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Reinhard Gehlen
Reinhard Gehlen (3 April 1902 – 8 June 1979) was a German lieutenant-general and intelligence officer. He was chief of the Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East military intelligence service on the eastern front during World War II, spymaster of the CIA-affiliated anticommunist Gehlen Organisation (1946–56) and the founding president of the Federal Intelligence Service (''Bundesnachrichtendienst'', BND) of West Germany (1956–68) during the Cold War. Gehlen became a professional soldier in 1920 during the Weimar Republic. In 1942, he became chief of Foreign Armies East (FHO), the German Army's military intelligence unit on the Eastern Front (1941–45). He achieved the rank of major general before he was fired by Adolf Hitler in April 1945 because of the FHO's "defeatism", the pessimistic intelligence reports about Red Army superiority. In late 1945, following the 7 May surrender of Germany and the start of the Cold War, the U.S. military (G-2 Intelligence) recruited him to esta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erfurt
Erfurt () is the capital and largest city in the Central German state of Thuringia. It is located in the wide valley of the Gera river (progression: ), in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest. It sits in the middle of an almost straight line of cities consisting of the six largest Thuringian cities forming the central metropolitan corridor of the state, the "Thuringian City Chain" ('' Thüringer Städtekette'') with more than 500,000 inhabitants, stretching from Eisenach in the west, via Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar and Jena, to Gera in the east. Erfurt and the city of Göttingen in southern Lower Saxony are the two cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants closest to the geographic center of Germany. Erfurt is located south-west of Leipzig, north-east of Frankfurt, south-west of Berlin and north of Munich. Erfurt's old town is one of the best preserved medieval city centres in Germany. Tourist attractions include the Merchants' Bridge (''K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intelligence Officer
An intelligence officer is a person employed by an organization to collect, compile or analyze information (known as intelligence) which is of use to that organization. The word of ''officer'' is a working title, not a rank, used in the same way a "police officer" can also be a sergeant, or in the military, in which non-commissioned personnel may serve as intelligence officers. Organizations which employ intelligence officers include armed forces, police, and customs agencies. Sources of intelligence Intelligence officers make use of a variety of sources of information, including ; Communications intelligence (COMINT): Eavesdropping and interception of communications (e.g., by wiretapping) including signals intelligence (SIGINT) and electronic intelligence (ELINT). ; Financial intelligence (FININT): The gathering of information about the financial affairs of entities of interest. ; Human intelligence (HUMINT): Derived from covert human intelligence sources ( Covert Human Intellige ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk ( Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established in January 1918. The Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations (especially the various groups collectively known as the White Army) of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. Starting in February 1946, the Red Army, along with the Soviet Navy, embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces; taking the official name of "Soviet Army", until its dissolution in 1991. The Red Army provided the largest land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II, and its invasion of Manchuria assisted the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan. During operations on the Eastern Front, it accounted for 75–80% of casual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the Chancellor of Germany, chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of in 1934. During his dictatorship, he initiated European theatre of World War II, World War II in Europe by invasion of Poland, invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of Holocaust victims, about six million Jews and millions of other victims. Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and was raised near Linz. He lived in Vienna later in the first decade of the 1900s and moved to Germany in 1913. He was decorated during his Military career of Adolf Hitler, service in the German Army in Worl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Major General
Major general (abbreviated MG, maj. gen. and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. The disappearance of the "sergeant" in the title explains the apparent confusion of a lieutenant general outranking a major general, whereas a major outranks a lieutenant. In the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth and in the United States, when appointed to a field command, a major general is typically in command of a Division (military), division consisting of around 6,000 to 25,000 troops (several regiments or brigades). It is a two-star general, two-star rank that is subordinate to the rank of lieutenant general and senior to the rank of brigadier or brigadier general. In the Commonwealth, major general is equivalent to the navy rank of rear admiral. In air forces with a separate rank structure (Commonwealth), major general is equivalent to air vice-marshal. In some countries including much of Eastern Europe, major ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a Theater (warfare), theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers against the Soviet Union (USSR), Polish Armed Forces in the East, Poland and other Allies of World War II, Allies, which encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltic states, Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans) from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. It was known as the Great Patriotic War (term), Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union – and still is in some of its successor states, while almost everywhere else it has been called the ''Eastern Front''. In present-day German and Ukrainian historiography the name German-Soviet War is typically used. The battles on the Eastern Front of the Second World War constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterised by unprecedented ferocity and brutality, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life due to combat, starvation, expos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional federal republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclaimed itself, as the German Republic (german: Deutsche Republik, link=no, label=none). The state's informal name is derived from the city of Weimar, which hosted the constituent assembly that established its government. In English, the republic was usually simply called "Germany", with "Weimar Republic" (a term introduced by Adolf Hitler in 1929) not commonly used until the 1930s. Following the devastation of the First World War (1914–1918), Germany was exhausted and sued for peace in desperate circumstances. Awareness of imminent defeat sparked a revolution, the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, formal surrender to the Allies, and the proclamation of the Weimar Republic on 9 November 1918. In its i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Federal Intelligence Service (Germany)
The Federal Intelligence Service (German: ; , BND) is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, directly subordinate to the Chancellor's Office. The BND headquarters is located in central Berlin and is the world's largest intelligence headquarters. The BND has 300 locations in Germany and foreign countries. In 2016, it employed around 6,500 people; 10% of them are military personnel who are formally employed by the Office for Military Sciences. The BND is the largest agency of the German Intelligence Community. The BND was founded during the Cold War in 1956 as the official foreign intelligence agency of West Germany, which had recently joined NATO, and in close cooperation with the CIA. It was the successor to the earlier Gehlen Organization, often known simply as "The Organization" or "The Org", a West German intelligence organization affiliated with the CIA whose existence had not been officially acknowledged. The most central figure in the BND's history was former Weh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spymaster
A spymaster is the person that leads a spy ring, or a secret service (such as an intelligence agency). Historical spymasters See also *List of American spies *List of British spies * List of German spies *List of fictional spymasters This is a list of fictional spymasters, deputy directors, directors general, and executive directors of Intelligence agencies. Books * Maxim Isaev, a Soviet spy operating in Nazi Germany under the name Max Otto von Stierlitz, tasked with disrupti ... References * https://general-history.com/famous-spy-masters-through-the-ages/ Notes Spies by role {{job-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
