Reinhard Gehlen

Reinhard Gehlen
Reinhard Gehlen
Born(1902-03-03)3 March 1902
Erfurt, Province of Saxony, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Died8 June 1979(1979-06-08) (aged 77)
Starnberg, Bavaria, West Germany
Allegiance
Service / branchArmy
Years of service1920–1956
RankGeneralleutnant der Reserve
Battles / warsWorld War II
Cold War
AwardsDeutsches Kreuz in silver
War Merit Cross
Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz am Schulterband
Grand Cross of the Order pro Merito Melitensi of the Order of Malta (1948)

Reinhard Gehlen (3 April 1902 – 8 June 1979) was a German career intelligence officer who served the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, and West Germany, and also worked for the United States during the early years of the Cold War. He was in charge of German military intelligence on Eastern Front of World War II and was later the first director of West Germany's intelligence agency, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND).

Born into a Lutheran family at Erfurt, Gehlen joined the Reichswehr, the truncated Army of the Weimar Republic, and remained a career military intelligence officer after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in 1933. Gehlen was chief of the Wehrmacht Fremde Heere Ost (FHO), an anti-Soviet military intelligence service, during World War II. He achieved the rank of major general before he was fired by Adolf Hitler in April 1945 because of the FHO's alleged "defeatism"[1] and accurate but pessimistic intelligence reports about Red Army military superiority.[2]

Following the end of World War II, Gehlen surrendered to the United States Army. While in a POW camp, Gehlen offered FHO's microfilmed and secretly buried archives about the USSR and his own services to the U.S. intelligence community. Following the start of the Cold War, the U.S. military (G-2 Intelligence) accepted Gehlen's offer and assigned him to establish the Gehlen Organization, an espionage service focusing on the Soviet Union and Soviet Bloc. Beginning with his time as head of the Gehlen Organization, Gehlen favored both Atlanticism and close cooperation between what would become West Germany, the U.S. intelligence community, and the other members of the NATO military alliance. The organization employed hundreds of former members of the Nazi Party and former Wehrmacht military intelligence officers.[3]

After West Germany regained its sovereignty, Gehlen became the founding president of the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) of West Germany (1956–68). Gehlen obeyed a direct order from West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and also hired former counterintelligence officers of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), in response to an alleged avalanche of covert ideological subversion hitting West Germany from the intelligence services behind the Iron Curtain.[4][5]

Gehlen was instrumental in negotiations to establish an official West German intelligence service based on the Gehlen Organization of the early 1950s. In 1956, the Gehlen Organization was transferred to the West German government and formed the core of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the Federal Republic of Germany's official foreign intelligence service, with Gehlen serving as its first president until his retirement in 1968.[5][6] While this was a civilian office, he was also a lieutenant-general in the Reserve forces of the Bundeswehr, the highest-ranking reserve-officer in the military of West Germany.[7] He received the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1968.

  1. ^ Critchfield, Lois M. (30 November 2018). James H. Critchfield: His Life's Story (1917–2003). AuthorHouse. ISBN 978-1-5462-6975-5.
  2. ^ "Intelligence Officer's Bookshelf" (PDF). Central Intelligence Agency.
  3. ^ Höhne & Zolling, p. 31
  4. ^ Richelson, J.T. (1997). A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century. Oxford University Press. pp. 233, 235. ISBN 978-0-19-976173-9.
  5. ^ a b Lardner, George Jr. (18 March 2001). "CIA Declassifies Its Records On Dealings With Ex-Nazis". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 4 February 2022.
  6. ^ "Gehlen Organization – German Intelligence Agencies". www.globalsecurity.org. Retrieved 4 February 2022.
  7. ^ Pahl, Magnus. Fremde Heere Ost: Hitlers militärische Feindaufklärung, p. 32, Ch. Links Verlag, 2013, ISBN 3862842037.