Secrets and lies

Using declassified documents, a compelling and eye-opening book tells the story of a grubby time.

Fugitives: A History of Nazi Mercenaries During the Cold War by Danny Orbach HURST, £18.99 REVIEW BY VIN ARTHEY

In 1944, Hitler’s Head of Intelligence for the Eastern Front, Reinhard Gehlen, could see the writing on the wall and started making plans. He microfilmed his notes on the Red Army put them in water resistant crates and buried them in various locations.

For months, he identified like-minded staff, and in 1945 he offered the Americans, then the fledgling West German government, the services of his team, the “GehlenOrg”, along with his intelligence on the Soviet Union which now occupied East Germany.

It worked, but the self-satisfied Gehlen did not keep himself ahead of the game. Inevitably, his growing workforce included a number of true-believing Nazis and anti-Semites, some of whom had been directly involved in the mass murder of Jews.

The words “Fugitives” and

“Mercenaries” in Danny Orbach’s title are apt for his new, compelling and eyeopening book about a grubby time. A number of Gehlen’s gangsters turned out to be double agents, working primarily for East Germany or the Soviet Union, and some of their behaviour, uncovered by Orbach, makes the Cambridge Five look like a bunch of naughty little boys being sneaky at a children’s party.

Orbach goes on to show how some of these gangsters trafficked arms to the

Algerian nationalists seeking independence from France, which led to covert action by the French intelligence services and to tensions between the French and West German governments.

Next, he focuses on the emerging role and power of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad. Mossad was tasked with exploring and reducing the alleged