Bodo Hechelhammer

Bodo V. Hechelhammer (born January 25, 1968 in Darmstadt ) is a German historian specializing in the history of the crusades and the history of the intelligence services . He is an employee of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), head of the history research and working group there since 2010 and head of the historical office and chief historian since 2016. Since 2011 he has been responsible for the editors of the communications of the research and working group "History of the BND" .

Life

Hechelhammer attended the Georg Büchner School in Darmstadt and graduated from high school in 1987. He first studied civil engineering and then geography , medieval and modern history as well as art history at the TU Darmstadt , where he completed his master's degree in 1997. Subsequently, he received a scholarship from the DFG graduate college "Medieval and Modern Statehood" at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen . In the meantime he was also a scholarship holder of the Italian-German historical institute in Trento . In 2000 he did his doctorate on the crusade of Frederick II at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen and Darmstadt, where he worked until 2002 as a research assistant at the Institute for History of the Kingship of Adolf of Nassau . He held various teaching positions in Darmstadt as well as at the Leopold Franzens University in Innsbruck .

Hechelhammer has been an employee of the Federal Intelligence Service since 2002 and has worked in various intelligence services. He was briefly seconded to the Federal Chancellery . Since 2010 he has headed the internal research group on the history of the BND, since 2016 the historical office of the authority and holds the position of chief historian.

As the BND chief historian, he repeatedly commented on the BND history in public. 2011 confirmed Hechelhammer on behalf of the BND first time that the NS - war criminal Walter Rauff was 1958-1962 a source of BND and published, the entire BND documents.

In 2011 he publicly regretted that the BND had destroyed files on SS criminal Alois Brunner .

At the end of 2011, the historian's commission (UHK) set up by the BND to process the BND's history uncovered the destruction of personal files of former SS members a few years earlier in the BND. Hechelhammer commented on this in a publication and relativized the claim of deliberate, politically motivated destruction. In autumn 2012, the magazine he published on the Cuba Crisis of 1962 attracted international attention when it became known that Fidel Castro had also tried to recruit former SS members to fight against the USA : “The Cuban Revolutionary Army evidently showed little fear of contact Personnel with a Nazi past, if it served their own cause ”.

At a scientific conference of the UHK in December 2013, he presented information to the public for the first time about the so-called “special card index” of the first BND President Reinhard Gehlen .

At the end of 2013, Hechelhammer confirmed for the BND for the first time to German television ( Frontal 21 ) that the BND had organized the so-called stay-behind organization for the Federal Republic until the beginning of the 1990s. "In consultation with the associated partner, this happened until the third quarter of 1991. The contacts to the intelligence services were discontinued."

In spring 2014 he published documents that showed that in 1966 the BND tried to influence the production of the international spy film " Mister Dynamit - Tomorrow kisses you death " with Lex Barker as BND agent. As a result of these research results, the film Christmas 2014 was released on DVD.

At the end of 2014, Links-Verlag published the comprehensive history of the BND headquarters in Pullach , the former NSDAP settlement (so-called Bormann settlement) , written by Hechelhammer . The documents from the BND archive were used for the first time.

Hechelhammer writes regularly for the online culture magazine CulturMag in the CrimeMag area.

Fonts (selection)

• Crusade and rule under Frederick II: scope for action by crusade politics (1215–1230). Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2004, ISBN 3-7995-4264-7 .
• Berlin crisis in 1958 and the closure of the sector borders in Berlin on August 13, 1961 in the files of the Federal Intelligence Service. Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-943549-00-3 .
• Walther Rauff and the Federal Intelligence Service. Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-943549-01-0 .
• Cassations of personal files in the BND archive. Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-943549-02-7 .
• The Federal Intelligence Service and the Cuba Crisis. (2 volumes), Berlin, 2012, ISBN 978-3-943549-04-1 and 978-3-943549-05-8.
• Intelligence service definitions of the " Organization Gehlen " and the early Federal Intelligence Service. Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-943549-03-4
• The Federal Intelligence Service and its Saint George Medal. Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-943549-06-5 .
• Documents of the "Organization Gehlen" on the popular uprising on June 17, 1953 . , Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-943549-08-9 .
• "In any case, the BND comes out big ..." The Federal Intelligence Service and the film project Mr. Dynamit , Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-943549-09-6 .
• With Susanne Meinl a secret object in Pullach. From the NS model estate to the headquarters of the BND , Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86153-792-2 .
• 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Documents from the files of the BND , Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-943549-10-2 .
• With Susanne Meinl Pullach, Heilmannstrasse. From the Reichsiedlung Rudolf Hess to the headquarters of the Federal Intelligence Service - history of a mysterious place , Pullach 2014, ISBN 978-3-00-048351-6 .
• Double agent Heinz Felfe discovers America. The BND, the CIA and a secret journey in 1956, Paderborn 2017, ISBN 978-3-506-78694-4 .
• Spy without limits. Heinz Felfe - Agent in seven secret services, Piper, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-492-05793-6 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Bodo Hechelhammer in the catalog of the German National Library
• http://opac.regesta-imperii.de/lang_en/autoren.php?name=Hechelhammer%2C+Bodo
• http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/geheimdienst-geschichte-statt-mythen.1153.de.html?dram:article_id=270747

Individual evidence

1. ↑ History instead of myths. Bodo Hechelhammer is the chief historian of the Federal Intelligence Service. In: deutschlandradiokultur. December 2, 2013, accessed August 15, 2015 . 
2. ↑ Bodo Hechelhammer is supposed to make the sloppy, incomplete BND archive usable - in Pullach under the sofa. In: Berliner Zeitung . March 12, 2011, accessed October 11, 2013 . 
3. ↑ Historians at the BND: Secret Service can look into the files In: Spiegel online from January 13, 2011, accessed on June 17, 2014
4. ↑ Code name "Enrico Gomez", Nazi criminal Walther Rauff and the BND. In: 3sat. Retrieved August 15, 2015 . 
5. ↑ Bodo Hechelhammer, Walther Rauff and the Federal Intelligence Service, Berlin 2011, p. 6
6. ↑ Treuer Freund In: Der Spiegel 39 (2011), p. 34
7. ↑ Brown past: BND destroys files on SS criminal Brunner. In: Spiegel online. July 20, 2011, accessed August 15, 2015 . 
8. ↑ Destruction of historically valuable files in the BND, UHK press release of November 29, 2011
9. ↑ Bodo Hechelhammer, cassations of personnel files in the holdings of the BND archive. Berlin 2011, p. 22.
10. ↑ Erich Schmidt-Eenboom: "I eat bread, I sing the song". Comments on a special publication by the Federal Intelligence Service. In: New Germany. January 31, 2012, accessed August 15, 2015 . 
11. ↑ Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Harsch went to court. Critical comments on an nd article about a special publication by the Federal Intelligence Service. In: New Germany. February 2012, accessed August 15, 2015 . 
12. ↑ Bodo Hechelhammer, The Federal Intelligence Service and the Cuba Crisis, Volume 1. Berlin 2012, p. 18.
13. ↑ Rachel Hirshfeld: Castro Hired Nazi SS to Train Military, Intel Documents Reveal. Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro recruited two former Nazi SS soldiers to help train his military at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. October 16, 2012, accessed August 15, 2015 . 
14. ↑ When Castro became interested in the Waffen SS. October 12, 2012, accessed August 15, 2015 . 
15. ↑ Bodo Hechelhammer, The "Dossiers". Reinhard Gehlen's secret special card index, in: The history of the Gehlen organization and the BND 1945-1968: Outlines and insights, Berlin 2014, pp. 81–90.
16. ^ The rediscovery of the "Gehlen card index". In: Cicero. December 3, 2013, accessed August 15, 2015 . 
17. ↑ Secrets of the Cold War - The Shadow Warriors of the BND. (pdf) (No longer available online.) In: Frontal 21. Formerly in the original ; accessed on August 15, 2015 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
18. ↑ Bodo V. Hechelhammer. In: CulturMag. Accessed October 9, 2019 (German).