-Caveat Lector-
>>>The revelations in the book should come as no surprise. The
measure of changes in German society through the first half of the
century comes from the train system: once the war was over in 1945,
the operators merely changed their uniforms and continued with their
routines. Why should it have been much different for other
professions? A<>E<>R <<<
>From www.wsws.org
WSWS : Book Reviews
The fascist roots of Germany’s post-war Criminal Police Office
By Jörg Victor
8 December 2001
Back to screen version| Send this link by email | Email the author
The book Blind in the right eye—The fascist roots of the BKA *
examines the post-war establishment of Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt
(BKA, Federal Criminal Police Office) and its roots within the
fascist Third Reich. (The BKA is the equivalent of the US Federal
Bureau of Investigation). The author, Dieter Schenk, who himself
worked for nine years in the BKA, refutes the view that the
organisation is basically non-political and free from any sort of
responsibility for crimes committed during the Nazi regime: “In 1959
the leadership of the BKA consisted of 47 officials—only two of whom
were not involved in the activities of the fascists”.
At a time when the present Interior Minister Otto Schily (Social Democratic Party,
SPD), is planning to give the Criminal Police enormous powers, the book throws a
revealing light on the roots of the BKA. Reading it makes
clear that giving the BKA such expanded powers represents a step back to the concepts
of the police force used in the Third Reich. Conducting investigations in cases
without any concrete cause for suspicion and the mergi
ng of the databases of the BKA and secret service was last possible for a centralised
police authority only under Heinrich Himmler. Combined with recent laws legalising the
use of police dragnets, the expanded possibiliti
es for surveillance afforded the BKA also call to mind the BKA’s predecessor
organisation.
Schenk proves that those officials responsible for creating the BKA after the war had
willingly served the Nazis’ regime of terror. Meticulously researching their
biographies, he shows how these police officers were invol
ved in war crimes. The book is full of such biographies, unmasking officials who were
previously regarded to have been merely “fellow travellers”.
The facts presented not only prove this continuity in regard to personnel. The
“founders” of the BKA, Paul Dickopf and Rolf Holl, were intimately involved in the
machinery of the Third Reich as a result of their deeply he
ld convictions. After the war, they also brought with them their views regarding
organisational issues and who should be treated as potential enemies. With the support
of political and legal institutions riddled with form
er Nazis, and together with the assistance of the American secret service, they
managed to realise most of their concepts regarding the organisation of the police
force, under the cover of the post-war German constitution
. The BKA rapidly became a melting pot for those who had participated in Nazi crimes.
With the protection of the newly created domestic police authority, they passed on
their anti-democratic convictions to the next genera
tion.
The Criminal Investigation Department in the Third Reich
The central organisation for detecting crime in the Weimar republic after the First
World War and in Hitler’s Third Reich in the 1930s was the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt
(RKPA, Imperial Criminal Investigation Department). I
n June 1936, three years after Hitler came to power, the RKPA and all Germany’s other
police forces were put under the control of Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS (
Schutzstaffel). In September, 1939 both the SS and t
he police were organised in the notorious Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA, Imperial
Security Office). Inside the RSHA, the secret police ( Gestapo) were designated as
Department IV, the criminal investigation department w
as Department V.
Arthur Nebe was one of the leaders of the RKPA, and participated in an assassination
attempt on Hitler. After the war this was cited as proof that the police generally had
been in opposition to the Nazis. But not only was
Nebe a member of the SA (brown shirts), SS and Nazi Party since 1931, he also
collaborated with Adolf Eichmann in the deportation of “Gypsies”. As the head of the
Criminal Investigation Department, he was also one of the
central figures who organised the fascist genocide. From June to October 1941 he was
the head of Einsatzgruppe B (Task Force B), active in the Baltic states and the
Ukraine. Their job was to find Jews, communists, and “g
ypsies” behind the frontline and kill them. Many of those active in the various
Einsatzgruppe joined the BKA or the secret police after the war. Einsatzgruppe B
reported that it had liquidated 45,467 people by October 194
1. Arthur Nebe, as its leader, bears responsibility for these crimes.
Dieter Schenk’s book is an important contribution to the body of research on the
organisational structure of Germany’s Criminal Investigation Department. Previously
the RKHA was said to have consisted of “non-political pr
ofessionals,” but this standpoint is contradicted by the facts gathered by Schenk. He
thoroughly examines the reorganisation of the RKPA in the context of its integration
into the Nazis’ RSHA.
The training of criminologists was reorganised in accordance with fascist leadership
structures. All the criminologists who later enjoyed a career in the BKA, had passed
through the so-called “Führer-School” lead by Reinh
ard Heydrich, in order to qualify for “duty in higher ranks”. Here, detectives and
Gestapo members were drilled in fascist ideology, to become part of the Nazi
killing-machine. The author writes: “To avoid misunderstandin
g, I stress: It was not the task of the Gestapo but of the Criminal Investigation
Department to place people in preventive custody, which often meant sending them to
almost certain death in one of the concentration camps.
” According to his research, the RKPA—and those working for it—was responsible for the
deaths of between 70 to 80,000 people.
Under the leadership of Himmler, Heydrich and people like Nebe, the Nazis’ Criminal
Investigation Department had the job of tracking down so-called Volksfeinde (enemies
of the people), oppositional workers, youth and inte
llectuals, most of them being members of the German Communist Party (KPD) and the
Social Democratic Party, as well as Jews, Sinti, Roma, homosexuals, unemployed, etc.
To carry out this kind of persecution the Criminal Inv
estigation Department established its own subdivisions, collected data and began to
arrest and deport its victims to concentration camps using “preventive custody,” which
had been legalised in 1937.
The Bundeskriminalamt
Following the collapse of the Third Reich, the Allied military government planned to
make the police responsible to the individual Länder, or states, replacing the
centralised structures of Nazi Germany with federal forms
of organisation. Only as the East-West conflict intensified did the Allies agree to
establish a central office responsible for internal security.
Paul Dickopf, who later became the president of the BKA, from 1965-1971, was already a
leading figure in early discussions on future forms of police organisation. In 1951,
the West German government established a new head
office for the internal police, in which he also had decisive influence.
Dickopf was born in 1910 and graduated from the “Führer-School” in 1938. Apart from
his theoretical training, he had had only limited practical training in different
parts of the police force, including the Gestapo, and h
ad worked as a detective superintendent for two months. For the bulk of his career, he
had worked as a Nazi secret agent. This espionage work, which took him to Switzerland
in 1943, made it possible for Dickopf to play a
central role liasing between the American secret service and the newly established
German office for internal security.
Schenk provides a detailed personal history of Dickopf. For his espionage activities
in Switzerland, it was essential for him to portray himself as an opponent of the Nazi
regime. After the war he utilised this fiction to
present himself as politically guiltless. While he was in Switzerland he also
established relations with the American secret service, OSS. He was a classic double
agent. These relationships made it possible for him to ex
ert his influence, backed by letters of recommendation from the OSS. Being an
informer, he was aware, to a certain extent, of American intentions, and with American
support became an important adviser to the German author
ities. His services were indispensable in helping to establish Germany’s post-war
Criminal Investigation Department. “In fact, Dickopf had more weight than the interior
ministers of the federal states in West Germany when
it came to establishing the police force.”
On March 8, 1951, the BKA-law was passed in the Bundesrat (upper house of parliament)
and Dickopf was given the task of creating the new body. The plans for the
organisation came from Dickopf’s pen, and are a copy of the
Reichskriminalamt of the Third Reich. During the debate over the character of the new
police force, he wrote that his plan “introduces nothing new, but the ideal solution
for the future shape of the Criminal Investigation
Department rests on the situation of 1936/37 to 1945.”
The BKA as developed by Dickopf was divided into many departments. “The organisational
division of the BKA served the purpose of creating posts that could be filled—the
amount of personnel rapidly increased. Under Dickopf
’s ‘care’ the BKA became an institution for politically tainted ‘old criminologists’.”
The career guidelines, as well as the basic forms used by the BKA drawn up by Dickopf
were also nearly identical to those of the RKPA.
Continuity of personnel
Dickopf’s influential position meant he had absolute powers regarding the choice of
personnel —even though he did not become the BKA’s first president. He chose his
personnel from the many old Nazi criminologists who appl
ied for jobs in the BKA. So many applications were received that the Interior Ministry
was able to forgo advertising for BKA vacancies.
As the author points out, former Nazis poured into the BKA where they made their
careers. After years of work, principally directed against the political left, these
participants in the Nazi genocide went into well-paid r
etirement. In detailing a number of their biographies, Dieter Schenk presents the
reader with a “chamber of horrors”.
For instance, Dickopf employed Kurt Griese, who had joined the SS in 1933. From
1942/43 to 1944, Griese had been a high-ranking SS officer in Einsatzgruppe A in
Lithuania, where their “work” involved murdering about 140,0
00 Jews. According to the orders of the day, officers like Griese were expected to
personally take part in these killings.
Under Dickopf’s direction, Griese wrote an expert report, which stated that graduation
from the fascist “Führer-School” justified promotion to higher ranks within the BKA,
including that of president. In 1970, Griese reti
red from his leading post as government director of the Criminal Investigation
Department.
The BKA was a hideout for many high-ranking Nazis like Griese, who had led
Einsatzgruppe or who, from their desks, had sent opponents of the Nazi regime to their
death. They all bore responsibility for the murder of those
the Nazis deemed to be opponents on religious, political or ethnic grounds.
Many former members of the secret military police, who had committed mass-murder
behind the frontline, also ended up in the BKA. The head of the BKA’s Technical
Institute had been a commander in the Third Reich, leading o
ver 1,200 secret military policemen. The military police was proven to have committed
arbitrary murders, executions, and possessed virtually unlimited powers to kill.
Torture was a part of the organisation’s everyday life
. The various local leaders sent their commanders proposals for punishment, which
mainly read “execution”, and the commanders usually agreed.
No member of the BKA was ever brought to court and removed from duty. Only two
officials were convicted overseas. One of these was Theo Saevecke, “the butcher of
Milan”. Dickopf brought him into the BKA in 1951, and he ev
entually retired in 1971. Because of the murders he had carried out, an Italian
military court sentenced him to death in absentia in 1998. He died in Germany last
year, aged 89.
To a certain extent, the same people who had occupied the posts under the Nazi regime
filled the senior ranks of the newly established BKA. The chief biologist in the RKPA
became the leading biologist of the BKA, and like
wise the BKA’s senior detective officer had previously held the same post in the
fascist police force.
Ideological continuity
Blind in the right eye also proves that not only was there a continuity in personnel
and organisational forms, but also the concepts of policing and notions of identifying
the enemy were taken over from the Nazis. Using a
number of official and unofficial letters from Dickopf, the author demonstrates this
ideological continuity. In one of its publications dealing with preventive custody,
the BKA comes to the conclusion: “The measures used
in the Third Reich were sensible, including the handing over of house keys, so that
the delinquent could be checked upon at any time of day by the police.”
The BKA officers regarded the liberation of concentration camp inmates as tantamount
to releasing criminals and that this was responsible for rising crime, based on
statistics they themselves had drawn up. Sinti and Roma,
dubbed “travellers” by the BKA, were regarded as “notorious criminals” and were kept
under observation by the criminal authorities in the federal states.
The BKA officers also continued to view left-wingers—meaning people who in one or
other form were connected to the workers’ movement—as their main enemy. For Dickopf,
the Soviet-Union, which despite Stalinism embodied cer
tain gains of the working class in a distorted form, was a special enemy, which the
political police had to fight with all the means at their disposal. In a report to the
American secret service in 1946, he wrote, “Maybe
the Russians are animals, as many Germans, and not only Germans, believe, but if this
is so, they are very intelligent animals.”
For the same reason the BKA participated in measures directed against the German
Communist Party (KPD) prior to it being banned in 1956. BKA departments were ordered
to search for and confiscate KPD-material. Schenk also
points out that Dickopf also viewed the SPD as an enemy, since it was to the left of
his “self-defined political middle”.
The “tradition” of opposing everything and anyone with a connection to the workers’
movement formed the basis of the work of the BKA following the collapse of the Third
Reich. “Personal convictions cannot be separated fro
m state measures [against communists— author’s note.]. To be suspected of being a
communist was a crime, while at the same time the rightwing extremism was virtually
ignored.”
Following the establishment of the BKA, the separation of the Criminal Investigation
Department from the secret police existed only on paper. Officials in the secret
service transferred to the BKA, and vice versa, and the
databases of these two authorities were combined in 1971.
Blind in the right eye can be recommended to anyone who wants to get a clear picture
of the founding and character of West Germany and its institutions. With thorough
detailed work, many cross-references, and additional i
nformation (which could not be dealt with in this review) Dieter Schenk has drawn up a
detailed and penetrating history of the BKA.
* * *
* Auf dem rechten Auge blind—Die braunen Wurzeln des BKA, by Dieter Schenk
Published by Kiepenheuer und Witsch, ISBN 3-462-03034-5
Copyright 1998-2001
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
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The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
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Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it
agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all.
Then accept it and live up to it."
The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta
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A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
German Writer (1759-1805)
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It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
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"Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless
of frontiers."
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