Customer Reviews

Gehlen: Spy of the Century

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I remain ambivalent both about Reinhard Gehlen as a man and as a spy.

As a man, I believe as the Russians did then (and still believe now), that he was basically a "Nazi war criminal" and should have been brought to the bar of justice at Nuremburg along with the others of Hitler's inner circle. That he escaped justice by hiding Hitler's intelligence files in the ground above Bavaria long enough to cut an unholy deal with the CIA, and because he offered his own self-denial of being a Nazi, is not in my view enough to have saved him from the gallows.

Because, whether he was a card carrying Nazi or not, this book gives us a sufficient summary of his actions as the architect of some of Hitler's most inhumane schemes in the Eastern region (of which he was head of intelligence) and which resulted in the death of many thousands of innocents in violation of the Geneva Accords. These actions alone override and belie any shrewd survival tactics and self-declared denials he may have made after the fact. In any case denials about being a card carrying Nazi were common in the aftermath of the war and thus is hardly sufficient to offset the damage he did as a Nazi bureaucrat in charge of the intelligence of the entire Eastern region. Gehlen was one upon whom Hitler repeatedly relied and one who was in excellent standing with Hitler throughout the war at least until the very end.

Likewise, this book remains unconvincing in its details about Gehlen's exploits as a spy, either for the American side after the war, or for the Germans during it. I am thus equally ambivalent about Gehlen's exploits as a spy. While it is true that he proved himself to have been more than just a competent negotiator in cutting the deal of the century by successfully getting the newly formed CIA to allow him to ensconce himself inside their belly as "the new Eastern bloc bureau," where he again proved his competence on our behalf, this is not exactly the prototype of the kind of exploits that we have come to associate with successful spying? And while it is difficult not to argue that Gehlen was both a shrewd negotiator and had a proven track record as a competent technocrat for both the U.S. and for Hitler, this does not qualify him to be put in the same class as the derringdo spies of our era like Allen Dulles, or Wildbill Donovan. Arguably, his exploits on our behalf simply reflects the level of our desperation for useful intelligence on Russia after the war. He filled that gap admirably but that does not make him the spy of the century.

And while the details of this book, which is wonderful WW-II history (with a detailed view from the German side), leaves us with a more accurate description of Gehlen as a shrewd survivor and a smart negotiator who just happened to also be in the right place at the right time, it also allows us to see him at his height as a diminutive (he was 5'4") little Hitler sycophant, and bureaucratic hustler and schemer extraordinaire, one without a discernable soul beyond being bent on his own survival at all cost. Unlike others, who tried to kill Hitler, Gehlen endured Hitler's insults and abuse and remained loyal to him until the very end.

Based on the deal he cut with the CIA alone maybe he could be called the "negotiator and survivor of the century," but not the spy of the century. Three stars