Colonel Maximilian Ronge (November 9, 1874 – September 10, 1953) was the last director of the Evidenzbureau, the directorate of

military intelligence Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist commanders in their decisions. This aim is achieved by providing an assessment of data from a ...

of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Ronge played a key role in the 1913 exposure of Col. Alfred Redl as a double agent.

Life

Ronge was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1874. He was a career officer in the Austro-Hungarian army; one of his classmates in officer training was Theodor Körner, later a notable Social Democrat and personal adversary of Ronge, who was to become President of the Second Austrian Republic in 1951. In 1907, Ronge was transferred to the Evidenzbureau, the directorate of military intelligence, where he became a student and protégé of Col. Redl. There, in 1913, Ronge directed the investigations following the discovery of an unclaimed letter containing a large sum of money, which eventually led to the exposure of Redl as a Russian

double agent In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organ ...

and Redl’s subsequent suicide. Ronge was promoted to Colonel and head of the Evidenzbureau in 1917, a position he held until the end of the monarchy brought about the dissolution of the Bureau in 1918. In the First Austrian Republic, Ronge was deputy director of the government office for Prisoners of War and

Civilian Internee A civilian internee is a civilian detained by a party to a war for security reasons. Internees are usually forced to reside in internment camps. Historical examples include Japanese American internment and internment of German Americans in the Un ...

s in Vienna. At the same time, he was a member of a secret society preparing to overthrow the social-democratic Republic. Ronge retired in 1932, but was recalled to duty in the following year as director of the ''staatspolizeiliches Sonderbüro'' ("state police special bureau"). In 1934, Ronge was posted to the ''

Bundeskanzleramt The German Chancellery (german: Bundeskanzleramt, , more faithfully translated as ''Federal Chancellery'' or ''Office of the Federal Chancellor'') is an agency serving the executive office of the chancellor of Germany, the head of the federal gove ...

'' ("chancellery") in the Dollfuss regime; his counter-espionage staff was however unable to prevent the assassination of Dollfuss by

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

agents in the same year. Maximilian Ronge Dachau Arolsen Archives

When Ronge refused to join the SS after Austria’s ''

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, en, Annexation of Austria), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into the German Reich on 13 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a " Greater Germany ...

'' to the

German Reich German ''Reich'' (lit. German Realm, German Empire, from german: Deutsches Reich, ) was the constitutional name for the German nation state that existed from 1871 to 1945. The ''Reich'' became understood as deriving its authority and sovereignty ...

in 1938, he was arrested and deported to the Dachau concentration camp. From prison, Ronge wrote a “declaration of loyalty“ to

Wilhelm Canaris Wilhelm Franz Canaris (1 January 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a German admiral and the chief of the ''Abwehr'' (the German military-intelligence service) from 1935 to 1944. Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi re ...

when the latter was promoted to vice admiral, upon which he was released in August 1938. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, Ronge lived in Vienna. After the war, aged 71, he supported the American troops in

allied-administered Austria The Allied occupation of Austria started on 8 May 1945 with the fall of Nazi Germany and ended with the Austrian State Treaty on 27 July 1955. After the in 1938, Austria had generally been recognized as part of Nazi Germany. In 1943, however, ...

in the creation of a new intelligence service, but died in 1953 before the '' Heeresnachrichtenamt'' ("Army Intelligence Office") was formally established in 1955, the year Austria regained its independence. He appears in Dennis Wheatley's 1950 historical novel ''The Second Seal'', which deals with the run-up to war in 1914 and the first few months of the war. As chief of Austrian Intelligence, he is the main antagonist and foil of the British agent, the Duke de Richleau, who visits Austria-Hungary several times in various guises. They conduct a running battle of wits throughout the story.

Life

References

See also