his larger design for an Islamic revolution against the British in Egypt
and India having failed to materialize. He died in Landshut (Bavaria)
on 15 November 1946.ORGANISATION CONSUL (OC). A clandestine paramilitary orga-
nization that operated during the early Weimar Republic, Organisa-
tion Consul (Organization Consul) was formed in Munich after the
failure of the Kapp Putsch in 1920. The initial group—employing the
cover name Bayerische Holzwertungsgesellshaft (Bavarian Timber
Assessment Company)—drew its membership primarily from the
ranks of the Ehrhardt naval brigade, a leading Freikorps unit under
the command of Hermann Ehrhardt that had been officially dissolved
in the wake of the putsch. The name derived from one of Ehrhardt’s
aliases, Consul Eichmann. Within six months, there were four of-
fices in Munich alone; by the following year, the OC counted no
fewer than 5,000 members throughout Germany, along with a large
cache of munitions. Their journal Wiking—self-described as “the
fighting paper of former Freikorps members and nationally minded
people”—appeared weekly.
The group’s ultranationalist objectives included combating Jewish
and socialist influences as well as subverting the new democratic re-
gime. To that end, the OC carried out two major assassinations. On 26
August 1921, while taking a walk in the Black Forest, former Finance
Minister Matthias Erzberger was shot by two OC members, Heinrich
Schulz and Heinrich Tillessen, who then fled to Hungary with false
passports. On 24 June 1922, Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau was
shot in Berlin with a submachine gun; the two assassins, Erwin Kern
and Hermann Fischer, committed suicide to avoid capture by police
several days later. The OC also attempted to murder socialist leader
Philip Scheidemann by spraying prussic acid in his face.
ORGANISATION GEHLEN (OG). The forerunner of the
Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the Organisation Gehlen (Or-
ganization Gehlen; also Org Gehlen) began operating in June 1946
under the direction of Reinhard Gehlen. With practically no access
to up-to-date reports about the Soviet bloc, the United States agreed
to provide the funding—first through the U.S. Army and then after
1947, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Housed modestly in
ORGANISATION GEHLEN • 333