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ABSTRACT
The rearmament of West Germany was an important goal of U.S. foreign policy during the early 1950s. However, this was a contested issue among the German population. In this context, former professional soldiers played a crucial role. U.S. intelligence agencies initiated covert operations that were designed not only to influence this key group but also to set up clandestine personnel pools for paramilitary action. The core of this endeavor was their cooperation with former Waffen-SS general Felix Steiner and the founding of the ‘Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde’ (GfW), a network of ex-officers that was dedicated to defense studies. This organization quickly developed into an important propaganda tool and a military think tank. After U.S. intelligence terminated its support, the German Federal Government took over GfW and used it as a means to establishing the West German armed forces. The case of the GfW also sheds light on the problematic cooperation between former Nazi functionaries and U.S. intelligence and highlights the divergence of German and American concepts for paramilitary operations.
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Notes
1 KMMANLY Monthly Project Status Report, November 1951, National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD [NACP], Record Group [RG] 263, Entry ZZ-19, Box 41.
2 See David Clay Large, Germans to the Front: West German Rearmament in the Adenauer Era (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1996).
3 For information about Steiner, see Mark P. Gingerich, “Felix Steiner: Himmlers ‘ausgesprochenes Lieblingskind’,” in Die SS: Elite unter dem Totenkopf, ed. Ronald Smelser and Enrico Syring, 2nd ed. (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2003), 431–440.
4 The early history of GfW has been a research desideratum. See Frank Reichherzer, “Alles ist Front!“: Wehrwissenschaften in Deutschland und die Bellifizierung der Gesellschaft vom Ersten Weltkrieg bis in den Kalten Krieg (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012), 382–413. An older and ideologically biased work is: Werner Hübner, Die Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde: Die Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde und ihre Rolle im System der Militarisierung Westdeutschlands (1952–1968) (Berlin (East): Deutscher Militärverlag, 1969).
5 The OPC files were released as a result of the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act. See Nazi Crimes & Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group, Final Report to the United States Congress (2007), accessed 22 May 2015, http://www.archives.gov/iwg/reports/final-report-2007.pdf.
6 On this area of research see Michael Wala, “Stay-Behind Operations, Former Members of SS and Wehrmacht, and American Intelligence Services in Early Cold War Germany,” Journal of Intelligence History 15, no. 2 (2016): 1–9.
7 Most publications focus on the question of a possible threat to European democracies by these units. See Erich Schmidt-Eenboom and Ulrich Stoll, Die Partisanen der NATO: Stay-Behind-Organisationen in Deutschland 1946–1991 (Berlin: Christoph Links, 2015).
8 For a recent publication on CIA’s role in the creation of the West German security architecture see Agilolf Keßelring, Die Organisation Gehlen und die Neuformierung des Militärs in der Bundesrepublik (Berlin: Christoph Links, 2017).
9 See Thomas A. Schwartz, “The United States and Germany after 1945. Alliances, Transnational Relations, and the Legacy of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 19, no. 4 (1995): 549–568.
10 See Sheldon A. Goldberg, From Disarmament to Rearmament: The Reversal of US Policy toward West Germany, 1946–1955 (Athens, OH: Ohio Univ. Press, 2017). Also see Large, Germans to the Front, 111–175.
11 See Frank M. Buscher, “The U.S. High Commission and German Nationalism, 1949–52,” Central European History 23, no. 1 (1990): 57–75.
12 See James S. Corum, “Adenauer, Amt Blank, and the Founding of the Bundeswehr 1950–1956,” in Rearming Germany, ed. idem (Boston: Brill, 2011), 29–52.
13 For an overview see Wolfram Wette, “Friedensinitiativen in der Frühzeit des Kalten Krieges (1945–1955),” in Alternativen zur Wiederbewaffnung: Friedenskonzeptionen in Westdeutschland 1945–1955, ed. idem and Detlef Bald (Essen: Klartext, 2008), 9–23.
14 This group consisted of the active officers’ and non-commissioned officers’ corps and comprised around 260,000 men. See Jay Lockenour, Soldiers as Citizens: Former Wehrmacht Officers in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1945–1955 (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2001), 6–9.
15 Ibid., 9–32.
16 See Edward J. Davies and Ronald Smelser, The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Cultur (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008), 64–80.
17 See Richard H. Immerman, The Hidden Hand: A Brief History of the CIA (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2014), 19–29.
18 See John Prados, Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), 65–69.
19 The connection to OPC is a blind spot in the research literature on HICOG. See for example Thomas A. Schwartz, America’s Germany: John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1991). On the budgetary entanglement see Harrison A. Gerhardt, Memo to Chauncey Parker re. Confidential Funds OPC, NACP, RG 466, Entry E-15, Box 5, Folder ‘HAG Chron. File Jan. 51–‘. On the OPC station chief and PEPCO, see Minutes of 53rd PEPCO meeting, 31 July 1951, ibid., Entry E-174, Box 3, ‘Folder Pepco – Agenda & Minutes’; and Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center/Boston University, Michael Burke Collection, Box 8, Folder ‘Diaries and Datebooks 1950–1955', Entry of 19 June 1951.
20 In this regard, Secretary of State Dean Acheson sent a cable on 29 September 1950 to McCloy that it was ‘our objective of obtaining whole-hearted German support for participation of German army units in the integrated force’. See Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950 (Vol. IV), document no. 389.
21 See Project Outline KMMANLY, 26 January 1951, NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-19, Box 41, 1.
22 See HICOG Security Survey No. 7, ibid., RG 59, Central Decimal File, 762A.5/8-1451, Box 3897A.
23 See HICOG Staff Conference Meeting, 7 August 1951, ibid., RG 466, Entry E-6, Folder ‘June-Dec. 1951ʹ, 14, 16.
24 H. Meyer, Psychological Problems of German Participation in Western Defense (PEPCO Series), 6 July 1951, ibid., Entry E-174, Folder ‘Pepco – Agenda & Minutes’, 4–5.
25 KMMANLY Monthly Project Status Report, November [1951], 1.
26 See Martin Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoah: Die Waffen-SS, der Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS und die Judenvernichtung 1939–1945 (Darmstadt: WBG, 2005), 339–347.
27 See Gingerich, Steiner, 431–440. A scholarly biography of Steiner remains a research desideratum, not least because his personal papers were destroyed after his passing by fellow members of the Waffen-SS lobby organization, HIAG. See Karsten Wilke, Die “Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit” (HIAG) 1950–1990: Veteranen der Waffen-SS in der Bundesrepublik (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2011), 25–26.
28 Eberhard Count von Nostitz, Erinnerungen an die Frühphase der Wiederbewaffnung, 26 October 1976, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg [Federal Military Archive/BArch] N 3/4, 1.
29 See Report re. Anti-Communist Movement in Germany (Source CIC USFA Agent), November 1948, NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-18, Box 126, 1.
30 See Cable MGLA-34, Chief of Station Karlsruhe to Chief of Foreign Branch M, re. Activity of Military Circles in Western Germany, 22 June 1949, NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-18, Box 141. On Operation Sunrise, Allen Dulles, and his contacts with Karl Wolff see Kerstin von Lingen, Allen Dulles, the OSS, and Nazi War Criminals: The Dynamics of Selective Prosecution (Oxford: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).
31 See Critchfield Notes re. Cable MGQW-2684, 11 August 1949, James H. Critchfield Papers, Earl Greg Swem Library, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Box 2, Folder 17.
32 See Keßelring, Neuformierung, 98–114.
33 See Cable MGLA-1557, Chief of Station Karlsruhe to Chief of Foreign Branch M, 21 March 1950, NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-18, Box 42, 6; Keßelring, Neuformierung, 101–104; and Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 170, 248.
34 For OPC’s search for paramilitary 'assets', see Memo re. BDJ Project, 28 January 1953 (LCPROWL Vol. 1), NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-19, Box 42, 1f.
35 [Michael Burke], Memo, 18 April 1951, RG 263, Entry ZZ-18, Box 126, 1–3.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid., 3–4. The term ‘Black Reichswehr’ referred to a number of covert paramilitary formations during the 1920s that were supposed to circumvent the Treaty of Versailles that had restricted Germany’s army after the First World War. Many of them were a breeding ground for right-wing extremism. See Bernhard Sauer, Schwarze Reichswehr und Fememorde: Eine Milieustudie zum Rechtsradikalismus in der Weimarer Republik (Berlin: Metropol, 2004).
38 See Entry of 23 April 1951 in Burke’s notebook, Michael Burke Collection, Box 8, Folder ‘Service Russia 1951ʹ. The OPC headquarters in Washington expressed strong reservations with regard to Steiner’s integrity and refused to grant him operational clearance. Cable Wash 18806 from OPC to Frankfurt, 12 December 1951, NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-18, Box 126.
39 See Bert-Oliver Manig, Die Politik der Ehre: Die Rehabilitierung der Berufssoldaten in der frühen Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004), 324–325. Manig refers to July 1951 correspondence between former Waffen-SS general Herbert Gille and former admiral Gottfried Hansen, the leader of another veterans’ association.
40 Letter from Felix Steiner to Günther Blumentritt, 17 September 1951. Also Letter from Steiner to Blumentritt, 5 October 1951, BArch N 252/16.
41 See KMMANLY Monthly Project Status Report, July [1951], NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-19, Box 41.
42 See QKSNITCH Final Report, 14 April 1953, NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-18, Box 20, 2.
43 Minutes of the Founding Meeting of the Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde, 5 January 1952, BArch BW 47/2, 1.
44 See Statute of the Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde, BArch BW 9/2124, 29–30.
45 QKSNITCH Final Report, 14 April 1953, 2.
46 Wilhelm Classen, Betreff: “GfW” [presumably January 1953], NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-18, Box 20, 4.
47 Minutes of the Sections Leaders’ Meeting in Hamburg, 3 May 1952, BArch BW 47/2, 10.
48 QKSNITCH Final Report, 14 April 1953, 2–3. Also Wilhelm Classen, Memo on the „Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde“, 10 December 1952, NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-18, Box 20, 2. It remains unclear whether the admission criteria was discussed together with GfW or perhaps imposed by OPC. On the issue of the 20 July plot see Lockenour, Soldiers, 175–176.
49 See Evaluation of Classen [presumably January 1953], 1. Also QKSNITCH Final Report, 14 April 1953, 2–3; and KMMANLY Monthly Project Status Report, June 1952, NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-19, Box 41, 3.
50 See Résumé Dr. Wilhelm Classen, 8 December 1951, ibid., Entry ZZ-18, Box 20. Classen was an expert on East Asia, and his work in the RSHA focused on Japan.
51 Operational Clearance No. 2420, 23 May 1952, ibid; Report for 2789-CFGWU, 7 March 1952, ibid; and CSDIC Preliminary Interrogation Report 150, 22 June 1946, ibid.
52 See File EGBT 10216/1, ibid.
53 Evaluation of Classen, [presumably January 1953], ibid; QKSNITCH Final Report, 14 April 1953, 2–5; and Cable EGLA-754, 4 February 1953, ibid., noted that Classen was ‘dropped without prejudice’.
54 In September 1952, the Army’s Counterintelligence Corps sent an inquiry to OPC concerning Classen and suggested checking possible links to the ‘Gehlen organization’. See Security Evaluation [presumably November 1952], ibid; and Office Note “Dick” to “Henry” [presumably October 1952], ibid. The trace request to CIA’s Pullach Operations Base had an unexpected result: In November 1952, OPC was quite astonished to learn that GfW board member Eberhard Count von Nostitz was a staff member of the ‘Gehlen organization’. See Cable Chief of Base Pullach to Chief of Base QKFENCE, 12 November 1952, NACP, RG 263, ibid.
55 Statistics on Development and Composition of the Sections [presumably April 1954], BArch BW 47/37; and KMMANLY Monthly Project Status Report, August 1952, NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-19, Box 41, 3.
56 See Minutes of the Sections Leaders’ Meeting in Hamburg, 3 May 1952, 2; and Statistics on Development and Composition of the Sections.
57 Letter from Baron Dobeneck to Johann Adolf Count Kielmansegg, 24 October 1952, BArch BW 9/771, 6–7; and Note by Achim Oster, 28 October 1952, ibid., 5.
58 Minutes of the Founding Meeting of the Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde, 5 January 1952, 8.
59 QKSNITCH Final Report, 14 April 1953, 3; Working Committees of the Scientific Advisory Board, BW 47/36. Classen, Memo on the „Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde“, 10 December 1952, 3–4.
60 See QKSNITCH Final Report, 14 April 1953, 3.
61 See Classen, Memo on the “Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde”, 10 December 1952, 6–10; Minutes of the GfW Board Meeting, 22 August 1952, BArch BW 47/2, 2–3.
62 Classen, Memo on the „Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde“, 10 December 1952, 6–7; Minutes of the GfW Board Meeting, 1 July 1952, BArch BW 47/2.
63 See Ja oder Nein zum Verteidigungsbeitrag, ed. Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde (Munich: Walter de Bouché, 1952), 25. Also Joachim Ruoff, “Zur westdeutschen Wehrsituation,” in Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde 1 (1952), 7–10.
64 KMMANLY Monthly Project Status Report, August 1952, 3; KMMANLY Monthly Project Status Report, October 1952, NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-19, Box 41, 2; and QKSNITCH Final Report, 14 April 1953, 3–5, 7.
65 Classen, Memo on the “Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde”, 10 December 1952, 11–14; and KMMANLY Monthly Project Status Report, July 1952, NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-19, Box 41, 3. On the ‘Führungsring’ as a communist front organization see Alexander Gallus, Die Neutralisten: Verfechter eines vereinten Deutschlands zwischen Ost und West, 1945–1990 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2001), 237–245. On the impact assessment, see Michael Warner, “Sources and Methods for the Study of Intelligence,” in Handbook of Intelligence Studies, ed. Loch K. Johnson (London: Routledge, 2009), 17–27.
66 Minutes of the GfW Board Meeting, 25 January 1952, BArch BW 47/2, 1.
67 See Letter from Vollrath von Hellermann to Bogislaw von Bonin, 2 October 1952; Letter from Wilhelm Classen to Bogislaw von Bonin, 8 January 1953; and Letter from Bogislaw von Bonin to Wilhelm Classen, 29 January 1953, all BArch BW 47/38. Also see Achim Oster, Memo Nr. 76/52, 31 October 1952, BArch BW 9/2124, 316–317.
68 KMMANLY Monthly Project Status Report, August 1952, 3–4; and Minutes of the GfW Board Meeting, 24 April 1952, BArch BW 47/2, 2.
69 Minutes of the GfW Board Meeting, 25 January 1952, 1; Letter from Otto Lenz to Wilhelm Classen, 28 November 1952, BArch BW 47/38; Minutes of the GfW Board Meeting, 18 July 1952, BW 47/2, 1–2; Letter from Otto Marcks to Wilhelm Classen, 9 October 1952, BArch BW 47/63; and Memo Otto Marcks, 29 January 1953, BArch BW 9/772, 162–163.
70 KMMANLY Monthly Project Status Report, August 1952, 4.
71 QKSNITCH Final Report, 14 April 1953, 3–4. Also Contact Report, Agent RNSPLUNT [Wilhelm Classen], [presumably 8–28 November 1952], NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-18, Box 20, 2.
72 Evaluation of Classen [presumably January 1953], 3.
73 Memo Classen re. Conversation with Mr. F., 30 October 1952, BArch BW 47/7.
74 See Manig, Ehre, 532–538.
75 Contact Report, Agent RNSPLUNT [Wilhelm Classen], [presumably 8–28 November 1952].
76 See Prados, Safe for Democracy, 68–70; and Immerman, Hidden Hand, 39–42.
77 John A. Bross, Memo for Deputy Director (Plans) re. Request for Budget Allotment under Project KMMANLY, 16 January 1953, NACP, RG 263, Entry ZZ-19, Box 41, 1.
78 Memo “LCPROWL”, 24 October 1954 (LCPROWL Vol. 1), ibid., Box 42, 2.
79 QKSNITCH Final Report, 14 April 1953, 3, 6–7; and Evaluation Classen [presumably January 1953], 3.
80 Minutes of the GfW Board Meeting, 19 February 1953, BArch BW 47/2, 1–2; Contact Report, Agent RNSPLUNT [Wilhelm Classen], 28 November 1952, 1; Contact Report, Agent RNSPLUNT [Wilhelm Classen], 17 December 1952, 1; and Contact Report, Agent RNSPLUNT [Wilhelm Classen], [presumably 8–28 November 1952], 1.
81 Johann Count Kielmansegg, Note re. Thoughts on the Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde, 18 December 1952, BArch BW 9/772, 155–156.
82 Otto Marcks, Memo, 29 January 1953, 162. Original emphasis.
83 Memo re. Steiners Trip to Bonn 5–11 February 1952 and the subsequent discussion, BW 47/7.
84 Minutes of the GfW Board Meeting, 19 February 1953. A contract was eventually signed on 7 March. See Contract between Press and Information Office and GfW, 7 March 1953, BArch BW 47/63; and general Adolf Heusinger, Executive Order on Cooperation with GfW, 12 May 1953, ibid., BW 9/770, 163.
85 Hans Reinhardt, “Zum 10jährigen Bestehen der Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde,” Wehrkunde 10, no. 1 (1962): 2.
86 See Hübner, Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde, 66–67. Moreover, former officers had been able to recommend themselves for employment in the Blank Office as a result of their work in the GfW. See Loretana de Libero, “Trentzsch, die Bundeswehr und das Attentat auf Hitler,” in Militärische Aufbaugenerationen der Bundeswehr 1955 bis 1970, ed. Helmut R. Hammerich and Rudolf J. Schlaffer (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011), 181–210.
87 See Peter C. Hughes and Theresa M. Sandwith, “Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist: The Man Behind Wehrkunde,” in Towards Mutual Security: Fifty Years of Munich Security Conference, ed. Wolfgang Ischinger (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 49–77. On GfW’s role in educating the reserve officers see Hübner, Gesellschaft für Wehrkunde, 70–103. Today, GfW is named ‘Gesellschaft für Sicherheitspolitik’ (‘Society for Security Policy’).
88 Olav Riste proposed the term ‘occupation preparedness’. See Olav Riste, “Stay Behind,” Journal of Cold War Studies 16, no. 4 (2014): 35–59. However, at least in the case of West Germany, the term is not sufficient to cover all the plans (particularly those pursued by the Germans) for clandestine personnel pools that were designed to prevent an occupation. In this case, the term ‘preparedness for external aggression’ might be more useful.
89 On the ‘BDJ-flap’ as a caesura see for example Keßelring, Neuformierung, 302–304, 443; and Wala, Stay-Behind Operations, 6–7.
90 QKSNITCH Final Report, 14 April 1953, 7.
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Tobias Schmitt
Tobias Schmitt is a PhD candidate at the Chair for Modern and Contemporary History/Department of History at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg/Germany. His PhD project examines the role of U.S. intelligence in the rearmament of West Germany (1948–1955).