Unscrupulous
WASHINGTON/MUNICH/BERLIN (Own report) - The German government's connivance in the escape of the Nazi mass murderer, Adolf Eichmann, has caused little public indignation in Germany, nor has it become a theme for the media. As head of the of the Third Reich's Section IV D4 of the Central Security Office (handling Jewish affairs and evacuation), Eichmann was responsible for the deportations to the gas chambers. He fled Germany after 1945. According to recently declassified archive files, the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) knew, at the latest, in 1958 that this mass murderer was living in South America under an assumed name. The German government did not initiate Eichmann's prosecution but rather informed the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of his whereabouts. But the CIA also remained inactive, because it feared incriminating evidence, against prominent cabinet members of the West German government, could be brought to light, if a trial were opened against Eichmann. The files, made public in Washington, shed a light on the cooperation between the post war elite of West Germany and the surviving Nazi personnel, who were integrated into the new state structures or enjoyed their secret protection. The BND served as one of the centers for this cooperation. "Now we know that at least a dozen veterans of Eichmann's 'Jewish Affairs Section' (...) worked as secret agents for the CIA and the BND (...) in the aftermath of 1945", writes Professor Christopher Simpson of the American University (Washington D.C.) in an article for german-foreign-policy.com.
After a long legal battle with the US government, the files at the US-National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) were declassified, and are causing a sensation in the USA. The German press relegated these news items to their back pages or merely laconicly quoted press agency reports out of Washington. Exposure of the BND's inactivity in the pursuit of the mass murderer, Eichmann, comes at an unfavorable moment. The BND stands under suspicion of having engaged in numerous illegal activities [1] and is seen as being out of control.[2] With its more than 10.000 employees in Munich and Berlin, this secret service organization is one of the most powerful state apparatuses of Germany. It is seen as capable of steering subversive movements both abroad and at home.
Leadership Trio
As critics have repeatedly stated, the internal situation of the German secret services cannot be explained without knowledge of their early links to the surviving Nazi personnel. The BND's predecessor, the "Organization Gehlen", (named after its founder and long time director, Reinhard Gehlen), which was established under direct supervision of the US intelligence services, beginning in 1946, had already integrated personnel from the Nazi espionage structures. After its crossover to become the BND (April 1, 1956), Reinhard Gehlen became chief of BND operations. During World War II, he was head of the General Staff's Division "Fremde Heere Ost" (Foreign Forces - East), that was responsible for carrying out espionage against the Soviet Union. Gerhard Wessel, appointed by Gehlen in the summer of 1942 to the post of director of "Group I" of the "Fremde Heere Ost", and thus responsible for the daily reports on operations, became, in 1946, the director of the analysis department of the new secret service organization. In 1968, he succeeded his former boss, to become President of the BND. Hermann Baun, in charge of procurement in the "Organization Gehlen" since 1946, had already been in the espionage trade during the war, as head of the Central Office of Front Line Intelligence - I East. He boasted of supervising an extensive espionage network inside the USSR.
Old Job
As Gehlen frankly admitted in his memoirs, the respective US agencies had given him the explicit "go ahead" to establish the new secret service "using the existing potential" and to continue with "the old job toward the same objectives".[3] According to more recent estimates, approximately ten per cent of the 4,000 agents, working for Gehlen in the summer of 1949, had previously been members of the SS, the SD and the Gestapo, in addition to a large number of former Wehrmacht soldiers. Among "Organization Gehlen's" Nazi personnel, were several war criminals e.g. Wilhelm Krichbaum, a former SS Standartenfuehrer and Gestapo Southeast Border inspector. Krichbaum was in charge of a BND network of "sleeping agents", who, in the case of a Soviet attack, would remain behind the advancing Soviet lines and subsequently carry out sabotage behind the front. Former SS Obersturmfuehrer Hans Sommer became Gehlen's employee in 1950. Sommer was responsible for the demolition of seven synagogues in Paris and was promoted in Nice to SD chief.[4]
Eichmann's Aide-de-Camp
Among the Nazi criminals taken in by the organization Gehlen was also Adolf Eichmann's former Aide-de-Camp, Alois Brunner. In France; Brunner was found guilty of the mass murder of more than 120,000 European Jews and was sentenced to death in absentia. In the 1950s Brunner was the resident in Damascus for the German secret service.[5] Secret service operations in favor of Egyptian security forces, involving 100 German "advisors," fell within the range of his Middle East activities in the 1950s. Numerous Nazi functionaries were among the assistants from Germany, whose recruitment had been directed by Otto Skorzeny. As an SS expert for sabotage and covert actions inside states under Nazi occupation, Skorzeny was active in Germany's subjugation of Europe.[6]
Updated
One of the first western scholars, who had assembled reliable information on the postwar German Nazi secret service network, was the US historian Christopher Simpson. His book "Blowback" published in 1988 named the names of several dozen German war criminals and mass murderers, who had made successful postwar careers with the CIA and the BND.[7] According to Christopher Simpson, Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt, was also in this circle. Strik-Strikfeldt was the ex-BND chief's liaison officer to Eastern European Nazi collaborators. He maintained these contacts in the post-war period and placed them at the disposal of revisionist exile organizations, planning terrorist attacks and maintaining contacts to the German "Expellees" scene. In this criminal environment, the German Reich's hegemonic concepts of Europe were updated - it is now garbed in an allegedly people-uniting European "Integration".[8]
Myth
As Christopher Simpson writes, in his article for german-foreign-policy.com, "brutality, stupidity and lawlessness" characterizes the commissioning into service of well-known Nazi criminals for the postwar political interests of the US and their German allies. To keep the Nazi race theoretician Hans Globke, in his position as undersecretary of state in the Federal Chancellor's Office, in Bonn, "the CIA initiated a campaign with the objective of suppressing information about Globke's affiliations with Eichmann." Globke had been helpful as West German liaison to NATO. This service was more important than Globkes responsibility for anti-Semitic persecution. "The recent scandal", which lays bare the passivity and aid furnished by both German and US prosecution authorities, puts into question a transparent post-war "myth", writes Christopher Simpson: Instead of "Freedom and Democracy" - unscrupulous cooperation between the BND, the CIA and globally wanted mass murderers, such as Adolf Eichmann.
Please read also Christopher Simpson's article here.
[1] see also In Accordance With the Law, Lapse into Barbarism, Erpressbar and Größte Gefährdungen
[2] see also Außer Kontrolle
[3] Reinhard Gehlen: Der Dienst. Erinnerungen 1942-1971, Mainz-Wiesbaden 1971
[4] Peter F. Müller, Michael Mueller (unter Mitarbeit von Erich Schmidt-Eenboom): Gegen Freund und Feind. Der BND: Geheime Politik und schmutzige Geschäfte, Hamburg 2002
[5] Georg Hafner, Esther Schapira: Die Akte Alois Brunner, Frankfurt am Main 2000. See also The Results Were Deadly
[6] Peter F. Müller, Michael Mueller (unter Mitarbeit von Erich Schmidt-Eenboom): Gegen Freund und Feind. Der BND: Geheime Politik und schmutzige Geschäfte, Hamburg 2002
[7] Christopher Simpson: Blowback. The first full account of America's recruitment of Nazis and its disastrous effect on our domestic and foreign policy, New York (USA) 1988
[8] John Laughland: The Tainted Source. The Undemocratic Origins of the European Idea, London 1997
