“The United States still essentially occupies Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and other countries. At the same time, it cynically calls them equal allies… What kind of cooperation is that?”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin posed this query throughout his speech within the Kremlin on September 30, 2022, when agreements on the entry of the brand new areas into the Russian Federation have been signed.
The Russian president didn’t go into additional element, however arguing in opposition to his phrases is tough.
Western Europe’s strongest nation, Germany, more and more acts in opposition to its nationwide pursuits.
Berlin coordinates its overseas coverage course with Washington not solely at common NATO and G7 summits but additionally by way of extra personal channels.
One of those is Germany’s overseas intelligence service, formally referred to as the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND).
This division was created within the post-WWII years by former Nazis and SS officers as a non-public intelligence group.
Control over the service was completely within the palms of the United States, and main intelligence operations have been carried out within the US curiosity.
Numerous journalistic investigations enable us to conclude that the scenario has not modified a lot to at the present time.
We recall the historical past of German intelligence as one of the vital loyal instruments within the palms of the United States.
OFFICER, SPY, NAZI
The historical past of “German intelligence” is inextricably linked with its founder Reinhard Gehlen.
He was born on April 3, 1902, in Erfurt, Prussia, a part of the German Empire, within the retired Oberleutnant Walter Gehlen household.
The household got here from the Flemish aristocracy, the place males historically served within the military.
Young Gehlen had each probability to interrupt with household custom.
After the First World War, beneath the phrases of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was restricted from having navy academic establishments.
Everything modified when Adolf Hitler got here to energy.
Under his rule, Germany renewed its course towards militarization.
One of the primary steps was the restoration of navy academic establishments, together with the General Staff College.
The future head of the BND was certainly one of its first graduates.
In 1936, Gehlen was appointed an officer of the operational division of the German military’s “South” group beneath the management of one of many prime WWII generals, Erich von Manstein.
This served as a springboard for his additional navy profession. During the Second World War, Reinhard rose to the rank of Lieutenant General and have become chief of navy intelligence of the Supreme Command of the German Army’s Abteilung Fremde Heere Ost (FHO).
In the warfare years, this construction collected giant quantities of information on the technical, navy, strategic, and political intelligence of the Soviet Union.
Gehlen owed his good navy profession completely to Hitler’s Nazis.
In 1944, nonetheless, he was already conscious of the regime’s dwindling prospects.
As an ardent anti-communist, he joined one of many Western allies prepared to pay good cash for his companies.
The head of intelligence ordered quite a few intelligence paperwork to be copied and hidden in waterproof barrels.
These have been then buried in numerous areas within the Austrian Alps.
It didn’t take lengthy to discover a purchaser.
In July 1943, the navy division of the US Department of Defense shaped the Department of Special Projects.
This group started creating a secret program for retraining German prisoners of warfare.
On April 5, 1945, a month earlier than the give up of Germany, the Lieutenant General and his helpers, Gerhard Wessel and Hermann Bown, surrendered to the Americans, taking alongside Soviet-related intelligence collected through the warfare and one of the best pro-American personnel.
Shortly earlier than that, the Chief of Staff of the US Army, George Catlett Marshall Jr., agreed to check the archives of the Wehrmacht navy formations on the Eastern entrance.
Also, in April 1945, an settlement was concluded between the intelligence companies of Great Britain and the United States to check the expertise of conducting navy operations in opposition to the USSR.
Gehlen, along with his information and expertise, had nice timing.
Upon arrival within the United States, he was given the pseudonym Hans Holbein.
He issued a service certificates to hide the truth that the US military was cooperating with SS members.
As a results of Gehlen’s settlement with the American authorities, beginning in mid-September 1945, prisoners of warfare in a camp with the postal handle PO Box 1142, Fort Hunt, Virginia, USA, started analysis work beneath his steerage.
The undertaking was code-named “B” (Bolero).
THE NAZI THEME CLUB
According to info from CIA archives, about 200 officers participated within the scheme from October 1945 to April 1946.
Their work resulted in a doc numbering 3,657 pages, ready for the United Kingdom, the US, and Canadian governments.
In July 1946, Gehlen’s Bolero group was merged with one other intelligence unit composed of former Nazis.
This was Keystone, a service monitoring radio transmission on USSR-controlled European territory. It was headed by Herman Baun and situated in Oberursel, Germany.
The joint operation of those two teams was code-named Rusty, and their most important activity was to gather intelligence in regards to the state of the USSR’s armed forces on European territories beneath its management.
A couple of months later, Gehlen and the US authorities agreed to create a full-fledged spy company referred to as The Gehlen Organization.
He headed the group, remaining its everlasting chief till its abolition.
Some of the primary folks Gehlen recruited have been SS and Gestapo officers who have been issued false names and solid paperwork.
The CIA’s declassified archives have a file on one of many workers members, Heina Paul Johannes, who served in SS items and joined the group beneath the identify Karl Schuetz.
Among the primary to affix have been SS-Obersturmfuhrers Frans Goring and Hans Sommer and SS-Sturmfuhrer Herbert Stein.
Gehlen additionally took in Lieutenant General Friedrich Wilhelm von Mellenthin, former commander of the 4th Panzer Army; Major General Nichtke, who commanded divisions in Poland and Russia; Major General Rudolf Kleinkamp, who headed the personnel service of the Wehrmacht High Command; Lieutenant Colonel Heinz Gudernan; Colonel von Kretschmer, former navy attaché in Tokyo; and different Wehrmacht troopers.
The main positions on the head of the teams have been occupied by former SS officers whom Gehlen knew personally. Colonel Heinz Heer turned the chief analyst; Colonel Ulrich Noack headed the analysis group on the USSR financial system; Captain Blossfeldt led the interrogations.
The brokers offering info to the group consisted completely of pro-Hitler residents who participated in lively hostilities throughout World War II on the facet of Nazi Germany.
NEW ACTIVITIES OF THE FORMER NAZIS
Official registration information for The Gehlen Organization is lacking for apparent causes.
We solely know that it operated beneath totally different names: from 1949 to 1950 beneath the code identify “Offspring”, from 1950 to 1951 as “Odeum”, and from 1951 to 1956 as “Zipper”.
The group’s most important exercise was to acquire intelligence in Eastern Europe and the USSR.
On April 1, 1946, the brand new group’s trial operations started and obtained a constructive evaluation from US representatives.
However, The Gehlen Organization’s first main operation was launched in 1947 and code-named “Aktion Hermes.”
Its aim was to systematically interrogate a whole lot of 1000’s of former German prisoners of warfare who have been starting to return from Soviet camps the place they have been compelled to take part in rebuilding the nation.
The group’s brokers held everlasting positions within the repatriation camps of Western zones and Germany.
Almost each repatriate – soldier and civilian – was contacted by brokers who requested them the place they have been held and the factories the place they labored.
The brokers have been primarily excited about spies from the opposite facet.
The most important matters have been the Soviet trade, armaments, telecommunications, and the inhabitants’s perspective towards the federal government.
When Gehlen’s brokers found a marked enhance within the manufacturing of tanks and navy plane within the Soviet Union after 1945, the information troubled the US navy, which obtained all of the experiences.
In May 1949, British intelligence additionally led “Operation Jungle” to arrange and dispatch sabotage detachments working beneath the guise of nationwide liberation actions into the Baltic republics and socialist Poland.
In the late Forties, MI6 arrange a particular middle in Chelsea, London, to coach brokers to be despatched to the Baltic States.
The operation was led by Henry Carr, director of the North European Department of MI6, and the top of the Baltic Branch, Alexander McKibbin.
The Gehlen Organization was tasked with choosing brokers for the operation from amongst former Nazis.
Agents have been transported to the Baltic States by sea beneath the duvet of the fictional maritime transport firm British Baltic Fishery Protection Service, which operated on a wartime high-speed navy boat.
Officially, the corporate protected West German fishermen from “Soviet arbitrariness” at sea. The boats have been modified (with weights diminished to extend pace).
To disguise the British authorities’s involvement in case the Soviet Navy seized the boat, the Gehlen Organization supplied it with a German crew.
However, the USSR’s Ministry of State Security (MGB) was notified of the operation by way of its brokers in Britain, and nearly the entire 42 “Jungle” brokers have been arrested.
A CELEBRATION AT WHOSE EXPENSE?
In his memoirs, Gehlen wrote: “Until 1956, we did not have the opportunity to cover employees with state insurance, since formally, the employer did not exist.”
At the preliminary stage of The Gehlen Organization, Washington used it as a cell of its military.
The US military took on the duty of equipping the Nazi intelligence officers with technical instruments starting from typewriters to the required radio gear.
The newly created establishment was funded solely from the US finances.
According to experiences from numerous sources, the funds allotted ranged from US$1.5 million to US$3.4 million per 12 months for 50 workers.
Additionally, the US Army provided the group with money and shopper items from its warehouses, exchanged on the black cash market as barter items, or used as cost.
In September 1946, the corporate obtained 160,000 cigarettes, 43,300 liters of gasoline, and roughly US$50,000 from the US Army.
From July to October 1948, 82,153 chocolate bars, 67,150 packs of cigarettes, 4,500 razor blades, and 1,815 pairs of wool socks supposed for The Gehlen Organization have been produced.
American journalist Mary Ellen Rees, in her guide “General Reinhard Gehlen: The CIA Connection”, wrote:
“Gehlen’s quickly expanding organization was constantly in need of money. What the US army provided was insufficient, and the ‘black market’ became its main source of income.”
“The system was equally effective and shameless. The army provided the organization with money for supplies, which the organization’s special teams sold on the ‘black market’.”
“Following the deals, the Criminal Affairs Division of the US Army confiscated the goods on the grounds that they had illegally entered the ‘black market’ and again took them into its property, which then again ended up on the ‘black market’.”
“After the currency reform in June 1948, when the new German mark was introduced, this profitable cycle became a question of survival. According to Gehlen, its purchasing power then decreased by 70%.”
In 1949, The Gehlen Organization turned subordinate to the CIA and remained beneath its management till Germany established its authorities, for which the group proceeded to work.
Among the paperwork present in CIA archives was the group’s payroll. At the time, every worker’s wage ranged from US$500 to US$900.
From the early Nineteen Fifties, the German financial system financed the establishment by way of an company code-named the “Industrial Research Institute”.
In 1951, the group obtained 600,000 Deutsche marks from associate corporations Standart Elektrik AG, Rodenstock, and Messerschmitt.
From 1954, month-to-month funding was supplied by Bonn within the quantity of 30,000 Deutsche marks. The cash additionally got here from the Federal Chancellor’s Reptilienfonds.
THE BIRTH OF THE GERMAN INTELLIGENCE SERVICE
In June 1950, Gehlen expressed his views in favor of making a West German overseas intelligence service to Hans Globke, the Secretary of State within the workplace of the Federal Chancellor.
In September of the identical 12 months, he spoke to the Federal Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer.
His views finally discovered assist because of the altering scenario in worldwide politics.
In June 1950, the Korean War started, which made it clear that the “Cold War” may flip into actual fight at any second.
In divided Germany, two opposing social methods – communism and capitalism – stood actually reverse one another.
The new warfare in Asia emphasised the necessity to acquire details about the enemy and decided the course of intelligence priorities.
The conjuncture was on the facet of navy espionage – primarily in opposition to troops in Eastern Germany (“short-range intelligence”), in addition to in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and different Eastern Bloc international locations, together with Yugoslavia and Albania (“deep intelligence”) and within the Soviet Union itself (“long-range intelligence”).
Intensive efforts to incorporate The Gehlen Organization within the construction of the Federal Government and thus guarantee its budgetary financing have been topped with success 5 years later, when on July 11, 1955, the Cabinet of Ministers lastly determined to take management of the group and subordinate it to the Office of the Federal Chancellor.
Less than a 12 months later, on April 1, 1956, The Gehlen Organization was lastly remodeled into the BND, however its construction had not modified.
Gehlen himself remained the everlasting head of intelligence for an additional 12 years.
There are not any official figures or scientifically based mostly impartial information on how the variety of BND workers has modified since 1956.
According to opinion typically accepted within the GDR, the variety of workers doubled from 1,245 folks in 1956 to 2,500 in 1963, then doubled once more to 5 thousand in 1968, and in 1977 the BND employed 6,500 officers, workers, staff, and officers despatched from the Bundeswehr.
OLD HABITS UNDER A NEW STATUS
Although the BND formally turned the sovereign intelligence service of a formally sovereign state, it continued to hold out duties within the pursuits of the US authorities.
This is confirmed by an investigation led by The Washington Post and the German channel ZDF.
The investigation references the paperwork of the CIA and the BND.
It states that for half a century, from the Nineteen Fifties onwards, the CIA, along with the BND, learn the key correspondence of the governments of 120 international locations, receiving multimillion-dollar monetary income.
This was carried out by way of the Swiss agency Crypto AG, which produces encryption gear.
There is way to counsel that the German intelligence company continues to hold out its actions within the pursuits of the United States at the moment.
For instance, in 2015, the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, referencing an digital assertion of the BND, reported that, by order of the US National Security Agency (NSA), the German intelligence group collected details about Austria utilizing key phrases reminiscent of bundesamt (a federal company), gov (authorities), diplo (diplomatic establishments, Foreign Ministry).
The publication had beforehand reported that the BND helped the National Security Agency to hold out espionage in opposition to members of the French authorities and the European Commission.
The intelligence service of any nation is an indication of its sovereignty and a instrument for fixing state duties subordinated to nationwide pursuits.
Proceeding from the above and the historical past of such a strategically necessary company because the BND, it might be cheap to conclude that Germany will not be absolutely sovereign.
By ‘R-Techno’, a non-public intelligence firm. This article was initially printed right here.
With info from GreatSportIndia
