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Wilhelm Fenner (*14. April 1891 in Saint Petersburg; † after 1946) was a German cryptanalyst, before and during the time of World War II in the OKW/Chi, the Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, the main cryptanalysis group, entrusted with deciphering enemy message traffic (Cryptography). To quote military historian David Alvarez:

Wilhelm Fenner was the central figure in the evolution of the German Cipher Bureau between 1922 and 1939, and a major personality in the history of German communications intelligence in the interwar period. Under his direction, the Cipher Bureau evolved into a highly professional communications intelligence service, which scored impressive cryptanalytic successes against the diplomatic and military systems of many countries.

Personal life

Wilhelm was born on April 14, 1891 in Saint Petersburg. He was the sixth of seven children of Heinrich Gottlieb Fenner and Charlotte Georgine Fenner, born Michaelsen. His father was the chief editor of the St. Petersburgische Zeitung, a German language daily newspaper published in Saint Petersburg, then the capital of the Russian Empire. After two years of home schooling, he attended the Evangelical Lutheran Anne School in St. Petersburg from 1899, and completed his final examination with distinction in May 1909. In the autumn of 1910 he matriculated at the Royal Institute of Technology in Berlin (TH) in Berlin-Charlottenburg and studied construction engineering. In the summer of 1914, he passed his final examination.

Wilhelm Fenner was married on 11 January 1922 to Elise Sophie Katharine von Blanckensee, a daughter of the former Prussian Major General Peter von Blanckensee. They had two children, a son, Siegwart Heinrich (born January 28, 1923), who served as a lieutenant in World War II, and was killed on February 19, 1945, and a daughter, Ilse Fredericki (born July 24, 1928).

Work

With the outbreak of the First World War, he had to drop out of college, and worked for a short time at Siemens, before being drafted into military service on December 1, 1914. After the war, now with the rank of lieutenant, he remained in the military until February 9, 1920. Just over a year later, his career took a decisive turn when he met Peter Novopaschenny in the spring of 1921. Novopaschenny was a former Russian Navy captain of the tsarist Marine and professor of Applied Tactics. Novopaschenny asked Fenner to help him to move to Berlin and confided in Fenner that he had worked during the war as director of the Russian cryptanalytic service working to break the ciphers of the German Baltic Fleet, and that he intended to make his experience available to the German General Staff. That same year presented Fenner connects and came so even for the first time with the cryptanalysis in contact. He was now working under the guidance of his taskmaster Novopaschenny and with him successfully on breaking Russian military ciphers. Here Fenner used his excellent language skills of German and Russian to his advantage, while Novopaschenny, although an excellent cryptanalyst, hardly spoke German.

As a result, Fenner led a uniform and clean technical terminology, and so put a first important foundation for further success of the new employer. In the fall of 1922, he and Novopaschenny not only officially as an employee of Chiffrierstelle (Chi-point) of the Reichswehr over, but Fenner was also the head of the cryptanalysis section and entrusted with eleven employees. Within the next years Fenner changed the operation of his group significantly. From a chaotic pile of creative genius, he formed an analytical thinking, systematic working and disciplined unit of more and more experienced code breakers. His actions fertilized and the number of successfully cracked (Decrypted) cryptograms increased steadily. Likewise, the number of staff grew and Fenner, took the opportunity to train newcomers himself and use his own, now grown enormously cryptology knowledge, was able to pass on to them. At the same time as his leadership role grew, he more and more lost contact with the actual decipherment.

On April 4, 1927 he was appointed a Government Councillor (German:Regierungsrat) In addition to his management duties he intensified the contacts and cooperation with friendly foreign cipher bureau's (German:Chiffrierstellen) in Austria, Hungary and Finland, and later to Italy, Spain and Estonia He also trained their employees, and wrote two treatises on cryptanalysis, namely fundamentals of deciphering and contribution to the theory of the slide. He also dealt with the then already tentatively used by the Reichswehr Enigma and showed cryptographic weaknesses and consequent Entzifferungsmöglichkeiten (English:Decoding Options), and made proposals to improve the machine.

After the Nazis seizure of power in January 1933, the times became increasingly restless for the cipher bureau (German: Chiffrierstelle). He now felt the competition from newly established rival institutions, such as beginning in 1933, with the establishment of the private intelligence agency, the Research Office of the Reich Air Ministry (German:Forschungsamt). Established by the Reich Aviation Minister, Hermann Goering, he lost many capable employees, who in the new organization hoped for better career prospects, including two cryptanalysts whom he considered excellent, Baron von Reznicek and Herr Weachter. Fenner was forced to fill the resulting gaps in staff by newcomers, who found the term "attitude" always more important. Fenner as a rule always recruited people who had not left the church and were not members of the NSDAP. It was during this time that he decided to implement a thorough training for all new talented cryptanalysts. He decided to use Romanian cypher's, which were used year in year out. Over two winter semesters he conducted a Course in Low Level Cryptography on a Romanian system with a single re-encipherment, which was held in three times a week from 1500 to 1700 until 1943. In the summer of 1933, we was promoted to Senior Counciller (German:OberRegierungsrat). Hatching a plan which he formulated in the 1920s to professionalize the business of cryptology and make cryptanalysts a special career within the military, i.e. ensure they were high officials, he approached the military, but it wasn't until the summer of 1938, shortly after establishment of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces the Chiffrierstelle was renamed the Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW/Chi), that the plan was approved by the chief of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht, Wilhelm Keitel. Now a Director of OKW/CHI (German:Ministerialrat) he could counteract the harmful poaching of staff, ensure suitable staff had a secure future, and place unsuitable people at the disposal of others.

The staff strength of the Chiffrierstelle (OKW/Chi) had increased in 1939 to include over 200 employees, after only two years earlier was only about 40 personnel. In the ensuing war years until 1944 it quadrupled to 800. The wartime for Fenner and his staff in the OKW/Chi was initially relatively peaceful and successful. The raw material, in the form of intercepted radio messages, gushed abundant and lay the material in more than sufficient quantities before, not infrequently, so that they focus several hundred messages a day on the most important projects and had to ignore relatively unimportant sources. There were able to get important decoding success (German:Entzifferungserfolge), for example, against France, in 1940, much to the quick victory of the German Armed Forces in the West contributed ("Case Red") during World War II. Also Polish, Russian and Yugoslav messages could be deciphered.

Towards the end of 1943, conditions now deteriorated rapidly for all staff of OKW/Chi, the working and living conditions in Berlin when the bombing increasingly approached the German capital. The work spaces were largely destroyed and many employees lost their homes by bombs. Of course you had to spend the night and now provisionally the daytime working outdoors unprotected, whereby the efficiency of OKW/Chi was degraded. Fenner describes that he sometimes could afford only a quarter of their usual workload barely a third. Towards the end of the war on July 20, 1944, Fenner had even to resist personal attacks when he was accused of the participation in the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. In February 1945, the working conditions in Berlin had become so catastrophic that the OKW/Chi move toSaxon Halle an der Saale was postponed. Just two months later, in mid-April, it was no longer safe here and there began the general resolution.

While his section chief, Colonel Kettler, and the head of the main group A, Major Mettig, and also one of its best people, the head of the group IV, Dr Erich Hüttenhain, located toward the north, Fenner fled with a part of its employees to the south. On April 23, 1945 OKW/Chi was officially disbanded and the staff of the General of Nachrichtenaufklärung (gDNA) assumed. Just before the American army reached their position (about 40 km south of Salzburg), they burned their documents or threw them into the Salzach River. With the surrender of the Wehrmacht on 8 May 1945 went out of the service agreement for all former employees of the High Command. Fenner moved to Landshut and found in neighboring Straubing employment as a bicycle and car mechanic.

In July 1946, he was charged as a witness for the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal and in August transferred to the Haus Alaska, a cover name for HQ 7707 European Command Intelligence Center Camp King, the US Army's interrogation centre, Oberursel (near Frankfurt), and interned with other high-ranking German's. Fenner was intensively interrogated by the Army Security Agency (ASA) and has written a number of reports about his life and his work, including an autobiographical essay, whose translation in TICOM Archive (see also: Web Links ) to DF-187 The Career of William Fenner bearing the words TOP SECRET is filed. These documents were made publicly available only a few years ago.

Literature

• David Alvarez: Wilhelm Fenner and the Development of the German Cipher Bureau, 1922-1939. Cryptologia . Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 31.2007,2 (April), pp 152–163. ISSN 0161-1194 .
• Friedrich L. Bauer : Decrypted Secrets. Methods and Maxims of Cryptology. 3rd revised and expanded edition. Springer, Berlin and others 2000 ISBN 3-540-67931-6 .
• Randy Rezabek: TICOM and the Search for OKW/Chi. Cryptologia. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 37.2013,2 (April), pp 139–153. ISSN 0161-1194 .

References

1. "Army Security Agency: DF-187 The Career of Wilhelm Fenner with Special Regard to his activity in the field of Cryptography and Cryptanalysis (PDF)". Google Drive. 1 December 1949. p. 1. Retrieved 7 July 2016.
2. David Kahn (1983). Kahn on Codes: Secrets of the New Cryptology. Maxwell Macmillan Canada, Incorporated. p. 313. ISBN 978-0-02-560640-1.
3. Alvarez, David (22 March 2007). "Wilhelm Fenner and the Development of the German Cipher Bureau, 1922–1939". Taylor and Francis Online. Cryptologia Volume 31 Issue 2. pp. 152–163. doi:10.1080/01611190601038225. Retrieved 12 July 2016.
4. "Army Security Agency: DF-187 The Career of Wilhelm Fenner with Special Regard to his activity in the field of Cryptography and Cryptanalysis (PDF)". Google Drive. 1 December 1949. p. 7. Retrieved 8 July 2016.
5. Bengt Beckman; C.G. McKay (11 January 2013). Swedish Signal Intelligence 1900-1945. Routledge. pp. 87–. ISBN 978-1-136-34148-9.
6. David Alvarez: Wilhelm Fenner and the Development of the German Cipher Bureau, 1922-1939. Cryptologia . Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 31.2007,2 (April), p 157. ISSN 0161-1194
7. "Army Security Agency: DF-187 The Career of Wilhelm Fenner with Special Regard to his activity in the field of Cryptography and Cryptanalysis (PDF)". Google Drive. 1 December 1949. p. 9. Retrieved 8 July 2016.
8. Randy Rezabek: TICOM and the Search for OKW / Chi. Cryptologia. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 37.2013,2 (April) 149. ISSN 0161-1194
9. "Army Security Agency: DF-187 The Career of Wilhelm Fenner with Special Regard to his activity in the field of Cryptography and Cryptanalysis (PDF)". Google Drive. 1 December 1949. pp. 10–14. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
10. "Army Security Agency: DF-187 The Career of Wilhelm Fenner with Special Regard to his activity in the field of Cryptography and Cryptanalysis (PDF)". Google Drive. 1 December 1949. p. 14. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
11. "Army Security Agency: DF-187 The Career of Wilhelm Fenner with Special Regard to his activity in the field of Cryptography and Cryptanalysis (PDF)". Google Drive. 1 December 1949. p. 15. Retrieved 24 July 2016.
12. "Army Security Agency: DF-187 The Career of Wilhelm Fenner with Special Regard to his activity in the field of Cryptography and Cryptanalysis (PDF)". Google Drive. 1 December 1949. p. 15. Retrieved 24 July 2016.

• 1891 births
• Pre-computer cryptographers
• Imperial German Navy personnel
• History of cryptography