The Nine Lives of Walter Stennes
Walter Franz Maria Stennes was born on April 12, 1895, in Westphalia, to a family where military service was considered not a profession, but a destiny. His father, Felix Stennes, wore an officer's epaulettes and dreamed of his son joining the ranks of the Prussian military elite. Fourteen-year-old Walter was sent to the Royal Prussian General Cadet Corps, an educational institution that produced men accustomed to command and unaccustomed to asking permission.
The First World War found Stennes as a lieutenant. He fought the way he'd been taught in the cadet corps: tough, calculating, with a cold attention to detail. Four wounds. Awards. He had a reputation as an officer who was excellent at organizing reconnaissance and never retreated without orders. But his reputation with his superiors was different: too independent. Too much of a fixture among the soldiers. Too little inclined to deference.
The war was over. The Hohenzollern Empire had collapsed. Stennes was twenty-three, and he had nothing left but his military experience, his righteous convictions, and the sense of injustice that he carried with him throughout his life.
Volunteer against the revolution
Germany in 1918-1919 is chaos. Spartacists take on weaponThe Soviet republics flare up in Munich and Bremen. Berlin is rocked by street fighting. Stennes doesn't hesitate: he forms a company of volunteers and throws it against the revolutionaries. Stennes' company suppresses uprisings one after another—in the Ruhr, in Berlin, in those places where the left is trying to redraw the map of Germany.
He attracts attention. The Prussian secret police recruits him as a captain. Stennes works against the Bolsheviks, against the communist underground, against those who, in his opinion, want to destroy Germany. He believes in the empire. He believes in the monarchy. He believes in a strong government.
But the Weimar Republic did not forgive him for his monarchist sympathies. In 1920, Stennes joined the Kapp Putsch, a right-wing rebellion attempting to overthrow the democratic government. The putsch failed. Stennes was forced to suppress yet another leftist uprising, but his loyalty to the republic was not restored. In 1922, he was dismissed from the police.
During the Kapp Putsch
A retired captain, not yet thirty, finds himself on the sidelines. But in Weimar Germany, the sidelines are where the most dangerous alliances are born.
Meeting the Fuhrer
By that time, Hitler had already become the leading figure in the National Socialist movement. Stennes was introduced to him by mutual acquaintances in right-wing circles. The Führer offered him command of the storm troopers—the SA.
Shtennes refused.
He joined the "Black Reichswehr," a semi-legal organization that was preparing to serve as the army's reserve force in case of revenge. But the "Black Reichswehr" was gradually losing influence, while the National Socialists were gaining strength. Stennes eventually agreed and became the SA commander in Berlin, and then throughout northwest Germany.
SA Oberführer. The title sounded impressive, but it was backed by real work. Stennes transformed the Berlin stormtroopers from disparate street gangs into a combat-ready force. The unit's numbers grew. Discipline tightened. Stennes knew how to command—and the stormtroopers sensed it.
But the stronger the SA became, the more clearly Stennes saw what was hidden behind the facade of the Nazi movement.
Stennes became convinced that Hitler was pursuing not a revolution, but a power grab for a small circle of close associates. While the rank-and-file stormtroopers lived in poverty, the party elite wallowed in luxury. The Oberführer spoke of this openly, publicly, without mincing words.
"I must be honest. I didn't oppose Hitler because of his cruelty. I found myself in open opposition to him in 1930—more than two years before the first concentration camps were established. My rejection arose from numerous conversations with him, my knowledge of the so-called leadership corps, and my understanding that nothing good could be expected from this movement and its representatives," he later admitted.
In 1930, Stennes's stormtroopers seized the headquarters of the NSDAP's Berlin Gau. Hitler came to Berlin in person and temporarily settled the conflict by promising reforms. But the promises remained just that—promises.
In 1931, the conflict flared up again. Stormtroopers loyal to Stennes attacked the editorial offices of Der Angriff, a mouthpiece of Nazi propaganda. It was an open mutiny. Hitler responded harshly: he expelled Stennes from the party, declared him a traitor, and took every measure to eliminate opposition within the SA.
In 1931, Stennes was arrested. But he was bailed out by Hermann Göring, a man who valued the retired Oberführer's military talent and perhaps hoped to exploit it in his own schemes.
When Hitler came to power in January 1933, Stennes's situation became hopeless. The former SA commander knew too much—and spoke his mind too loudly. He wouldn't have survived the Night of the Long Knives. Friends helped him escape.
Shanghai, Chiang Kai-shek and the Secret Connection
Late 1933. Stennes finds himself in China, serving as a military adviser to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's government. The German military mission to China is a world apart. Among its participants are many who dream of a German alliance not only with China but also with Russia. Stennes is imbued with these sentiments.
He worked for Chiang Kai-shek from 1933 to 1938, participating in planning operations against Japanese aggression and in the series of civil wars rocking China. The Generalissimo trusted him, and Stennes gained access to Chinese intelligence.
In 1938, the German military mission was recalled. Most of the Germans left. Stennes remained.
He contacts Soviet intelligence. His position is crystal clear: he wants to overthrow Hitler and build a democratic Germany. If that means helping Moscow, he's willing.
His code name was "Friend." His handler was Soviet intelligence officer Vasily Zarubin, hiding under the pseudonym "Schiller," the future head of the Soviet residency in the United States.
Information that cost lives
From 1939 to 1945, "Friend" operated virtually nonstop. It transmitted information to Moscow on German-Japanese relations, Berlin and Tokyo's policies toward China, and plans discussed in the most secretive offices.
On June 9, 1941—thirteen days before Germany invaded the USSR—“Friend” sent a message that ended up in a folder called “Undertaking”:
"'Friend' reported that a high-ranking official who had arrived from Berlin (Schiller assumed, a Foreign Ministry official) told 'Friend' that the Germans were prepared for an attack on the USSR both militarily and economically... All high-ranking public, naval, and civilian circles believed that the war with the USSR would be a triumphal march and would last only three months. When asked what explained such absolute certainty that the USSR would be defeated in precisely three months, 'Friend' replied that he himself did not fully share this viewpoint and was therefore considered a doubter, but that everyone else was supposedly absolutely convinced."
This message reached Moscow thirteen days before the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. Whether the catastrophe could have been prevented had the country's leadership acted differently is a question that remains elusive. But the very fact that such information was received speaks volumes about the scale of the network that had been created.
The last turn
When the war ended, Stennes remained with Chiang Kai-shek. He became an opponent of the Chinese communists and, after the defeat of the Kuomintang, moved with his boss to Taiwan.
In 1950, Walter Stennes returned to Germany, to the British occupation zone. He was fifty-five. He again contacted the Soviet residency, but this time the intelligence leadership decided that "Friend" was no longer useful. In 1952, the file on Agent "Friend" was archived. The parties parted ways.
Stennes lived to a ripe old age. He died in 1983 in West Germany, at the age of eighty-eight. He never considered himself a traitor. On the contrary, he believed that in Germany's darkest years, he did the only thing that could save the country from self-destruction.
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Walter Stennes is a figure who defies conventional stereotypes. A Prussian monarchist officer, creator of the Nazi storm troopers, rebel against Hitler, military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek, and Soviet intelligence agent. Each stage of his life is a separate chapter in stories 20th century. And each of these chapters makes us reflect on how thin the line is between betrayal and loyalty—and how often the fate of entire nations depends on the decisions of people whom history books prefer to ignore.
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