Reinhard Gehlen « History Rhymes

5May/092

Reinhard Gehlen – Conclusion

Reinhard Gehlen in 1945

I have finally finished up my paper on Reinhard Gehlen. The final version was due today and it is a great relief to have it finished. I wrote up a brief summary of how the Gehlen Organization came to be on my German blog, but I will write a rough translation of it here.

Gehlen was a very interesting man. During the Nazi-period in Germany he was the head of the General Staff division, Fremde Heere Ost (Foreign Armies East). The division dealt with the condition of the soviet military. Just before the end of the war he foresaw that German was going to lose and thus decided to hide the information collected by his division in Bavaria. He wanted to give all of the information to the Americans so the Americans could be more prepared to fight against the Soviet Union in the upcoming battle of ideologies he saw coming.

After the war, he was taken prisoner by the Americans which is when he began to work for the Americans. In 1946, the Gehlen Organization was founded by the American Army and Gehlen. Gehlen worked with his colleagues from the Fremde Heeren Ost for the Americans until 1956. The Gehlen Organization was taken over by the new West German government in 1956 and the Bundesnachrichtendienst(Federal Intelligence Service) was born.

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26Mar/090

Historiography Paper on Reinhard Gehlen Sources

The professor of the history class I am currently taking, in which I am doing research on Reinhard Gehlen, has assigned a historiography paper with a minimum of 20 secondary sources. This would not be a problem if that many secondary sources existed on Reinhard Gehlen. I have been able to only find about 12 books and articles about him and his intelligence-gathering organization. Everything else I have found has been primary.

I would say the biggest reason for this is because the CIA has only recently (within the past 5-6 years) declassified and released material about Reinhard Gehlen and the Gehlen Organization during the Cold War. That isn't sufficient time for 20 books to be written on the subject, which means I have stumbled into relatively untreaded ground. Most of the books and articles I have found were actually written in the early 1970s shortly after Gehlen retired as president of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (the Federal Intelligence Agency which his organization essentially turned into after its adoption by the West German government).

I certainly can't complain about the abundance of primary sources that I have found and seem to still be unwritten about, but it still does not help my situation with my historiography paper.

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3Mar/090

Research Proposal Completed

I’ve finally finished my research paper proposal for one of my history classes. The research paper is going to be about Reinhard Gehlen, but I have discussed that in a previous post. I feel a lot better about the paper now though because I now have a clear direction in which I want to head with the paper. I now know exactly what I am going to argue and how I’m going to go about doing it with the sources I’ve found.

There are a couple of books that I would really like to use, however, one of them is currently checked out and isn’t due back until May and the other book isn’t available at the library at my university. I put in a request to get it from Colorado State University’s library through our Interlibrary Loan Service, but who knows how long that will take. I probably won’t get it until the end of this month or even later. Unfortunately it’s a primary source, which is important. The book is the memoirs of James Critchfield who worked with Reinhard Gehlen directly. Critchfield worked on the CIA side of things, so it would be interesting to get that perspective. As of now, I just have Gehlen’s perspective which, without the other perspective, is quite biased. Hopefully I will get it soon enough to be able to use it as a resource for my paper.

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28Feb/090

Gehlen Research: Primary Documents Jackpot

Reinhard Gehlen

As I have discussed before, I am doing a research project on the former German spymaster Reinhard Gehlen and the organization that he established after the second World War which eventually became the West German (and now just German) Bundesnachrichtendienst, or Federal Intelligence Service. The relationship between Gehlen and his spy ring had with the United States, in particularly the CIA, was extremely controversial as the American public would have been horrified to know that their government had employed former Nazis in their attempt to gather intelligence on the Soviets.

Because of the controversy of their relationship many officials in the CIA, the American military and the American government did not trust Gehlen or the intelligence gathered by his organization during the Cold War. This is going to be the focus of my research project. From a post-Soviet era, 21st century vantage point, I want to know if the intelligence gathered by Gehlen's spy ring was -- as many Americans claim -- actually inaccurate and deceiving or if that was simply something that the Americans unjustly accused the Gehlen Organization of. I watched a History Channel special about Reinhard Gehlen which presented Gehlen in a very negative light, claiming that his intelligence was falsified and incorrect. I guess we will see though.

Today I spent most of the morning and early afternoon researching at the university library. I have already spent quite a bit of time there this week, but this time I spent it looking for primary documents related to Gehlen and his organization. It turns out that the CIA declassified a huge number of documents in the late 90's and in 2004. That's lucky, but unfortunately it would require a trip to the National Archives in Washington DC, which I am unwilling to spend the money and time to do for a short undergraduate research paper. I was quite discouraged by this, but after a bit more looking around on the internet, I came across a site from The George Washington University which has all of the released documents in handy PDF files I can download for free. Needless to say, that pretty much made my day. I am now in over my head with primary documents on the organization and can't wait to start sifting through them.

Tagged as: Bundesnachrichtendiesnt, Reinhard Gehlen No Comments

17Feb/092

David Irving’s Translation of Der Dienst: Erinnerungen 1942-1971

For anyone who is going to be working with the memoirs of Reinhard Gehlen, do not use David Irving's translation of it, entitled: The Service: The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen. For a project I am working on, I have been dealing with both Irving's translation as well as the original book in German written by Gehlen himself (Der Dienst: Erinnerungen 1942-1971). I read the German version cover to cover for this project and have been attempting to use Irving's translation as a quick reference to check for facts, however, as I have been using the translation, not only is information missing from the original in his translation (I've had to check the original multiple times to verify it was actually there), but there are actually pages and pages of accounts and "memories" that don't exist anywhere in the original!

The accounts may be true for all I know, but they are presented as though Gehlen told them (though he did not in his memoirs) and there are no references cited. It has been most frustrating and I do intend to report this inaccuracy to the university. Perhaps they will dispose of the book as anyone who is unable to read the German version would have no idea otherwise, possibly leading to inaccuracy.

Tagged as: David Irving, Reinhard Gehlen, Translations 2 Comments

5Feb/090

Reinhard Gehlen

This semester I am taking a historical methods class in which the focus is the history of espionage. In this class, we are required to choose a topic related to the history of intelligence and do a research paper based on that. The topic I have chosen to do is Reinhard Gehlen who held a high rank in the German military as an intelligence gatherer during World War II and then was used by the CIA after the war to collect intelligence on the Soviet Union in East Germany.

Reinhard Gehlen in 1945

Gehlen was instructed to create a spy ring based in West Germany that would gather intelligence on Soviet affairs. Because of this he was excused from any warcrimes he had committed during the Nazi era. His spy ring became known as the "Organisation Gehlen" and included many of his former colleagues whom he worked with during the second World War. The Organisation Gehlen essentially became the forerunner for the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), or the Federal Intelligence Bureau, which is in many respects the German equivalent of the CIA. Gehlen served as the BND's first president.

For more about Reinhard Gehlen, see the Reinhard Gehlen article on Wikipedia.

As part of this particular assignment, we have to include memoirs from the person involved. Reinhard Gehlen wrote his memoirs in 1971 under the title of Der Dienst: Erinnerungen 1942-1971 (The Service: Memoirs 1942-1971). The library here does not have a copy of the book in English, so I have to resort to reading it in German. It shouldn't really be a problem, but it will take a little longer to plough through all 400 pages of it.

Tagged as: Espionage, German History, Intelligence, Nazi, Reinhard Gehlen No Comments

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