GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
GENERAL REINHARD GEHLEN:
THE BANALITY OF COLLABORATION
HIST 606: COLLABORATION IN WWII
DR. AVIEL ROSHWALD
BY
SEAN P. MCBRIDE
WASHINGTON, DC
6 MAY 2010
AD MAIOREM DEI GLORIAM
McBride, 1
Introduction
On April 1, 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Reinhard Gehlen assumed command of the German
General Staff intelligence division, Fremde Heere Ost [FHO].1 On February 27, 1945, Brigadier
General Reinhard Gehlen personally met with Adolf Hitler in the Reich Chancellery to discuss
the strategic situation on the Eastern Front.2 On July 1, 1946, Reinhard Gehlen departed
Washington, D.C. with Pentagon authorization and support to reactivate his spy network against
the Soviet Union.3 On September 20, 1950, Gehlen met with Konrad Adenauer at the Koenig
Museum in Bonn to discuss the reformation of his spy service under full West German
sovereignty.4 On April 1, 1956, the Gehlen Organization became the West German
Bundesnachrichtensdienst [BND],5 and Gehlen was commissioned a Lieutenant General in the
newly formed Bundeswehr.6 As this string of events suggests, Gehlen continually worked to
develop and operate an intelligence network against the Soviet Union from 1942 until his 1968
retirement, serving in turn Adolf Hitler, the United States Army, the Central Intelligence
Agency, and Adenauer’s Christian Democrats.
The first comprehensive attempt to explain Reinhard Gehlen’s provocative career was
made by Julius Mader, an East German intellectual who earned a doctorate in the “development,
system, and methods” of the “imperialist” West German intelligence service.7 Mader argued that
Gehlen was the Cold War equivalent of Mephistopheles from Goethe’s Faust, a “Fascist General
1 Heinz Höhne and Hermann Zolling, The General was a Spy: The Truth About General Gehlen and His
Spy Ring (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc., 1972), 10. 2 Reinhard Gehlen, The Service: The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen (New York: World Publishing,
1972), 2. 3 Jens Wegener, Die Organisation Gehlen und die USA: Deutsch-amerikanische Geheimdienstbeziehungen
1945-1949 (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2008), 66. 4 Mary Ellen Reese, General Reinhard Gehlen: The CIA Connection (Fairfax: George Mason University
Press, 1990), 120. 5 Reese, 141.
6 Gehlen, 380.
7 Helmut Müller-Enbergs, Wer war wer in der DDR?, 4th ed. (Berlin: Links Verlag, 2006), s.v. “Julius
Mader.”
McBride, 2
Staff Officer”8 that successfully carried out his “diabolical plan”
9 to plant “the seed of Satan”
10
in the anti-Fascist alliance of the Great Patriotic War by offering the United States knowledge of
the Soviet Union in exchange for permission to become “America's number one Spy in Europe…
without the knowledge of either the US Congress or the American People.”11
The American
Faust character thus gained intelligence on the Soviet Union, but at the cost of starting an
ideological Cold War in support of “the dream of Himmler and Schellenburg,” namely the
resurrection of Hitler's General Staff to serve as a foundation for the eventual rearmament of
Germany.12
Despite his impressive synthesis of literary flourish and sound Marxist-Leninism, this
paper disagrees with the theoretical conclusions reached by Julius Mader. Reinhard Gehlen was
never impressive enough to cause such a dramatic shift in the international political arena (often
characterized as “slight, soft-spoken[,] small and slim”),13
and his intelligence analysis (exposed
as a complete failure by intercepts from the ULTRA program)14
could never match
Mephistopheles’ offer of unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Nevertheless, Mader
correctly identifies the central puzzle of the U.S.-Gehlen relationship: how can a fellow-traveler
of the Nazi party’s war of aggression against the Soviet Union end up in the employ of the U.S.
Army mere months after Hitler’s suicide? How was he able to shield war criminals from
denazification efforts, aid German rearmament, and monopolize control over the clandestine arm
of the West German regime? What did this association mean in light of the subsequent Cold
8 Julius Mader, Die Graue Hand: Eine Abrechnung mit dem Bonner Geheimdienst (East Berlin: Kongress
Verlag, 1960), 52. 9 Mader, 43.
10 Mader, 101.
11 Julius Mader and Albrecht Charisius, Nicht Länger Geheim: Entwicklung, System und Arbeitsweise des
imperialistischen deutschen Geheimdienstes (East Berlin: Deutscher Militärverlag, 1969), 136. 12
Mader and Charisius, 136. 13
Reese, 4. 14
Wegener, 9.
McBride, 3
War? Furthermore, against which yardstick should we then judge Reinhard Gehlen? When was
Gehlen actually collaborating? Ultimately, this paper seeks to address these questions through
the framework of collaboration.
Historiography and Declassification
The study of Reinhard Gehlen is admittedly problematic due to the complexities of
historically studying espionage and clandestine intelligence organizations. Because spies
professionally work with secrets and operate covertly, scholarly efforts to unearth and analyze
those secrets in order to form coherent narratives are closely related to the paradox of clandestine
government agencies in open democratic societies. It is thus especially telling that the polemical
East German Julius Mader has been the only scholar to defend a doctoral dissertation on the
Gehlen Organization and the BND. At the mercy of the delicate balancing act between freedom
of information and national security, the primary sources available on Reinhard Gehlen have
been entirely dependent on the halts and spurts of government declassification.
Early works on Gehlen relied largely on the 36,852 typescript pages of FHO reports that
Gehlen handed over to the U.S. Army in exchange for clemency following World War II.15
While somewhat enlightening regarding Gehlen’s personal views of the Soviet Union and his
competency as an intelligence analyst, early efforts to use these documents to argue about
Gehlen’s post-1945 activities were highly speculative, written by either polemical East German
authors such as Julius Mader or Western journalists that used unsubstantiated off-the-record
sources to mythologize Gehlen as the “Spy of the Century.” This began to change when the U.S.
Army decided to declassify “well over a thousand” new intelligence documents on the 1950s
15
E.H. Cookridge, Gehlen: Spy of the Century (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1972), 384.
McBride, 4
Gehlen Organization in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act.16
This decision,
accompanied by the subsequent agreement of several former U.S. intelligence officers to come
forward and tell their stories,17
provided the documentary basis for a series of less speculative
investigative works on the Gehlen Organization.
Based off these new sources, several works, exemplified by Christopher Simpson’s
Blowback, leveled the charge that the United States recruited former Nazis and SS officers to act
as clandestine agents for the CIA and its puppet Gehlen Organization.18
While Marxist authors
had long equated the CIA and the Gehlen Organization with the Waffen SS, the appearance of
these charges in the Western media increased political pressure for the declassification of
government documents relating to Western employment of Nazis and war criminals within the
CIA, the CIA-backed Gehlen Organization, and the West German BND.19
The initial outcome of
this pressure was the passage of the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, which resulted in the
formation of the Nazi War Criminal and Imperial Japanese Records Interagency Working Group,
tasked with finding and declassifying all U.S. government records relating to Nazi and Japanese
war crimes. With over 8 million pages of U.S. government records now declassified, including
thousands of new CIA documents on Gehlen, works such as U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis have
documented the controversial and troubling link between U.S. agencies and Nazi war criminals
in the early Cold War.20
Despite greater U.S. openness regarding this controversial element of
Cold War politics, the West German government has until very recently remained silent
16
Reese, xiii. 17
The most important of these new accounts are the memoirs of the CIA handler of the Gehlen
Organization throughout the period of CIA oversight. James H. Critchfield, Partners at the Creation: The
Men behind Postwar Germany’s Defense and Intelligence Establishments (Annapolis: Naval Institute
Press, 2003). 18
Christopher Simpson, Blowback (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988), 5. 19
Wegener, 5. 20
Breitman et al, U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
McBride, 5
regarding the BND’s employment of Nazis and war criminals. This has changed due to a March
18, 2010 article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung entitled “Eine ‘zweite Entnazifizierung,’”
which scandalously alleged that the covert collaboration between anti-Semitic war criminals and
anti-communist Western democracies continued under West German control into the 1960s,
deeply problematizing the postwar myth of Stunde Null.21
Under the pressure of this
controversy, the German government has finally begun in earnest to declassify compromising
BND documents. While it will be some time before these documents make their way into the
historiographical debate on German nationalism, intelligence history, and the Cold War, this
most-recent round of declassification finally allows scholars a complete view of this
controversial chapter of Cold War collaboration.
Pétain, Gehlen, and the Morality of Collaboration
Because the concept of collaboration originates out of the postwar French debate on the
Vichy regime, use of this theoretical lens has predominantly been limited to European
collaboration with German occupiers during World War II. Applying this analytical concept to
German collaboration with American occupiers during the Cold War therefore represents a
paradigm shift, necessitating that this paper reexamine and reevaluate the basic assumptions of
collaboration. Recent works by Timothy Brook on Chinese collaboration with the Japanese in
Manchukuo and mainland China22
and by Roger Peterson on collaboration and resistance within
the Soviet Bloc23
stand as previous attempts to shift the thematic debate outside of its narrow
21
Peter Carstens, “Eine ‘zweite Entnazifizierung’: NS-Verbrecher in BND,” Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, March 18, 2010, Inland Politik. Available at
[http://www.faz.net/s/Rub594835B672714A1DB1A121534F010EE1/Doc~EA65AAB2D1C2048249EAD3
E3BC2FA6BAA~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html]. 22
Timothy Brook, Collaboration: Japanese Agents and Local Elites in Wartime China (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2005). 23
Roger Petersen, Resistance and Rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2001).
McBride, 6
temporal and geographical boundaries, but in many ways these newer examinations retain the
pejorative nationalist framework of collaboration as inherently immoral. Morality is equated
with the nation, making collaboration with the “other” an immoral exercise. In light of the
development of collaboration as an analytical concept during the postwar purge trials of Pétain
and other Vichy officials, it is understandable that this concept has become emotionally laden
with the charge of treason. However, by analyzing the German Reinhard Gehlen as a
collaborator rather than an occupier, this paper reverses the typical dynamic of WWII
collaboration.
This paper disputes the idea that the lessons of Vichy are universally applicable to all
forms of collaboration. Pétain collaborated with the Germans against the interests of the French
people (as defined ex post facto by de Gaulle and others with “proof of national sentiments”)24
,
ergo his actions were immoral and must be punished. This paper argues that this simplistic
analysis is both inaccurate and inappropriate, leading scholars such as Ben Cion Pinchuk to
conclude that “the use of [this] term… in research is problematic at best and misleading at
worst.”25
Viewing collaboration as a complex concept that transcends the specific characteristics
of Vichy or de Gaulle’s sense of nationalism, this paper takes Timothy Brook’s approach and
adopts Henrik Dethlefson’s minimalist definition of collaboration as “the continuing exercise of
power under the pressure produced by the presence of an occupying power.”26
In the spirit of treating collaboration as a “problem to be investigated” rather than a
“moral failure to be tagged and condemned,”27
this paper seeks to challenge the logic of using
24
Alice Kaplan, The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 2000), 123. 25
Antony Polonsky and Joanna Michlic, eds., The Neighbors Respond: the controversy over the Jedwabne
Massacre in Poland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 216. 26
Brook, 2. 27
Brook, 7.
McBride, 7
the nation-state as the basis for judging morality. Both Reinhard and Marshall Pétain were
military officers of a vaguely conservative bend from Roman Catholic backgrounds, who
decided to serve the interest of their former enemies and occupiers in the name of a common
conservative and anti-Communist ideology. Although both men were clearly collaborators,28
they suffered substantially different fates after the end of their collaborative relationships. Pétain
spent the rest of his life in captivity after having his death sentence commuted to life in prison,
while Gehlen went on to become the head of the German intelligence service. By shifting the
nation-state in question from France to Germany, this paper problematizes the idea that the
nation-state is fundamentally good or moral or that collaboration with an occupying power is
inherently immoral.
This paper also seeks to problematize the tendency to view collaboration with a foreign
occupier as unrelated to preexisting domestic political conflicts. This relates to the reevaluation
of the Vichy regime as “the very archetype of the guerre france-françoise,” effectively
redefining the conflicts of the Vichy years as the volcanic explosion of geothermal forces that
had long been active under the surface of the French nation.29
This paper views the capitulation
of Germany in 1945 (and to a lesser degree the German defeat at Stalingrad) as analogous to the
capitulation of France in 1940, in that both triggered profound identity crises based around
preexisting political fault lines. In the case of Pétain, the defeat of fascism discredited the
28
Both men quickly offered to collaborate with their erstwhile enemies soon after the defeat of their nations
in the battlefield. Following the July 10, 1940 vote providing him full powers, Philippe Pétain immediately
worked to redefine Franco-German relations along the lines of peaceful collaboration. Julian Jackson,
France: The Dark Years 1940-1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 139. Similarly, Reinhard
Gehlen planned to offer his expertise on the Soviet Union and the resources of FHO to the United States as
early as the end of 1944. Wegener, 57. Gehlen later wrote in his memoirs that he told his American captors
that “the collapse of the East-West alliance could only be a matter of time; a conflict of interest was bound
to break out between East and West and this would jeopardize the safety of Europe and of the United
States. So how could we reach an agreement as rapidly as possible on suitable terms for collaboration?”
Gehlen, 9. 29
Henry Rousso, The Vichy Synbrome: History and Memory in France since 1944 (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1991), 6.
McBride, 8
National Revolution, ensuring that de Gaulle’s conception of the French nation became the
yardstick against which Vichy would be charged for treason.30
However, in the case of Gehlen,
the Allied invasion discredited National Socialism and divided the Reich, yet Gehlen himself
continued his intelligence career until 1968, albeit for different masters. Ultimately, these deep
continuities of Gehlen’s career merit a reevaluation of collaboration in the light of a potential
guerre france- françoise over the identity of the German nation.
By examining these problematic aspects of collaboration, this paper seeks to demonstrate
the historiographical futility of charging collaborators with treason. In the post-Nürmberg world
of international law, cosmopolitan thought, and human rights, the argument that one was “just
following orders” cannot excuse one from crimes against higher moral principles. When
German nationalism was used to pursue a policy of genocide and eugenics against
Untermenschen, treason became the moral course of action. The Holocaust has thus seriously
problematized the honor and morality previously attributed to the ancient Teutonic value of
Treue (fidelity). In this light, the nation appears as a deeply morally ambiguous construct,
especially in regards to its treatment of “others.”
Comparative Collaborations
Analyzing Gehlen’s career from 1942 until 1968 provides the ideal means to investigate
the analytical interrelationships and continuities between collaboration and preexisting domestic
political conflicts over the identity of the nation. Because Reinhard Gehlen did not consider
himself a National Socialist, an Atlanticist, or a democrat, each of the superiors that he served
from 1942 until 1968 can be considered an “other” of one kind or another. Reinhard Gehlen’s
career as a spymaster thus always remained a mixture of collaboration and resistance with
30
Jackson, 139.
McBride, 9
domestic and foreign “others” according to the “benefits and losses that [he] thought [he] could
decipher at the time.”31
His collaborations with the Nazis, the Americans, and the Christian
Democrats must therefore be viewed as an unapologetic attempt to steer his superiors towards his
unique and pragmatic sense of German nationalism based around a conservative vision of
German militarism, the values of the Prussian General Staff, and counterrevolutionary anti-
Communism.
Drawing from the concept of the guerre france-francoise, this paper argues against the
presumption of a universal conception of nationalism during periods of national trauma. Rather
than embracing a “post-national” agenda of discrediting the nation-state or denying the social
construction of national identity, the purpose of this argument is to reevaluate the theoretical
framework of collaboration in light of competing visions of the nation. Benedict Anderson is
correct in asserting that every nation is “imagined because the members of even the smallest
nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them,”32
but
this vision of individual imaginings of the nation must be countered with Aviel Roshwald’s
observation that most individuals cannot “construct their multifaceted identities out of whatever
cultural materials they happen to find in their attics.”33
The definition of the nation thus remains
a community effort, albeit one where different sub-national communities may imagine opposing
conceptions of the nation.
During a period of national trauma such as the guerre france-francoise, the tensions
between communities with opposing “imagined nations” can create a situation that approximates
the relationship between a domestic nationalist and a foreign occupier. Though the other
community is composed of fellow nationals, they become an “other” that poses a direct threat to
31
Brook, 245. 32
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983), 6. 33
Aviel Roshwald, The Endurance of Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 301.
McBride, 10
the health and prosperity of the nation. The resulting us-them dichotomy thus retains numerous
commonalities with the traditional understanding of Collaboration. Adding to these
commonalties, the conflict between sub-national communities under an occupation, when
stripped of the labels of collaborators and resistors, often resemble political fault lines that
existed prior to the national trauma of capitulation. Just as the traditional archetype for the
modern pejorative definition of collaboration emerged from Vichy, the French National
Revolution emerged from the prewar guerre france-françoise. These links demonstrate that
scholars must pay more attention to the political contestation over defining the nation when
studying collaboration. As Reinhard Gehlen and others students of Clausewitz know, “war is a
continuation of political negotiation by other means,” suggesting that it is impossible to separate
either capitulation or occupation from the ongoing political negotiation over national identity.34
Judging from Reinhard Gehlen’s 1972 memoirs,35
Gehlen’s sense of nationalism was
closely related to his self-association with the German General Staff,36
considered by many to be
a “small, tight and proud aristocracy, alone in the German army entitled to wear the coveted “red
trousers,”37
but romantically described by Gehlen as “unsoldierly… atypical…seek[ing] and
cultivat[ing] the unorthodox, the unconventional, the unusual officer, in the hopes of thus
acquiring original thinkers and bold, untrammeled spirits.” 38
By emphasizing the General Staff,
34
Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007), 258. 35
These memoirs must be met with skepticism, as they conflict with recently declassified documents.
Furthermore, it is quite possible that Gehlen’s postwar career led him to reinterpret his experiences in
World War II through the lens of the Cold War. Nevertheless, his general comments about his strong sense
of German nationalism are believable precisely because they are so unapologetic and countercultural.
Considering the domestic West German angst regarding nationalism in 1972, the unapologetic approach in
Gehlen’s memoirs suggest that he felt little need to placate to his audience. What other West Germans
would have felt so comfortable in 1972 asserting that "Hitler's decision to invade the Soviet Union was
correct”? Gehlen, 26. 36
He even had a portrait of the elder Field Marshal von Moltke in his living room. Gehlen, xi. 37
David Kahn, Hitler’s Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II (New York: Da Capo Press,
1978), 405. 38
Gehlen, XI.
McBride, 11
Gehlen’s conception of Germany thus synthesized the tradition of Prussian militarism and
discipline with the Wolfgang Menzel’s romanticized ideal of Germany as the Volk der Dichter
und Denker. Adding to this strange synthesis, Gehlen quoted at length from comments made by
the historian Carl J. Burckhardt in 1925 that the German “inclination toward extreme solutions”
was responsible for both the Reformation and the philosophical [Marxist] revolution of the 19th
Century.39
This idea seems to relate the Western conflict against Bolshevism to the 17th
religious
conflict of the Thirty Years’ War, suggesting a pseudo-religious crusade against Marxist-
Leninism in which Germany plays the central role. Furthermore, Gehlen’s rhetoric conveys that
he views Communism and Christianity as diametrically opposed religions, contrasting “Marx
and Lenin” to Jesus and “Marxism” to “the teachings of our Lord.”40
The message is apparent:
as a German counterrevolutionary that combines Prussian discipline with the “untrammeled
spirit” of the General Staff, Gehlen perceives himself as central to “the great conflict existing
between the free world in the communist world.”41
Gehlen and the Nazis
It is admittedly problematic to treat Gehlen’s service in the General Staff as a form of
Collaboration, as both Adolf Hitler and Reinhard Gehlen considered themselves German.
However, the General Staff’s vision of Germany differed from that of the Nazi Party,
emphasizing professionalism, pragmatism, and conservatism over ideology and racial dogma.
The tensions over these differences became much more pronounced once the General Staff began
to perceive the Nazis as responsible for the military failures against the Soviet Union in
39
Gehlen, XXC. 40
Gehlen, 293. 41
Gehlen, 283.
McBride, 12
Operation Barbarossa and Operation Blau.42
Gehlen’s assertion in 1972 that "I still believe that
we could have achieved the 1941 campaign objectives had it not been for the pernicious
interventions of above all Hitler”43
thus expresses a view that was likely shared by most of the
General Staff in the last years of the war. In light of plot to assassinate Hitler as a means to free
the war effort from Nazi interference, the defeat at Stalingrad should be perceived as a paradigm
shift in the relationship between certain conservative elements of the German state and the Nazi
Party. Similar to the conquest in France in 1940, Stalingrad served as a national trauma that
created a situation akin to the guerre france-francoise. Due to these factors, this paper considers
it appropriate to analyze Reinhard Gehlen’s service to the Third Reich through the lens of
collaboration.
General Halder assigned Reinhard Gehlen as head of the FHO on the recommendation of
Colonel Heusinger, the chief strategist of Operation Barbarossa and the future first Inspector
General of the Bundeswehr.44
Due to Gehlen’s reputation as an organized, capable, and
apolitical General Staff officer,45
Heusinger considered him an excellent candidate to identify
and correct the FHO’s institutional deficiencies. Gehlen’s approach to improving the
organization reflected his apolitical nature, firing numerous poor performers and replacing them
with “soldiers or civilians, anti-Nazi or Nazis… provided that they seemed likely to raise the
intellectual level of the organization.”46
Along similar lines, Gehlen reached out to strengthen
ties with the Sicherheitsdienst [SD] (the Waffen SS intelligence service) and the Abwehr (the
42
Critchfield, 84. 43
Gehlen, 73. 44
Wegener, 19. Alaric Searle, Wehrmacht generals, West German society, and the debate on rearmament,
1949-1959 (Westport: Praeger, 2003), 284. 45
Reese, 14. 46
Höhne and Zolling, 15
McBride, 13
relatively anti-Nazi intelligence organization based around Admiral Canaris).47
Gehlen’s
effectiveness as an intelligence officer thus directly related to his political detachment from
National Socialism and his ability to promote cooperation between pro-Nazi and anti-Nazi
intelligence agents in the name of a common anti-Communist front.48
The failure of Adolf Hitler to heed the FHO’s detailed warnings about the imminent
threat of encirclement at Stalingrad led Reinhard Gehlen to assume a more critical perspective of
the Nazi leadership.49
Despite suggestions in his memoirs and by his hagiographers to the
contrary,50
Gehlen never took part in the organized anti-Nazi resistance or the plot against
Hitler.51
However, following Stalingrad, he did become more influenced by and accommodating
towards the anti-Nazi faction of his staff. Influenced by Lieutenant Colonel Alexis Freiherr von
Roenne, a Baltic Baron favorably disposed towards Russian nationalism and highly critical of
Nazi racial ideology, Gehlen circulated a memorandum criticizing the Nazi racial dogma as
responsible for destroying the goodwill the Russians felt towards the German Army.52
Determined to shift Nazi policy to adopt his “moderate and realistic political solution,” in which
Germany would liberate Russia from communism "with the help of the Russian peoples
themselves,"53
Gehlen cooperated with von Roenne to secretly build up a Russian Liberation
47
Höhne and Zolling, 17. 48
Höhne and Zolling, 25. While Gehlen had a largely positive reputation among his peers as apolitical and
professional, British and American agents working with ULTRA intercepts considered the intelligence
output of the FHO highly inaccurate, biased towards underestimating Russian capabilities, and filled with
Russian misinformation. Because Gehlen was one of the most professional and least dogmatic intelligence
experts on the Eastern Front, this must be read as a particularly damning criticism of the larger WWII
German intelligence community. Goda, “Manhunts: The Official Search for Notorious Nazis,” in U.S.
Intelligence and the Nazis, ed. Richard Breitman et al (Madden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2004), 378. 49
Höhne and Zolling, 25. “Statement of Gerhard Wessel on Development of the German Organization
[undated],” Nation Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 50
Cookridge, 68. 51
Critchfield, 27. 52
Höhne and Zolling, 25. 53
Gehlen, 73.
McBride, 14
Army of anti-Bolsheviks around the figure of General Andrei Vlassov.54
Despite Gehlen’s
hopes, the Nazi party remained steadfast in their racialized conception of the Eastern Front as a
war for Lebensraum, leading them to refuse to prop up a potential Russian “de Gaulle” that could
block the dreams of a Greater Germany stretching to the Urals.55
The failed July 20 plot against Hitler led the Gestapo to carry out a thorough purge of
intelligence agents suspected of anti-Nazi tendencies. Many of Gehlen’s closest advisors,
including von Roenne, von Rittberg, and other vocal anti-Nazis in the FHO, were arrested and
shot for anti-regime sentiment and connections to the assassination attempt.56
Admiral Canaris
was arrested, held and shot, and Abwehr was placed under the control of the Nazi SD.57
As a
result of this dramatic ideological reorientation in the German intelligence community, the
Waffen SS successfully gained control of nearly all aspects of military intelligence and
espionage,58
leaving Gehlen in charge of the last intelligence organization on the Eastern Front
unaffiliated with the Nazi Party. Despite this technical nicety, likely due to Gehlen’s excellent
reputation in the German intelligence community and personal rapport with General Heinz
Guderian,59
the FHO lost much of its freedom of action due to its growing dependence on the
Waffen SS due to the SD’s monopoly on intelligence collection assets.60
Although Gehlen
fatalistically became convinced of the eventual defeat of the Third Reich, he continued to
provide intelligence on the Soviet military until Hitler dismissed him and General Guderian for
“defeatism” on April 9, 1945.61
54
This also served as Gehlen’s future touchstone against accusations of racism. Wegener, 29. 55
Höhne and Zolling, 15. 56
Höhne and Zolling, 41. 57
Reese, 14. 58
Kahn, 268. 59
Höhne and Zolling, 41. 60
Critchfield, 25. 61
Reese, 15. Kahn, 539.
McBride, 15
Reinhard Gehlen was never truly a National Socialist supporter or resistor, leading his
actions throughout the Second World War to approximate a relationship of collaboration. As a
Reichswehr officer and German nationalist, he surely cheered the electoral success of the Nazis
in 1933 as a repudiation of Versailles, but no evidence suggests that Gehlen supported the
ideology of National Socialism.62
This is reflected in the means he used to reform the FHO. By
establishing himself as a moderate distinct from the Nazi sympathizers and critics, Gehlen was
able to bridge between the two factions in the interest of a common front against the Soviet
Union. Gehlen’s ideological leanings thus appear as the least-common-denominator between the
two factions: virulent anti-Bolshevism. While it is unclear whether this ideological stance was a
deeply-held personal belief, as suggested by his memoirs and his Marxist critics, or merely a
tactical stance taken to unify politically heterogeneous intelligence officers around a common
enemy, it is logical that Gehlen’s post-Stalingrad contact with the anti-Nazi Baltic Germans in his
organization, such as the Baron von Roenne, and the Russian anti-Communists around General
Andrei Vlassov made him gradually redefine the Eastern Front as a Western crusade to destroy
Bolshevism. While elements of Gehlen’s activities after Stalingrad defied the wishes of Adolf
Hitler, most clearly regarding his unsanctioned decision to help the Russian Liberation Army,
none of these activities can be considered resistance precisely because Gehlen’s relatively-benign
(and perhaps naïve) intent was to convince the Nazis to adjust their ideological stances. Thus,
while Reinhard Gehlen specifically distanced himself from the Nazis and the assassination
attempt on Hitler,63
he collaborated with the Nazi leadership against the Soviet Union until the
62
Wegener, 28. 63
Gehlen feared that the assassination of Hitler could lead to political chaos and the collapse of the German
Army, similar to the Russian Army during the First World War. Gehlen was not involved in the plot, but
Gerhard Wessel (Gehlen’s deputy) suggests he was aware of it “but had considered the matter too
dangerous to discuss.” “Statement of Gerhard Wessel on Development of the German Organization
[undated].” Nation Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.
McBride, 16
final capitulation of the Reich.64
Gehlen and the Americans
After the defeat of the Third Reich seemed assured, Reinhard Gehlen began to
contemplate collaboration with the Americans. Recent sources indicate that he first aired this
possibility to one of his Baltic German employees, Baron von Rittberg, late in 1943 after
Operation Kutuzov demonstrated that the Soviet Union had definitively seized the strategic
initiative on the Eastern Front.65
Nevertheless, Gehlen likely thought little of the prospect until
von Rittberg and his other close advisors were assassinated for their involvement in planning the
plot to assassinate Hitler. Due to the risks involved in planning this operation, it is unsurprising
that no written records can verify when exactly Gehlen began his preparations for turning the
FHO over to the Americans, but by April 4, 1945 (five days before his dismissal by Hitler),
Gehlen met with his most important spy handler, Hermann Baun, to brief him on their plan to
change allegiance to the Americans.66
Drawing off an intelligence intercept of the occupation
zones planned at Yalta, they planned to move their personnel and documents into hiding in
southwest Germany to ensure collective surrender to the Americans. The first portion of their
plan went well, as the personnel successfully rendezvoused and waited out the chaotic first days
of the occupation. However, following his surrender to an American lieutenant on May 22,
Gehlen found it difficult to convince his American captors of his value. After a period of
64
Gehlen even proposed Operation Werewolf, which sought to apply the lessons of the Polish resistnace
movement to the construction of a similar German movement. In his debriefing with Critchfield, Gehlen
claimed this was just a pretext to maintain contact with the FHO personnel after he was relieved from
command. See “Statement of General Gehlen on Walter Schellenberg Story,” National Security Archive,
George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 65
This also fits with the Wessel’s statement that he and Gehlen agreed in May 1943 that “there was no
hope” of German victory in World War II. See “Statement of Gerhard Wessel on Development of the
German Organization [undated],” National Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington,
D.C. 66
Wegener, 21.
McBride, 17
detention, during which Gehlen dubiously claimed in his memoirs to have obtained legal
permission from Admiral Dönitz as head-of-state to collaborate with Americans,67
Gehlen
eventually encountered Captain John Boker, a U.S. military intelligence officer interested in
collecting Germans with knowledge of the Soviet military.68
With his assistance, Gehlen was
able to meet General Sibert sometime in July, the G-2 (intelligence chief) for the European
theater, which allegedly resulted in a “Gentleman’s Agreement” over future collaboration
between the U.S. Army and Gehlen’s intelligence organization.69
Reinhard Gehlen defined the terms of the unwritten “Gentleman’s Agreement” in his
memoirs as follows:
1.) FHO would continue its information gathering operations as during the war.
2.) The German organization would run “jointly with the Americans.”
3.) The organization would be German-led but receive directives from the Americans.
4.) Americans would finance the organization in exchange for all intelligence reports.
5.) The organization will remain in American hands until a sovereign German government decided its future.
6.) The organization will respect the interests of Germany first if German and American interests diverge.70
In summary, Gehlen characterized this agreement as an extremely benign form of collaboration
based around anti-Communism that would jointly serve the American and German interests in
preventing the expansion of the Soviet sphere of influence. This account is doubtful, as it seems
highly unlikely that any U.S. occupation authority would provide Gehlen binding assurances that
67
This argument seems far too convenient to be true, as this anecdote serves as a legal cover and
exoneration from nationalist criticism. Considering that Gehlen sought to become the head spymaster of
West Germany, he probably invented this story to bolster his nationalist credentials. Interestingly, more
recent accounts have confirmed that such a meeting was possible, as Gehlen and Döntiz were quartered in
the Twelfth Army Group’s interrogation center at the same time. Reese, 45. Gehlen’s claim to have
secured the blessings of General August Winter, deputy chief of the Army High Command, for his plans, as
“he was the OKW authority I was able to reach” (Gehlen, 120) is however confirmed by General Winter’s
postwar statement. See “Statement of General WINTER on the HISTORY of the Organization,” National
Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 68
This encounter was purely chance. Boker was investigating the Vlassov Movement, and he was advised
to talk to Gehlen. Gehlen had no part in arranging this meeting, and he was even half-dressed and asleep
when Boker arrived to ask him initial questions. See “Report of Initial Contacts with General Gehlen’s
Organization by John R. Boker, Jr. 1 May 1952,” National Security Archive, George Washington
University, Washington, D.C. 69
Gehlen, 123. 70
Gehlen, 122.
McBride, 18
it would respect the interest of Germany over those of the United States anytime before the
creation of the West German state, let alone as early as 1945. Recently discovered documents
seem to confirm these suspicions, instead suggesting that this “Gentleman’s Agreement” with
General Sibert envisioned collaboration completely occurring on American terms, including the
granting of U.S. citizenship to all of Gehlen’s personnel and their families and the wholesale
Americanization of the FHO as an intelligence division in the Pentagon.71
Considering the anti-
German sentiment throughout parts of American intelligence at this time, even this offer appears
relatively magnanimous. Due to his poor bargaining position this early on, Gehlen likely
conditionally accepted this unwritten offer, which, due to General Sibert subsequent
reassignment from Europe, allowed Gehlen to take advantage of the change in leadership and
creatively reinterpret the details of this unwritten agreement.72
Despite this apparent slight of hand, Reinhard Gehlen’s collaboration with the U.S. Army
and the Central Intelligence Agency appears to have been quite mutually beneficial once the
Americans came around to Gehlen’s anti-Bolshevik way of thinking.73
Over tine, the so-called
Gehlen Organization demonstrated its usefulness by providing the U.S. Army with most of its
actionable intelligence on Soviet threats and intentions. This became especially pronounced
during the Berlin Airlift, when Gehlen personnel provided real-time intelligence of Soviet air
movement unavailable form any other source.74
By improving the output of intelligence reports,
71
“Report of Interview with General Edwin L. Sibert on the Gehlen Organization, 26 May 1970,” National
Security Archive, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. 72
By 1949, the CIA acknowledged Gehlen’s general demands by noting that “it is clearly recognized that
members of the German staff of this project are acting first and foremost as German nationals working in
the interest of the German people in combating communism by contributing their efforts and accumulated
experience in the field of intelligence against Communist Russia.” From [Critchfield] to Chief, FBM,
“Basic Agreement with [Gehlen Organization],” 13 June 1949,” National Security Archive, George
Washington University, Washington, D.C. 73
Searle, 106. 74
Critchfield, 86.
McBride, 19
Gehlen gradually built up his ties with key American intelligence leaders, such as Allen Dulles.75
These ties were crucial for placating Gehlen’s critics, many of whom formed an extremely
negative view of German intelligence while working with ULTRA, leading them to conclude that
the potential gains of collaboration were not worth the potential risks of becoming associated
with former Wehrmacht officers and war criminals.76
Gehlen thus gradually gained influence
over his American keepers,77
eventually allowing him the power to unilaterally dictate the terms
of his relationship with Washington. This is evident by Gehlen’s successful use of the threat of
dissolving the Gehlen Organization to force the Army and the CIA to make key concessions,78
including less oversight, higher funding, and an American acknowledgement that the Gehlen
Organization would be allowed to become part of a future sovereign West German state.
In addition to this extensive collaboration with the Americans, Reinhard Gehlen
simultaneously used the Gehlen Organization to carry out actions unsanctioned by his American
superiors.79
These actions revolved around the goals of preserving the general staff for the
remilitarization of Germany80
and establishing of the Gehlen Organization as the sole
intelligence and counter-intelligence organization of West Germany. In planning for the
remilitarization of Germany, Gehlen hired numerous former Army leaders as intelligence
75
Gehlen, 196. Reese, 178. 76
Goda, 385. 77
It appears that the U.S. Army did not oversee Gehlen very closely. A CIA report cites the U.S. Army
overseer of Gehlen “went around the bend” and fell “under the temptations of the fleshpots.” The article
goes on to detail high cases of VD among U.S. Army personnel attached to the Gehlen Organization,
leading it to conclude that “the Army did not control or even attempt closely to steer the Gehlen
Organization.” From “Debriefing of Eric Waldman on the U.S. Army’s Trusteeship of the Gehlen
Organization during the years 1945-1949,” National Security Archive, George Washington University,
Washington, D.C. 78
Critchfield, 122. 79
These actions did not occur without the knowledge of the Americans. James Critchfield, the head CIA
overseer of the Gehlen Organization, was fully aware of the role the Gehlen Organization was playing in
the remilitarization of Germany, although he did not know about Gehlen’s employment of war criminals.
This logically fits with the fact that most of these questionable personnel worked outside of the Gehlen
Organization headquarters at Pullach. Higher levels of the CIA did know about these personnel due to
efforts by a counterintelligence unit to infiltrate the Gehlen Organization. Critchfield, 167. 80
Searle, 105.
McBride, 20
personnel in order to protect them from American occupation authorities and provide them
resources to conduct their military planning.81
The most important of these hires was Adolf
Heusinger, Gehlen’s former boss and the key figure in the formation of the Bundeswehr. In
planning for the Gehlen Organization’s monopolization of all intelligence and
counterintelligence assets in the West German state, Gehlen attempted to prevent the intelligence
fiascos of World War II by eliminating competing intelligence agencies, much as the Nazi SD
accomplished in the Third Reich when it absorbed the Abwehr. For example, Gehlen actively
resisted the West German government’s efforts to form a counterintelligence organization called
the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution by conducting a heavy-handed smear
campaign against the appointed head of the organization, Otto John.82
Although Gehlen did not
destroy this new federal office, the FHO campaign against John succeeded in estranging Otto
John from the Christian Democrats, which led him to defect to East Germany in 1954.83
By
pursuing these goals, Reinhard Gehlen sought to promote his vision of the German nation.
Reflecting Gehlen’s previous stance of recruiting “soldiers or civilians, anti-Nazi or
Nazis… provided that they seemed likely to raise the intellectual level of the organization,”84
Gehlen’s efforts to preserve the General Staff and the German intelligence community defied
American instructions not to employ war criminals.85
Although Gehlen’s experience in World
War II demonstrates that he was not a Nazi himself, he hired and protected personnel with Nazi
backgrounds because he considered them useful. For example, many of the figures with Nazi
81
Searle, 105. 82
Otto John fled Germany with the help of British Intelligence after his brother was executed for
involvement in the failed assassination attempt on Hitler. Throughout the rest of the war, he collaborated
with the BBC German language broadcast service. Otto John defected to East Germany in 1954 citing
fears about the Gehlen Organization and the Christian Democrats’ decision to pursue remilitarization.
Critchfield, 179. 83
This clearly strengthened Gehlen’s hand considerably in his political battles in Bonn. Searle, 108. 84
Höhne and Zolling, 15. 85
Critchfield, 86.
McBride, 21
pasts were employed in counterintelligence and domestic espionage due to their expertise in this
field, leading to a troubling continuity between domestic espionage in the Third Reich and in the
early postwar years.86
Having learned from the purge of his anti-Nazi personnel following the
assassination plot against Hitler, Gehlen hid and protected these employees from the prying eyes
of his American keepers.
Many aspects of Gehlen’s collaboration with the American drew from his previous
experience during the Third Reich. The Gehlen Organization produced actionable intelligence
on Soviet actions and intentions for the Americans much as the FHO had for the Nazis, using
many of the same analysts, handlers, and even informants. His covert work in building up a
West German Army around Heusinger ironically mirrored his covert work in building up Russian
Liberation Army around Vlassov. His willingness to work with Nazis and anti-Nazis during the
postwar period mirrored his willingness to work the Nazis and anti-Nazis during World War II.
In both instances, he justified his actions as building a unified front against the Soviets. Both
Gehlen’s obsession with monopolizing all intelligence and counterintelligence functions in the
new West German government and his methods of exploiting divisions in the U.S. intelligence
community related to his experience with intelligence divisions in Nazi Germany. His attempts
to expand the Gehlen Organization into the new functions of counterintelligence and domestic
espionage was enabled by recruiting former Nazis and war criminals with expertise in the
Sicherheitsdienst and the Gestapo. These commonalities demonstrate the impossibility of
separating Gehlen’s collaboration with the Americans from his collaboration with the Nazis.
Gehlen and the Christian Democrats
The April 1, 1956 transformation of the CIA-backed Gehlen Organization into the West
86
Höhne and Zolling, 172.
McBride, 22
German BND was a major personal success for Reinhard Gehlen.87
In addition to providing
Gehlen with immense authority over intelligence and counterintelligence matters and influence
in German policymaking, the formation of the BND vindicated much of Gehlen’s vision of the
German nation. In contrast to Adolf Hitler, Konrad Adenauer shared many of Reinhard Gehlen’s
conservative sense of German nationalism, possibly due to their common background as middle-
class Roman Catholics in the Kingdom of Prussia.88
Furthermore, they both shared the vision of
the German nation as a part of Western Europe and the Western crusade against Communism.
Due to these similarities, Gehlen and Adenauer had a close relationship.89
Reinhard Gehlen’s downfall within the West German state resulted from two negative
characteristics he learned from his experiences in the FHO. The first characteristic was his
willingness to work with ideologically questionable people if their intelligence or skills could
add to the intelligence organizations, which backfired in the Heinz Felfe scandal.90
This 1963
scandal characterized the BND as ineffective and compromised as an intelligence service, largely
due to its morally questionable policy of hiring SS officers. Because this scandal coincided with
Konrad Adenauer’s resignation, Gehlen found himself ostracized by Ludwig Erhardt, who
ordered the BND’s liaison staff in the chancellery to evacuated the building, saying: “I will not
live under the same roof as these people.”91
The second negative characteristic that led to
Gehlen’s downfall was his deep suspicion of the Social Democrats, whom he characterized as a
87
Reese, 141. 88
Critchfield, 109. 89
Höhne and Zolling, 183. 90
In 1951, the former Sicherheitsdienst lieutenant Heinz Felfe joined the Gehlen Organization as a Russian
double agent. Over time, Felfe impressed his superiors with information supplied by his KGB handlers,
leading him to become head of the Soviet Union desk in the Gehlen Organization’s counterintelligence
division. After producing detailed plans of the Soviet Command Center in Karlshorst, Gehlen said “that
fellow Felfe is outstanding. He can produce what others cannot.” Höhne and Zolling, 149. With the
authority provided by his high position and close relationship with Gehlen, Felfe provided the KGB with
over 15,000 photographed documents, effectively blowing the cover of Gehlen’s network of informants in
Eastern Europe prior to his 1961 arrest. Reese, 150. 91
Höhne and Zolling, 15.
McBride, 23
sort of communist fifth column within the German state.92
Recent documents suggest that the
Gehlen Organization targeted select Social Democrats in their domestic espionage program, and
perhaps even fed some of this information to the Christian Democrats.93
Gehlen supported the
Federal Republic of Germany largely because he supported Adenauer’s Christian Democratic
government, not because of support of democratic or liberal values.94
Because Willy Brandt’s
vision of German Ostpolitik was completely contrary to Gehlen’s vehement anti-Communism,95
Gehlen found himself elbowed into retirement in 1968.
Conclusion
Reinhard Gehlen’s collaborations from 1942 until 1968 are difficult to fathom because
they demonstrate a troubling strand of antidemocratic and militaristic continuity in the postwar
redefinition of the German nation. His success in collaborating with the Americans, shielding
Nazis and war criminals from prosecution, and monopolizing the control over the clandestine
arm of the West German regime troublingly demonstrates how effective his vehement anti-
Communism was at winning over American support. Because Gehlen lacked the anti-Semitic
and racial ideology of the Nazis, even Captain Waldman, an Austrian that was so opposed to
National Socialism that he fled Austria after the Nazi takeover and joined the U.S. Army as an
intelligence officer, supported his request for American financial backing.96
Why did the
Americans decide to do so? Ultimately, this was for the very same reasons as the Nazis and the
92
Gehlen’s memoirs are particularly scathing towards Willy Brandt’s government, accusing them of being
duped into Ostpolitik by the Italian Communists and betraying the German nation by surrendering
“Germany's ancient territories to the east of the Oder and Neisse rivers and thus formally acquiescing to the
communist policies of aggrandizement in Central and Eastern Europe.” Gehlen, 355-7. 93
Critchfield, 110. 94
“If there was any one former general who threaten the establishment of parliamentary control…, then
that officer was Reinhard Gehlen.” Searle, 110. 95
This is quite ironic, considering that Brandt would leave office due to a scandal over one of his personal
aid’s turning out to be a Stasi agent. 96
Reese, 56.
McBride, 24
Christian Democrats: they considered him an effective tool against the Soviet Union. In the
context of anti-Soviet fears, the Nazis, the Americans, and the Christian Democrats were willing
to tolerate Gehlen’s independent views and eccentricities in light of his genuine anti-Bolshevism,
his expertise deciphering Soviet actions and intentions, and his unwillingness to challenge
authority that was also militantly anti-Communist.
Due to the inability of nationalist frameworks of “crimes against the nation” to accurately
judge the moral nuances of specific instances of collaboration, the moral judgment of Reinhard
Gehlen’s career must be based off the more universal concept of “crimes against humanity”
established by the Nürmberg Trials. By making the international law of the Nürmberg Trials the
centerpiece of ethical judgments of collaboration or resistance, morality becomes disaggregated
from any sense of the nation. This approach attempts to heed Timothy Brook’s call to “look
through the moral landscape to the political one underneath and figure out what is going on”97
by
detecting “ambiguity in what a superficial reading might otherwise dismiss as confirmation of
the norms by which a culture, then or now, has constructed its moral subjects.”98
The key moral
questions is no longer “did you collaborate or did you resist?,” but “how did this collaboration or
resistance violate conceptions of human rights and international law?”
When measured against this standard, Reinhard Gehlen falls short. He may not have
been a Nazi, but he collaborated with the Hitler regime in knowledge of the Holocaust99
He may
have shared a common anti-Communism with the Americans, but he defied the American efforts
at denazification. He may have had a personal rapport with Konrad Adenauer, but he had little
faith in democracy or a plural society. His anti-Communism thus blinded him to other moral
97
Brook, 5. 98
Brook, 246. 99
As an intelligence analyst on the Eastern Front, it is completely unfeasible that Gehlen was not aware of
the systematic murder of the Jews.
McBride, 25
considerations. In this regard, he was not alone. Gehlen’s collaborations with the Americans
and the Christian Democrats relied on a degree of naïve and sophomoric accommodation of his
antidemocratic and illiberal views. Gehlen’s actions also have American equivalents, such as the
United States’ willing collaboration with Klaus Barbie,100
proving that it problematic to assume
an inherent morality in any actor, even the United States. Gehlen was therefore much more than
a “bad” nationalist who employs war criminals and uses postwar doubts about the Soviet Union
to manipulate the “good” Americans and Christian Democrats into collaboration. Such
nationalist oversimplifications confuse Gehlen’s moral failings with his relatively banal
collaborations. Reinhard Gehlen’s career is not immoral because of his relatively banal
collaboration, but because of his personal moral failings and willingness to sacrifice the liberal
ideals of human rights, international law, and democracy for his rigid nationalist and anti-
Communist agenda.
100
Goda, 427.
McBride, 26
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