosper were orga.... Discover the Sarah Kieffer popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Sarah Kieffer books.