GROSCURTH, HELMUTH (1898–1943). A senior Abwehr officer
involved in the military conspiracy against Adolf Hitler, Helmuth
Groscurth was born in Lüdenscheid (Westphalia) on 16 December
1898, the son of a Protestant army chaplain. After serving in World
War I, Groscurth studied agronomy but decided on a career in the
Reichswehr. His first assignment after joining the Abwehr in 1935
involved military reconnaissance of France and Belgium and later
of Italy and Abyssinia. In June 1938, Wilhelm Canaris appointed
Groscurth head of Division II, charged with preparing wartime
sabotage in enemy territory and maintaining secret contact with Ger-
man and other ethnic minorities, notably in the Sudetenland. The
post was transferred to Erwin Lahousen at year’s end, and Canaris
gave Groscurth responsibility for a new liaison unit—Abteilung zur
besonderen Verwendung—that was intended to provide the General
Staff with comprehensive, reliable information and thereby curb the
growing influence of the SS. Groscurth’s tenure, however, encoun-
tered opposition from Commander in Chief Walther von Brauchitsch
and lasted only until February 1940.
A conservative nationalist with strong Christian convictions, Gros-
curth had been a key participant in the earlier military plot against
Hitler, while the atrocities of the SS in Poland had aroused his
outspoken indignation. Several field commands later, he was taken
prisoner by the Red Army in February 1943, following the battle of
Stalingrad. His death on 7 April 1943 was the result of typhus con-
tracted in captivity. Not until after the war did Groscurth’s private
and official diaries come to light. Covering the period from August
1938 to February 1940 and supplemented by other firsthand materi-
als, they were published in 1970.
GROSSMANN, WERNER (1929– ). The final head of the Haupt-
verwaltung Aufklärung (HVA), Werner Grossmann was born in
Oberebenheit (Saxony) on 6 March 1929, the son of a carpenter.
Trained as a mason after the war, he joined the Ministerium für
Staatssicherheit (MfS) in April 1952 under the pseudonym Werner
Olldorf and soon established his credentials in the foreign intelligence
branch. Grossmann’s work was supplemented by studies at the Soviet
Communist Party school in Moscow in 1966–1967 and by a degree
from the Juristische Hochschule des MfS in 1972. A self-proclaimed
GROSSMANN, WERNER • 151