Oberländer’s belief that Hitler had no further territorial ambitions
and that no world war loomed was soon shattered. Despite having
accepted a position at Charles University in Prague in September
1940, Oberländer began to direct his main energies to a new Abwehr
project—the Nachtigall (Nightingale) Battalion, a joint German and
Ukrainian volunteer force designed to foment opposition to Joseph
Stalin from within the Soviet Union. Aided by his recently acquired
knowledge of the Ukrainian language, Oberländer had the respon-
sibility of coordinating the heterogeneous elements in the battalion.
Hardly had the unit been deployed—notably in Lviv in late June
1941—when authorities in Berlin, fearful of the emergence of an
independent Ukraine, ordered its dissolution. Despite his disappoint-
ment, Oberländer accepted another Abwehr assignment involving
the creation of the Bergmann (Miner) unit, a German-Caucasian
force, which he commanded but which had to retreat in late Decem-
ber 1942. His widely distributed memoranda critical of the harsh
German occupation policy in the east resulted in his dismissal from
the Wehrmacht the following fall—an act orchestrated by Heinrich
Himmler, head of the SS. Narrowly escaping confinement in a con-
centration camp, Oberländer attempted to revive his academic post
in Prague. In March 1944—in a sharp reversal of SS-policy—he was
assigned to the Vlasov army as a liaison officer, only to be captured
shortly afterward by American troops.
Given his expertise in Soviet and East European affairs, the U.S.
Counterintelligence Corps expedited his denazification at war’s end
and offered him a position in its main analytical unit in Frankfurt am
Main. Following the formation of the first government of the Federal
Republic of Germany (FRG), Chancellor Konrad Adenauer turned to
Oberländer in 1953 to head the federal ministry for expellees, a group
that included roughly 12 million people. To his numerous critics, the
chancellor justified the appointment on pragmatic grounds.
Oberländer later became the object of a defamation campaign by
the KGB and the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS). On 3
July 1959, Nikita Khrushchev fired the opening shot by accusing the
Adenauer government of harboring former Nazis such as Oberländer.
A month later, the Association for the Victims of Nazism, working
in collaboration with the Eastern bloc security services, charged him
with the wartime deaths of 310,000 Jews, Poles, and communists.326 • OBERLÄNDER, THEODOR