Organizational unit 85

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The OU 85 ( Org 85 ) was a group in the Federal Intelligence Service to determine (BND), which until 1968 was active from November 1963 to the number of members of the BND, in the Nazi regime were charged with specific functions. The investigation was largely complete in 1966. 71 members of the BND were identified as being involved in acts of Nazi violence who then left the BND.

List of Org 85

At the beginning of 1961, the head of the BND Reinhard Gehlen commissioned the 30-year-old Hans-Henning Crome to conduct an investigation into alleged agents of other secret services in the ranks of the BND. The reason for this measure were the BND members Heinz Felfe and Johannes Clemens , who were exposed as agents of the Soviet secret service. In 1963, a working group with the code name organizational unit 85 was set up in the presidential villa on the premises of the BND in Pullach , which was led by Crome. (Crome attributed his appointment as head of Org 85 to his previous investigations into agents Felfe and Clemens. However, Gehlen also knew his father as an officer in the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht . After his captivity, his father was also a member of the BND.) Crome was supported in his work by one employee and two typists as well as by a member of the security department of the BND. This established the technical connection to the Ludwigsburg central office in order to check the career data of the persons exposed .

Task and activity

The task of the investigations of Org 85 was to identify the members of the BND who had participated in acts of violence during the National Socialist era . The suspects were asked to come to Munich to the auditing office at Bayerstraße 8, where the BND had an office. Based on the personal records of the suspects from the Nazi era, it was intended to determine in which places and in which functions they were active during the Second World War . The affiliation of these suspects to the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the Secret Field Police (GFP), the SD , the Waffen-SS , the NSDAP , the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD and similar criteria was checked.

The reviews revealed that 146 relatives were examined more closely. Of these, 75 could be classified as still usable according to the specified criteria . The last of this group ended his service with the BND in 1986. The remaining 71 people who had to leave the BND could be classified as contaminated. In order to avoid legal disputes, the vast majority of these 71 people received termination agreements and severance payments .

Report from Crome

On February 1, 1965, Crome wrote a final report entitled Working Principles and Experiences of 85 on the activities of Org 85 (Az: 815/65). In it he reported that members of special forces involved in mass executions denied complicity and even denied having heard of the crimes. Crome judged these statements to be conspicuously insincerity . The information provided by the suspect was so implausible that no intelligence service that thought and judged realistically could accept it as the truth.

The report was distributed in 20 copies to senior officials of the BND, but was withdrawn shortly afterwards. Only in 2010 was the report released for inspection by the President of the BND Ernst Uhrlau .

literature

  • Sabrian Nowack: Security risk Nazi exposure. Personal checks in the Federal Intelligence Service in the 1960s , Chr. Links Verlag, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-86153-923-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Carstens: “ Nazi Criminals in the BND: A 'Second Denazification' ”, FAZ.NET , March 18, 2010.
  2. ↑ Hans Michael Kloth: " How the BND hunted its own Nazis ", one day , March 18, 2010.