Recalled to Berlin in June 1941, Huppenkothen was appointed
head of the counterintelligence division (Group IVE; after 1944,
Section IV a 3) of the newly formed Reichssicherheitshauptamt. He
further belonged to the special commission that was formed under
Ernst Kaltenbrunner following the conspiracy of 20 July 1944.
Huppenkothen’s most notorious assignment was carried out in early
April 1945 as the ruthless prosecutor in the summary court proceed-
ings against Hans von Dohnányi at the Sachsenhausen concentration
camp, and against Wilhelm Canaris (a long-standing enemy), Hans
Oster, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the Flossenbürg concentration
camp. Shortly afterward, he was captured by U.S. forces and held for
four years. On 19 June 1956, after numerous trials, West Germany’s
highest court found him guilty as an accessory to murder in seven
instances and imposed a six-year prison term. Huppenkothen was
also required to testify at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in- He died in Lübeck in 1979.
– I –
ILLEGALER. An intelligence professional dispatched to a foreign
destination under a false identity, an Illegaler (illegal) does not nec-
essarily operate illegally but rather secretly. Employed extensively
by the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit during the Cold War, these
covert operatives usually entered the Federal Republic of Germany
via a third country and developed their legend over time before be-
ing activated. As a result of Operation anmeldung in 1979, more
than 100 such operatives were identified and investigated. See also
HEMPEL, HEINZ; KUNZE, ROSALIE; LUDWIG, HERBERT;
RAKOW, WERNER; RUNGE, YEVGENY YEVGENIEVICH;
SOSNOWSKI, GEORG; STOEBER, KARL-HEINZ.
INDISCHE LEGION. An Abwehr unit composed of Indian volunteers
and recruits, the Indische Legion (Indian Legion) was conceived in
April 1941 following the arrival in Berlin of Subhas Chandra Bose,
the leader of the radical wing of the All-Indian Congress. Bose had
escaped from British house arrest in Calcutta with the assistance of
both the Abwehr and the NKVD (Soviet People’s Commissariat of
INDISCHE LEGION • 203