Gerhard Wessel (December 24, 1913 – July 28, 2002) was President of the Federal Intelligence Bureau from May 1968 to December 1978. He previously served in the

Reichswehr ''Reichswehr'' () was the official name of the German armed forces during the Weimar Republic and the first years of the Third Reich. After Germany was defeated in World War I, the Imperial German Army () was dissolved in order to be reshaped ...

(1932–35) and

Army An army (from Old French ''armee'', itself derived from the Latin verb ''armāre'', meaning "to arm", and related to the Latin noun ''arma'', meaning "arms" or "weapons"), ground force or land force is a fighting force that fights primarily on ...

, including the

Foreign Armies East Foreign Armies East, or Fremde Heere Ost (FHO), was a military intelligence organization of the ''Oberkommando des Heeres'' (OKH), the Supreme High Command of the German Army during World War II. It focused on analyzing the Soviet Union and other Ea ...

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 ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. After the war, he was part of the Gehlen Organisation, and then the

Bundeswehr The ''Bundeswehr'' (, meaning literally: ''Federal Defence'') is the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. The ''Bundeswehr'' is divided into a military part (armed forces or ''Streitkräfte'') and a civil part, the military part con ...

(1956–1952). He was head of the BND, Germany's

Federal Intelligence Service 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 head ...

from 1 May 1968 to 31 December 1978. According to his obituary in the

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

, entitled ''Gerhard Wessel, 88; Did Espionage Work for Hitler, West Germany'', the "former intelligence officer in Adolf Hitler’s anti-Soviet spy operations" ... "is credited with modernizing the BND by hiring academic analysts and electronics specialists". The obituary issued by the

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

News Service summarized some of the BND's successes under Wessel: "It informed the government three months in advance of the Soviet Union's plans to invade Czechoslovakia in 1968. It also gathered early information about dissatisfaction among shipyard workers in Gdansk, which eventually led to upheaval in Poland in the 1980s". The coverage also discusses the adverse incidents under his leadership. For example, it mentions a "number of incidents of East Germans infiltrating the West German government, particularly intelligence agencies, on Gen. Wessel's watch". Wessel was born in the Holstein city of Neumuenster; his father was an Evangelical pastor. Gerhard Wessel joined the army in 1932. He died in

Pullach Pullach, officially Pullach i. Isartal, is a municipality in the district of Munich in Bavaria in Germany. It lies on the Isar Valley Railway and is served by the S 7 line of the Munich S-Bahn, at the Großhesselohe Isartalbahnhof, Pullach and ...

References

Literature

(All books in German) * Albrecht Charisius, ((Julius Mader)): ''Nicht länger geheim. Entwicklung, System und Arbeitsweise des imperialistischen deutschen Geheimdienstes.'' Deutscher Militärverlag, Berlin 1969 (4., überarbeitete und ergänzte Auflage. Militärverlag der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Berlin 1980). * James H. Critchfield: ''Auftrag Pullach. Die Organisation Gehlen 1948–1956.'' Mittler, Berlin u. a. 2005, . * Helmut Roewer, Stefan Schäfer, Matthias Uhl: ''Lexikon der Geheimdienste im 20. Jahrhundert.'' Herbig, München 2003, . 1913 births 2002 deaths People from Neumünster German Army personnel of World War II Lieutenant generals of the German Army People of the Federal Intelligence Service People from the Province of Schleswig-Holstein Military personnel from Schleswig-Holstein {{Germany-bio-stub