Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND; Federal Intelligence Service),
Reinhard Gehlen was born in Erfurt on 3 April 1902, the son of
middle-class parents. Eager for a military career, he joined the
reduced Reichswehr in 1920, received his commission as a second
lieutenant in 1923, and was appointed to the prestigious Cavalry
School in Hanover in 1926. Following Adolf Hitler’s assumption
of power and the expansion of the army (including the official
resurrection of the General Staff), his prospects brightened consid-
erably. In 1935, Gehlen passed the rigorous Staff College course
with distinction, allowing his entry into this elite group. Assigned
to the operational sector, he attracted the attention of Franz Halder,
the army chief of staff, who increasingly depended on Gehlen’s ad-
vice and appointed him his senior aide in June 1940. After winning
the Iron Cross Second Class during the Polish campaign, Gehlen
became involved in preparations for the invasion of the Soviet
Union under Adolf Heusinger (who later became the first inspector
general of the West German Bundeswehr).
Once the invasion was under way and showed continuing signs
of stalling, Halder voiced his frustration at the “lapses in the intel-
ligence service,” which prompted Heusinger to recommend Gehlen
as the new director of Fremde Heere Ost (FHO), the General Staff’s
intelligence service on the eastern front. Gehlen, who had no prior
experience in intelligence work and knew no foreign languages but
was strongly endorsed by Heusinger for his organizational skills and
almost limitless capacity for work, assumed the new position on 1
April 1942. Instead of simply compiling statistics, the FHO now
began to issue reports containing its own judgments regarding the
enemy’s operational intentions. Gehlen also took pains to assemble
the most qualified staff he could find. Although his systematic ap-
proach to the processing of intelligence marked a major innovation
for the German army, the FHO’s analytical record was mediocre at
best, hampered in large measure by the lack of its own collection
organization. Arguably its most egregious error was failing to predict
the Soviet offensive in June 1944 (code name bagration), which
resulted in the destruction of Army Group Center, roughly 350,000
men.
Although Gehlen had convinced Andrei Vlasov, one of Joseph
Stalin’s most capable commanders who had been captured by the128 • GEHLEN, REINHARD