55 Facts About Rudolf Roessler

Rudolf Roessler was a Protestant German and a dedicated anti-Nazi.

In 1934, Rudolf Roessler became stateless by Germany and as a political refugee, moved to Lucerne in Switzerland.

Rudolf Roessler was able to provide a great quantity of high-quality intelligence, around 12,000 typed pages, sourced from the German High Command of planned operations on the Eastern Front, usually within a day of operational decisions being made.

Later in the war, Rudolf Roessler was able to provide the Soviet Union with intelligence on the V-1 and V-2 missiles.

Rudolf Roessler was born on 22 November 1897 in Kaufbeuren, Kingdom of Bavaria.

Rudolf Roessler's father was Lutheran Bavarian Forestry official Georg Roessler and his mother was Sophie nee Kleemann.

When he was eighteen, Rudolf Roessler was drafted into the 120th Infantry "Emperor William, King of Prussia" regiment of the Imperial German Army in Ulm in 1916.

From 25 May to 12 July 1917, Rudolf Roessler's unit was deployed to an area south of Ypres, that was under continuous British artillery bombardment from 21 May to 7 June.

Rudolf Roessler then fought in the Third Battle of Ypres from 19 August to 10 September 1917.

In January and February 1918, Rudolf Roessler fought in the trenches in Flanders.

Rudolf Roessler was left with a lasting negative opinion of how the war was fought in 1916 and 1917 and the methods with which the lives of frontline soldiers were being wasted for the survival of what he increasingly saw as a power-hungry elite.

Rudolf Roessler started working as a trainee journalist at the Munich-Augsburger Abendzeitung, a German daily newspaper which was one of the most important Catholic newspapers in Germany until it was banned by the Nazis in 1935.

In 1922, Rudolf Roessler founded the Augsburger Literary Society along with Bertold Brecht and others and became its chairman.

In 1924, Rudolf Roessler moved to work at the Allgemeine Zeitung, a daily newspaper printed in Bavaria as a correspondent in Augsburg.

From 1925, Rudolf Roessler contributed copy to the Frankfurter Zeitung, the Kolnische Zeitung and the Vossische Zeitung newspapers.

In 1927, Rudolf Roessler became associated with the Christian-conservative Buhnenvolksbund in Berlin, which from 1919 to 1933 attempted to increase the number of people attending theatre, to ensure the advancement of German theatre stage people.

In 1928, Rudolf Roessler became executive director and a playwright for the association, as well as head of the Buhnenvolksbund publishing house.

Rudolf Roessler opposed the ethnic politicization of theatre and the attempt to subordinate art to mass taste.

On 5 May 1933, the chairman of the KfdK, Hans Hinkel, who later became the third managing director of the Reich Chamber of Culture, placed Rudolf Roessler on leave and prohibited him from continuing to exercise his directorship, effectively expelling him.

On 15 June 1933, bankruptcy proceedings were opened and from then on, Rudolf Roessler was without income.

In May 1934, Rudolf Roessler left Germany as a political refugee and emigrated to Lucerne Switzerland with his wife Olga, with the help of his friend, the Swiss librarian and Marxist Xaver Schnieper, who Rudolf Roessler had met during his studies in drama in Germany.

Rudolf Roessler published some fifty brochures and books that attacked both Nazism and Stalinism, contrasting them with the Christian values of the older Germany and Russia.

From 1940 to 1941, Rudolf Roessler wrote and published a 94-page memorandum using his Hermes pseudonym that was titled Die Kriegsschauplatze und die Bedingungen der Kriegfuhrung that discussed how partisans forces needed to be formed in countries that had been conquered, otherwise the country had to be dominated by forces in place.

Rudolf Roessler described how Germany would fail to take this lesson into account, particularly in Poland and the Soviet Union, where the campaigns would be designed as a war of annihilation between two races and two world views.

The reason the consulate provided for the decision was that Rudolf Roessler had violated loyalty to the Reich and the people and damaged German interests.

In 1940, Rudolf Roessler managed to obtain a Czechoslovakian passport for himself and his wife, which was issued to him by the consulate in Marseille of the no longer existing Czechoslovak Republic.

From 1936 to 1939, Rudolf Roessler worked on the semi-monthly left-wing Catholic and radically democratic journal Die Entscheidung that was published by Xaver Schnieper.

Rudolf Roessler anticipated that the Nazis would soon launch a military attack on Switzerland and therefore agreed to work with Hausamann.

Rudolf Roessler became one of the most important sources of intelligence for Buro Ha.

Rudolf Roessler was recruited into the espionage network by Soviet agents Paul Bottcher and Rachel Dubendorfer via Christian Schneider.

Rudolf Roessler remained there until the end of his employment in 1939, when the ILO laid off staff because its importance had declined, resulting in Schneider becoming unemployed.

About a year later, Bottcher told Schneider that a report by Rudolf Roessler would be of great strategic interest to Soviet intelligence and asked Schneider if Rudolf Roessler would be prepared to pass the intelligence to him on a regular basis.

Rudolf Roessler agreed and from the summer of 1942 to 1944 gave Schneider the typed sheets, who couriered them to Dubendorfer.

At the beginning of 1942, Rudolf Roessler complained to Bernhard Mayr von Baldegg, who was an officer in the Swiss general staff at the time, staff officer to Max Waibel, in command of Noehrichtenstelle I of the 5th Signals in Lucerne, that he found the work for Hausamann boring.

Rudolf Roessler was paid by Soviet intelligence, initially receiving 700 Swiss francs per month, increasing to 3000 francs per month as the war progressed.

The record of messages transmitted show that Rudolf Roessler had four important sources.

Three and a half years before his death, Rudolf Roessler described the identity of the four sources to a confidant.

Rudolf Roessler was provided with an Enigma machine and the latest shortwave transmitter and told to start listening for messages from Thiele who was stationed in the Bendlerblock.

Roger Masson, head of the intelligence section of the Swiss army staff, was not interested in the intelligence activities of their informant Rudolf Roessler becoming known to a wider group of people.

Rudolf Roessler could have tried to have the investigation closed.

Rudolf Roessler was often able to deliver accurate intelligence within one day of the orders being issued.

Rudolf Roessler was told to report all military and air force matters in Western Europe, the UK, and Spain under Franco, and in particular to concentrate on infiltrating the United States military and report on intelligence operations in Western Europe.

Rudolf Roessler was paid a signing bonus of 3,000 francs.

Rudolf Roessler developed his reports largely from newspaper clippings and other previously published material.

Rudolf Roessler collected, compared and checked the news for contradictions and placed them in a larger context.

Rudolf Roessler trial was held on 2 November 1953, where he was charged with spying on West Germany for Communist Czechoslovakia.

Rudolf Roessler was sentenced to twenty-one months in prison, minus the time he spent in detention awaiting the trial.

Rudolf Roessler was imprisoned for 12 months and released in early 1954.

Xaver Schnieper who was charged with Rudolf Roessler, was imprisoned for nine months in prison.

Rudolf Roessler continued to argue against West German rearmament and for international solidarity.

Rudolf Roessler was disillusioned with the Cold War, particularly after his trial, particularly when he was accused of spying in favour of the Soviet Union.

Rudolf Roessler was not a Social Democrat, so it was difficult to determine how his political analysis was affected by his articles being published in a social-democratic daily newspaper, as other sources on his life, politics and cultural outlook have so far been lacking.

Rudolf Roessler was committed to the socially disadvantaged, combined with a criticism of the idea that technology and armament were the only way to a better world.

Rudolf Roessler had aversion to the hysteria of the Cold War and its associated militarism that made him appear more left-wing today than many social democrats at the time.

The possible motive is that Rudolf Roessler rejected dialectical and historical materialism.