Possessing no intelligence collection agency of its own, the FHO
had to depend on numerous sources, including the Abwehr, the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the Foreign Office, and the Luftwaffe
—all exceedingly protective of their own domain. Moreover, the
lack of agents deep in the Red Army’s rear made the FHO highly
vulnerable to large-scale deception schemes, such as Operation
scherhorn. An overriding failure of German intelligence was its
underestimation of the magnitude of Soviet attacks and counterat-
tacks at critical junctures in the war.FREMDE HEERE WEST (FHW). An intelligence branch of the
Armed Forces High Command, the Fremde Heere West (Foreign
Armies West) was created on 10 November 1938 and focused on the
armies of Western Europe, Great Britain, the upper Balkans, and the
United States (except for one brief interlude after Adolf Hitler’s dec-
laration of war). Based in Zossen, just south of Berlin, it was headed
successively by Ulrich Liss, Alexis von Roenne, and Willi Bürklein.
With only a limited number of standard intelligence sources at its
disposal, the FHW depended to a large degree on the accumulated
general knowledge of its staff. Large guidebooks were compiled on
individual countries and covered such topics as military geography
and organization, armaments, training, and education. Most notable
was its strategic conceptualization in the campaign against France
and the Low Countries in 1940.
FREMDE LUFTWAFFE. The main intelligence branch of the Luft-
waffe, the Fremde Luftwaffe (Foreign Air Forces) was headed by
Josef Schmidt until October 1942. Because intelligence enjoyed little
prestige within the air force command, much rivalry and friction
developed in a highly decentralized atmosphere (10 different groups,
for example, were charged with radar monitoring). As a result, its
analytical capacity was severely limited.
FRENZ, WOLFGANG (1936– ). An extreme right-wing political
functionary and informer for West German counterintelligence, Wolf-
gang Frenz was a founding member of the Nationaldemokratische
Partei Deutschlands (NPD) in 1964. Having been engaged in 1959
as a paid informer by the Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz (LfV)
116 • FREMDE HEERE WEST