General agency L

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The general agency L , GV L for short (first agency 114 , later agency 142 ), was a secret service facility of the Gehlen Organization (OG) and the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) with headquarters in Karlsruhe .

history

Name and area of ​​responsibility

The OG general agency L was founded as early as 1946 as agency 114 , which was initially still directly subordinate to the American Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC). It was located in a back yard in Karlsruhe's Gerwigstrasse, disguised as the roller shutter company Zimmerle & Co. The GV L was named after the alias of its manager Alfred Benzinger , who worked as Leidl on the upper floor . After the conversion of the OG into the BND in April 1956, the GV L was finally called department 142 . This is an arbitrary number designation.

The task of the GV L was actually to operate counter-espionage against Soviet agents for the Americans . However, the OG manager Reinhard Gehlen used this mandate "to set up a system of informers against pacifists and communists ." In practice, the area of ​​responsibility of the GV L comprised three main areas:

  1. Establishment and management of a network of informants in the western zones , later the Federal Republic , to monitor legal and illegal communist activities
  2. Active espionage by investigating the Soviet occupation zone , later the GDR , as well as establishing counter-espionage connections in the Eastern Bloc
  3. Educational work against France

Employee

The CIA man James H. Critchfield estimated the strength of the GV L at 400 people in 1948 . An incomplete CIA overview from 1950 lists almost 250 employees, including about 80 permanent OG employees (including drivers and office staff), 86 agents in West and 32 in East Germany, 36 other sources in the West and 12 in the East. Heinz Felfe , himself a member of GV L from 1951 , stated the number of employees as around 300.

The founder of GV L was Gehlen's confidante Hermann Baun , former commander of the Defense Front Reconnaissance Control Center I East ("Walli I"). As head of the future general agency, he hired Alfred Benzinger, who was already known to him from wartime but was inexperienced in counter-espionage. During the Second World War , the Benzingen sergeant, born in 1912, was assigned to the Secret Field Police (GFP), the " Gestapo of the Wehrmacht ", and later to the military defense in occupied France . Benzinger was unpopular with his employees and was disparagingly called "the fat one" by them. He was considered a braggart, technically incompetent and is said to have linked his work with private business.

The employees of GV L in the 1950s included, among others, Philipp Herbold , who had already worked with Benzinger during the war, as well as the former members of the Abwehr Erich Heidschuch , Oscar Reile and Otto Wagner (code name DELIUS). Benzinger and the former Nazi field police chief Wilhelm Krichbaum, who also worked for the OG, had recruited a number of former SS and SD / RSHA employees, some of whom were heavily burdened, for GV L , such as Emil Augsburg , Herbert Böhrsch , Georg Grimm , Kurt Moritz , Walter Otten , Heinrich Josef Reiser , Carl Schütz , Ernst Schwartzwaller , Otto Somann , the former SS war correspondent Cornelius van der Horst and the former Hungarian police general and Arrow Cross member Paul Hodosy-Strobl . The GV L thus became the "main gateway" into the West German secret service for Nazi criminals.

This personnel policy repeatedly led GV L and its parent service OG / BND into crises, as the Nazi past offered many employees the opportunity to infiltrate Eastern secret services . In 1953, Wolfgang Höher, a member of the GV L district representation in Berlin, was allegedly kidnapped to East Berlin . In fact, Höher worked as a double agent for the KGB and the MfS . In 1955, the leading GV L employee Ludwig Albert , a former member of the Secret Field Police and a temporary member of a task force , was arrested as an alleged ostagent. He committed suicide while in custody . In 1961, the former SD members Hans Clemens and Heinz Felfe, originally recruited for GV L , were transferred as KGB agents. Starting in 1963, 146 members of the BND were therefore checked for their Nazi past by the specially established organizational unit 85 , and 71 of them were successively removed from service “due to demonstrable participation in violent Nazi crimes”.

construction

The GV L was the largest of several general agencies of the Gehlen organization . In 1949/50 her budget was between 56,000 and 60,000 marks a month. The general agency had disguised district agencies (BV) in numerous major West German cities, sub-agencies (UV) for recruiting, training and managing agents, branches close to the border as contact points for informants and independently acting groups of foreign employees, called special connections (SV). In 1948, the CIA employee Critchfield stated that the GV L comprised 8 regional field stations ("field stations"). But even the CIA was not the complete structure of the GV L known. The facilities of GV L in the early 1950s included:

  • The headquarters of GV L in Karlsruhe, Gerwigstrasse 36, with 16 employees.
  • The BV 2600 (North) in Frankfurt am Main , Head of Ludwig Albert, in charge of Hesse and the British occupation zone . It had 20 permanent OG employees, 24 agents west and 5 east, 12 sources west, 1 east. By 1953 at the latest, there was a branch in Mainz , managed by Georg Grimm.
  • From 1952, CIA reports also mention a BV West , which is probably identical to the BV Rhein-Ruhr established by Hans Clemens . Head of the associated UV 2978 was Carl Schütz in 1952/53.
  • BV 2601 (south), initially in Coburg , responsible for Bavaria and Württemberg-Baden ; 12 permanent OG employees and 3 German-Russian interrogators, 44 agents west, 23 sources west, 1 source east. From 1951 Wilhelm Krichbaum is said to have been its director. The BV had a UV Oberrhein , management Otto Wagner, responsible for the French occupation zone as well as southern Baden and -Wuerttemberg. There were also branch offices in Munich-Allach (Vogelloh 3 and 11, headed by Erich Heidschuh), Augsburg (questioning returning prisoners of war ) and Regensburg (Prüfingerstraße 109).
  • BV 2602 , later BV-E ( Berlin ) with 10 permanent employees on the upper floor and 3 eastern sources. The ML sub- agency, which was active in espionage in the GDR, was also based in Berlin . The only OG member was Arthur Benzinger's brother, who managed 27 agents and 6 sources in East Germany.
  • BV 2603 ("counter espionage") in Künzelsau , Langenburger Str. 35, managed by Oscar Reile, with 7 permanent employees on the upper floor.
  • In addition there were the special connections SV Condor (group of Russian employees), SV Czardas (3 Hungarian employees with 3 agents, management Paul Hodosy-Strobl) and SV Polka (Polish group; the only OG employee was the former Ukrainian collaborator Gleb Umnov , 8 agents) .
  • Waldkapelle , an internal security group of the GV, which existed both in the headquarters and in the BVs. Kurt Moritz (code name MAUE) was the director of the forest chapel of BV Berlin.

As a result of repeated secret service mishaps, the GV L was restructured several times from 1953 and finally downsized. In 1968 the BND was completely reorganized.

literature

  • Richard Breitman, Norman JW Goda, Timothy Naftali, Robert Wolfe: US Intelligence and the Nazis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 ISBN 978-0-521-85268-5 .
  • James H. Critchfield: Partners at the Creation. The Men behind Postwar Germany's Defense and Intelligence Establishments. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2003 ISBN 1-59114-136-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joachim Bornschein: perpetrators in secret. Wilhelm Krichbaum between the Nazi field police and the Gehlen organization. Leipzig 2010, p. 132.
  2. ↑ a b c Klaus Wiegrefe : Brown roots . In: Der Spiegel No. 7 v. February 14, 2011, p. 28f.
  3. ↑ a b James H. Critchfield, KGB-Felfe documents . James H. Critchfield Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library, College of William & Mary , Part 8 , unfollowed (6.3 MB) (accessed September 2, 2014); see. James H. Critchfield: Partners at the Creation. The Men behind Postwar Germany's Defense and Intelligence Establishments. Annapolis 2003.
  4. ↑ Heinz Felfe: In the service of the enemy. Autobiography. Berlin (Ost) 1988, pp. 271-273.
  5. ↑ Wave of Truths . In: In: Der Spiegel No. 1 v. January 2, 2012, pp. 32-39.
  6. ^ A b Armin Wagner, Matthias Uhl: BND contra Soviet Army. West German military espionage in the GDR. Berlin 2008, p. 63.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Heinz Felfe: In the service of the enemy. Autobiography. Berlin (Ost) 1988, pp. 193-197.
  8. ↑ a b Timothy Naftali: Reinhard Gehlen and the United States. In: Richard Breitman et al .: US Intelligence and the Nazis. Cambridge 2005, pp. 375-418, here: p. 389.
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g h ODEUM introduction: Study of Organization 114 v. February 17, 1950 (released document from the holdings of the CIA), NWCDA 1/1, Albert, Ludwig, 0011 ( PDF 1.3 MB, accessed on September 2, 2014).
  10. ↑ James H. Critchfield. Partners at the Creation. The Men behind Postwar Germany's Defense and Intelligence Establishments. Annapolis 2003, pp. 34-36, 163; Hermann Zolling, Heinz Höhne: Pullach intern. The history of the Federal Intelligence Service . 7. Continuation. In Der Spiegel No. 18 v. Chr. April 26, 1971, pp. 145-161, here p. 145.
  11. ↑ Quote from: Klaus Geßner: Geheime Feldpolizei - the Gestapo of the Wehrmacht. In: Hannes Heer , Klaus Naumann (ed.): War of Extermination - Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941-1944. Hamburg 1995, pp. 343-356.
  12. ↑ Klaus Eichner , Gotthold Schramm : Attack and Defense. The German secret services after 1945. Berlin 2007, p. 89f.
  13. ↑ a b Timothy Naftali: Reinhard Gehlen and the United States. In: Richard Breitman et al .: US Intelligence and the Nazis. Cambridge 2005, pp. 375-418.
  14. ↑ a b Erich Schmidt-Eenboom : "I eat bread, I sing the song". Comments on a special publication by the Federal Intelligence Service . In: Neues Deutschland v. January 31, 2012.
  15. ^ A b James H. Critchfield: Partners at the Creation. The Men behind Postwar Germany's Defense and Intelligence Establishments. Annapolis 2003, pp. 171-173.
  16. ^ Wolfgang Kraushaar: career of a boxer. Johannes Clemens. In: Mittelweg 36 (1996), H. 5, pp. 3-18; Heinz Felfe: In the service of the enemy. Autobiography. Berlin (East) 1988, passim.
  17. ^ Peter Carstens: Nazi criminals in the BND: A "second denazification" . In: FAZ v. March 18, 2010 (accessed September 12, 2014).
  18. ↑ cf. Keyword general agency (GV) . In: Jefferson Adams: Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence. Lanham 2009, p. 132.
  19. ↑ a b UJ-Dredger Report Albert, Ludwig 1955 (released document from the holdings of the CIA), NWCDA 1/1, Albert, Ludwig, 0027 ( PDF 4 MB, accessed on September 2, 2014).
  20. ^ Henry Leide: Nazi Criminals and State Security The GDR's Secret Politics of the Past. Göttingen 2005, p. 62.
  21. ↑ CIA data sheet Schuetz, Carl (undated) (released document from the CIA's holdings), NWCDA 7/170 Schuetz, Carl 0002 ( PDF 331 kB, accessed on September 2, 2014).
  22. ↑ Joachim Bornschein: perpetrators in secret. Wilhelm Krichbaum between the Nazi field police and the Gehlen organization. Leipzig 2010, p. 106.
  23. ^ Career of Kurt Maue (no year) (released document from the holdings of the CIA), NWCDA 6/155 MORITZ, KURT AUGUST HUGO 0005 ( PDF 957 kB, accessed on September 2, 2014).
  24. ↑ Udo Ulfkotte: classified information BND . Revised Edition, Munich 1998, p. 157f.