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Reinhard Gehlen | |
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![]() Reinhard Gehlen | |
Born | Erfurt, Province of Saxony, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire | 3 March 1902
Died | 8 June 1979 Starnberg, Bavaria, West Germany | (aged 77)
Allegiance |
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Service | Army |
Years of service | 1920–1956 |
Rank | Generalmajor (Wehrmacht) Generalleutnant der Reserve (Bundeswehr) |
Unit | 213th Infantry Division |
Commands | Foreign Armies East |
Battles / wars | World War II Cold War |
Awards | Deutsches 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 military and 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 the Eastern Front of World War II and was later the first director of West Germany's intelligence agency, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND). Gehlen is also considered to be one of the founders of the West German armed forces, the Bundeswehr.[1]
The son of an army officer and World War I veteran, in 1920 Gehlen joined the Reichswehr, the truncated army of the Weimar Republic, and was an operations staff officer in an infantry division during the invasion of Poland in 1939. After that he was appointed to the staff of General Franz Halder, the Chief of the Army High Command (OKH), and quickly became one of his main assistants. Gehlen had a significant role in planning the German operations in Greece, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. When the Red Army continued to fight after the initial German success during Operation Barbarossa, in the spring of 1942 Gehlen was appointed by Halder as director of Foreign Armies East (FHO), the military intelligence service of the OKH tasked with analyzing the Soviet armed forces. He achieved the rank of major general before he was dismissed by Adolf Hitler in April 1945 because of the FHO's alleged "defeatism"[2] and accurate but pessimistic intelligence reports about Red Army military superiority.[3]
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.[4]
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.[5][6]
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.[6][7] 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.[8]