German–American Intelligence Relations, 1945–1956: New Evidence on the Origins of the BND

Under the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released a certain amount of documents relating to a German–American intelligence co-operation that began almost immediately after the German surrender of May 1945; it lasted until 1956 when the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) was founded, today's German foreign and military intelligence service. The Americans assembled, supervised, and largely financed what is often referred to as the “Gehlen organisation,” named after its leader, former Wehrmacht general, Reinhard Gehlen, who was chief of the BND until his retirement in 1968. Whilst the existence of this co-operation had been known since the 1940s, largely due to Soviet subversion and propaganda, very little reliable information and virtually no original source material was available before the release of this, somewhat redacted, material in 2002 and 2007. This article provides a sketch of how former Wehrmacht officers, and even a number with an ominous SS past, who might well have been war criminals, came to work, first for United States military intelligence and, from 1949, for the CIA. It looks at some of their operations during those turbulent post-war years, which include the Berlin airlift and German rearmament in response to the Korean War. The potential of those newly declassified documents, unfortunately, cannot be corroborated from other sources as long as German and Russian archives remain closed. Despite its manifold limitations, this material provides an exciting window into transatlantic intelligence history.     

Can young pups teach an old Dog new tricks? Lessons for British reformers from eastern Europe's new constitutional democracies

This article analyses the process of constitutional reforms in eastern Europe and draws lessons for similar reforms in British politics. It looks, first, at electoral engineering and shows how political actors, pursuing their particular interests, try to turn proportionality back into majoritarianism, and how and why such moves do not necessarily result in their projected outcomes. In a similar vein, it then goes on to analyse parliamentary formal rules, such as standing orders, and demonstrates how attempts to manipulate them can be offset, not just by counter‐manipulation, but by underlying informal rules and cultural norms. Overall, we argue that, because constitutional change is an ongoing and crucially political process, its results are neither wholly predictable nor always welcomed. On the basis of the eastern European experience, we also suggest that constitutional change does not necessarily lead to increased legitimacy of the system, thus undermining one of the major hopes of reformers in Britain.     

German Intelligence History: A Field in Search of Scholars

German historians have so far shown little interest in the history of intelligence services and in the role the craft of intelligence played in national and international politics. The sole exception is found in the historical writings on East Germany between 1945 and 1990, where the Ministry for State Security - or Stasi - has become the subject of dozens of highly valuable studies. This neglect cannot be explained simply by pointing to the difficulties in getting access to relevant source materials. A more plausible explanation is found in the reluctance on the part of most German intellectuals to study the broader questions of war and peace in international politics. Military history has been marginalised in post-1945 German universities. The same is largely true of international security studies, defence studies, studies of insurgency, terrorism and various related subjects. Peace and conflict studies, a discipline established sometime in the 1970s, has mostly avoided both war or intelligence. The deeper reasons for this neglect lie both in Germany's psychological atmosphere and in academic politics. Spy novels and spy movies are as popular in Germany as anywhere but their heroes almost never are Germans. Even those German intelligence officers and spies who worked against Hitler and might therefore be regarded as heroes are barely known in present-day Germany. Those few scholars who are now trying to build up the field of intelligence studies get little help from their government or from private funders. While East Germany publicly revered communist spies like Richard Sorge and Klaus Fuchs, the West German Bundesnachrichtendienst did and does nothing to publicise its achievements.     

‘Intelligence,Public Confidence and Security’

Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York: The Free Press, 1987). Pp. 624; $27.95.

Jeffrey Richelson, American Espionage and the Soviet Target (New York: William Morrow, 1987).

John Keegan, The Mask of Command (New York; Viking Penguin 1987). Pp. 368; $18.95.

Major General Rygor Slowikowski, In the Secret Service: The Lighting of the Torch (London: The Windrush Press, 1988). Pp. 285; £16.95.

Alexandre de Marenches and Christine Ockrent, The Evil Empire: The Third World War Now (London: Sidgwick &; Jackson, 1988), Pp. 224, £13.95

Robert Marshall, All the King's Men (London: Collins, 1988). Pp.314; £12.95. Brendan M. Murphy, Turncoat (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987). Pp. 301; $19.95.

Ray Godson (ed.), Comparing Foreign Intelligence: The U.S., the USSR, the U.K. and the Third World (New York: Pergamon Brasseys, 1988), Pp. 157; $18.95.

Stephen J. Cimbala (ed.). Intelligence and Intelligence Policy in a Democratic Society (Dobbs Ferry, New York: Transnational Publishers Inc., 1987). Pp. 262. $37.50.     

Book notes

Jean‐Pierre Cabestan, Le système politique de la Chine Populaire (No. 2863 in the series Que sais‐je) Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994. 127 pp. ISBN 2–13–046516–1.

Frederick C. Teiwes Politics and Purges in China: Rectification and the Decline of Party Norms 1950–1965 Armonk, NY and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1993. 593 pp. $70.00, ISBN 1–56324–226–5. Paperback $27.95, ISBN 1–56324–227–3.

Erroll Hodge Radio Wars: Truth, Propaganda and the Struggle for Radio Australia Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 324 pp. £35.00. ISBN 0–521–47380 2.

Richard A. Baker (ed.) The Anzus States and Their Region: Regional Policies of Australia, New Zealand and the United States Westport CT and London: Praeger, 1994. 228 pp. £51.95. ISBN 0–275–94693–2.     

Book Reviews

Arran Gare: NIHILISM, INC.: Environmental Destruction and the Metaphysics of Sustainability. Como, New South Wales, Australia: Eco‐Logical Press, 1996.

David Harvey: Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.

David Macauley, editor: Minding Nature: The Philosophers of Ecology. New York: The Guilford Press, 1996.

Daniel M. Herman and John T. O'Connor: Who Owns the Sun? People, Politics, and the Struggle for a Solar Economy. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 1996.

Harold Crooks: Giants of Garbage: The Rise of the Global Waste Industry and the Politics of Pollution Control. Toronto: Lorimer, 1993

Sudhir Chella Rajan: The Enigma of Automobility: Democratic Politics and Pollution Control. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996.

Garrett Hardin: Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.     

Weight References for Burned Human Skeletal Remains from Portuguese Samples

Weight is often one of the few recoverable data when analyzing human cremains but references are still rare, especially for European populations. Mean weights for skeletal remains were thus documented for Portuguese modern cremations of both recently deceased individuals and dry skeletons, and the effect of age, sex, and the intensity of combustion was investigated using both multivariate and univariate statistics. The cremains from fresh cadavers were significantly heavier than the ones from dry skeletons regardless of sex and age cohort (p < 0.001 to p = 0.003). As expected, males were heavier than females and age had a powerful effect in female skeletal weight. The effect of the intensity of combustion in cremains weight was unclear. These weight references may, in some cases, help estimating the minimum number of individuals, the completeness of the skeletal assemblage, and the sex of an unknown individual.