The covert US involvement in the rearmament of West Germany, 1948-1955

涵盖 1948 年至 1955 年美国参与西德重整军备的情况

• 批准号: 379438738
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Ulrich Herbert
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Lehrstuhl für Neueste Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-31 至 2022-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/379438738?language=en
• 关键词: covert; US; involvement; rearmament; West

The decision concerning a West German defense contribution was made in 1950 and led ultimately to the founding of the Bundeswehr and the Federal Republics admission to NATO in 1955. The research project presented here aims at investigating certain indications on a broad basis, which were discovered in the preliminary work for the project. According to these indications, US intelligence agencies, particularly the CIA, were, maybe decisively, involved in this decision. Scholarly literature has dealt with the implementation of the rearmament project against opposition in West Germany and its military realization as a intra-German matter. With regard to the US, mainly their diplomatic efforts on an international level have been analyzed. However, the project presented here assumes that the US government, particularly after the outbreak of the Korean War, had found itself in a state of putative defense against the communist powers and that it had come to the conclusion that it was heavily reliant upon the support of German troops to resist the threat of Soviet aggression in Europe. As a result, the United States intervened significantly in the domestic political affairs of West Germany in order to isolate the groups opposed to rearmament. With the help of pro-Western forces primarily among the former Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS officers, the support for a West German contribution to the Western defense effort was to be strengthened. Alongside secret diplomatic contacts and intelligence gathering activities, covert operations were one of the primary means of achieving this during the period 1948-1955. Such operations included propaganda campaigns to promote rearmament, the influencing of decision-makers, or the build-up of military and paramilitary structures. These activities are central to the planned research project, which will focus on three main actors: Firstly, the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), the CIAs covert operations branch; secondly, the Office of Special Operations (OSO), the espionage branch of the CIA; thirdly, the Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) of the US Army. Alongside these, however, it will also examine the influence exerted on covert operations by political institutions and those responsible for policy planning. By analyzing the covert efforts of the USA in the context of German rearmament, this research project aims to facilitate a new understanding of the prehistory of West German rearmament. Furthermore, it attempts to determine the role of intelligence agencies as tools of US foreign policy and the policy towards Germany during the early Cold War.

关于西德国防贡献的决定是在1950年做出的，并最终导致了联邦国防军的成立和联邦共和国于1955年加入北约。这里提出的研究项目的目的是在广泛的基础上调查某些迹象，这些迹象是在项目的初步工作中发现的。根据这些迹象，美国情报机构，特别是中央情报局，可能果断地参与了这一决定。学术文献将针对西德反对派的重整军备计划的实施及其军事实现视为德国内部的问题。关于美国，主要分析了美国在国际层面的外交努力。然而，这里提出的项目假设美国政府，特别是在朝鲜战争爆发后，发现自己处于一种假定的防御共产主义大国的状态，并得出结论，它严重依赖德国军队的支持来抵御苏联在欧洲的侵略威胁。因此，美国对西德的国内政治事务进行了大量干预，以孤立反对重整军备的团体。在主要由前国防军和武装党卫军军官组成的亲西方力量的帮助下，西德对西方防御努力的支持得到了加强。在1948-1955年期间，除了秘密外交接触和情报收集活动外，秘密行动是实现这一目标的主要手段之一。这些行动包括宣传运动，以促进重整军备，影响决策者，或建立军事和准军事结构。这些活动是计划中的研究项目的核心，该项目将侧重于三个主要参与者：首先，政策协调办公室（OPC），中央情报局的秘密行动部门；其次是中央情报局的间谍部门——特别行动办公室（OSO）；第三，美国陆军反情报部队。然而，除了这些，它还将研究政治机构和负责政策规划的人对秘密行动施加的影响。通过分析美国在德国重整军备背景下的秘密努力，本研究项目旨在促进对西德重整军备史前史的新理解。此外，它试图确定情报机构的作用，作为美国外交政策的工具和对德政策在冷战初期。