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134-907: Under the Fourth Republic the SDECE was subordinated to the President of the Council . From the onset of the Fifth Republic and until 1962, it was subordinate to Prime Minister Michel Debré and its resources largely dedicated to the Algerian War . Following the Mehdi Ben Barka affair, General Charles de Gaulle subordinated the service to the Ministry of Defence , and the service was gradually militarized. The SDECE

268-825: A dirigiste economic policy, which included substantial state control over a capitalist economy, which was followed by 30 years of unprecedented growth. The wartime damage was extensive, and large reparations from defeated Germany did not happen. The United States helped revive the French economy with the Marshall Plan (1948–1951), giving France $ 2.3 billion with no repayment. France was the second largest recipient after Britain. The total of all American grants and credits to France from 1946 to 1953 amounted to $ 4.9 billion. It provided urgently needed funding for modernizing transport systems, electricity generation, and basic industries including cement, coal, and steel. The plan required

402-648: A plurality (not the absolute majority) of the National Assembly voting against the Cabinet. Consequently, these ministerial crises did not result in the dissolution of Parliament. Thus, as in the Third Republic, this regime was characterized by ministerial instability. The Fourth Republic was also a victim of the political context. The split of the three-party alliance in spring 1947, the departure of Communist ministers, Gaullist opposition , and

536-622: A KGB defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn revealed to the CIA the existence of the Soviet Sapphire spy ring within the SDECE. President John F. Kennedy wrote a letter to President de Gaulle, detailing Golitsyn’s revelations, which was handed to de Gaulle personally by the CIA station chief in Paris. De Gaulle, however, believed the claim that the Sapphire spy ring existed was a CIA plot to disorganize

670-681: A bargaining tool with the intelligence services of the Western Allies. Meanwhile, as of 1946, when Joseph Stalin consolidated his absolute power and control over Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe as agreed at the Potsdam Conference of 1945 and demarcated with what became known as the Iron Curtain , the Western Allies of World War II , the U.S, Britain, and France had no sources of covert information within

804-563: A bloodless action called Opération Corse . Operation Resurrection would be implemented if De   Gaulle was not approved as leader by the French Parliament , if De   Gaulle asked for military assistance to take power, or to thwart any organized attempt by the French Communist Party to seize power or stall De   Gaulle's return. De   Gaulle, who had announced his retirement from politics

938-538: A close ally of France, had long been annoyed at Ben Barka's criticism of his regime and had asked General de Gaulle to extradite him back to Morocco, but as Ben Barka had been granted asylum in France and was breaking no laws, it was not legally possible to return Ben Barka to Morocco, leading to alternative means to be deployed. Ben Barka's body was never found, but as he was last seen alive in Paris being handed over by two SDECE agents to Moroccan agents on 29 October 1965, he

1072-593: A complete disaster as every single agent parachuted into Eastern Europe was captured. As in Vietnam, during the Algerian War , the SDECE played a prominent role in waging la guerre sale ("the dirty war") against the enemies of the republic. The 1950s-60s are remembered as the "era of political assassinations" by SDECE agents as one of the agency's main jobs was to assassinate members of the FLN. The number of killings dramatically stepped up in 1958 when Charles de Gaulle gave

1206-466: A decade before, placed himself in the midst of the crisis, calling on the nation to suspend the government and create a new constitutional system. On 29 May 1958, French politicians agreed upon calling on De   Gaulle to take over the government as prime minister. The French Army's willingness to support an overthrow of the constitutional government was a significant development in French politics. With Army support, De   Gaulle's government terminated

1340-505: A good record in the collection of military and economic intelligence on East Germany and the Soviet forces there. But this information, for the most part, came from observation and not from clandestine penetration". Upon Gehlen's retirement in 1968, a CIA note on Gehlen describes him as "essentially a military officer in habits and attitudes". He was also characterized as "essentially a conservative", who refrained from entertaining and drinking,

1474-551: A great deal of foresight in his thinking." He was also noted to be very hardworking. His role in Barbarossa was mainly planning for the difficulties of bringing reserves up to the front, separating the areas of the army groups and armies in the invasion, and arranging transportation. For this work Gehlen was awarded the War Merit Cross , first and second classes, in the spring of 1941. As Operation Barbarossa began and

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1608-569: A high-placed mole in Stavka . When the cables continued, the British suspected a Soviet operation but later dismissed that idea upon investigation. The cables are available to be read upon purchase from the British archives at cost. The fact remains that aside from several instances of possible Soviet disinformation, most of the Max cables contained extremely accurate intelligence. Max was a big reason for

1742-453: A highly developed system of social benefits. According to various studies, the real purchasing power of the average French worker's salary went up by 170% between 1950 and 1975, while overall private consumption increased by 174% in the period 1950-1974. The French standard of living, which had been damaged by both World Wars , became one of the world's highest. The population also became far more urbanized; many rural départements experienced

1876-546: A man who was legally living in France to be killed by the Moroccan state, but as the victim was a Moroccan Muslim, the public outrage soon subsided over L'affaire Ben Barka , and the scandal ended when the two SDECE agents who helped kidnap Ben Barka were convicted in 1967. A major area of SDECE activity in the 1960s was supporting the Quebec separatist movement. Jacques Foccart , one of de Gaulle's most important aides directed

2010-494: A modernization of French industrial and managerial systems, free trade, and friendly economic relations with West Germany. The French economy grew rapidly like economies of other developed countries within the framework of the Marshall Plan such as West Germany , Italy , and Japan . These decades of economic prosperity combined high productivity with high average wages and high consumption, and were also characterised by

2144-411: A population decline while the larger metropolitan areas grew considerably, especially that of Paris . Ownership of various household goods and amenities increased considerably, while the wages of the French working class rose significantly as the economy became more prosperous. As noted by the historians Jean Blondel and Donald Geoffrey Charlton in 1974, If it is still the case that France lags in

2278-538: A second-rate nation that from the French viewpoint had humiliatingly helped to save France, a would-be world power, in both world wars, and de Gaulle sought revenge by seeking to break up Canada. Furthermore, de Gaulle was an Anglophobe and as Canada was a product of the British Empire , this gave him an additional reason to hate Canada. A sign of how much de Gaulle hated Canada because of Canadian sacrifices during both world wars can be seen in that de Gaulle snubbed

2412-604: A section of the French Army rebelled and openly backed the Algérie française movement to defeat separation. Revolts and riots broke out in 1958 against the French government in Algiers, but there were no adequate and competent political initiatives by the French government in support of military efforts to end the rebellion owing to party politics. The feeling was widespread that another debacle like that of Indochina in 1954

2546-434: A serial number, which tracked its number within the series of messages; and a secondary catalogue number that indicated the region and location that the message referred to. The messages were also filed by date, which was of no less importance. It was an incredibly efficient and well-organized system. If asked what exactly was reported about a specific city or region, or what was reported on a specific date, Kauder could retrieve

2680-855: A thing. Further operations by the Gehlen Org produced detailed reports about Soviet construction and testing of the MiG-15 jet-propelled aircraft, which United States airmen flying F-86 fighters would soon to face in aerial combat during the Korean War . Between 1947 and 1955, the Gehlen Organization also debriefed every German PoW who returned to West Germany from captivity in the Soviet GULAG . The network employed hundreds of former Wehrmacht military intelligence and some SS officers, and also recruited many other agents from within

2814-665: A transitional administration empowered to design a new French constitution . The Fourth Republic was dissolved on 5 October 1958 following a public referendum which established the current French Fifth Republic with a strengthened presidency . After the liberation of France in 1944, the Vichy government was dissolved and the Provisional Government of the French Republic ( French : Gouvernement provisoire de la République française , GPRF), also known as

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2948-664: A way to prevent further war between France and Germany . Though the United Kingdom was invited, its Labour government , then preparing for a re-election fight, did not join the initiative. It was formally established in 1951 by the Treaty of Paris , signed by France, Italy , West Germany , Belgium , Luxembourg and the Netherlands . Between these countries the ECSC would create a common market for coal and steel. The ECSC

3082-725: A year into the German war against the Soviet Union, Gehlen understood that the FHO required fundamental re-organization, and secured a staff of army linguists and geographers, anthropologists, lawyers, and junior military officers who would improve the FHO as a military-intelligence organization despite the Nazi ideology of Slavic inferiority. Gehlen made great use of cables received from the Max Network . Originally an Abwehr creation, Max

3216-432: Is "chock full of errors". The CIA review is kinder when speaking of Gehlen's memoirs but makes this comment: "Gehlen's descriptions of most of his so-called successes in the political intelligence field are, in my opinion, either wishful thinking or self-delusion.... Gehlen was never a good clandestine operator, nor was he a particularly good administrator. And therein lay his failures. The Gehlen Organization/BND always had

3350-529: Is all far from the fact," as quoted in the Washington Post . Critchfield added that Gehlen hired the former Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS) men "reluctantly, under pressure from German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to deal with 'the avalanche of subversion hitting them from East Germany'". Gehlen's memoirs were published in 1977 by World Publishers, New York. In

3484-513: Is generally believed to have been murdered by the Moroccans. The revelation that the gangsters from le milieu (literally "the middle"; i.e French organized crime) had also involved in kidnapping Ben Barka further added to the scandal as many French people were shocked to discover that the SDECE often co-operated with le milieu . The Ben Barka affair briefly caused much public excitement as the SDECE had no powers of arrest, let alone to hand over

3618-518: Is generally regarded as the most able of the SDECE directors, and the man who saved the agency from itself, turning what had been an thuggish outfit designed to murder enemies of the state into a more professional intelligence agency. Marenches also restored the ties to the CIA that de Gaulle had broken off, and in 1975 the SDECE worked with the CIA and the government of Zaire to support the National Liberation Front of Angola during

3752-462: Is one of the unsolved mysteries of the war, with Kauder's loyalties and sources of information still unclear. Max was probably the most sophisticated radio operation in World War Two: "Kauder now had skilled German radio operators at his disposal. He also formed his own team [of Jews] that worked with the radio operators and managed detailed records of all messages. Each message was assigned

3886-652: The Angolan Civil War . At same time, the SDECE continued with its traditional work of ensuring that the countries in Françafrique stayed in the French sphere of influence. Ali Soilih , the president of the Comoros , had proven hostile to French influence after taking power in a 1975 coup, and in 1978 the SDECE hired Bob Denard to stage a coup. On the night of 13 May 1978, Denard and 42 other mercenaries landed on Grande Comore, almost effortlessly annihilated

4020-574: The Council of the Republic ), played a symbolic role. His main power was to propose a Prime Minister, who was subject to election by the National Assembly before forming a Cabinet. Only the Prime Minister could invoke a parliamentary vote on legitimacy of the Cabinet. The Prime Minister was also the only member of the executive able to demand a vote of confidence from the National Assembly (in

4154-652: The Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance and other conservative parties, unsuccessfully attempted to oppose the Christian democrat and socialist MRP –SFIO–PCF alliance. The new constituent assembly included 166 MRP deputies, 153 PCF deputies and 128 SFIO deputies, giving the tripartite alliance an absolute majority. Georges Bidault of the MRP replaced Felix Gouin as the head of government. A new draft of

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4288-667: The European Union , created in 1993 through the Maastricht Treaty ). The trigger for the collapse of the Fourth Republic was the Algiers crisis of 1958 . France was still a colonial power, although conflict and revolt had begun the process of decolonization . French West Africa , French Indochina , and French Algeria still sent representatives to the French parliament under systems of limited suffrage in

4422-664: The French Committee of National Liberation , was instituted after a unanimous request of the Provisional Consultative Assembly to be properly represented. With most of the political class discredited and containing many members who had more or less collaborated with Nazi Germany, Gaullism and communism became the most popular political forces in France. Charles de Gaulle led the GPRF from 1944 to 1946. Meanwhile, negotiations took place over

4556-531: The French Communist Party ( Parti communiste français , PCF) and the socialist SFIO supported the draft constitution, which envisaged a form of government based on unicameralism ; but this was rejected in the referendum of 5 May 1946 . For the 1946 elections , the Rally of Left Republicans ( Rassemblement des gauches républicaines , RGR), which encompassed the Radical-Socialist Party ,

4690-648: The French Union . Algeria in particular, despite being the colony with the largest French-identifying population, saw rising pressure for separation from the Métropole . The situation was complicated by those in Algeria, such as the Pieds-Noirs , who wanted to stay part of France, so the Algerian War became not just a separatist movement but had elements of a civil war . Further complications came when

4824-655: The Imperial German Army during World War I , and his mother, Katharina Margaret Gehlen ( née  van Vaernewycks ), was a Flemish noblewoman. He grew up in Breslau , where his father, a former army officer, was a publisher for the Ferdinand-Hirt-Verlag, a publishing house specializing in school books. In his youth, Gehlen's main interests were mathematics and horses. He wanted to follow his father's path and become an army officer, despite

4958-805: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) was monitoring the SDECE agents who were supporting Quebec separatism by handing over bags of cash to separatists, and the RCMP viewed the French embassy in Ottawa much like the Soviet embassy; namely as a den of spies working for a hostile foreign power. During the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-70, the SDECE supported Biafra by supplying the Biafrans with weapons and mercenaries as de Gaulle wanted to break up Nigeria and have oil-rich Biafra in

5092-639: The Soviet Union and Soviet Bloc . Beginning with his time as head of the Gehlen Organization, Gehlen favored both Atlanticism and close cooperation between what would become West Germany, the U.S. intelligence community , and the other members of the NATO military alliance . The organization employed hundreds of former members of the Nazi Party and former Wehrmacht military intelligence officers. After West Germany regained its sovereignty, Gehlen became

5226-474: The Third Republic any minister could call for a vote of confidence). The Cabinet could be dismissed if an absolute majority of the National Assembly's members voted against the Cabinet. Finally, the National Assembly could be dissolved after two ministerial crises in the legislature . However, these constitutional measures did not work. In January 1947, after his election by the National Assembly and

5360-513: The "Red Hand" assassinations committed by SDECE was the result of a secret agreement with General Reinhard Gehlen , the chief of the Bundesnachrichtendienst under which the French and German intelligence were to share information in exchange for allowing the SDECE to commit murders on German soil. One SDECE agent, Philippe L. Thyaud de Vosjolo, wrote in his 1970 memoir Lamia : "Dozens of assassinations were carried out. Besides

5494-701: The Action Service blew up the headquarters of the OAS's assassins. In 1960, de Gaulle founded the Service d'Action Civique (SAC), an organization linked to SDECE of about 8,000 that spied on his political opponents, broke up anti-Gaullist demonstrations and engaged in "dirty tricks" for the SDECE. In December 1961, the SDECE was rocked by scandal of the Martel affair (also known as the Sapphire Affair) when

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5628-407: The BND that was headed by Gehlen. All three were eventually discovered and convicted in 1963. There were also Communists and their sympathizers within the CIA and the SIS ( MI6 ), especially Kim Philby and the Cambridge Spies . As such information appeared, Gehlen, personally, and the Gehlen Organization, officially, were attacked by the governments of the Western powers. The British government

5762-431: The Cabinet and to reinforce the authority of the Prime Minister of France, who led the Cabinet. The goal of the new constitution was to reconcile parliamentary democracy with ministerial stability. For instance, under the new Constitution, the President of the Council was the leader of the executive branch (Prime Minister of France). The President of the French Republic, elected by the Parliament (the National Assembly and

5896-501: The Comorian forces and by the morning the Comoros was theirs. President Soilih was high on marijuana and naked in his bed together with three nude teenage schoolgirls watching a pornographic film, when Denard kicked in the door to his room to inform him that he was no longer president and had Soilih taken out to be "shot while trying to escape". In 1981, when the Socialist François Mitterrand become president, he fired Marenches whom he viewed as too conservative and appointed Pierre Marion ,

6030-410: The Constitution was written, which this time proposed the establishment of a bicameral form of government. Leon Blum of the SFIO headed the GPRF from 1946 to 1947. After a new legislative election in June 1946, the Christian democrat Georges Bidault assumed leadership of the Cabinet . Despite De   Gaulle's so-called discourse of Bayeux of 16 June 1946 in which he denounced the new institutions,

6164-435: The FLN, arms dealers and other anti-French nationalists in Africa. The SDECE also engaged in hijacking six ships bound for Algeria with arms for the FLN between 1956–61, and blew up one ship packed with weapons for the FLN in Hamburg harbor with a naval mine. Within Algeria itself, the SDECE assassinated suspected FLN members and provided intelligence to the Army to indicate "disloyal" villages that were to be burned down. Many of

6298-426: The First Amendment, leading to the scandal of the Generals' affair as once the news broke in the United States, it was picked up by the French media. In the 1950s, SDECE had a reputation for engaging in bizarre operations like stealing fuel from Soviet planes that had landed in France to analyze the antifreeze contents of Soviet jet fuel and for drugging Soviet espionage couriers on the Orient Express to rifle through

6432-441: The Foreign Armies East (FHO) after the dismissal of Colonel Kinzel. Prior to that he had little intelligence experience, though he did have interactions with military intelligence, the Abwehr , during his earlier work at the Army High Command, to the point where he received a warning for meddling too much in the affairs of that agency. Before the Wehrmacht disasters in the Battle of Stalingrad (23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943),

6566-407: The Fourth Republic (the last parliament of the Fourth Republic voted for its dissolution) and drew up a new constitution proclaiming the French Fifth Republic in 1958. Reinhard Gehlen Reinhard Gehlen (3 April 1902 – 8 June 1979) was a German career intelligence officer who served the Weimar Republic , Nazi Germany , and West Germany , and also worked for the United States during

6700-435: The French people wanted to continue the fight in Indochina against the Communists, led by Ho Chi Minh and his Viet Minh movement. Pierre Mendès France was a Radical Party leader who was Prime Minister for eight months in 1954–55, working with the support of the Socialist and Communist parties. His top priority was ending the war in Indochina, which had already cost 92,000 dead, 114,000 wounded and 28,000 captured in

6834-421: The French reaction to Golitsyn’s revelations (the NSA apparently was not capable of breaking the Quai d'Orsay's codes in the 1960s). When it was discovered the CIA had broken into the French embassy to steal the French diplomatic codes, the SDECE station chief in Washington was recalled to Paris in disgrace. Despite de Gaulle's belief that the KGB Sapphire spy ring was CIA disinformation, it was later discovered that

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6968-428: The French sphere of influence. Furthermore, Nigeria, like Canada, was, also, a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic federation that was a product of the British Empire , giving de Gaulle another reason to want to see Nigeria broken up. The SDECE hired Bob Denard , a French mercenary who usually fought for France in Françafrique (France's sphere of influence in its former African colonies), and company to fight for Biafra. In

7102-448: The Gehlen Organization or "the Org", a secret intelligence service composed of former intelligence officers of the Wehrmacht and members of the SS and the SD , which was headquartered first at Oberursel , near Frankfurt, then at Pullach , near Munich. The organization's cover-name was the South German Industrial Development Organization. Gehlen initially selected 350 ex-Wehrmacht military intelligence officers as his staff; eventually,

7236-445: The Gehlen Organization to the BND.... Instead of expelling them, the BND even seems to have been willing to recruit more of them – at least for a few years". On the other hand, Gehlen himself was cleared by the CIA's James H. Critchfield , who worked with the Gehlen Organization from 1949 to 1956. In 2001, he said that "almost everything negative that has been written about Gehlen, [as an] ardent ex-Nazi, one of Hitler's war criminals ...

7370-399: The General Staff, in October 1936 he was assigned to the Operations Section, and in the following year he was reassigned to the Fortifications Section. In November 1938 Gehlen was again posted to an artillery regiment. At the time of the Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939, Gehlen was a major and an operations staff officer in the 213th Infantry Division . It was mobilized for

7504-470: The Jew. This information was the bait that may have carried costs for the Soviets but was worth the payoff when it was later used as part of the Soviet Maskirovka Strategy to trap the Wehrmacht in Stalingrad, Kursk, and the Summer Offensive of 1944 ( Operation Bagration ). Many of the Jews who stayed alive working for Kauder later moved to Israel. Ageing Israelis have made the claim "a handful of Jews won World War Two " — slightly legitimate if Max caused

7638-424: The Max information was accurate, and both the NKVD and Smersh later investigated the Max network. It is possible that Stalin kept Max away from the regular organizational structures, which he never fully trusted. It is argued that the accuracy of the Max reports were the bait that caused the FHO overreliance on Max – to the extent that Nazi officials defied Hitler's explicit directive to stop working with Kauder

7772-423: The Polish campaign but did not see any action. He was still awarded the Iron Cross , second class. In late 1939 he was transferred to the staff of General Franz Halder , the Chief of the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH), the Army High Command. In his early work, Gehlen was once again planning the construction of fortifications both along the Soviet border and in the west. Halder increasingly relied on Gehlen during

7906-438: The Red Army continued to fight despite its losses, Halder became upset at his intelligence department for not informing him of the true extent of Soviet military capabilities. In late 1941 Gehlen was being considered to replace Colonel Eberhard Kinzel as the head of Foreign Armies East ( Fremde Heere Ost , FHO), the Army Staff section responsible for analyzing the Soviet Union, on the recommendation of Colonel Heusinger. Halder

8040-444: The Red Army, and much strategic political intelligence about the Soviet Union. Understanding that the Soviet Union would defeat and occupy the Third Reich , Gehlen ordered the FHO intelligence files copied to microfilm ; the FHO files proper were stored in watertight drums and buried in various locations in the Austrian Alps. They amounted to fifty cases of German intelligence about the Soviet Union, which were at Gehlen's disposal as

8174-443: The Reichswehr, including more opportunities for promotion. That same year in October, Gehlen began attending the "Commander Assistants Training," the equivalent of the German staff college during the Weimar Republic, and in June 1935 he graduated as second in his class. The following month he was promoted to captain and assigned to the "Troop Office," or what was renamed the German General Staff in 1936. During his early years on

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8308-467: The SDECE's Action Service carte blanche to kill suspected members of the FLN under the cover of a pseudo-terrorist group called the Red Hand. The first two murders took place in West Germany, where an arms dealer who sold arms to the FLN was killed when the SDECE planted a bomb in his car while an anti-French Algerian politician was killed in a drive-by shooting. The fact that the various Länder police forces of West Germany were ineffective in investigating

8442-439: The SDECE's operations against Canada, having SDECE fund Quebec separatists via the French consulates in Quebec City and Montreal. In 1968, the Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau handed the French ambassador a diplomatic note of protest against SDECE agents operating in Quebec and several SDECE agents in Canada posing as diplomats were declared persona non grata . De Gaulle had a deep, visceral hatred of Canada, which he viewed as

8576-434: The SDECE, and ordered the SDECE to break off all co-operation with the CIA. James Jesus Angleton , the CIA counterintelligence chief, seeing no French reaction to Golityn's information, ordered a "Black Bag job" (a break-in) at the French embassy in Washington to photograph the codebooks that were used to encrypt the Quai d'Orsay's radio messages, thereby allowing the Americans to know what the French were doing and to monitor

8710-406: The Sapphire spy ring did in fact exist, and that Georges Pâques , the NATO press secretary, and André Labarthe , an aviation scientist, were both working for the KGB. Pâques was convicted of espionage for the Soviet Union, receiving life in prison, which was later reduced down to 20 years in prison. The Sapphire affair inspired the American novelist Leon Uris to write the 1967 novel Topaz about

8844-587: The Soviet Union. In exchange for his own liberty and the release of his former subordinates (also prisoners of the US Army), Gehlen offered the Counter Intelligence Corps access to the FHO's intelligence archives and to his intelligence gathering abilities aimed at the Soviet Union, known later as the Gehlen Organization . Boker removed his name and those of his Wehrmacht command from the official lists of German prisoners of war, and transferred seven former FHO senior officers to join Gehlen. The FHO archives were unearthed and secretly taken to Camp King, ostensibly without

8978-468: The Soviet penetration of the SDECE via the "Topaz" spy ring, which so closely resembled the Sapphire affair that many suspected the CIA leaked Uris information about the Sapphire case. In October 1965, the SDECE was involved in another scandal when two SDECE agents kidnapped Mehdi Ben Barka , a left-wing Moroccan émigré, on the streets of Paris and handed him over to the agents of the Moroccan government to be tortured and killed. King Hassan II of Morocco ,

9112-406: The Third World also laid the groundwork for friendly relations that Gehlen attempted to use to steer local governments into taking an anti-Soviet and Pro- NATO stance during the ongoing Cold War and further assisted the West German economic miracle by both encouraging and favoring West German trade and corporate investment. Gehlen's refusal to correct reports with questionable content strained

9246-414: The Trente Glorieuses as an exceptional "catch up" period following the world wars. He cites statistics showing that normal growth in wealthy countries is about 1.5–2%, whereas in Europe growth dropped to 0.5% between 1913 and 1950, and then "caught up" with a growth rate of 4% between 1950 and 1970, until settling back to 1.5–2% from 1970 onward. Public opinion polls showed that in February 1954, only 7% of

9380-430: The Vietminh who were fighting for independence from France, but the general hostility of the Vietnamese to the French limited the appeal of fighting for France among the Vietnamese people. The SDECE parachuted agents both in Vietnam and Eastern Europe, but the SDECE was well penetrated by French communists who provided Moscow with all the details of the operations. In particular, the operations in Eastern Europe in 1950s were

9514-429: The Vietminh. The French state tried to bury the story by ordering the newspapers not to print it, but the Paris correspondent of Time had reported to the New York office of Time . Unknown to him, the French state was illegally listening in to dispatches filed by foreign correspondents from Paris. The French embassy in Washington tried to suppress the story as embarrassing to France, but the U.S. government refused, citing

9648-512: The West German Bundeswehr —also recognized Gehlen's talent as a staff officer. From late 1940 Gehlen worked on operational planning for Germany's movement east. That included the invasion and occupation of Greece and Yugoslavia, as well as the preparations for Operation Barbarossa . In February 1941 Gehlen was described in a report by his superiors as "a fine example of a general staff officer ... Great operational ability and

9782-545: The accuracy of the intelligence, Hitler dismissed Gehlen, soon after his promotion to major general . The FHO collection of both military and political intelligence from captured Red Army soldiers assured Gehlen's post–WWII survival as a Western anticommunist spymaster, with networks of spies and secret agents in the countries of Soviet-occupied Europe. During the German war against the Soviet Union in 1941 to 1945, Gehlen's FHO collected much tactical military intelligence about

9916-699: The anti–Communist Gehlen Organization became the nucleus of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND, Federal Intelligence Service). Gehlen was the president of the BND as an espionage service until his retirement in 1968. The end of Gehlen's career as a spymaster resulted from a confluence of events in West Germany: the exposure of a KGB mole , Heinz Felfe , (a former SS lieutenant) working at BND headquarters; political estrangement from Adenauer, in 1963, which aggravated his professional problems; and

10050-511: The assassins were pro-French Vietnamese who fled to France after Vietnamese independence, and were quite willing to kill and/or be killed for France. In 1960, many of the Action Service's killers, including most of the Vietnamese, went over the OAS , leading to the Action Service to dispatch new agents to Algeria to assassinate the former Action Service assassins who joined the OAS. In January 1961,

10184-524: The cavalry school in Hanover in 1926, where spent two years before requesting a transfer, and in 1928 he was sent to back to his original unit in Schweidnitz. There he met a secretary working for the military, Herta von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, and they got married in 1931. She was a member of an aristocratic Prussian military family . After Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933 there was an expansion of

10318-485: The contents of their briefcases. The cryptographic division of the SDECE was well regarded, having broken several Soviet diplomatic codes, but its attempts at playing the role of a para-military organization was less successful. In 1951 SDECE created the Groupement de Commandos Mixtes Aéroportés para-military organization in Vietnam, part of the "Action Service" (together with 11th shock parachute regiment ), to counter

10452-663: The countries in which the occupying Red Army had vanquished the Wehrmacht. On 22 May 1945, Gehlen surrendered to the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) of the U.S. Army in Bavaria and was taken to Camp King , near Oberursel , and interrogated by Captain John R. Boker. The American Army recognised his potential value as a spymaster with great knowledge of Soviet forces and anticommunist intelligence contacts in

10586-601: The division of responsibilities between rival agencies led to different arms of the French state to spend more time locked in bureaucratic disputes with one another than anything else. In September 1949, SDECE played a prominent role in the "scandal of the generals", when the Sûreté Générale revealed that the Army chief of staff had trusted confidential documents relating to the war in Vietnam to another general, who had given them to an SDECE agent who in turn had given them to

10720-490: The downfall of the German effort in the east, where most of the German army were destroyed. On the other hand, Max cables clearly warned FHO regarding Operation Mars , a terrible defeat for the Red Army. This caused the British to conclude that it was impossible for Max to be a Soviet operation. However, the British may have been blinded by western ideals regarding acceptable costs of national sacrifice. The Max Network

10854-663: The early years of the Cold War of 1945–91, Gehlen's agents were providing the United States Federal Government with more than 70% of its intelligence on the Soviet armed forces . Early in 1948, Gehlen Org Spymasters began receiving detailed reports from their sources throughout the Soviet Zone of covert East German remilitarization long before any West German politicians had even thought of such

10988-684: The early years of the Cold War . He was in charge of German military intelligence on the Eastern Front of World War II and was later the first director of West Germany's intelligence agency, the Federal Intelligence Service (BND). Born into a Lutheran family at Erfurt , Gehlen joined the Reichswehr , the truncated army of the Weimar Republic , and later took part in the invasion of Poland in 1939. He

11122-610: The end of World War II , Gehlen surrendered to the United States Army . While in a POW camp, Gehlen offered FHO's microfilmed and secretly buried archives about the USSR and his own services to the U.S. intelligence community . Following the start of the Cold War , the U.S. military (G-2 Intelligence) accepted Gehlen's offer and assigned him to establish the Gehlen Organization , an espionage service focusing on

11256-644: The fact that Gehlen allowed former Nazis to work for the agencies. The authors of the book A Nazi Past: Recasting German Identity in Postwar Europe (2015) stated that Reinhard Gehlen simply did not want to know the backgrounds of the men whom the BND hired in the 1950s. The American National Security Archive states that "he employed numerous former Nazis and known war criminals". An article in The Independent on 29 June 2018 made this statement about BND employees: "Operating until 1956, when it

11390-477: The fall of 1968, the SDECE hired Rolf Steiner , a German mercenary who had once served in the French Foreign Legion, who together with 4,000 of his men left for Nigeria on a French ship from Lisbon to Libreville, Gabon, from where they were flown into Biafra on French planes. The SDECE often smuggled arms into Biafra on Red Cross planes that were supposed to be bringing food and medical supplies for

11524-483: The former CEO of Air France as the new intelligence chief of what was renamed the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (General Directorate of External Security) in 1982. French Fourth Republic In Alsace-Moselle : The French Fourth Republic ( French : Quatrième république française ) was the republican government of France from 27 October 1946 to 4 October 1958, governed by

11658-539: The founding president of the Federal Intelligence Service ( Bundesnachrichtendienst , BND) of West Germany (1956–68). Gehlen obeyed a direct order from West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer , and also hired former counterintelligence officers of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), in response to an alleged avalanche of covert ideological subversion hitting West Germany from

11792-587: The fourth republican constitution of 13 October 1946. Essentially a reestablishment and continuation of the French Third Republic which governed from 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War to 1940 during World War II , it suffered many of the same problems which led to its end. The French Fourth Republic was a parliamentary republic . Despite political dysfunction, the Fourth Republic saw an era of great economic growth in France and

11926-421: The inefficiency of the BND consequent to Gehlen's poor leadership and continual inattention to the business of counter-espionage as national defence. According to Der Spiegel journalists Heinz Höhne and Hermann Zolling , the premature end of the German colonial empire in 1918 placed West Germany's new foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst at a considerable advantage in dealing with

12060-509: The information was so potent that FHO refused to allow any tainting of their golden source. After the war, the Allies interrogated Kauder and his associates and promptly concluded that the Soviets ran the entire Max operation, and that Kauder was not a professional spy but merely allowed himself to be the figurehead relaying information he received from his NKVD contacts and sources. However,

12194-637: The intelligence services behind the Iron Curtain . Gehlen was instrumental in negotiations to establish an official West German intelligence service based on the Gehlen Organization of the early 1950s. In 1956, the Gehlen Organization was transferred to the West German government and formed the core of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), the Federal Republic of Germany's official foreign intelligence service, with Gehlen serving as its first president until his retirement in 1968. While this

12328-527: The keys to breaking Czechoslovakian intelligence's codes. The results were nothing less than devastating for Czechoslovakian espionage and led to multiple arrests and convictions. The security and efficacy of the Gehlen Organization were compromised by East German and Soviet moles within it, such as Johannes Clemens , Erwin Tiebel and Heinz Felfe who were feeding information while in the Org and later, while in

12462-619: The knowledge of the camp commander. By the end of summer 1945, Captain Boker had the support of Brigadier General Edwin Sibert , the senior G2 (intelligence) officer of the U.S. Twelfth Army Group, who arranged the secret transport of Gehlen, his officers and the FHO intelligence archives, authorized by his superiors in the chain of command, General Walter Bedell Smith (chief of staff for General Eisenhower ), who worked with William Donovan (former OSS chief) and Allen Dulles (OSS chief), who also

12596-641: The massive anti-Communist ethnic German, Soviet, and East European refugee communities throughout Western Europe. They were accordingly able to develop detailed maps of the railroad systems, airfields, and ports of the USSR, and the Org's field agents even infiltrated the Baltic Soviet Republics and the Ukrainian SSR . Among the Org's earliest counterespionage successes was Operation Bohemia, which began in March 1948 after Božena Hájková,

12730-498: The message instantly, using his simple, intelligent and efficient filing method. Gehlen's cadre of FHO intelligence-officers produced accurate field-intelligence about the Red Army that frequently contradicted Nazi Party ideological perceptions of the eastern battle front. Hitler dismissed the gathered information as defeatism and philosophically harmful to the war effort against " Judeo-Bolshevism " in Russia. In April 1945, despite

12864-590: The nationalist leader in Tunisia, for the independence of that colony by 1956, and began discussions with the nationalist leaders in Morocco for a French withdrawal. The intention of the new Constitution's authors was to rationalize the parliamentary system . Ministers were accountable to the legislative body, the French National Assembly , but some measures were introduced in order to protect

12998-596: The new proportional representation did not create conditions for ministerial stability. Governmental coalitions were composed of an undisciplined patchwork of center-left and center-right parties. Finally, the Fourth Republic was confronted with the collapse of the French colonial empire . The creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was first proposed by French foreign minister Robert Schuman and French economist Jean Monnet on 9 May 1950 as

13132-458: The new draft was approved by 53% of voters voting in favor (with an abstention rate of 31%) in the referendum held on 13 October 1946 and the Constitution of 27 October 1946 came into force two weeks later as the Fourth Republic, in an arrangement in which executive power essentially resided in the hands of the President of the Council (the prime minister). The President of the Republic

13266-498: The newly independent governments of post-colonial Africa, Asia, and the Middle East . This is why many Third World military and foreign intelligence services were largely trained by BND military advisors . This made it possible for the BND to easily receive accurate intelligence in these regions which the CIA and former colonialist intelligence services could not acquire without recruiting local spy rings. BND covert activities in

13400-690: The night of 8-9 November 1948, after being warned by "Ondřej" of an imminent Stalinist witch hunt for " rootless cosmopolitans " within the Czechoslovak officer corps, Captain Jeřábek and two other senior military intelligence officers crossed the border into the American Zone and defected to the West. In addition to several lists of Czechoslovakian spies in West Germany, Captain Jeřábek also carried

13534-456: The nomination of his ministers, Prime Minister Paul Ramadier called for a vote of confidence in order to verify that the Assembly approved the composition of his Cabinet. This initiated a custom of double election, a vote for the Prime Minister followed by a vote of confidence in the chosen Cabinet, that weakened the Prime Minister's authority over the Cabinet. Cabinets were dismissed with only

13668-416: The number of its telephones, working-class housing has improved beyond recognition and the various 'gadgets' of the consumer society–from television to motor cars–are now purchased by the working class on an even more avid basis than in other Western European countries. The worldwide 1973 oil crisis slowed down its explosive growth. Thus, the mid-1970s marked the end of the period. Thomas Piketty describes

13802-493: The organization recruited some 4,000 anticommunist secret agents. After he started working for the U.S. Government, Gehlen was subordinate to US Army G-2 (Intelligence). He resented this arrangement and in 1947, the year after his Organization was established, Gehlen arranged for a transfer to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The agency kept close control of the Gehlen Organization, because during

13936-428: The organization's credibility, and dazzling achievements became an infrequent commodity. A veteran agent remarked at the time that the BND pond then contained some sardines, though a few years earlier the pond had been alive with sharks. The fact that the BND could score certain successes despite East German Stasi interference, internal malpractice, inefficiencies and infighting, was primarily due to select members of

14070-478: The president acting through a special adviser on intelligence matters. The SDECE was frequently involved in bureaucratic disputes with the Deuxième Bureau in Vietnam and Algeria, and within France with the Sûreté Générale , which led successive directors of the SDECE to see their real enemies as the other branches of the republic concerned with intelligence. As was usually the case with French intelligence,

14204-583: The proposed new constitution, which was to be put to a referendum. De   Gaulle advocated a presidential system of government, and criticized the reinstatement of what he pejoratively called "the parties system". He resigned in January 1946 and was replaced by Felix Gouin of the French Section of the Workers' International ( Section française de l'Internationale ouvrière , SFIO). Ultimately only

14338-491: The rebuilding of the nation's social institutions and industry after World War II, with assistance from the United States through the Marshall Plan . It also saw the beginning of the rapprochement with France's longtime enemy Germany , which led to Franco-German co-operation and eventually to the European Union . The new constitution made some attempts to strengthen the executive branch of government to prevent

14472-687: The recent defeat of Germany in World War I and the reduction in the size of the army. In 1920, at the age of eighteen, Gehlen completed his Abitur and joined the Reichswehr . In 1921 he was posted to the 6th Light Artillery Regiment (later the 3rd Prussian Artillery Regiment) in Schweidnitz , a town in Silesia near the Polish border, and 1923 he became a lieutenant. He graduated from the infantry and artillery schools. Gehlen received an assignment at

14606-522: The remembrance ceremonies for the 20th anniversary of the Dieppe raid in 1962 and the 50th anniversary of Vimy Ridge in 1967 as he claimed he was too busy to attend; by contrast the Germanophile de Gaulle always found time for remembrance ceremonies involving German sacrifices in the world wars as Germany was a fellow would-be world power, meaning that German sacrifices to subjugate France were worthy of

14740-485: The respect and admiration of the French people in a way that Canadian sacrifices to liberate them were not. Marcel Cadieux , the undersecretary of state at the Canadian Ministry of External Affairs from 1964-1970, often wrote in his diary about de Gaulle's obsessive hatred of Canada and his willingness to break international law by meddling in the internal affairs of Canada. From 1963 onward, a major concern for

14874-424: The rise of Gehlen's career, and he leveraged the "success of Max" into a spymaster's reputation and a postwar career. Possible Soviet penetration of Max would parallel and be a strong contributor for the thorough Soviet penetration of NTS and the Gehlen Organization . During the war some German officers attempted to trace the mechanics of Kauder's networks, and never found a satisfactory explanation. Nevertheless,

15008-519: The same year another book was published about him, The General Was a Spy, by Heinz Hoehne and Herman Zolling, Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, New York. A review of the latter, published by the CIA in 1996, calls it a "poor book" and goes on to allege that "so much of it is sheer garbage" because of many errors. The CIA review also discusses another book, Gehlen, Spy of the Century , by E. H. Cookridge, Hodder and Stoughton, London , 1971, and claims that it

15142-496: The settling of the most bloody scores". Marenches severed the links with the SAC (which was finally dissolved in 1982 after the SAC murdered a police officer and his family in 1981), fired half of SDECE's 1,000 employees, made the SDECE more professional and less politicised, changed the focus from assassinating enemies of the republic to intelligence gathering, and modernized the procedures for intelligence collecting and analysis. Marenches

15276-598: The sister in law of Czechoslovak military intelligence officer Captain Vojtěch Jeřábek, defected to the American Zone and applied for political asylum in the United States. After learning from Hájková that Captain Jeřábek was secretly expressing anti-communist opinions to his family, the Org dispatched a Czech refugee and veteran field agent codenamed "Ondřej" to make contact with the Captain and his family in Prague . During

15410-692: The spring of 1940 and he became one of Halder's main assistants. Gehlen was sent as his liaison officer to several German units that were involved in the Battle of France in May 1940, and in October of that year he was assigned to the Eastern Group of the Operations Section, led by Colonel Adolf Heusinger . Heusinger—who incidentally would later work with Gehlen after the war, as the first head of

15544-490: The staff who took it upon themselves to step up and overcome then existing maladies. Abdication of responsibility by Reinhard Gehlen was the malignancy; bureaucracy and cronyism remained pervasive, even nepotism (at one time Gehlen had 16 members of his extended family on the BND payroll). Only slowly did the younger generation then advance to substitute new ideas for some of the bad habits caused mainly by Gehlen's semi-retired attitude and frequent holiday absences. Gehlen

15678-569: The starving Ibos as the Federal Nigerian Army used starvation as a weapon to break Biafra. In 1970, President Georges Pompidou appointed the Comte Alexandre de Marenches SDECE chief with orders to clean up the agency. Marenches described SDECE in 1970 as being more alike to an organized crime racket than an intelligence agency, writing: "Some agents were running drugs and guns; others were engaged in kidnapping, murder and

15812-641: The unstable situation before the war, but instability remained and the French Fourth Republic saw frequent changes of government – there were 21 administrations in its 12-year history. Moreover, the government proved unable to make effective decisions regarding decolonization of the numerous remaining French colonies . After a series of crises culminating in the Algerian crisis of 1958 , the French Fourth Republic collapsed. Wartime leader Charles de Gaulle returned from retirement to preside over

15946-468: The use of guns or knives, more sophisticated methods had been perfected. Carbon dioxide guns ejecting small syringes had been purchased in the United States-but the SDECE people substituted the tranquilizing drug with a lethal poison. The victim showed all the symptoms of having suffered a heart attack". Besides for members of the FLN, the SDECE killed left-wing French intellectuals who supported

16080-611: The wake of the humiliating defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in early May 1954. At the Geneva Conference (1954) , he made a deal that gave the Viet Minh control of Vietnam north of the 17th parallel, and allowed him to pull out all French forces. That left South Vietnam standing alone. However, the United States moved in and provided large-scale financial, military and economic support for South Vietnam. Mendès France next came to an agreement with Habib Bourguiba ,

16214-639: Was a civilian office, he was also a lieutenant-general in the Reserve forces of the Bundeswehr , the highest-ranking reserve-officer in the military of West Germany. Along with Adolf Heusinger , Gehlen is considered to be one of the founding fathers of the Bundeswehr. Gehlen was born 1902 into a Protestant family in Erfurt and had two brothers and a sister. His father was Walther Gehlen, an officer in

16348-536: Was assigned as a staff officer to Gehlen was chief of the Wehrmacht Fremde Heere Ost (FHO), an anti-Soviet military intelligence service, during World War II . He achieved the rank of major general before he was fired by Adolf Hitler in April 1945 because of the FHO's alleged "defeatism" and accurate but pessimistic intelligence reports about Red Army military superiority. Following

16482-401: Was dissatisfied with Kinzel's performance and was looking for a replacement, though he thought that the 40-year old Gehlen was too young for such an important role and had no previous intelligence background. Heusinger believed that Gehlen was a good manager, and on his advice, Gehlen was appointed the head of FHO on 1 April 1942. In spring of 1942, Lieutenant Colonel Gehlen assumed command of

16616-570: Was especially hostile towards Gehlen, and the politically Left wing British press ensured full publicisation of the existence of the Gehlen Organization, which further compromised the operation. On 1 April 1956, 11 years after World War II had ended, the U.S. Government and the CIA formally transferred the Gehlen Organization to the authority of what was by then the Federal Republic of Germany , under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer (1949–63). By way of that transfer of geopolitical sponsorship,

16750-402: Was forced out of the BND due to "political scandal within the ranks", according to one source, He retired in 1968 as a civil servant of West Germany, classified as a Ministerialdirektor , a senior grade with a generous pension. His successor, Bundeswehr Brigadier General Gerhard Wessel , immediately called for a program of modernization and streamlining. Several publications have criticized

16884-520: Was founded in 1946 as a successor to the wartime Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action which was seen as too closely associated with the Gaullists to properly serve the republic. SDECE was known in France as la piscine (the swimming pool) because its HQ in Paris was located next to a public swimming pool. The SDECE was officially responsible to the Minister of Defense, but in fact reported to

17018-474: Was given a largely symbolic role, although he remained chief of the French Army and as a last resort could be called upon to resolve conflicts. After the expulsion of the Communists from the governing coalition, France joined the Cold War against Stalin, as expressed by becoming a founding member of NATO in April 1949. France now took a leadership position in unifying western Europe, working closely with Konrad Adenauer of West Germany. Robert Schuman , who

17152-402: Was governed by a 'High Authority', checked by bodies representing governments; representatives of the peoples of the member States (selected from each state's Members of Parliament ); and an independent judiciary . The Treaty of Paris (1951) , which created the ECSC, was superseded on 25 March 1957 by the Treaty of Rome , which established the European Economic Community (the forerunner to

17286-587: Was in the offing and that the government would order another precipitous pullout and sacrifice French honour to political expediency. This prompted General Jacques Massu to create a French settlers' committee to demand the formation of a new national government under General De   Gaulle, who was a national hero and had advocated a strong military policy, nationalism and the retention of French control over Algeria. General Massu, who had gained prominence and authority when he ruthlessly suppressed Algerian militants, famously declared that unless General De   Gaulle

17420-401: Was one of the primary sources of FHO intelligence on the Soviet Military. Based in Sofia, Max - the Klatt Bureau (Dienststelle Klatt) was led by a Viennese Jew, Richard Kauder and included many other Jews as radio operators. Max cables were highly accurate, and amounted to 10,700 cables from 1942–44, causing a British warning – Ultra intercepted the Max cables – to Stalin regarding

17554-411: Was returned to power, the French Army would openly revolt; General Massu and other senior generals covertly planned the takeover of Paris with 1,500 paratroopers preparing to take over airports with the support of French Air Force units. Armoured units from Rambouillet prepared to roll into Paris. On 24 May, French paratroopers from the Algerian corps landed on Corsica , taking the French island in

17688-425: Was superseded by the BND, the Gehlen Organization was allowed to employ at least 100 former Gestapo or SS officers.... Among them were Adolf Eichmann ’s deputy Alois Brunner , who would go on to die of old age despite having sent more than 100,000 Jews to ghettos or internment camps, and ex-SS major Emil Augsburg .... Many ex-Nazi functionaries including Silberbauer , the captor of Anne Frank , transferred over from

17822-424: Was the OSS station-chief in Bern . On 20 September 1945, Gehlen and three associates were flown from the American Zone of Occupation in Germany to the US, to become spymasters for the Western Allies . In July 1946, the US officially released Gehlen and returned him to occupied Germany. On 6 December 1946, he began espionage operations against the Soviet Union, by establishing what was known to US intelligence as

17956-444: Was twice Prime Minister and at other times Minister of Finance and Foreign Minister, was instrumental in building post-war European and trans-Atlantic institutions. A devout Catholic and anti-Communist, he led France to be a member of the European Communities , the Council of Europe and NATO. Les Trente Glorieuses ('The Glorious Thirty') was the high prosperity in the 30 years from 1945 to 1975. In 1944, De   Gaulle introduced

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