The Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit (KgU) (German for "Combat Group against Inhumanity") was a German anti-communist

resistance group A resistance movement is an organized effort by some portion of the civil population of a country to withstand the legally established government or an occupying power and to disrupt civil order and stability. It may seek to achieve its objectives ...

based in

West Berlin West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...

. It was founded in 1948 by

Rainer Hildebrandt Rainer Hildebrandt (born December 14, 1914 in Stuttgart, died January 9, 2004 in Berlin) was a German anti-communist resistance fighter, historian and founder of the Checkpoint Charlie Museum. He was involved in the resistance to the communist reg ...

, Günther Birkenfeld, and

Ernst Benda Ernst Benda (15 January 1925 – 2 March 2009) was a German legal scholar, politician and judge. He served as the fourth president of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany from 1971 to 1983. Benda briefly served as Minister of the Interior ...

, and existed until 1959. Hildebrandt would later establish the

Checkpoint Charlie Museum The Checkpoint Charlie Museum (german: Das Mauermuseum – Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie) is a private museum in Berlin. It is named after the famous crossing point on the Berlin Wall, and was created to document the so-called "best bord ...

History

The KgU received significant financial support from several Western intelligence agencies as well as the government of

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

and the

Ford Foundation The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...

. The

US Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

Counterintelligence Corps The Counter Intelligence Corps (Army CIC) was a World War II and early Cold War intelligence agency within the United States Army consisting of highly trained special agents. Its role was taken over by the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps in 1961 and ...

(CIC) provided funding from the group's creation in the late 1940s. By the early 1950s, the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

(CIA) gradually replaced the CIC as the KgU's most prominent American backer. According to CIA documents, the KgU ran approximately 500 agents in East Germany in the early 1950s, which, according to historian Enrico Heitzer, put it on par with the Gehlen Organization, the predecessor to the West German intelligence service

Bundesnachrichtendienst 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 ...

. The KgU's activities included

sabotage Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. One who engages in sabotage is a ''saboteur''. Saboteurs typically try to conceal their identitie ...

arson Arson is the crime of willfully and deliberately setting fire to or charring property. Although the act of arson typically involves buildings, the term can also refer to the intentional burning of other things, such as motor vehicles, wat ...

and

poison Poison is a chemical substance that has a detrimental effect to life. The term is used in a wide range of scientific fields and industries, where it is often specifically defined. It may also be applied colloquially or figuratively, with a broa ...

attacks as well as aggressive

economic warfare Economic warfare or economic war is an economic strategy utilized by belligerent nations with the goal of weakening the economy of other states. This is primarily achieved by the use of economic blockades. Ravaging the crops of the enemy is a cl ...

, such as Operation ''Osterhase'' ("Easter Bunny"), in which the group sent 150,000 fake letters to East German stores, ordering drastic price cuts in order to cause a run on already scarce consumer goods. Other activities included collecting data on individuals imprisoned in East Germany and passing it on to their relatives, as well as collecting names of informers to the East German government and passing it on to RIAS, which would then broadcast so-called "snitch reports" in order to silence informers and discourage others from engaging in similar activities. It also printed and distributed a satirical magazine, '' Tarantel'', in East Germany. The KgU also aided the CIA in building up a so-called

stay-behind In a stay-behind operation, a country places secret operatives or organizations in its own territory, for use in case an enemy occupies that territory. If this occurs, the operatives would then form the basis of a resistance movement or act as sp ...

network to be used in the event of a hypothetical

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

invasion. Infiltration of the KgU by

Stasi The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the (),An abbreviation of . was the Intelligence agency, state security service of the East Germany from 1950 to 1990. The Stasi's function was similar to the KGB, serving as a means of maint ...

operatives and the arrest of several of its agents in East Germany eventually caused the group to dissolve in 1959, with many of its records going to the CIA. Although some KgU members, such as Rainer Hildebrandt and Ernst Tillich, had served time in prison during the

Third Reich Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

for anti-Nazi activities, as historian Enrico Heitzer points out, the group also used numerous activists with a

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

past, many of whom hadn't changed their political views. The KgU has been infiltrated by

informants when the organization was still active.

Notable members

, founding member * Günther Birkenfeld, founding member *

, founding member * Ernst Tillich, chairman * Johann Burianek, executed in 1952 * Wolfgang Kaiser, executed in 1952 * Gerhard Benkowitz, executed in 1955

Alleged terrorist activities in East Germany

William Blum William Henry Blum (; March 6, 1933 – December 9, 2018) was an American author, critic of United States foreign policy and socialist. He lived in Washington, DC. Early life Blum was born at Beth Moses Hospital (now part of Maimonides Medical ...

has alleged, based on various news articles from the 1950s, that the group carried out the following actions in East Germany: * Engaging in industrial sabotage against power stations, factories, shipyards, canals, dams, gas stations, shops, public transport, public buildings, a dam and a radio station using methods including explosives, arson, short circuiting and contaminating machinery with sand and special acids. * Engaging in sabotage against the transport infrastructure of East Germany, through methods such as derailing freight trains, destroying key equipment on freight trains, blowing up road and railway bridges, burning the cars of one freight train and in one case attempting to blow up bridge of the Berlin-Moscow railway line. * Poisoning and killing 7000 cows in a dairy cooperative by poisoning the wax coating of the wire used to bale corn fodder. * Adding soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools * Raided and attacked left-wing offices in West and East Berlin to steal membership lists, in order to assault leftists and in some cases to kidnap and murder them. * Attempting to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations; carried out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; set fire to a wooden bridge on a main motorway leading to the festival. * Attempting to cause chaos for economic planners by forging ration cards to cause shortages and confusion, forged tax notices and government directives to cause disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions.

References

Bibliography

* {{Authority control Anti-communist organizations in Germany West Berlin Organisations based in Berlin Cold War history of Germany 1950s in Berlin 1948 establishments in Germany 1959 disestablishments in Germany Organizations established in 1948 Organizations disestablished in 1959 Anti-communist resistance movements in Eastern Europe

History

Notable members

Alleged terrorist activities in East Germany

See also

References

Bibliography