Germany’s first democratically elected chancellor used the nation’s overseas intelligence service to systematically spy on his largest political rivals for nearly a decade, a bunch of impartial historians tasked with researching the previously West German spy company’s historical past have found.
The covert and unlawful stream of data between the workplaces of Konrad Adenauer and the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) chief, Reinhard Gehlen, enabled the conservative politician to cement his maintain on energy by way of correct insider information on the marketing campaign methods, parliamentary manoeuvres and inside energy struggles of the Social Democratic social gathering (SPD), which led the opposition within the Bundestag on the time.
Klaus-Dietmar Henke, a spokesperson for the analysis group trying into the spy company’s historical past, likened the scheme to the Watergate scandal within the US, when Richard Nixon deliberate to have ex-CIA and FBI brokers bug the headquarters of the Democratic social gathering. Not like Nixon’s bungled break-in, nevertheless, Adenauer’s infiltration of his rival social gathering was a hit – and till now had eluded historians.
The closely annotated correspondence between the German chancellor and the spy company has for many years been saved on the archives of the Konrad Adenauer Basis in Sankt Augustin, however its significance has solely turn out to be obvious now after Henke was in a position to view it in parallel with declassified recordsdata from the BND. Particulars from the reviews have been completely printed by Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the Guardian and the Washington Submit.
Adenauer, a devoutly Catholic Rhinelander who was twice arrested as a political enemy by the Nazis, continues to be fondly remembered in trendy Germany because the chancellor who docked his nation to the western sphere of affect and oversaw an financial revival after the second world struggle. The headquarters and in-house thinktank of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the social gathering he co-founded, are nonetheless named after him.
“Konrad Adenauer was a key determine of the twentieth century and an ideal German chancellor,” mentioned Henke. “However his chummy association with the BND in opposition to the SPD confirms in probably the most drastic manner doable that he was additionally a brutally callous power-seeker.”
Narrowly elected as chancellor in 1949, Adenauer was within the early Nineteen Fifties looking for methods to consolidate his function on the high of a freshly cast West German republic that was discovering itself on the frontline of a brand new battle between east and west.
The previous mayor of Cologne didn’t solely worry enemies on the opposite facet of the iron curtain but additionally within the ranks of the centre-left Social Democrats. A 1953 CDU election poster warned that “all of the paths of Marxism result in Moscow”, despite the fact that the SPD on the time had positioned itself as a nationalist and patriotic outfit.
In December 1953 a possibility offered itself for Adenauer to observe and thus preserve at bay his largest political rivals. Reinhard Gehlen, the top of an intelligence company arrange as a German department of the CIA, had secured as an informant the SPD’s govt secretary on the time, Siegfried Ortloff.
Between 1953 and 1962, Ortloff verbally handed on nearly 500 confidential memos that had been typed up at Gehlen’s intelligence company after which handed over to Adenauer’s chief of workers, from the place they discovered their strategy to the desk of the chancellor.
The memos gave Adenauer a significant tactical benefit, outlining forward of public bulletins which politicians the SPD was planning to place ahead as chancellor candidates in federal elections or for the primarily ceremonial function of the presidency.
They allowed Adenauer to arrange prematurely for motions the opposition deliberate to submit or for traces of assault that had been being readied in opposition to his staff, reminiscent of one elevating the function his chief of workers, Hans Globke, had performed in drafting the Nazis’ Nuremberg race legal guidelines.
They gave the chancellor stay updates on the centre-left’s newest inside debates and the vulnerabilities that got here with them, whether or not over German rearmament or over its formal renouncement of orthodox Marxism in 1959.
In a number of situations, Adenauer’s workplace requested particular info on political rivals from German spies. A 12 months earlier than the 1961 nationwide elections, the intelligence company was tasked with digging up info on his challenger, Willy Brandt, such because the id of his first spouse and whether or not he had performed a component within the “liquidation” of a tearaway faction of Trotskyists through the Spanish civil struggle,which Brandt had lined as a journalist whereas in exile from the Nazis.
The covert association with the intelligence company proved a profession booster not just for Adenauer, who stayed in energy for 14 years earlier than stepping down on the age of 87, but additionally for Gehlen, whose budding relationship with the German head of presidency put him in a major place to steer the newly shaped overseas intelligence company, the BND, in 1956.
“Gehlen, like Adenauer, didn’t view social democracy as a political competitor however as an enemy,” mentioned Henke, whose e book on the BND’s unlawful actions will probably be printed in Germany in Might. “What the 2 of them practised for nearly 10 years was a campaign in opposition to an opponent they believed justified each means doable.”
The motivation of the mole contained in the Social Democrats’ headquarters is much less clear. An investigation by Süddeutsche Zeitung suggests Ortloff may have been pushed by a private rivalry with and political mistrust of the previous communist Herbert Wehner, a dominant determine within the SPD on the time.
Surviving relations mentioned they might not consider Ortloff would have knowingly betrayed the political motion he had began supporting in his youth. However that Ortloff was passing on confidential info in full information of its use is doubtless: in 1962, the 12 months Gehlen determined to wind down his secret collaboration, his dependable supply despatched him a birthday letter that expressed gratitude “for my involvement as a trusted collaborator”.
Ortloff’s handler within the BND, a person named Siegfried Ziegler, tried to blow the whistle 5 years after the surveillance scheme had come to an finish. Between 1967 and 1969 he despatched a sequence of letters to the SPD management providing to disclose all the things on what he described as “reactionary powers” attempting to avoid the legal guidelines of the land.
The SPD’s then parliamentary chair and later the chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, replied with a well mannered however brief letter – and left the veil that had been drawn over the saga firmly in place.