The French intelligence service employed former Nazis after World War II for intelligence gathering activities in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries and to keep tabs on attempts to resurrect Nazi groups in other parts of the world, Le Monde reported.
The paper stressed that these Nazis, unlike Klaus Barbie who was employed by the CIA after the war, were not involved in war crimes. Barbie, the wartime gestapo chief in Lyon, is presently awaiting trial there for “crimes against humanity.” According to recent revelations, the CIA helped Barbie escape from Europe at a time when France was seeking his extradition from a U.S. detention camp in Germany.
According to Le Monde, the French secret services, like their American and British counterparts, selected Nazis with intelligence experience in the prisoner-of-war camps after 1945 to renew contacts with their agents in East European countries. Those agents had informed German intelligence of Soviet moves during the war.
VIEW OF EX-NAZIS’ ROLE
France believed that with Russian forces in occupation of all of Eastern Europe, it was essential to continue to receive information from those sources and the only way to do it was through ex-Nazis, Le Monde reported.
France employed the services of agents from Section VI of the Reichs Sicherhert Haupt Amt (RSHA) which had been involved in sabotage missions in regions under Soviet influence, such as Iran, Turkey, certain Arab countries and Eastern Europe. Also hired were former Abwehr agents, the German military intelligence service, which was active until February, 1944.
According to Le Monde there was dissension between the RSHA which employed agents close to the Nazi movement, many former members of the SA, and the Abwehr which was less sympathetic towards the Nazis. Both groups were fiercely anti-Communist. They had worked with thousands of anti-Communist agents planted in the Eastern European countries while under Nazi occupation.
Le Monde said the French also needed the help of these former Nazi agents to prevent the reactivation of Nazi movements throughout the world. Former RHSA members were not too cooperative in that mission, the paper said.
The cooperation lasted four years, until the Berlin blockade in 1949. After that the efforts to revive anti-Communist networks in Eastern Europe ended. But the efforts against the revival of Nazi groups elsewhere continued for a much longer time, Le Monde said. Former French intelligence officers refused to reveal the names of the Nazi agents who worked for them.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
