Brandenburger Regiment

The Brandenburger Regiment originally started out as the "Bataillon Brandenburg". It was called the Brandenburg Battalion because initially the unit was stationed in Brandenburg and trained its people there. It had evolved out of the Abwehr's (German military intelligence) K-units and was used as a commando unit during the first years of the war. Initially the unit consisted mainly of former German expatriates. The unit operated in France, Norway, the Soviet Union as well as North Africa. A large number of its operations took its soldiers behind enemy lines. Towards the end of the war, after Admiral Canaris and the Abwehr fell from grace with the rest of the German regime, the unit was used as a kind of fire brigade and rarely served in a commando function. By the time the German surrender rolled around it had evolved (or rather "devolved") into more of a regular motorized unit rather than a commando unit.