Niedermayer was made its military leader, although dissension soon
developed with Werner Hentig, who had taken charge of diplo-
matic matters. When the mission failed to achieve its objective, the
two men returned to Germany in 1916 from opposite directions, and
Niedermayer was assigned various military and intelligence respon-
sibilities for the remainder of the war. His role in the Afghanistan
expedition nevertheless earned him election into Bavaria’s most
prestigious military order.
After finishing his doctoral dissertation on Persia at the Univer-
sity of Munich in 1919, Niedermayer joined a special Reichswehr
task force designed to develop secret contacts with the Red Army.
As this collaboration deepened under the leadership of his mentor
Hans von Seeckt, his career shifted to Moscow, where Niedermayer
(code name siebert) remained from 1924 to 1932. Afterward came
a teaching position at the University of Berlin, which included the
directorship of its institute for security studies. In 1942, despite his
critical attitude toward Adolf Hitler and the German invasion of the
Soviet Union, Niedermayer commanded a division on the eastern
front composed of Muslims from Azerbaijan and Central Asia who
had become German prisoners of war.
The failure of the 20 July 1944 conspiracy against Adolf Hitler
resulted in Niedermayer’s arrest by the Gestapo and imprisonment
at the Wehrmacht prison near Torgau (Saxony). In May 1945, with
the arrival of the Red Army, Niedermayer hoped that his old Soviet
comrades would provide him a lifeline. Instead, he was taken to the
Lubjanka in Moscow for interrogation and found guilty of espionage
by a special court. Hardly had his 25-year prison term begun when
he died at Vladimir, southwest of Moscow, on 25 September 1948.
Niedermayer was rehabilitated by the Russian Federation as a “vic-
tim of political repression” in 1997.NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES. The killing of 77 leading Nazis
and more than 100 others at the direction of the Hitler regime, the
Night of the Long Knives (also known as the Röhm Purge) occurred
on 30 June 1934 and was directed principally at members of the
Sturmabteilung (SA) led by Ernst Röhm. Alarmed by his adamant
call for a “second revolution,” both the Reichswehr and the SS found
common cause in halting the rapidly escalating ambitions of the SA.
NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES • 321