Wehrmacht forces at Stalingrad. Conceived by the propaganda divi-
sion of the Red Army, the initial group—25 prisoners of war from
the Krasnogorsk camp and 13 communist exiles—was soon joined
by some 100 members of the League of German Officers headed by
Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach to form essentially a single organiza-
tion. Its aims included a democratic German state that ensured indi-
vidual rights and peaceful coexistence with other European countries.
Besides publishing the weekly newspaper Freies Deutschland (with
a patriotic black-white-red masthead) and transmitting radio broad-
casts into Germany, the NKFD recruited agents for sabotage work
within the Wehrmacht. The organization was officially dissolved
in November 1945, although considerable apprehension persisted
among the Western allies for several years afterward.NAUJOCKS, ALFRED (1911–1960). A prominent Sicherheitsdienst
(SD; Security Service) official often used for special tasks, Alfred
Naujocks was born in Kiel on 20 September 1911. An engineering
student at the University of Kiel for a brief period, he was also known
as an amateur boxer who engaged in street brawls with communists.
He joined the SS in 1931 and the SD three years later. His first major
assignment involved the abduction of Rudolf Formis, a member of
the dissident Nazi organization Black Front, who was broadcasting
anti-Hitler propaganda from a secret radio station a short distance
from Prague. Once Formis was located, an armed encounter took
place at his hotel, and he was fatally shot by Naujocks. This unin-
tended outcome—along with the string of clues inadvertently left for
the Czech police—angered his superior, Reinhard Heydrich, but
did not result in his dismissal.
As part of Heydrich’s plan to sow discord between Stalin and the
Red Army general staff, Naujocks fabricated compromising materi-
als against Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who was ultimately tried
and executed in June 1937. Even more noteworthy was Naujocks’s
involvement in Operation tannenberg, the staging of provoca-
tive actions against Germany on 31 August 1939 intended to justify
Hitler’s invasion of Poland. A few months later, Naujocks played
an important supporting role in the Venlo Incident, having led
the SS unit that kidnapped two British intelligence officers near the
Dutch border city. As head of the forgery subsection, Naujocks also
316 • NAUJOCKS, ALFRED