TABOO 9: THE COUP OF A TOP GERMAN SPY

Pullach, Germany, March 13, 1956: Reinhard Gehlen has achieved his goal. Gehlen, who’d been the head of the east division of the German army’s intelligence service, had not only saved his own skin by changing sides after the war: With the help of the CIA he also transformed the Nazi intelligence service into its postwar equivalent and became appointed to head it. Now enjoying his new power, he nevertheless sensed that he had enemies everywhere—and so on that March day he requested a visit from CIA Division Chief James Critchfield.

Gehlen got right down to the point. He was concerned about European security: Left-wing governments were not just threatening France and Italy— the same tendencies could be found in West Germany, and they might lead to the fall of the Christian Democratic Union’s conservative government. If the Social Democrats were to win the

next election, he continued, he feared for his own life. But that was not all: Such a government would also be susceptible to political infiltration as well as ultimate control by the East. Gehlen declared he was determined to do everything possible to prevent a Soviet invasion—even if it came at the cost of breaking the greatest of all political taboos: bringing about the end of democracy in West Germany. He wanted to discuss a plan for such an eventuality with the head of CIA, Allen Dulles. The moment Critchfield left Gehlen’s office, he informed his superiors about the conversation.

Was Gehlen proposing a coup led by the German intelligence service? Today such a scenario seems absurd, but at the height of the Cold War there were many such coups—in Greece, Indonesia, and a number of South American countries. According to American journalist David Talbot, the prospect of a putsch may well have seemed like a viable option to Dulles: “It’s unlikely that Dulles was shocked by Gehlen’s proposal to reinstitute fascism in Germany, as CIA officials had long since been discussing such authoritarian contingency plans with the Gehlen Organization and other right-wing elements in Germany.” One example was Operation Gladio, the code name for a clandestine armed resistance operation that was to stay behind and fight if the signatories of the Warsaw Pact were to invade West Germany. There was also the League of German Youth, a group of several thousand young people with the same basic task. The League also kept an assassination list of political leaders, many of whom were Socialists. When the Christian Democratic chancellor Konrad Adenauer won a decisive reelection victory one year later, Gehlen no longer saw the need to overthrow the government. His putsch became yet another taboo of German history.