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Intelligence agency to probe own Nazi past

Published: 14 Jul 10 07:55 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20100714-28483.html

Germany’s top domestic intelligence agency is to delve into its own post-war history to examine the role played by former Nazis and war criminals in the agency’s early days, a Wednesday media report said.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), or Verfassungsschutz, will appoint an independent scholar to lead a research project to determine what role and how much influence former Nazis had on West German intelligence, daily Berliner Zeitung reported.

“The BfV is planning to commission an independent historian or, if necessary, a research institute for the review of the history of the office’s beginnings,” spokeswoman Tania Puschnerat told the paper.

The agency, set up in Cologne in November 1950, worked until the 1970s with former members of the SS, Gestapo and National Socialist secret services, some of whom are suspected are supposed to have taken part in war crimes during the Second World War.

However the depth and breadth of their involvement has remained a subject of controversy.

The influence of the Nazis within the community of BfV workers will also be probed by the new investigation.

The agency will call for tenders as soon as the financing for the project is approved, the paper reported.

DDP/The Local (news@thelocal.de)

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Your comments about this article:

#1
14:59 July 14, 2010 by bmck
As if they do not already know....
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#2
16:41 July 14, 2010 by Der Grenadier aus Aachen
Just another idiotic political gesture. Of course they were all Abwehr and Gestapo, it's not like we had any other convenient, politically-correct spies laying about. And yes, they were probably all bastards. But they played their game well against the soviet union, and thereby ultimately redeemed themselves in the eyes of their country. Just let the past lie. It's been too long to still worry about this crap.
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#3
20:28 July 14, 2010 by bernie1927
You are so right. For God's sake, enough already. How long has it been? 65 years, right? Who gives a damn?
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#4
20:36 July 14, 2010 by wxman
Der Grenadier uas Aachen has it right. Wasting time and resources on this sort of "navel gazing" is of little contemporary value.
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#5
20:48 July 14, 2010 by Frenemy
You're asking sh!t-stirring bureaucrats (without alternative means of career advancement) to let sleeping dogs lie??

...yeah right, fat chance!
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#6
21:36 July 14, 2010 by mikecowler
Was well known fact that the occupiing forces after the war used ex nazi spies to spy on others...
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#7
22:10 July 14, 2010 by Frenemy
not only that! The US used ex-Nazis (like R. Gehlen) to renovate their OWN foreign intel service (OSS/CIA) and others to (literally) get the American space program off the ground (W. von Braun)...

Now thats what I call a proud history of transatlantic cooperation :-)
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#8
23:34 July 14, 2010 by JAMessersmith
This is hardly news, and the agency has to know it's own history... merely a political gesture. As has been said, even the US heavily recruited Nazis after the war in regards to espionage, intelligence, and science, so what choice did West Germany have? All of the leading agents/scientists had either been Nazis or worked for Nazis, so you're not left with much of a choice if you wish to continue on. Had the West German government purged every former Nazi from their posts, they would've been left with inexperienced novices who would've lacked the skills necessary to do the job. An inconvenient truth, perhaps, but a truth nonetheless.
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#9
02:40 July 15, 2010 by wood artist
From a pure history standpoint, whatever they "discover" might well prove interesting. It's long been known that the American policy of de-nazification was a failure, both because it punished a lot of low-level people who were members because they had to be, and failed to punish a lot of higher-ups, simply because their skills were "needed."

Hopefully, regardless of the outcome, the world is ready to simply say "Yup" and move on. The bulk of current German society wasn't even born then, and it's time to move on.

wa
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#10
05:43 July 15, 2010 by vonSchwerin
Actually, I think this is an interesting topic, but as part of research into Germany history and not as a political stunt. It's not worth wasting government money and man-hours on. Can't they ask a group of historians research the topic? Opel, Daimler, Deutsche Bank, usw. have had outside, independent, serious historians do interesting, scholarly, de-politicized research on their NS pasts.
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