HANS COPPI.
Hans Coppi, alias STRALMANN, was during 1941-1942 agent, WT operator and technician for Schulze-Boysen's service in Germany.
Probably recruited by Walter Huseman.
Trained by Kurt Schulze.

He received in May 1941 a WT battery transmitter from Alexander Erdberg, of small range, intended for internal communications with other groups of agents within Germany. The set was concealed for Coppi by Helmuth Roloff in his father's house, where it was subsequently discovered by the Gestapo. A second WT apparatus, also supplied by Erdberg, was destroyed by Coppi through faulty wiring.

In november 1941, he was introduced through Husemann to Kurt Schulze, who gave him technical instruction and supplied him in December with a third transmitter, with which Coppi attempted to pass material from the Schulze-Boysen group to Moscow.

In August 1942 he was joined by Hössler and renewed but apparently unsuccessful attempts were made to establish a line to Moscow over his and Hössler's transmitters.
Coppi may also have accepted material from Harnack's group for transmission to Moscow.
He was assisted in his work by his wife Hilde.

Early in October 1942 Hössler was arrested and Coppi's complicity was discovered by the Gestapo. Coppi himself had shortly before been called up for military service and posted to the Eastern Front. He had been instructed by Schulze-Boysen to desert to the Russians, quote a Moscow telephone number and report to "Headquarters" (probably Alexander Erdberg). However Coppi was apprehended and taken back to Berlin for trial. In due course both he and his wife were executed.


Source: KV3/350.



Hilda Coppi, nee Rake.

Was between 1941 and 1942 assistent of her husband, Hans Coppi, in the Schulze-Boysen group in Germany.

Was arrested in the autumn of 1942 arrested, tried and executed.


Source: KV3/350.




Hans-Wedigo Robert Coppi (25 January 1916 - 22 December 1942) was a German resistance fighter against the Nazis. He was a member of a Berlin based anti-fascist resistance group that was later called the Red Orchestra by the Gestapo.

Coppi was born in Wedding, Berlin to a working-class family. His parents were Robert Coppi, a house painter who specialised in lacquer cutting and gilding and Frieda née Schön (1884-1961), a seamstress and dressmaker who worked to supplement the family income. Both his parents were ardent communists who in 1930, became members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). This resulted in Coppi becoming politicised at an early age and that led to him becoming a communist activist and later agitator. From 1929 to 1932, Coppi attended the Schulfarm Scharfenberg [de], a left-wing progressive "school-farm" on the island of Scharfenberg in Lake Tegel in Berlin. During 1931-32 Coppi became a member of the "Red Boy Scouts" (Roten Pfadfinder) and the Communist Youth Association of Germany (KJVD).

In November 1932, Coppi was expelled from the Scharfenberg school after supporting students who had watched Georg Wilhelm Pabst's banned Franco-German solidarity film Kameradschaft and subsequently was transferred to the Berliner Lessing-Gymnasium, a gymnasium in the Wedding area of Mitte, Berlin. In February 1933, the Coppi family moved to the newly created garden-colony known as Am Waldessaum in Borsigwalde. After he moved, he made an attempt to rebuild the KJVD organisation in Tegel, which had been banned by the state. In September 1933, with the formalisation of the Nazi state, the Sturmabteilung began to search for Coppi as he was considered an undesirable. He went into hiding and began to live an illegal existance. During that period he organised a protest campaign with his friends from Scharfenberg and Tegel to protest the Reichstag elections that were held in November 1933. In February 1934 Coppi was arrested by the Gestapo for posting illegal leaflets and sent to Oranienburg concentration camp for two months during pre-trial detention, before being sentenced for one year imprisonment in juvenile detention. After his release on the 4 February 1935, he made contact with his old friends from Scharfenberg that included Hans Lautenschläger [de], Hermann Natterodt and Heinrich Scheel. He continued to co-write leaflets warning of the consequences of Nazi warmongering  and Nazi rearmament.

As he was no longer in full-time education, Coppi neeeded to work to support himself. He first worked in his mums ice-cream parlour then as a delivery boy. In November 1938, Coppi found stable employment as a lathe operator in a small engineering factory while training to be a technician during evening class.

At the start of World War II, Coppi was conscipted, but was classed as "Unworthy of military service" ("Wehrunwürdiger") due to his background. Through a friend from the banned KJVD, he was introduced to the actor and dramturge Wilhelm Schürmann-Horster's and became part of his group of friends who at night would discuss openly current affairs, the development of the Nazi state and what it meant for them and their future.

In 1935, Coppi met Hilde Coppi née Rake, a student and receptionist. In 14 June 1941, Coppi married Hilde Coppi.

The couple continued to aid victims of persecution and illegally relay information to and from Soviet radio. The following year, Coppi was given care of a Soviet agent who had been parachuted into Germany; and, as the tide of the war turned against Nazi Germany, Coppi received papers calling him up as "suitable" for service in the Wehrmacht.

On 6 June 1941, Kurt Schumacher, the groups radio telegraphist was drafted into the German army and Schulze-Boysen found a replacement radio operator in Coppi, who agreed. Schulze-Boysen persuaded Coppi to establish a radio link to the Soviet Union for the resistance organisation. Karl Behrens volunteered to deliver the coded message to Coppi and be a backup operator. Both Harnack and Coppi were trained by a contact of Alexander Korotkov, in how to encode text and transmit it and Soviet espionage had settled on using the novel "Der Kurier aus Spanien" by Hans Rabl as the book cipher and a copy was entrusted to Coppi by Korotkov. Coppi collected the radio from a contact on underground station. The shortwave radio set was built into an disguised as suitcase and had a battery that lasted two hours. On 26 June 1941, Coppi began transmitting and sent the greeting, "1000 Grüsse an alle Freunde" ("A thousand greetings to all friends". Moscow replied "We have received and read your test message. The substitution of letters for numbers and vice versa is to be done using the permanent number 38745 and the codeword Schraube", and directing them to transmit at a predefined frequency and time. Coppi failed to send any other messages during that night due to inexperience and dead batteries. It is unknown how many attempts Coppi makes in the next few months but makes no connection during the critical period of the latter-half of 1941.

In May 1942, the Nazis publicised propaganda as an exhibit known as The Soviet Paradise. Massive photo panels depicting Russian Slavs as subhuman beasts who lived in squalid conditions and pictures of firing squads shooting young children and others who were hung, were shown at the exhibit. The group decided to respond and created a number of stickers to paste onto walls. Hans and the pregnant Hilde set out for first for Lustgarten, then for Moabit where they pasted the stickers, then went to Wedding.

On 12 September 1942, Coppi and his pregnant wife were arrested in Schrimm, now in central Poland. Due to the German idea that the family shares responsibility for a crime, known as Sippenhaft Coppis parents Robert and Freida, his brother Kurt Coppi and his mother-in-law were also arrested.

On 19 December 1942 the 2nd Senate of the Reichskriegsgericht sentenced Coppi to death for "preparation for high treason, enemy favouring and espionage". Hilde gave birth to their son, Hans, on 27 November 1942, while detained at the Barnimstrasse Women's Prison in Berlin. The couple met for the last time at an meeting at the RSHA office. Three days later, Coppi was hanged along with fellow resistance members Arvid Harnack and Harro Schulze-Boysen at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin. Hilde was executed less than a year later, on 5 August 1943, on the same day as Ursula Goetze, Maria Terwiel, Oda Schottmüller, Rose Schlösinger, Eva-Maria Buch, Cato Bontjes van Beek, Liane Berkowitz and many others.


Source: Wikipedia.