Wilhelm Fenner (14 April 1891 – 25 July 1961) was a German cryptanalyst, before and during the time of World War II in the OKW/Chi, the Cipher Department of the High Command of the Wehrmacht, working within the main cryptanalysis group, and entrusted with deciphering enemy message traffic (Cryptography). Wilhelm Fenner was considered an excellent organizer, an anti-Nazi, an anti-Bolshevik and a confirmed Protestant and was known by colleagues as someone who was keen to continue working in cryptology after World War II. To quote military historian David Alvarez:
Wilhelm Fenner was the central figure in the evolution of the German Cipher Bureau between 1922 and 1939, and a major personality in the history of German communications intelligence in the interwar period. Under his direction, the Cipher Bureau evolved into a highly professional communications intelligence service, which scored impressive cryptanalytic successes against the diplomatic and military systems of many countries.
Personal life Wilhelm Fenner was born on 14 April 1891 in Saint Petersburg. He was the sixth of seven children of Heinrich Gottlieb Fenner and Charlotte Georgine Fenner, née Michaelsen. His father was the chief editor of the St. Petersburgische Zeitung, a German language daily newspaper published in Saint Petersburg, then the capital of the Russian Empire. The sixth of seven children, he was home schooled for two years before he attended the evangelical lutheran Anne School in St. Petersburg from 189. He completed his final examination with distinction in May 1909. In the autumn of 1910, he matriculated at the Royal Institute of Technology in Berlin (TH) in Berlin-Charlottenburg and studied construction engineering, chemistry and metallurgy. In the summer of 1914, he passed his final examination. Fenner was married on 11 January 1922 to Elise Sophie Katharine von Blanckensee, a daughter of the former Prussian Major General Peter von Blanckensee. They had two children, a son, Siegwart Heinrich (born 28 January 1923), who served as a lieutenant in World War II, and was killed on 19 February 1945, and a daughter, Ilse Fredericki (born 24 July 1928).
First World War With the outbreak of the First World War, he had to drop out of college, and worked for a short time at Siemens as an engineer, working to develop electrical systems for warships. He was drafted into military service on 1 December 1914, joining the 5th Guards Grenadiers, seeing service in Russia, France and Serbia and eventually joined the staff of the Tenth Army. After the armistice in November 1918, he remained under arms as a member of one of the Free Corps battalions of demobilized soldiers who offered their services to political groups jockeying for political position in Germany in the first months of peace. After the war, now with the rank of lieutenant, he remained in the military until 9 February 1920. When Fenner returned to civilian life, he took a job as a publicist with an émigré assistance organization, but the position provided little interest and within the year, he took a position as an editor in a new press agency, which was founded by Konstantin von Krusenstern, who was a former colonel in the Imperial Russian Army. The fledgling news agency collapsed, with Krusenstern relocating to Paris, but before he left, Fenner's career took a decisive turn when the Russian colonel introduced him to Peter Novopaschenny in the spring of 1921.
Meeting Novopaschenny and Buschenhagen Peter Novopashenny was a former Russian Navy captain of the tsarist Marine and professor of Applied Tactics. Novopaschenny asked Fenner to help him to move to Berlin and confided in Fenner that he had worked during the war as director of the Russian cryptanalytic service working to break the ciphers of the German Baltic Fleet, and that he intended to make his experience available to the German General Staff, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In the same year, Fenner provided him with contacts, eventually becoming an acquaintance of an officer called Erich Buschenhagen, who would later become a general in the Wehrmacht. In 1919, Buschenhagen had set up Volunteer Evaluation Post which had been absorbed into Germany's postwar military establishment as a cipher bureau of the army's Troops Department, which was allowed under the terms of the peace agreement.
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