To The Victor Go The Spoils

by David "Mane Raptor" Joyce

Article Type: Military History
Article Date: April 04, 2002

Spoils of War

Most people know that one of America’s “spoils” from World War II was Dr. Werner Von Braun, the V2, and the knowledge that lead to being the first to put a man on the Moon. What is lesser known is the story of another war spoil. This spoil was one that would help shape the nature of the early Cold War era, and in turn, led to a profound change in the scope and nature of American Government.

The “spoils” was nothing less than the entire Third Reich’s espionage apparatus (in place network of agents, a complete set of files, and the expertise to operate) targeting the Soviet Union. This is the story of how those spoils fell into America’s hands and a look at the result.

Reinhard Gehlen

By late 1944 / early 1945, all but the most die-hard Nazis knew the war was lost. Those that could do so made plans for the post war years. General Reinhard Gehlen, Military Intelligence Chief of Foreign Armies East (FHO) was one such German making plans to sit out the first few months of chaos that would accompany the collapse of the Third Reich.

Reinhard Gehlen, born April 4 1902, was a product of World War I Prussian military schools. Enlisting in the German Army when he turned 18, his path was fast-tracked. Commanding an artillery unit shortly after being commissioned, he was one of the first graduates of German War College re-established when Hitler came to power.

Gehlen at the time he took over FHO in 1942

A physically unremarkable man, whose photos portray a humorless man with a deep frown, Gehlen spent most of the early war years as an adjutant to the General Staff. In March of 1942 he was appointed head FHO Intelligence. His task was to provide information on Russian military capabilities and estimates of Russian plans and intentions. Gehlen went at the task with abandon, making changes in FHO Intelligence operations, and improving both intelligence collection and analysis. So valued was this work by the General Staff and Hitler, he was promoted to the rank of General without ever having served on the front lines, something highly unusual at the time. As his reports more and more proved to be accurate, his position within the circle of Hitler’s advisors became fortified.

One result of the abortive July 20 1944 attempt on Hitler’s life was the subsequent downfall of Abwehr. On Hitler’s orders Abwehr was broken up, and Gehlen was handed the Russian espionage portion. Thus by the beginning of 1945, FHO’s files were a treasure trove of diplomatic, economic, political, and military information on the Soviet Union. Gehlen not only had that information at his fingertips, but he had also inherited Abwehr’s network of agents, which he now ran along with his own considerable network.

So it was that on this cold winter’s day, he told his staff to round up fifty steel canisters and fill them with microfilmed copies of all FHO/Abwehr files. Sending his family to Bavaria, he stayed behind at FHO Headquarters in Zossen overseeing the work and putting his network of agents in Russia on hold. By early April he was ready. On April 9th he sent Hitler an intelligence brief on the final Russian assault on Berlin. Hitler was infuriated over it and relieved Gehlen of command.

Have Microfilm Will Travel

Finally free to leave, Gehlen and a handpicked group set out, headed towards Elendsalm, near Lake Spitzing in Bavaria. Gehlen had rented Elend Lodge. By late April Gehlen and his group of six officers and three female staff assistants were safely tucked away in the mountain heights, accessible only by foot, the fifty canisters buried in scattered locations around the area. Gehlen was aware that American Intelligence officers would be very interested in looking at his material and perhaps want to utilize his “talents” in the future.

American Intelligence officers were indeed aware of Gehlen and his group. Allen Dulles, later Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director, but then Head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Station in Berne Switzerland, had spent the war years gathering data on Nazi Germany and running many covert operations throughout Europe. One of Dulles’ biggest successes during the war was the surrender of German forces in Northern Italy. During the negotiations, Dulles had heard from one of his agents that Gehlen had been fired and had gone into hiding with his staff and files. Dulles was too involved with the negotiations to do anything about this information, but he did pass it on to both Brigadier General Edwin Sibert and Colonel William Quinn of the U.S. 7th Army. Quinn started to scan the lists of German POWs looking for the name.

On May 22nd, Gehlen and his group surrendered to a detachment of U.S. Military Police that had arrived in Elendsalm two days earlier. Gehlen was taken by jeep to an interrogation center in Miesbach. Captain Marian Porter, who was unimpressed by Gehlen’s claims that he had information of the highest importance, interviewed him. Porter told Gehlen, “So you all say,” and had him shipped to a POW camp in Salzburg.

While Gehlen sat in the camp, the Russians finally learned of FHO and Gehlen’s existence. The June 1945 Russian interrogation of a German General Staff officer captured by the British let the cat out of the bag. The Russians immediately demanded the Americans turn over FHO’s files and Gehlen. But because Gehlen’s name had not yet appeared on any POW lists that Quinn had seen, he was able to tell the Russian representative that the Americans did not have Gehlen or his files.

Finally, in August, Quinn saw the name he was looking for and called Sibert. Sibert ordered Gehlen driven to Augsburg for a meeting. And after sitting in a POW camp for two months, Gehlen was ready to deal.

Let's Make a Deal

Gehlen told Sibert about the type of work FHO had been doing. He described the quality of intelligence and accuracy it had produced. He told Sibert of Soviet intentions of denying Polish independence and that Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania would all be turned into communist states. Then he offered to give Sibert a report based upon his buried files if he, Sibert, would release his staff to help him prepare it.

Sibert was impressed. He ordered Gehlen’s staff member released and sent to Wiesbaden to work at the Historical Research Center. He and Gehlen, along with some MP’s then went to Elendsalm to retrieve the fifty canisters. Once Gehlen and his group were safely retired in their secure area within the Historical Research Center, they poured over the files and after a month’s labor, produced a report that contained, along with data backing up Gehlen’s claims, a pen-portrait of Lavrent Beria (Head of Stalin’s Secret Police), a list of U.S. Communist Party members working for the OSS, and a copy of a British report detailing the differences between FDR and Churchill over Russia. Once again Sibert was impressed.

By this time, the Russians knew Gehlen was working for the Americans. The OSS in Germany reported in September that Soviet agents were on their way to Wiesbaden to either kidnap or kill Gehlen. Shortly after Sibert received these reports, a bullet struck Gehlen’s car. It was time to send Gehlen to Washington, D.C.

Gehlen and three members of his staff were placed aboard Sibert’s private plane, wearing ill-fitting civilian clothing and carrying a few personal possessions. They arrived in Washington on Sept 20th and were sequestered at Fort Hunt in Virginia. A short time later Gehlen met with some of the highest-ranking Intelligence and Policy Makers in America. Attending that meeting was Admiral William Leahy (Security Advisor to President Truman), General George Strong and his aide Major General Alex Bolling (Army Intelligence), Major General John Magruder and Loftus Becker (OSS Special Operations), Sherman Kent (OSS Research and Analysis) and Allen Dulles (OSS Europe).

At that meeting Gehlen came right to the point. They had all read the Wiesbaden Report. Gehlen was offering to spy on the Russians as long as four conditions were met. First they were not to be part of any American Intelligence Service and Gehlen would be in autonomous control; any liaison would be via officers’ hand picked by Gehlen. Second they would target solely the Soviet Union and Soviet Bloc nations. Third, when a new German government was established, they would be transferred to that government and any agreements would be cancelled. And fourth, no activities would be directed against German interests or citizens.

Within a few weeks the deal was approved. America would now have an important source of information about the new threat—the Soviet Union. But how should this source be handled? The OSS would have been the logical choice, but President Truman disbanded that organization by Executive Order on October 1, 1945.

Peacetime Covert Ops In America

Before his death, FDR, realizing that America lacked a full time Intelligence Agency, tasked the OSS Director, William Donovan, to come up with a plan for one. The Donovan Plan was submitted in early April of 1945 and when Truman took over after FDR’s death, it languished around Washington.

Then, in September of 1945, a copy landed on the desk of Chicago Tribune Columnist Walter Trohan. In the Tribune, Trohan published the report in a series of scathing articles arguing against the establishment of an all powerful intelligence service. Other newspapers picked up this series and public protest over the Donovan Plan was quick and negative. Thus Truman was forced to issue his Executive Order.

The effect of the order on the OSS Intelligence Community was a game of bureaucratic shuffle that lasted for several months. The OSS was broken up and its parts were taken over by the Army, the Navy, and the State Department. Finally in late January of 1946 there emerged a new agency, the Central Intelligence Group (CIG), established by another Truman Executive Order. The CIG was the first peacetime centralized intelligence agency in America’s history. It was an extension of the Executive Branch, reporting directly to the President, and drew it’s funding from the Army, the Navy, and the State Department. Its main asset upon creation was America’s use of the spy network now being run by Gehlen. Within a year the name would change again. This time it was the CIA. And now, mandated with a charter under the National Security Act of 1947 passed by Congress partly as a result of the uproar over the Donovan Plan, America had finally formally institutionalized the covert side of warfare.

The Gehlen Organization

While Congress and the Executive Branch debated and put together the legal niceties, Gehlen was wheeling and dealing in America. He had left three of his staff in Wiesbaden to help train their new American colleagues in Soviet covert techniques and assisting them in intelligence gathering operations. But his staff needed help. He requested, and was granted, the release from interment camps of hundred of his ex-Wehrmacht and SS colleagues. Some reports of his activity at the time place the number as high as 350.

Among those being trained back in Germany, were such OSS veterans as Richard Helms (later to become CIA Director), Harry Rositzke (later to head CIA Operations Directorate), and James Angleton (later to head CIA Counter Intelligence). This luminary of the future CIA worked side by side with the Gehlen Organization collecting covert information on the Soviet Union.

Gehlen returned to Germany in July 1946 and by late 1946 the intelligence gathering abilities of this American/German group had begun to bear real fruit. Soon they were providing policy makers in Washington the first facts about Soviet progress in atomic energy and jet airplane projects.

This information was arriving in Washington during the debates and bureaucratic chaos following the break up of the OSS and formation of the CIG and CIA. And its source, the Gehlen Organization, profoundly influenced that debate. It was by no accident that the first Chairman of CIG was Admiral Leahy (who chaired the September 1945 meeting with Gehlen) and that over two-thirds of the CIG’s personal were in the covert operations, with a majority stationed in Germany.

So just how important was Gehlen’s organization in terms of intelligence gathering? According to some accounts, up to 70 percent of all US information on Soviet forces, armaments, and intentions in the early Cold War years came from it. But perhaps one incident highlights how good was the tradecraft of the Gehlen organization. Allen Dulles, in his biography “The Craft of Intelligence” (ghost written by E. Howard Hunt of Bay of Pigs and Watergate fame), relates how when the first Russian jet fighters appeared there was an urgent need to calculate the performance of the plane. In order to do so, the CIA scientist needed a sample of the skin of the craft. So the call went out to Wiesbaden. Several months later, Gehlen, visiting Dulles in Washington who was now working for the newly established CIA, presented him with a coat hanger. It was made from the scrap metal left over from manufacturing a Mig-15’s wing.

By the end of 1947, both America and Gehlen had come a long way. America, who had started out as a “babe-in-the-woods” in the intelligence game, now was quickly advancing to a position among the top players of that game. Gehlen, who five years earlier had been a Major, serving as a General Staff Adjutant, was now playing a crucial role in that advancement as the head of an autonomous group of ex-Nazi spies.

Gehlen at his retirement in 1969

And as the Cold War between the Superpowers grew during the late 40’s and beyond, the Gehlen Organization would be involved in many operations and events, some of which are just seeing the light of day as the mists of History clear and documents long hidden are released.

Sources

• Cookridge, E. H.
  Gehlen: Spy of the Century
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• Dulles, Allen Welsh
  The Craft of Intelligence
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• Farago, Ladislaw
  Burn After Reading
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• Ford, Cory
  Donovan of the OSS
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• Gehlen Reinhard
  The Service: The Memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen
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• Hone, Heinz and Herman Zolling
  The General was a Spy
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• Mosley, Leonard
  Dulles: A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John Foster and Their Family Connections
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• Rositzke, Harry
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• U. S. Congress
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• U. S. Department of State
  “Foreign Relations of the United States”
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