The Rise of the Fourth Reich - ThereAreNoSunglasses

THE RATLINES 143have led to Gehlen lending a sympathetic ear to plotters against Hitler.But whatever his role, if any, in the failed July 1944 bomb plot against thefuehrer, Gehlen managed to survive.By then, he had a new plan—one that was to have lasting effect on theAllied nations and particularly the United States and Rus sia.In April 1945, realizing that the war was lost for the Germans, Gehlenoffered his spy network in Rus sia to the British but received no answer.“Taking everything into consideration, it seemed more expedient to makeour approach to the American military forces,” Gehlen recalled. “I suspectedthat once the shooting stopped the Americans would probably recovera sense of objectivity toward us more rapidly then their Europe anallies, and subsequent history bore me out on this point.”Gehlen also showed no signs of being anything other than an unrepentantNational Socialist. In his 1971 memoirs, he stated, “I still believethat we could have achieved our 1941 campaign objectives, had it notbeen for the pernicious interventions of Adolf Hitler.” In other words,Gehlen’s only objection to Nazi aggression was that Hitler lost.Gehlen and his organization stashed their voluminous intelligence filesin more than fifty sealed steel containers and buried them as they retreatedwestward—one cache was stored near the Wendelstein Mountains,another in the Algau province of southwest Bavaria, and the thirdin the Hunsruck mountain range in the Rhineland. After hiding out in amountain lodge for some time, Gehlen made his move. “We were determinednot to be taken prisoner,” he later recounted. “We wanted to surrenderon our own initiative to the Americans. It was all part of theplan.”Initially spurned by American officers who failed to recognize his importance,including a member of the Counterintelligence Corps (CIC),Gehlen finally arrived in front of Brigadier General Edwin L. Sibert, seniorintelligence officer of the American occupation zone in Germany.“While fighting was still in progress in France, [Sibert] had been preparedto make use of Adolf Hitler’s officers in the cause of American strategy,”wrote Gehlen chroniclers Heinz Hoehne and Hermann Zolling, adding,“The idea came from . . . the adviser to Allen W. Dulles, the U.S.secret-service officer in Berne.”