case in a locker in the Western section of the station, which would
be retrieved by an MfS case officer with a special permit to enter the
border zone. When an agent needed a special radio or other object,
the process worked in reverse. Further reflecting its high-security sta-
tus, customs officials at the station included Offiziere im besonderen
Einsatz (officers in special deployment).BAHR, HERBERT (1913– ). An Abwehr agent arrested in the United
States, Herbert Bahr was born in Klosterfelde (Brandenburg) on 27
August 1913 but moved to Buffalo, New York, at the age of 13. A
gifted student, he returned to Germany in 1938 to attend the Tech-
nical College in Hanover. On 30 June 1942, apprehended by the
U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation upon disembarking from the
exchange ship Drottningholm, Bahr readily conceded his Abwehr
affiliation and Jewish refugee cover. A Newark court sentenced him
to 30 years in prison.
BANDELOW, KARLI (1905–1954). A high-level spy in the German
Democratic Republic (GDR) working for the Organisation Gehlen
(OG), Karli Bandelow was a civil engineer in the State Secretariat
for Motor Vehicles and Road Transport. Recruited for the OG by his
girlfriend Käthe Dorn, he procured information about strategically
important bridges and highways and also conveyed the details of
his meetings with Polish engineers. As a result of Operation Pfeil,
Dorn, Bandelow, and Ewald Misera, an official in the East Berlin
railway headquarters, were arrested in early August 1954, accused
of sabotaging the transportation system of the GDR. The widely
publicized trial led to the execution of Bandelow and Misera on 11
November in Dresden; Dorn received a prison sentence of 12 years
and was released on 1 September 1964.
BARBIE, KLAUS (1913–1991). A Gestapo official in France later
engaged by American intelligence, Klaus Barbie was born in Bad
Godesberg on 25 October 1913, the son of village schoolteachers.
In April 1933, he joined the Hitler Youth and eagerly embraced its
ideology. A member of the SS two years later, Barbie was assigned to
the Sicherheitsdienst (SD; Security Service) and sent to Bernau for
training. His first major posting was in Amsterdam following the 1940
18 • BAHR, HERBERT