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lier, when Abwehr operations were moved out of the capital to avoid air
raids, in addition to his Arab World desk duties, he had been appointed
staff liaison officer between Wünsdorf near Zossen in rural Prussia and the
Tirpitzufer HQ in Berlin. Far from being able to call for a staff car and
driver whenever he wished, Eisenberg had to depend on an inconvenient
and time-consuming Abwehr shuttle-bus service between Berlin and the
Wünsdorf camp.^12 Nevertheless, his operational responsibilities remained
and, with the help of his fellow officer and good friend Hans-Otto Wagner,
he oversaw the planning of the seven Abw II initiatives that targeted Iraq.
It was an uphill struggle to mount Ferneinsätze (long-range operations)
in a region where no Abwehr networks had been established before the
war. According to Raymond Maunsell, head of Security Intelligence
Middle East (SIME), Hitler never intended that Mussolini should enter
the war in June 1940 and was originally counting on Italian armed neutral-
ity to allow him a free hand in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. He
also planned to allow the Italians to provide him with a proxy espionage-
cum-diplomatic organization in the region. Hitler’s anger at Italy’s decla-
ration of war on Britain and France was therefore understandable, since it
forced the Axis to discard what promised to be a valuable proxy subversive
network in neutral guise. In particular, it meant that the Abwehr had to try
and penetrate the region from scratch, to lay down an espionage organiza-
tion after war had been declared. And we all know that you organize your
covert networks before you go to war, during peacetime. The Abwehr did
Fig. 9.1 Werner Eisenberg of Abw II OR and later chief-of-staff of Mil D, the
successor to Abw II. Source: PIR No. 37, CI-FIR/62, E-7, National Archives and
Records Administration