Hermann Baun

Hermann Baun (born December 17, 1897 in Odessa ; † December 17, 1951 ) was a German Abwehr officer who coordinated espionage close to the front during the Wehrmacht's entire Russian campaign and was the first head of the Gehlen organization , the forerunner of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND).

Life

Childhood and First World War

Baun was born in Odessa as the son of the businessman Carl and Wilhelmine Baun. For the grammar school he moved to Leipzig , where he received the general university entrance qualification on April 11, 1916 . At the age of 18 he joined the German army , was trained as an infantry officer during the First World War and was promoted to lieutenant in the late summer of 1917 . He had missions on the western and eastern fronts and was most recently responsible for enemy intelligence as an intelligence officer in an army high command .

Interwar period

At the end of the war, Baun resigned from military service and returned to Odessa. There he married Irma Liebmann on February 5, 1920 and five years later had a son. From 1921 to 1929 Baun worked at the German Consulate in Odessa, where he initially headed the welfare office for prisoners of war and civilian prisoners and became consulate secretary in mid-1922. He then went to the German representation in Kiev until 1937 , where he was most recently administrative assistant.

Wehrmacht

Subsequently, Baun returned to Germany and was employed in the Wehrmacht on July 1, 1937 . After a six-month probationary period as a supplementary officer ( E-officer ), he was permanently taken over on January 1, 1938 and promoted to captain. He was immediately transferred to the Foreign / Defense Office Group, presumably because of his excellent Russian and Ukrainian language skills. There he worked in Department I (intelligence gathering) in Unit I H East / North (land forces of eastern enemy states in the north). He evaluated open sources , Russian-language literature and press products. In 1939 he was the clerk responsible for Poland and evaluated captured Polish intelligence documents. Around 1940 he was promoted to major and head of the Russia department within Department I. In June 1941, Baun moved to the vicinity of Warsaw to take over the management of the "Walli I" department. It had the task of collecting intelligence from close to the front, evaluating loot documents and questioning prisoners. All enemy news about the Eastern Front converged on her. The most important consumer of Walli I was the Foreign Army East Department (FHO). In 1943 Walli I was assigned to the FHO, which had been led by Reinhard Gehlen since April 1942 . An official assessment from 1943 shows Baun as the main bearer of the secret intelligence service against Russia. Baun's wife Irma and other family members were killed in the bomb attack on Dresden in 1945 . On April 4, 1945, Baun and his adjutant Graber met with Gehlen and his deputy, Gerhard Wessel , in Bad Elster . They agreed to offer themselves, their key personnel and materials to the Americans after the war. This meeting is also called the "Pact of Bad Elster". They gave the FHO members the code name "Fritz", the defense members "Otto".

After the Second World War

On July 29, 1945, the then Lieutenant-Colonel Baun went voluntarily into American captivity in Hinterberg near Sonthofen and was held in the Allgäu area until September 1945. The Americans, who had specifically searched for Baun, hoped that he would gain in-depth knowledge of the Soviet Union , the Red Army and contacts to intact agent networks . Gehlen and other FHO members ("Fritz") were brought to the USA, where they were questioned extensively. A first preliminary questioning of Baun took place on August 16, 1945 in the interrogation center of the 3rd US Army in Freising . On October 10, 1945, he presented the Americans with a concept he had developed for an espionage and counter-espionage organization (code name: Keystone). In November 1945, Baun traveled through the American occupation zone to look for former Abwehr employees ("Otto"). They were accommodated in a small hotel in Oberursel . The US War Department issued on 10 December 1945, the permit for espionage activities of the "Group Baun." Brigadier General Edwin L. Sibert, G2 of the United States Forces European Theater , was directly responsible for the deployment of Baun . Sibert put Fritz and Otto together in the so-called "Organization X". In early 1946, Baun's focus was on counter-espionage in order to identify Soviet espionage in the American zone of occupation. Alfred Bentzinger was commissioned by Baun to set up office 114 in Karlsruhe . From April 1, 1946, the focus changed to military reconnaissance in the Soviet occupation zone . This date was also the official start of "Operation Rusty", which would later become the Gehlen Organization . Baun was their first leader. In the late summer of 1946 he had 124 full-time employees. However, the reactivation of old Abwehr agent networks and Walli I did not succeed. The main sources of knowledge were the interviews with returning prisoners of war and refugees. In addition, there was a modest telecommunications education .

Gehlen returned from the US in July 1946 and was integrated into Operation Rusty. With him, an evaluation component was added to Operation Rusty, which he led. In February 1947, Gehlen took over the overall management of Operation Rusty. Baun remained in charge of procurement until April 1947. Then he was deposed by Gehlen and should henceforth deal with the reconnaissance against the Soviet Union (deep reconnaissance / strategic reconnaissance). Activities were to be based in the Middle East , which is why Baun prepared for his departure to Tehran at the end of 1948 . On January 31, 1950 he left the Gehlen organization . Baun died on his 54th birthday to cancer .

literature

• Magnus Pahl : Hermann Baun (1897–1951) - Failed chief espionage . In: Helmut Müller-Enbergs , Armin Wagner (ed.): Spies and news dealers - secret service careers in Germany 1939–1989 . 1st edition. Ch. Links Verlag , Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-872-1 , p. 38–77 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
• Thomas Wolf: The creation of the BND. Construction, financing, control . Ed .: Jost Dülffer et al. (=  Publications of the Independent Historical Commission for Research into the History of the Federal Intelligence Service 1945–1968 . Volume 9 ). 1st edition. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-96289-022-3 ( limited preview in Google book search).

Web links

• Rainer Blasius: The obsessive enemy BND. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . April 1, 2016, accessed April 6, 2020 . 
• Photo Bauns in Google Book Search

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kevin C. Ruffner: A Controversial Liaison Relationship: American Intelligence and the Gehlen Organization, 1945-49 . In: CIA (Ed.): Studies in Intelligence . 1997, p. 69-84 ( numbers-stations.com [PDF]).