One of the most important features of Gehlen was that he collected important information about the Soviets, which had a very closed structure at that time and gave them to the Americans. Who is Reinhard Gehlen, from Nazi officer to BND president?
Reinhard Gehlen was born in 1902. He became famous as the theorist and practitioner who initiated the practice of espionage in Nazi Germany and became increasingly known as one of the greatest espionage masters of all time.
One of the most important features of Gehlen was that he collected important information about the Soviets, which had a very closed structure at that time and gave them to the Americans.
Reinhard Gehlen (3 April 1902 – 8 June 1979) was a German lieutenant-general and intelligence officer. He was chief of the Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East military intelligence service on the eastern front during World War II. During the early Cold War, Gehlen sided with the Western Allies as the spymaster of the CIA-funded anti-Soviet Gehlen Organisation (1946–56) and the founding president of the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst BND) of West Germany (1956–68).
In fact, Gehlen also worked for the Americans until he became director of the West German secret service from 1955-68. When he was appointed Commander of the Outer Eastern Armies in 1942, he took a ruthless attitude towards Soviet war criminals and civilians. On July 17, 1944, the Loringhoven unit informed Gehlen that Stauffenberg was plotting to assassinate Hitler. The Nazi administration got out of this rebellion. Gehlen was promoted to major general in December 1944. In April 1945, Hitler fell. Thus, Gehlen also left the army command. In March, Gehlen and his agents microfilmed many classified Soviet documents and stored them in steel drums in the Austrian Alps. Gehlen handed over this information to colleagues in the US military in May.
The Americans, who did not know much about the Soviets at the time, were grateful to Gehlen for this information.
After this stage, Gehlen established an intelligence organization under the control of OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and CIA. The initial staff included 350 former German army intelligence agents. And the Gehlen organization increasingly became the eyes and ears of the CIA in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
In 1956 the Gehlen organization took its current structure. This was the birth of the Federal German Secret Service Bundesnachrichtendienst, also known as the BND for short. Gehlen was appointed head of this organization.
Gehlen resigned in April 1968 after the operation in which the identity of Heinz Felfe, who was a spy for the KGB, was revealed while working in the German secret service. This was a minus point for Gehlen, but despite the Felfe scandal, Gehlen was among the legendary names in the history of intelligence until his death in 1979. He retained this title after his death.