Stay-behind organization

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As a stay-behind organization or stay-behind (from English stay behind , "stay back / behind"; abandonment organization or roll-over group ) is a secret paramilitary resistance organization , which in the event of hostile occupation of a state or parts of it behind the The front is supposed to provide intelligence and sabotage against the occupying power . While the regular army withdraws from an attacker, these units can be rolled over by the front and then operate in their rear.

Apart from a few forerunners, stay-behind refers to organizations that were founded in Western Europe after the Second World War and that should be used behind their lines in the event of an invasion by Warsaw Pact troops . In many cases they only became known in 1990 when Gladio was discovered in Italy. They were partly disbanded during and partly after the Cold War .

precursor

The first stay-behind organization emerged in Great Britain as part of the resistance movement against National Socialism . In summer 1940, the British decided Staff Committee in preparation for a possible occupation of the British Isles by the army to train armed fighter groups behind the lines of the German occupying power a guerrilla war should lead. With the establishment of such units - the Special Operations Executive - was Colonel Colin Gubbins instructed previously in Norway in the Allied rear guard had tried to delay the advance of the German troops. The units were supposed to disrupt the supply lines of the Wehrmacht through raids and ambushes. In addition, a group should be equipped with transmitters and specially trained for intelligence tasks.

West Germany

After the end of the war, in the context of various security-political crises, the Western allies began with plans for Western European stay-behinds (first phase) and built up the first until the establishment of the Bundeswehr in 1955 in the Federal Republic of Germany (second phase), which then became the Federal Intelligence Service (BND ) took over (third phase).

Until 1949

For the western allies (USA, Great Britain, France) various resistance groups in continental Europe had contributed to the military victory over the German Reich and its allies. In the emerging Cold War (from around 1947) they began to consider setting up appropriate stay-behind units in the event of a Soviet occupation of Western European countries. The fear of Soviet attacks on Western Europe, especially on West Germany, was nourished by the February revolution in Czechoslovakia , with which communists took power there. Based on their historical experience with the German occupation, they wanted to prepare secret operations in the event of a new, this time Soviet occupation. To this end, Western European countries signed the Brussels Pact in April 1948 .

From 1949

According to the files released by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the USA in 2005 , the CIA initially founded the units Pastime ( West Berlin ) and Kibitz ( Karlsruhe ) in 1949 . They were part of an American security service program that included other stay-behind units. The Berlin units were as Berlin Operations Base (BOB) out to the south and southwest Germany as Karlsruhe Operations Base (KOB) , located in the general agency L . The following stay-behind projects, which were encrypted with Identity 1,2, etc. , were coordinated from these two main locations :

  • Pastime = Identity 1, a unit established in Berlin before the actual stay-behind program
  • Vulture = Identity 2, responsible for digging underground material hiding places, procuring gold, etc. for all KOB and BOB networks
  • Missouri = Identity 3, organization of "safe houses", i.e. secret hiding places for BOB and KOB networks
  • Kibitz = Identity 4, recruiting, organizing and training stay-behind staff. Kibitz had several subdivisions
  • Fold = Identity 5, organization of "safe houses" for networks in the BOB area
  • Cajun = Identity 6, development and training of BOB staff in dealing with telecommunications technology
  • Cadeau = Identity 7, procurement unit for the procurement of required material for agents and others who are in connection with Identity 8
  • Cabinda = Identity 8, unit for the provision of selected American secret service agents who served as the core of the other units
  • Wrinkle = Identity 9, an operational unit that was already obsolete at the beginning of the program, whose tasks have meanwhile been integrated into the other 8 identities [1]

The core of the Kibitz network, founded in 1950, resulted from a letter from the former Wehrmacht officer Walter Kopp to John Jay McCloy , who, as High Commissioner, was the highest representative of the victorious Allied powers in the newly founded Federal Republic of Germany . In the letter, Kopp, as the dispatched spokesman for an interest group made up of former Reichswehr members, expressed concerns about an invasion of the Soviet army in Western Europe and offered the American occupation forces a cooperation. As a result, the US secret service suggested the establishment of a stay-behind organization under his leadership. Kopp agreed and demanded in return u. a. an adequate position in a German or European army. In addition, Kopp attached great importance to the statement that he was not a US agent and that his commitment was solely for the “fight against the black race”, the “fight against communism and Bolshevism” and the “protection of Europe”. US secret services classified Kopp as a nationalist, militant anti-communist and pro-Western German who supports the NATO alliance and the idea of ​​a European army.

Kopp alias Kibitz 15 contacted approx. 500 possible candidates, from which 125 anti-Bolsheviks were ultimately recruited, whom Kopp classified as suitable for subversive work. Karlsruhe was chosen as the basis for the network . The largest of the Kibitz unit, divided into twelve subdivisions, with 63 people, was headed by Walter Kopp with the participation of the former high-ranking SS soldiers Hans Rues (alias Kibitz 16 ) and Heinrich Hoffmann. The main task was to train these people in telecommunications and communications engineering. In addition, military exercises were carried out under German direction and American observation.

For certain agents from the Kibitz network, a total of nine "safe houses" have been set up. These shelters were US-owned apartments in nondescript residential buildings such as B. in Heidelberg , Unterschondorf am Ammersee and Ulm . In the Heidelberg shelter from 1951 to October 1952 the fictitious news agency "Cosmopress" was operated for camouflage. In June 1952, Hans Otto Ims (alias Kibitz 171 ) uncovered some agents of the Kibitz 15 division. For intelligence security reasons, Ims then emigrated to Canada with the help of the CIA and the Australian Consulate General. The unmasking of the Kibitz 15 agents, as well as the assessment of the US secret services that the goals of Kopp and those of the US services differ too much from each other, led to the partial dissolution of this unit.

In addition to the BOB and KOB networks, the POB ( Pullach Operation Base ), which was founded on the initiative of the US secret service official James H. Critchfield , was located within the Gehlen organization . The nationwide ZIPPER stay-behind network with units in Munich, Frankfurt, Bremen and Hanover (including the SATURN unit ) was managed from Pullach . According to sources, the 150-man ZIPPER network was managed by the US secret service official Richard Helms .

The trained units set up secret depots all over the Federal Republic of Germany with weapons, explosives, radio and Morse code devices as well as supplies. Two completely preserved depots were discovered in the spring of 1996 in Berlin's Grunewald .

NATO was founded in 1949. In 1952, the Western European intelligence services involved and the NATO military leadership set up the Coordinating and Planning Committee (CPC) to coordinate their plans. In 1954 they founded the Allied Coordination Center (ACC) to coordinate their collaboration . According to a later statement by the German government, both bodies were not part of the NATO structure.

In September 1952 the Technische Dienst (TD) became known in the Federal Republic of Germany , a sub-organization of the Bund Deutscher Jugend (BDJ) dominated by right-wing extremists . The former SS member Hans Otto wanted to get out of this group. He told the Hessian criminal police that he belonged to "a political resistance group whose task it was to carry out acts of sabotage and blow bridges in the event of an occupation of the Federal Republic by the armed forces of the Warsaw Pact states". Otto further testified that about 100 members of the organization had received political training and instruction in the use of American, Soviet and German weapons and the use of military tactics. The members of this organization were mainly former officers of the Air Force , the Army or the Waffen SS . Otto told the police that an American secret service agent provided the money and most of the training and equipment. The men were instructed near Wald-Michelbach , a community in the Hessian Odenwald, had a house with an underground shooting range and a bunker nearby, and were taught to kill without leaving any traces.

During a raid by the German police it became known that the USA had financed the group with 50,000 DM per month and supplied them with weapons, ammunition and explosives. In Odenwald a weapons cache was found with machine guns , grenades, light artillery guns and explosives. There was also a list of 40 German leaders who were classified as “not reliably anti-communist” and who were intended to be assassination victims, including the SPD party leader at the time, Erich Ollenhauer , Herbert Wehner , Heinrich Zinnkann and some SPD mayors. In order to carry out the attacks as efficiently as possible, the BDJ-TD smuggled members into the SPD.

Several members were arrested. After the Federal Prosecutor's Office had taken over the case, Federal Prosecutor Carlo Wiechmann released the suspects on October 1, 1952. The Hessian police and the Federal Ministry of Justice were not informed. This led to considerable political irritation. The Hessian Prime Minister Georg-August Zinn (SPD) said: "The only legal explanation for these dismissals can only be for us that the people in Karlsruhe have declared that they were working on American orders." Who in the federal prosecutor's office the release who caused the arrested could never be clarified.

The USA declared on October 2, 1952 for the first time that they had set up and financed the BDJ-TD, but had stopped these activities six months earlier. Nothing was known about the continued existence of the organization. A German-American investigative commission was formed to investigate the events and was reinstated in November 1952. As a result, it was reported that the USA had no knowledge of the illegal activities of the BDJ-TD.

The German units such as the Secret Resistance , Kibitz , Gruppe 27 or the Bund Deutscher Jugend (dissolved in 1953) were initially subordinate to the Gehlen organization . The first talks and plans for the establishment of a Germany-wide " evasion and escape network " ( Evasion and Escape , E&E) between the American foreign intelligence service CIA and the Gehlen organization took place in 1950. Since 1954/1955 the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (NATO Headquarters) coordinated the tasks of the national secret services of the NATO countries. This was made known by the “Stay-behind Report” published in 1990 by Lutz Stavenhagen (then Minister of State in the Federal Chancellery ). In 1955, planning provided for the subdivision of West Germany into 13 EE districts and the creation of several hundred depots with emergency equipment.

From 1956

In 1956 the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) was founded and took over the West German stay-behind units that had been formed up to then. Since 1959 the BND has been a regular member of the CPC and ACC bodies. According to the federal government, the German stay-behind structures he led were not part of NATO, nor were any other national intelligence services of NATO member states.

In 1959 the organization comprised around 75 full-time employees and at times up to 500 people with intelligence connections. In the beginning there was also an operational part to train people who were supposed to carry out acts of sabotage against the occupying forces in the occupied area and to lead resistance groups. With the changed security situation between East and West, the workforce has been gradually reduced since the early 1970s. In 1983 the BND stopped most of the stay-behinds at the time. At the beginning of 1986 there were still 26 full-time employees and 104 "intelligence connections" who worked together with the BND as part of stay-behind units. These were German citizens of various professional groups who would have taken on the classic stay-behind activities such as intelligence gathering and smuggling tasks in the event of an enemy occupation.

The Ministry for State Security (MfS) of the GDR noticed the preparations of the BND under the legend of teaching and training group for tele-spying of the Bundeswehr and cleared up well over 50 West German units with their radio connections, weapon depots and members by 1980.

According to the BND historian Bodo Hechelhammer , "in consultation with the associated partners, the German unit was dissolved in the third quarter of 1991 and the contacts to the intelligence services ceased". According to the federal government, the SOO was dissolved on September 30, 1991.

Belgium

After the existence of the stay-behind organization Gladio in Italy became known in 1990, a parliamentary investigation was to clarify whether the Belgian “stay-behind organizations” were involved in Belgian terrorist attacks. The Senators found no solid evidence that criminal groups had infiltrated the stay-behind network. They confirmed in the final report that there had been two stay-behind networks in Belgium for decades, called SDRA VIII and STC / Mob . The department SDRA VIII was a sub-unit of the military intelligence service SGR (Service Général de Renseignement) . Until spring 1990, their mission consisted on the one hand of organizing a radio network that would have enabled agents in occupied Belgium to contact the Belgian government in exile and on the other hand of setting up evacuation routes in the event of an occupation of Belgium. The second assignment was canceled in May 1990 and the number of instructors deployed was halved. The civilian branch STC / Mob was part of the civil intelligence service ( Sûreté de l'Etat ) and was subordinate to the Ministry of Justice. Its mission consisted mainly of gathering information in occupied Belgium that would have been of importance to the government in exile. The network was created in 1969/1970 and would not have been combined with SDR VIII until it had been occupied.

Greece

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's aim was to prevent the communist-led resistance movement EAM from coming to power after the end of World War II. After the suppression of an uprising by EAM supporters among the Greek armed forces in Egypt in April 1944 , a new and reliable unit was set up, the Third Hellenic Mountain Brigade, from which "almost all men of moderately conservative to leftist views" were excluded. After the liberation in October 1944, the EAM controlled most of the country. When she organized a demonstration in Athens on December 3, 1944, members of right-wing and pro-royalist paramilitary groups suddenly shot into the crowd. They were covered by "British troops and by police officers with machine guns [...] who had taken position on the roofs of houses". 25 demonstrators were killed, including a six-month-old boy, and 148 injured. This was the outbreak of the Battle of Athens (Dekemvriana) , which subsequently led to the Greek Civil War .

When Greece joined NATO in 1952, the LOK (Lochoi Oreinōn Katadromōn, i.e. mountain hunter companies) were incorporated into the European stay-behind network. On March 25, 1955, the CIA and LOC confirmed their cooperation in a secret document signed by General Trascott for the CIA and by Konstantinos Dovas, Chief of Staff of the Greek military. In addition to preparing for a Soviet invasion, the CIA also gave instructions to the LOC to prevent a left-wing military coup.

The approximately 300 men of the LOC were involved in the coup of April 21, 1967, which brought the Greek military dictatorship (1967–1974) to power. Andreas Papandreou went into exile, from which he returned in 1974. In 1981 he became Prime Minister. He covered his own testimony to the existence of the secret stay-behind force on which the code name Red Sheepskin (Red sheepskin) wore and gave instructions for their resolution. According to Andreotti's 1990 revelations, the Greek Defense Minister confirmed that a branch of the network, code-named, had been active in his country until 1988. The socialist opposition called for a parliamentary investigation into the secret organization and its alleged links to terrorism and the 1967 military coup. Interior Minister Yannis Vassiliadis said there was no need to investigate such “fantasies” because “Sheepskin was one of 50 NATO plans that stipulated that when a country is occupied by an enemy, an organized resistance should exist. Sheepskin provided secret weapons hiding places and officers who could form the core of a guerrilla war. In other words, it was, nationally, a justified process. "

Italy

Gladio was the name of a secret, paramilitary stay-behind unit in Italy . Gladio would carry out guerrilla operations and sabotage against the invaders in the event of an invasion by Warsaw Pact troops . In August 1990, the Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed the existence of Gladio in response to a parliamentary request.

Luxembourg

According to a newspaper report of November 10, 1990 in the newspaper vum Lëtzebuerger Vollek , Jacques Santer confirmed the existence of a stay-behind organization in Luxembourg on November 14, 1990 before the Luxembourg parliament and, as the responsible member of the government, ordered its immediate dissolution. The organization had been activated since 1959 with the approval of Prime Minister Pierre Werner , its control was carried out by the Luxembourg secret service Service de Renseignement de l'Etat , and coordination was carried out by a NATO agency. On December 17, 1990, Santer informed the parliament's constitutional committee that the organization had never consisted of more than twelve people and was only intended for the transmission of intelligence information and the infiltration and removal of people. Hand weapons had been in storage since 1973, and direct access to them was not provided. On October 14, 1990, members of the organization who were still alive were informed of the dissolution and asked to hand over their radio material. Senningen Castle near Niederanven was the site of an international stay-behind meeting in 1986.

Spain

In response to Giulio Andreotti's extensive confessions , Adolfo Suárez , Spain's first democratically elected prime minister after Franco's death, denied having ever heard of Gladio. Suárez 'successor Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo stated that Spain would not have been informed about Gladio after joining NATO. He also said that such a network was not necessary in French-speaking Spain, as "the regime itself was Gladio".

General Fausto Fortunato, head of the Italian secret service SISMI from 1971 to 1974, said that France and the US supported Spain's entry into the Gladio organization, but Italy vetoed it. However, the Spanish Defense Minister Narcís Serra ordered an investigation into Spain's relationship with Gladio. In addition, the newspaper Canarias 7 wrote , citing the former Gladio agent Alberto Volo, that a Gladio meeting had taken place in Gran Canaria in early August 1991 . Volo also stated that he completed training courses as a Gladio agent in Maspalomas , Gran Canaria , in the 1960s and 1970s .

Austria

In 1947, trade unionists in occupied post-war Austria agreed to set up a powerful force against attempts at communist overthrow. After this, under the leadership of Franz Olah, played a decisive role in the crackdown on the general strike during the October strike in 1950 , it was expanded into a paramilitary stay-behind organization with the support of the CIA under the cover name of Austrian hiking, sport and Social club there. Special units were trained as stay-behinds in the American occupation zone and front companies took care of the financial processing. When Franz Olah became Minister of the Interior in 1963 and a détente in the Cold War was recognizable internationally, this organization was gradually dissolved.

In the course of a domestic political scandal in 1969, information about this stay-behind organization first came to the public. The peculiarity of the Austrian organization was that it relied exclusively on socialist trade unionists. In 1996, secret documents from the occupation were published in the USA, which led to the discovery of 85 hidden weapons depots in Salzburg , Upper Austria and Upper Styria . To make it more difficult to find the camps, the buried material was covered with a layer of metal scrap, usually empty cans. Almost all weapons and equipment corresponded to the standard equipment of the US Army for the period 1945-1960. The most striking aspect of the weapons depot was represented by large amounts of plastic explosives and detonators .

Switzerland

A secret resistance organization existed in Switzerland until 1990. It last had the cover name Project 26 (P-26) and trained Swiss citizens (men and women) for conspiratorial resistance. In the event of an occupation, they were supposed to maintain the will to resist among the population through leaflets, mockery of the enemy and high-profile acts of sabotage. While radio equipment and cipher tables had already been given to the radio operators in the cells for training purposes, sensitive material such as explosives and firearms were stored in military magazines and should only be given out in the event of an invasion of Switzerland.

Project 26 was investigated in 1990 by the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (PUK-EMD) in the aftermath of the Fichen affair and subsequently dissolved by the Swiss Federal Council in view of the changed security situation in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Since similar organizations in other European countries became known at the same time and the question arose as to whether project 26 had been part of a European network, the Federal Council commissioned the investigating judge Pierre Cornu to carry out additional investigations. Cornu made public that the Swiss cooperated loosely with the British secret service MI6 and the British Special Air Service for training purposes . He was unable to establish any further or institutionalized cooperation: "Neither the P-26 nor the predecessor organizations had relations with the international committees or were represented in them, or were involved in an international resistance community."

The report of the Cornu investigation ( ( Cornu report ) ) was published in 1991 only in an abridged version. Since the original report also contained numerous statements about foreign intelligence services and their stay-behind preparations, such as the British intelligence service MI6, which officially did not even exist until 1993, the Federal Council decided not to publish it in full. In 2018 the Federal Council published the entire report, although the passages mentioned and names of people were still blackened out.

United States

Between 1951 and 1959 , the FBI promoted the establishment of a stay-behind network in Alaska under the name Operation Washtub . This was triggered by fears that the Korean War could mark the beginning of a new world war in the course of which the Soviet Union would occupy Alaska. The stay-behind network had two tasks: The primary task was to recruit and train “stay-behind agents” who were tasked with transmitting intelligence information from the occupied territories to the US armed forces. The secondary task was to train civilians to be agents who would have been able, for example, to evacuate shot down military pilots from the occupied territories. This “evasion and escape” preparation was coordinated with the CIA .

A total of 89 civilian agents were recruited and prepared for their possible deployment. Preparations included creating depots for food, winter equipment and radios. After Alaska became a fully fledged US state in 1959, preparations were discontinued. In 2014, the FBI released relevant documents.

research

The discovery of Gladio in Italy sparked some research on the Western European stay-behind from groups to their coordination and their activities until 1990. The Swiss historian Daniele Ganser devoted to this subject his 2005 published dissertation NATO's Secret Armies, in 2008 under the title NATO - Secret armies in Europe appeared in German. He advocates the thesis that the "secret armies" in many Western European countries were subordinate to certain NATO bodies, were directed from there and were involved in state terrorism along the lines of the Italian strategy of tension .

Other scientists who have done research on the subject have rejected this central control hypothesis. According to political scientist Philip HJ Davies , Ganser's lack of knowledge of intelligence work has led him to imagine conspiracies, exaggerate the scope and importance of covert operations, misunderstand their coordination with national governments, and historically misclassify their activities. Even his description of relatively small sleeper cells, trained for sabotage and equipped with weapons stores, as "armies" is inaccurate. He claims constant, sometimes criminal action by the USA and NATO against the political left. In addition, he portrayed Gladio actions in the 1960s as a coup attempt by the CIA, although the actors had assured him of their own initiative. He describes the Allied Clandestine Committee of NATO as the coordinator of those crimes, without understanding the multinational division of labor of the networks. He regards members of paramilitary and non-military special operations indiscriminately as intelligence agents. In doing so, he overlooks the fact that paramilitaries equipped and trained by the CIA have historically often evaded their control and then committed crimes. Ganser relies only on journalistic sources and poorly valid primary sources. He does not consider academic studies by subject matter experts and critical material in specialist magazines of the US services. The important story of the Allied Staybehinds must therefore first be told precisely and well.

The Danish historian Peer Henrik Hansen sees Ganser's book not as serious scientific research, but as journalistic work with a considerable amount of conspiracy theory . Ganser does not present his methodological approach and treat his sources (especially newspaper reports and publications by politicians) uncritically. He claims, without proof, a conspiracy between Western states and their secret services, especially the CIA and MI6, with the NATO secret armies. The testimony he cited showed, however, that the CIA and MI6 did not have the right to vote in NATO bodies. Ganser cites a version of the US Army Manual 30-31B as evidence that had been exposed as falsified by the KGB before 1990 . Stay-behind troops from some Scandinavian countries were established and controlled nationally before NATO was established. Undeniable crimes committed by some stay-behind members should not lead to branding everyone as terrorists.

In 2005 and 2014, historian Olav Riste criticized Ganser's main thesis that the stay-behind groups were a CIA-controlled, conspiratorial network across Western Europe that was predominantly infiltrated by right-wing extremists and carried out acts of terrorism aimed at destroying left groups. It is true that there are hardly any reliable documents on the subject. However, Ganser does not give a critical overview of his sources, does not try to classify them and accepts indiscriminately printed statements as evidence. He cited sources incorrectly, including Riste himself, and gave many unsubstantiated allegations as historical facts. Investigative committees and historians in Italy and Belgium have rejected acts of terrorism by stay-behind groups. Some Western European countries, not the CIA and MI6, would have formed these groups out of special national interests. Their patriotic members could not be directed from the outside. The members of the Atlantic Pact Clandestine Committee (ACC) had to accept the independence of the networks in the member states. Thus the thesis of centrally controlled “NATO secret armies” is wrong. According to the documents available, the states participating in the ACC excluded sabotage in the 1970s, reduced weapons depots, dissolved them or placed them under their own armies and maintained their independence from NATO command structures.

For historian Charles G. Cogan , Ganser's book is one of those journalistic writings that link stay-behind networks with more and more actions without solid evidence. Ganser claims that the CIA supported a coup d'état against Charles de Gaulle in 1961 with NATO secret armies and the US Department of Defense and encouraged the coup leader Maurice Challe . However, there is no evidence of this.

The historian Gregor Schöllgen agreed with Ganser that 16 NATO countries had stay-behind troops coordinated from NATO headquarters. Ganser could almost only rely on known material. It is true that what has been compiled from these sources is “remarkable overall”, but “not infrequently grotesquely exaggerated”. Connections of the organization Gehlen and the resulting Federal Intelligence Service (BND) in the "right wing milieu" are undeniable, but whether and to what extent the forerunner of the BND was also involved in the Staybehind troop " Technical Service " is still unknown. Nonetheless, Ganser speculated that the BND was involved in the Oktoberfest attack in 1980. Ganser assumed that there would be "secret German Nazi stay-behind armies of divisional strength" for the early 1950s, while others estimated up to 600 members for the 1960s.

For the historian Pascal Girard (2008) Ganser's thesis that the CIA caused all or part of important European events of the post-war period is an uncheckable assumption.

In January 2006, the United States Department of State criticized Ganser for presenting a forged version of US Army Manual 30-31B as "perhaps the most important Pentagon document in relation to stay-behind armies" and as the basis for their activities. However, this version had been known since 1980 as a forgery created and widespread by the Soviet secret services.

In 2018, the Swiss historian Titus Meier published his dissertation on the resistance preparations in Switzerland during the Cold War. He was able to work with the files in the Swiss Federal Archives for the first time and refute numerous speculative statements. Among other things, he refuted Ganser's thesis that the Swiss preparations were part of a European network. Siegfried Weichlein criticized “Meier's attempt to depoliticize the debate about the 'secret army'” as a “sham objectification”: “A real objectification would have required a comparison with other organizations with the same direction from Italy to Sweden and Norway, which in this study is of course already in its infancy is omitted. "

Documentaries

  • "Gladio: Secret Armies in Europe", documentation by Wolfgang Schoen and Frank Gutermuth, first broadcast February 16, 2011, 85 min .; arte
  • “Stay behind - The shadow warriors of NATO”, documentary by Ulrich Stoll, first broadcast March 25, 2014, 45 min., ZDFinfo
  • "Code name Gladio - Secret NATO troops in the Cold War", documentary by Lucio Mollica, first broadcast on November 25, 2015, 44 min., ZDFinfo
  • “The Swiss Secret Army P-26”, documentation by Pietro Boschetti and Xavier Nicol, first broadcast on March 22, 2018, 52 min., SRF ; broadcast on February 26, 2019 on 3Sat : Link to the media library .

literature

Nazi era
  • Frans Kluiters: R-Netz: The stay-behind network of the Abwehr in the Low Countries. In: Ben De Jong, Wies Platje, Beatrice De Graaf (Eds.): Battleground Western Europe: Intelligence Operations in Germany and the Netherlands in the Twentieth Century. Het Spinhuis, 2008, ISBN 978-90-5589-281-5 , pp. 71-94 .
Western Europe in general
  • Leopoldo Nuti , Olav Riste : Introduction - Strategy of "Stay-Behind" . In: The Journal of Strategic Studies , Vol. 30, No. 6 (December 2007), pp. 929-935.
  • J. Patrice McSherry: The European Stay-Behind Armies. In: Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012, ISBN 0-7425-6870-9 , pp. 38-52 .
  • Olav Riste: “Stay Behind”: A Clandestine Cold War Phenomenon. In: Journal of Cold War Studies. Volume 16, No. 4, Fall 2014, pp. 35-59 (abstract) .
West Germany
  • Erich Schmidt-Eenboom , Ulrich Stoll: The partisans of NATO. Stay-behind organizations in Germany 1946–1991. Christoph Links, Berlin 2015, ISBN 3-86153-840-7 .
  • Agilolf Kesselring. The Gehlen Organization and the reorganization of the military in the Federal Republic. Christoph Links, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-86153-967-4 (review) .
  • Armin Müller: Wave War. Agent radio and radio reconnaissance of the Federal Intelligence Service 1945-1968. Christoph Links, Berlin 2017, ISBN 3-86153-947-0 , pp. 151-184.
France
  • Charles Cogan: 'Stay-Behind' in France: Much Ado About Nothing? In: The Journal of Strategic Studies. Volume 30, No. 6 (December 2007), pp. 937-954.
Italy
  • Leopoldo Nuti : The Italian 'Stay-Behind' Network - The Origins of Operation 'Gladio'. In: The Journal of Strategic Studies. Volume 30, No. 6 (December 2007), pp. 955-980.
Netherlands
  • Dick Engelen: Lessons Learned: The Dutch 'Stay-Behind' Organization 1945–1992. In: The Journal of Strategic Studies. Volume 30, No. 6 (December 2007), pp. 981-996.
Norway
  • Olav Riste : With an eye to history: the origin and development of 'Stay-Behind' in Norway. In: The Journal of Strategic Studies. Volume 30, No. 6 (December 2007), pp. 997-1024.
Switzerland

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Leopoldo Nuti , Olav Riste : Introduction to the "Special Section: Preparing for a Soviet Occupation: The Strategy of 'Stay Behind'" . In: Journal of Strategic Studies . 30, No. 6, December 2007, pp. 929-935. doi: 10.1080 / 01402390701676485 .
  2. ↑ a b c Olav Riste: "Stay Behind": A Clandestine Cold War Phenomenon . In: Journal of Cold War Studies ( MIT Press ). 16, No. 4, Fall 2014, pp. 35–59. doi: 10.1162 / JCWS_a_00515 .
  3. ↑ Leopoldo Nuti: Article Review of "Stay Behind": A Clandestine Cold War Phenomenon . H-Diplo Article Reviews, No. 551, September 2015.
  4. ↑ Kevin C. Duffner: Forging an Intelligence Partnership: CIA and the Origins of the BND, 1949-56 . CIA's Europe Division National Clandestine Service, 2006; Erich Schmidt-Eenboom , Ulrich Stoll: The partisans of NATO: Stay-behind organizations in Germany 1946–1991. Christoph Links, Berlin 2016, pp. 137–157 ( The stay-behind network of the Karlsruhe CIA station ); Dr. Badis Ben Redjeb: The Central Intelligence Agency and the Stay-Behind Networks in West Germany: An Assessment. British Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 50, July 2016, Vol. 1, pp. 50ff.
  5. ^ CIA document on Kibitz; Page 2 - point e: "twelve two men teams and one singleton team were set up."
  6. ^ Sven Felix Kellerhoff: West German partisans for the Cold War. July 27, 2019, accessed July 28, 2019 .
  7. ^ CIA: Declassified Freedom if Information act files: Walter Kopp Vol. 2
  8. ^ CIA: Declassified Freedom if Information act files: Walter Kopp Vol. 2
  9. ↑ Timothy Naftali: New Information on Cold War Stay-Behind Operations in Germany and on the Adolf Eichmann Case (PDF; 721 kB)
  10. ^ Julian Borger: Why Israel's capture of Eichmann caused panic at the CIA (The Guardian, June 8, 2006)
  11. ↑ Erich Schmidt-Eenboom , Ulrich Stoll: Die Partisanen der NATO . Christoph Links Verlag, Berlin, 2016, chapter The Kibitz-15-Show: The network of Walter Kopp and Kibitz-15 in the race war ff.
  12. ↑ Existing and Planned Facilities ( English , PDF) cia.gov. Retrieved November 8, 2019.
  13. ^ Reply of the Federal Government to Gladio of March 3, 2014
  14. ^ Süddeutsche.de GmbH: Underground troops in NATO countries - state guerrillas. In: Süddeutsche.de. May 17, 2010, accessed March 14, 2015 .
  15. ^ A b Daniele Ganser: Terrorism in Western Europe: An Approach to NATO's Secret Stay-Behind Armies. In: The Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations 6 / No. 1, South Orange NJ, 2005, p. 69 ff.
  16. ^ Daniele Ganser: NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe: An Approach to NATO's Secret Stay-Behind Armies. London 2005, p. 195
  17. ^ A b c Heiko Buschke: German press, right-wing extremism and the National Socialist past in the Adenauer era. Campus, 2003, ISBN 3-593-37344-0 , pp. 210-218
  18. ↑ Christopher Simpsons: The American Boomerang: Nazi War Criminals in the Pay of the USA. Ueberreuter, 1988, ISBN 3-8000-3277-5 , p. 180 ff.
  19. ↑ Everything for Germany . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 1952, pp. 6-8 ( online ).
  20. ↑ Glad in an emergency . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1952, pp. 6-7 ( online ).
  21. ^ Outline of stay-behind operation. CIA, November 10, 1950
  22. ↑ The Bloody Sword of the CIA. Spiegel, November 19, 1990
  23. ^ Project outline. CIA, November 29, 1955
  24. ↑ ZDF film "Stay behind" - The secret fighters. Stuttgarter Zeitung , March 24, 2014
  25. ↑ Report of the Federal Government on the Stay-behind orgnisation the Federal Intelligence Service; Point 1: historical development. (PDF) Retrieved March 6, 2017 .
  26. ↑ Report of the Federal Government on the Stay-behind orgnisation the Federal Intelligence Service; Point 2.2: Development of the stay-behind organization ; Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, Ulrich Stoll: The partisans of NATO , p. 164
  27. ↑ a b Manuscript for the ZDF program Frontal 21 : Secrets in the Cold War - The Shadow Warriors of the BND ( Memento from March 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), December 3, 2013
  28. ^ Response of the Federal Government to the investigation into the Nazi backers of the Oktoberfest attack. (PDF) November 24, 2014, accessed February 29, 2016 .
  29. ↑ Belgian Senate (French / Dutch; PDF file; 28.29 MB)
  30. ^ Belgian Senate: Enquête parlementaire sur l'existence en Belgique d'un réseau de renseignements clandestin international . Brussels October 1, 1991, p. 36 .
  31. ^ Belgian Senate: Enquête parlementaire sur l'existence en Belgique d'un réseau de renseignements clandestin international . Brussels October 1, 1991, p. 56 .
  32. ^ Peter Murtagh: The Rape of Greece. The King, the Colonels, and the Resistance. Simon & Schuster, London 1994, p. 29. Quoted in Daniele Ganser: NATO-Geheimarmeen , 2008, p. 213
  33. ↑ Ganser (2005), pp. 213-214 (his quote)
  34. ↑ Philip Agee, Louis Wolf, Dirty Work: The CIA in Western Europe (Secaucus: Lyle Stuart Inc., 1978), p. 154 (quoted in Daniele Ganser (2005) p. 216)
  35. ↑ J. Patrice McSherry: Predatory States. Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham 2012, p. 39.
  36. ^ NATO's secret network 'also operated in France. The Guardian, Nov. 14, 1990, p. 6
  37. ^ Nato's secret network 'also operated in France' The Guardian, November 14, 1990
  38. ^ Daniel Ganser: NATO Secret Armies in Europe Staged Terror and Covert Warfare . 2nd Edition. Orell Füssli Verlag AG, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-280-06106-0 , p. 345 .
  39. ↑ Giampiero Buonomo, Profili di liceità e di legittimità dell'organizzazione Gladio in Questione giustizia, 1991, n. 3, .
  40. ↑ Michel Thiel: Bommeleeër affair: Stay behind: cold war or cold coffee? In: Luxemburger Wort . September 29, 2008
  41. ↑ Steve Remesch: Bommeleeër affair: Luxemburg's shadow fighters, The Santer report on “Stay behind” for reading . In: Luxemburger Wort . September 29, 2008
  42. ↑ L'essentiel: SREL has not overheard alleged perpetrators . In: L'essentiel in German . ( lessentiel.lu [accessed December 17, 2017]).
  43. ↑ Andreu Manresa: Suárez afirma que en su etapa de presidente nunca se hablo de la red Gladio. In: ELPAÍS.com. November 18, 1990, Retrieved July 24, 2008 (Spanish).
  44. ↑ Calvo Sotelo asegura que España no fue informada, cuando entró en la OTAN, de la existencia de Gladio. In: ELPAÍS.com. November 21, 1990, Retrieved July 24, 2008 (Spanish).
  45. ↑ Juan Arias: Italia veto la entrada de España en Gladio, según un ex jefe del espionaje italiano. In: ELPAÍS.com. November 17, 1990, Retrieved July 24, 2008 (Spanish).
  46. ↑ Serra Ordena indagar sobre la red Gladio en España. In: ELPAÍS.com. November 16, 1990, Retrieved July 24, 2008 (Spanish).
  47. ^ La 'red Gladio' continúa operando, según el ex agente Alberto Volo. In: ELPAÍS.com. August 19, 1991, Retrieved July 24, 2008 (Spanish).
  48. ^ Walter Blasi, Erwin A. Schmidl, Felix Schneider: B-Gendarmerie, weapons storage and intelligence services: the military way to the State Treaty . Böhlau Verlag Vienna, 2005, ISBN 978-3-205-77267-5 , p. 156–164 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  49. ↑ Lucien Fluri (Solothurner Zeitung, July 14, 2012): Former "Secret Army" P-26: Secrecy in flesh and blood
  50. ↑ Titus J. Meier: Preparations for Resistance in the Case of Occupation Switzerland in the Cold War . Zurich 2018, ISBN 978-3-03810-332-5 , pp. 333 .
  51. ^ Opinion of the Federal Council on the report of the Parliamentary Investigation Commission EMD. Retrieved December 24, 2016 .
  52. ↑ Report of the Federal Council on the Cornu investigation. Retrieved December 24, 2016 .
  53. ↑ Pierre Cornu: Final report in the administrative investigation to clarify the nature of any relationships between the organization P-26 and analogous organizations abroad. Abstract for the public. September 19, 1991, p. 2.
  54. ^ Meier, Titus J. Preparations for resistance in the event of occupation. Switzerland in the Cold War. P. 455.
  55. ^ Federal Council publishes anonymous version of the "Cornu Report". Retrieved October 7, 2018 .
  56. ↑ US trained Alaskans as secret "stay-behind-agents". August 31, 2014, accessed March 8, 2017 .
  57. ^ Proposed Plan for Intelligence Coverage in Alaska in the Event of an Invasion (Stay-Behind Agent Program). (PDF) Retrieved March 8, 2017 (1951-1959).
  58. ^ Daniele Ganser: NATO Secret Armies in Europe: Staged Terror and Covert Warfare. Orell Füssli, Zurich 2008, ISBN 978-3-280-06106-0
  59. ↑ Philip Davies: Review of Ganser, NATO's Secret Armies . In: Journal of Strategic Studies . 28, No. 6, 2005, pp. 1064-1068. doi: 10.1080 / 01402390500448524 .
  60. ↑ Roskilde University: Peer Henrik Hansen ( Memento from January 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  61. ^ Peer Henrik Hansen: Daniele Ganser. NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe ( Memento of August 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). In: Journal of Intelligence History . 5, No. 1, 2005, doi: 10.1080 / 16161262.2005.10555113 , p. 111; see also Peer Henrik Hansen: Falling Flat on the Stay-Behinds . In: International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence . Volume 19, Issue 1, 2006, doi: 10.1080 / 08850600500332656 , pp. 182-186.
  62. ↑ Olav Riste: Review of Ganser, NATO's Secret Armies. In: Intelligence and National Security. 20, No. 3, September 2005, pp. 550-551. doi: 10.1080 / 02684520500340357 ; Olav Riste: "Stay Behind": A Clandestine Cold War Phenomenon. In: MIT / Harvard Press (ed.): Journal of Cold War Studies. 16, No. 4, Fall 2014, pp. 35–59. doi: 10.1162 / JCWS_a_00515
  63. ^ Charles G. Cogan: 'Stay-Behind' in France: Much ado about nothing? In: Journal of Strategic Studies . 30, No. 6, 2007, pp. 937-954. doi: 10.1080 / 01402390701676493 .
  64. ↑ Gregor Schöllgen: Gladiators in the Cold War . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . April 25, 2009, p. 9
  65. ^ Pascal Girard: Conspiracies and visions of conspiracies in France and Italy after the Second World War . In: European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire . 15, No. 6, 2008, pp. 749-765, here p. 754. doi: 10.1080 / 13507480802500707 .
  66. ↑ Misinformation about "Gladio / Stay Behind" Networks Resurfaces . United States Department of State, January 20, 2006.
  67. ↑ Titus J. Meier: Preparations for Resistance in the Case of Occupation Switzerland in the Cold War . Zurich 2018, ISBN 978-3-03810-332-5 .
  68. ↑ Siegfried Weichlein: TJ Meier: Resistance Preparations for the Case of Occupation. April 10, 2019, accessed May 13, 2019 (review).