Fred Hermann Brandt (21 May 1908 – 30 November 1994) was a German entomological collector, botanist and

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

secret agent in

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

who worked in Iran and Afghanistan during the 1930s.

Biography

Brandt was born in

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

and grew up in

Latvia Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east and Belarus to t ...

. His brother, Wilhelm Brandt (1904–1982), was an entomologist who specialised in butterflies particularly of Papua New Guinea, and through his brother Fred also became interested in the field. In the Second World War, he became a counter-espionage agent and rose to the rank of Colonel within the German

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the German Army (1935–1945), ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmac ...

and led a Brandenburg Battalion in 1939-40. An Afghan government mission to Berlin noted the problem of leprosy and the German government offered to help with a “leprosy research commission” which was headed by Dr

Manfred Oberdörffer Manfred J. Oberdörffer (6 December 1910 – 19 July 1941) was a German physician and specialist on leprosy. He also served as an intelligence agent in the Nazi Abwehr and died on a mission into Afghanistan under the cover of leprosy research. B ...

. Oberdörffer was invited by the Afghan government and he chose Brandt as an assistant. Brandt's knowledge of Russian, Iranian, Arabic and Islamic culture were considered key skills. Labelled by the British media as "the crafty butterfly colonel" they set up camp on the Waziristan border and joined the tribes there. On 15 July 1941 the pair took over a British field station in

Waziristan Waziristan (Persian language, Persian, Pashto, Ormuri, , ) is a mountainous region of the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The Waziristan region administratively splits among three districts: North Waziristan, Lower South Waziristan Dis ...

and were attacked by Afghan troops. In the ensuing gun battle, they were both injured and Oberdörffer died of injuries on the way to Kabul while Brandt spent three months in hospital before being repatriated to Germany in November 1941. The main aim of their mission had been to recruit Mirza Ali Khan, a Waziri guerrilla leader known as the ''

Fakir of Ipi Haji Mirzali Khan Wazir (), commonly known as the Faqir of Ipi (), was a tribal chief and adversary to the British Raj from North Waziristan in what is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. After performing his ''Hajj'' pilgrimage in 1923, Mirzali ...

'' to help in attacking British targets. Hearing that many German officers were being shot as traitors by the Nazi leadership, he joined British officers at Lezha and travelled to Bari as a prisoner of war. Brandt was later taken prisoner by the Soviets and was held in custody until 1955. Brandt wrote a memoir of his army service in 1973. Some of the lepidopteran specimens collected by Brandt were studied later and some new species were described. ''Scythris brandti'' is named after him. His collections are deposited along with those of his brother Wilhelm Brandt in the Naturhistoriska riksmuseet at Stockholm.

References

External links

Texts and Documents of Albanian History by Robert Elsie

National Archives UK
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brandt, Fred Hermann 1908 births 1994 deaths German entomologists 20th-century German botanists Scientists from Saint Petersburg 20th-century German zoologists Latvian emigrants to Germany German expatriates in Afghanistan German prisoners of war in World War II held by the Soviet Union