blind man must have in his guide dog. Funded initially by
Göring’s Prussian state government, the harmless-sounding
Forschungsamt began with four code-breakers, expanded to
twenty by July , and employed thirty-five hundred or
more, operating throughout Germany and the occupied coun-
tries, over the next twelve years. Its senior officials were dedi-
cated Nazis, and only one FA employee Oberregierungsrat
Hartmut Plaas, a close friend of Canaris and the former adjutant
of Freikorps Commander Ehrhardt was caught leaking FA
secrets (he was shot).
Soon after it was set up, Göring handed over general su-
pervision of the Forschungsamt to Paul Körner. Körner ap-
proved its budget and staff appointments. When the FA moved
into its first cryptanalytical workshop, in an attic in Behren
Strasse in the heart of the government district, the FA chief was
Hans Schimpf, a quiet navy lieutenant commander who had
until recently been attached to the army’s code office.
All except Schimpf survived the coming war, but after the
surrender they lay low, scared of being treated as Nazi agents.
They volunteered little information, and the records of that era
vanished. Scattered around the world, however, are a few items
that clearly betray FA provenance, and they show beyond a
doubt that it was one of the most efficient and accurate intelli-
gence-gathering agencies of its time, its integrity guaranteed by
the rigid civil-service standards imposed on its staff and by the
extraordinary character of Hermann Göring as its ultimate
master.
Hitler had granted to him the absolute Reich monopoly on
wiretapping. Göring protected this monopoly fiercely. A big
“G” scrawled at the foot of a warrant, forwarded to him by Pili
Körner, would suffice for the tap to be applied. But that “G” was
not easily attained, and he gave Himmler’s Gestapo a particu-