Catalogue description Erich PFEIFFER: a senior Abwehr officer [Naval Intelligence], whose career spanned the...

Erich PFEIFFER: a senior Abwehr officer [Naval Intelligence], whose career spanned the 1930s & 1940s. Before The Second World War he was in charge of a number of successful espionage operations against France including an important case in the French Navy involving Marc AUBERT, who supplied Germany with vital naval intelligence, and against the USA, where a network of agents provided information on naval and air construction and even hatched a plan to kidnap an American officer with access to important documents; this operation ended in 1938 with the arrest of most of the agents in a blaze of publicity. PFEIFFER also controlled a number of 'visiting' agents to Britain who reported on naval targets and British industry. During The Second World War PFEIFFER commanded a Maritime Kommando unit for the Abwehr which gathered and disseminated intelligence gained from abandoned Allied naval equipment and documents. Later PHEIFFER was based in Bremen and Istanbul.