The General Was a Spy: The Career of Reinhard Gehlen

[Mark Alinsky]

Has anyone here read the book, "The General Was a Spy", by Heinz Höhne and Hermann Zolling? I read the book a few years ago, and I am now rereading it. The book is about the long and somewhat dubious career of Reinhard Gehlen, who worked in the Abwehr during the war. His "Foreign Armies East" section gathered intelligence on every aspect of the Red Army. His sources were so deeply entrenched in the higher echelons of the Kremlin, they are unknown even to this day. At the height of his intelligence gathering, Gehlen claimed to have known the disposition and strength of every Soviet unit from army group down to brigade level. Much of his information was ignored by OKW , mostly because of jealous rivals in the SD, such as Walter Schellenberg, and the Abwehr. After the surrender of Germany, he microfilmed all of his documents and hid them. He approached the CIA with the offer of continuing to gather information, this time for the Americans. Later his organization was transferred to the BND, the West German state security service. Gehlen's entire Foreign Armies East spyring was kept intact well into the 1950's, and the existence of his organization was a well kept secret until the 1960's. The Gehlen organization provided the Americans with substantial reports on Soviet missile strength during the Cold War. He also had high level contacts within the DDR (East German) government, though it was later proved that some of these were double agents working for the Soviets. Even after his death, the Americans did not fully disclose their relationship with him. Anyway, I just wanted to get some feedback from others who have read this book.

[Bene]

Hi,

one absolutely PERFECT, INTERESTING and WELL WRITTEN book for you if you're interested in Gehlen/Stauffenberg/Herre's "Fremde Heere Ost":

Jürgen Thorwald: "Die Illusion" (it's in German :-O)

It covers the story of members of the Red Army / of the Kosaken-Korps and other soviets under the service of Hitler's Army (under General Wlassow, who worked very close to "Fremde Heere Ost").
"Fremde Heere Ost" was IMHO one of the most fascinating departments of the Nazis, because they were never satisfied with Hitler's "Übermenschen"-plans, to take everything usable out from Russia/Ukraine and to treat the civilians very bad. Instead they wanted to treat the Russians very good, so that they were helping the Germans fighting against Stalin. At the beginning of the war very many Russians wanted to help, especially after they heard about General Wlassow fighting for Germany.
Very fascinating people at "Fremde Heere Ost", especially Stauffenberg.

Greetings and hope this helps!

Bene

[Bene]

Really, one of the best books I read in the last time!

Greetings

Bene

[AndyW]

At the height of his intelligence gathering, Gehlen claimed to have known the disposition and strength of every Soviet unit from army group down to brigade level. Much of his information was ignored by OKW , mostly because of jealous rivals in the SD, such as Walter Schellenberg, and the Abwehr.

Well, I can only comment on 1940/41 FHO-reports and the intel there was a complete mess.

The Germansintel reported from July 1941 up until Dec. 1941 continiously that the Soviets have no more reserves in armed menpower and industrial capacities. Based on those, completely wrong assesments, fatal decisions had been made on the German side. We can speculate if Hitler really would have invaded the USSR if he had sufficient intel about thier menpower ressources and industrial capacities at this time.

The bad German intel was a nail in the coffin of German's failure of Operation "Barbarossa".

Cheers,

[pdhinkle36ID]

Before I got my PC I,d read WW II books during to cold winter days. There were several on Gehlen. These stories can hold great interest. It is hard to except that they are all true.