Smoke and Mirrors: The German Foreign Intelligence Service’s Release of Names of Former Nazi Employees

After defeating the Third Reich, the Western Allies and the Soviet Bloc began their own intelligence war. Both sides recruited from among their former mutual enemies: Nazi security personnel. In the Federal Republic of Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland, BRD) the largest employer of such persons was the Gehlen Organization, which in 1956 became the core of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the BRD’s foreign intelligence service, with Reinhard Gehlen as its first chief. In 2010 the BRD revealed career details of early officials who had Nazi backgrounds. The author of this note clarifies the identities of some Holocaust perpetrators who later served in West German intelligence, and also suggests why German authorities released only partial information and only about certain employees, most of whom been identified earlier in declassified US documents.