page_title: Walter Schellenberg
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Walter Schellenberg / Career
caption_attribution_description: Norsk bokmål: Riksprotektor i Böhmen og Mähren foretar bekransning på æreskirkegården på Ekeberg september 1941 (Original bildetekst) Heydrich besøkte Norge fra onsdag 3. til fredag 6. september 1941. Fotografiet ble gjengitt i Aftenpostens aftenutgave mandag 8. september 1941 under tittelen «Gruppenführer Heydrich besøker den tyske æreskirkegård.» Bildeteksten under er «Fot. N. T. B. Oslo, 8. september. (NTB.) Chefen for det tyske politi og den tyske sikkerhetstjeneste, SS.-Gruppenführer Heydrich har under sitt besøk i Oslo nedlagt en krans på den tyske æreskirkegård på Ekeberg.» Det er ingen annen artikkeltekst til bildet. English: Reinhard Heydrich at Ekeberg cemetery for German soldiers in Oslo during his visit to Norway 3-6 September 1941. Heydrich (1904 – 1942) was a SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei (Senior Group Leader and General of Police) as well as chief of the Reich Main Security Office RSHA (including the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD). Heydrich walking in front with SS Officer Georg Wilhelm Müller [note Not SS-Brigadeführer/SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller (head of the Gestapo)] to his right and SS_Oberführer Heinrich Fehlis (leader of SD and Sipo in Norway) to his left. Also SS-hauptsturmführer Hermann Kluckhohn, SS-Sturmbannführer Walter Schellenberg, Rudolf Schiedermair, and other SS police officers.
context_page_description: Walter Friedrich Schellenberg was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He rose through the ranks of the SS, becoming one of the highest ranking men in the Sicherheitsdienst and eventually assumed the position as head of foreign intelligence for Nazi Germany following the abolition of the Abwehr in 1944.
context_section_description: Schellenberg was born in Saarbrücken, Germany. He was the seventh child born to his parents and his father was a piano manufacturer. Schellenberg moved with his family to Luxembourg when the French occupation of the Saar Basin after the First World War triggered an economic crisis in the Weimar Republic. Like many young intellectuals who would later join the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), Schellenberg was deeply affected by the economic woes which befell Germany in the wake of the First World War.
  Schellenberg returned to Germany to attend university, first at the University of Marburg and then, in 1929, at the University of Bonn. He initially studied medicine, but soon switched to law. While in law school, Schellenberg performed some spy work for the SD. He reported actually having been recruited by two SD agents who were college faculty, who also advised him to join the Civil Service. After graduating he joined the SS in 1933. From what Schellenberg later wrote, the "better type of people" preferred the SS over the other Nazi organizations. While educated as a lawyer, Schellenberg distrusted administrative attorneys and was intent on ensuring the SD could operate outside the constraints of normal law. Subscribing to the Führerprinzip, Schellenberg also thought Hitler's directives were beyond the framework of the legal system and believed it was best to "unquestioningly" carry-out anything ordered by the Nazi leader.
  In 1935, Schellenberg met Reinhard Heydrich and worked for him in the counter-intelligence department of the SD. Besides his native German, Schellenberg also spoke French and English fluently. Correspondingly, his first foreign-intelligence assignment was to Paris in 1934, where his role was to check up on the political views of a professor. Then in 1937, Schellenberg was sent to Italy for a police assignment which included security duties for an upcoming visit by Mussolini; his outstanding work in providing security garnered positive attention from Heydrich, who then tasked him with additional organizational responsibilities, some of which later helped give birth to the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). The official SS personnel report on Schellenberg described him as "open, irreproachable, and reliable"; the file also delineated him as "firm, tough, possesses energy" and one who was "very sharp thinking"; and his National Socialist worldview was labeled, "thoroughly fortified." Many of the SS street-brawling types despised men like Schellenberg, considering them effete, but for the most part Schellenberg made a good impression on the Nazi elite.
  Sometime in 1938, Schellenberg married Käthe Kortekamp, a seamstress three years his senior, whom he dated for seven years and had supported him through college. Their marriage was brief, due partially to her social standing and the fact many things about her embarrassed him; the relationship ended in divorce in 1939 but only after Schellenberg promised her an "aryanized" fashion business expropriated from Jewish owners. Shortly thereafter, he married a more socially-acceptable woman named Irene Grosse-Schönepauck, the daughter of an insurance executive, but this relationship was also troubled.
  As the Nazis tightened their grip on German society, Hitler and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler determined that the SS and police organs should merge, a move which Schellenberg fully supported by releasing a memorandum on 24 February 1939 which advocated further centralization within the state. In summer 1939, Schellenberg became one of the directors of Heydrich's foundation, the Stiftung Nordhav. Schellenberg was mentored by Herbert Mehlhorn while at the SS-Hauptamt. When Heydrich announced his intentions to create the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) in July 1939, he had Schellenberg to thank as both the organisation's name and its existence were resultant from his plans. On 27 September 1939, Himmler made the RSHA an official state organ by decree.
  As the role of the SS and its action groups, the SS-Einsatzgruppen, expanded in the war zones in May 1941, it was Schellenberg w
caption: Georg Wilhelm Müller  (front row, to the left) and Reinhard Heydrich and SS_Oberführer Heinrich Fehlis (leader of SD and Sipo in Norway) to the right. Also SS-hauptsturmführer Hermann Kluckhohn, SS-Sturmbannführer Walter Schellenberg, Rudolf Schiedermair, and other SS police officers at Ekeberg cemetery for German soldiers in Oslo during Heydrich's visit to Norway 3-6 September 1941.
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