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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allen Dulles | 2/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:07:09.293836+00:00 | kb-cron |
== World War II and OSS career == In July 1941, with World War II raging in Europe, William J. Donovan was tasked by US President Roosevelt to establish an American intelligence service, which became the Office of Strategic Services. Dulles was recruited by Donovan in October 1941, and assigned as liaison with the "British Security Co-ordination" office in New York City (the US outpost of MI6). In 1942, Dulles was sent to Switzerland, arriving in Bern on on 12 November 1942. He rented an apartment at Herrengasse 23 for the duration of the war. As Swiss Director of the OSS, Dulles gathered intelligence about German plans and activities, and established wide contacts with German émigrés and resistance figures, including anti-Nazi intelligence officers. He was assisted by Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz, a German emigrant. Dulles also received valuable information from German diplomat Fritz Kolbe, whom he described as the best spy of the war. Kolbe supplied secret documents about active German spies and plans for the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter. Dulles' activities resulted in tension with MI6, who had been building up extensive operations in Switzerland since 1939. They warned their station head, Frederick 'Fanny' Vanden Heuvel, that Dulles would "lend himself easily to any striking proposal which looks like notoriety". Vanden Heuvel agreed that Dulles was "out for himself", but became a personal friend. One of Dulles' early contacts was Hans Bernd Gisevius, the Zürich representative of German military intelligence. Gisevius was already an important source for Polish intelligence and MI6, as he regularly met with their agent Halina Szymańska. Gisevius purported to be involved in anti-Nazi circles, but MI6 suspected that some of the information he provided about German military plans was intentional misinformation, and it is still unclear where his true loyalty lay at this time. One of Gisevius' claims was that the Germans could read the cipher that Dulles was using, but despite knowing this, Dulles used it to send to Washington a report of his Gisevius meeting, including a claim that the Germans planned to launch suicide attacks against London with flying boats. MI6 were unimpressed, both because he was potentially putting his source in danger and because the plan was implausible. The assistant chief of MI6, Claude Dansey, described Dulles as a "fool" who "swallows [false information] easily". At a subsequent meeting, Gisevius urged Dulles to use MI6 communications instead, which he did. By February 1944, Szymańska reported that Gisevius was persona non grata with his own side and unable (or unwilling) to provide any intelligence, which MI6 considered was due to Dulles allowing the source of his information to become widely known in Washington.
Dulles was in contact with the Austrian resistance group around the priest Heinrich Maier, who collected information through many different contacts with scientists and the military. From 1943 onward, he received very important information from this resistance group about V-weapons, tanks, and aircraft, and related factories. This helped Allied bombers to target important armaments factories. In particular, Dulles obtained crucial information for Operation Crossbow and Operation Hydra. The group reported to him about the mass murder in Auschwitz. Through the Maier Group and Kurt Grimm, Dulles also received information about the economic situation in the Nazi sphere of influence. After the resistance group was uncovered by the Gestapo, Dulles sent American agents to Austria to contact any surviving members. Although Washington barred Dulles from making firm commitments to the German anti-Hitler conspirators, they nonetheless gave him reports on developments in Germany, including sketchy but accurate warnings of plans for the V-1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket. As the Third Reich neared defeat in 1944 and 1945, Dulles and his law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, worked with several German industrialists to move Nazi funds out of Germany's territory. Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the German SS, began transferring Nazi wealth, including that stolen from Jewish Holocaust victims, to other countries to support a postwar "Fourth Reich." Brigadeführer Kurt Baron von Schröder, who cooperated with Himmler on his plan, was a business associate of Dulles. Dulles and Schröder created companies through which they moved Nazi wealth to other nations. This operation infuriated U.S. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who unsuccessfully pressured President Harry S. Truman to disrupt the plan. However, given the ties of the British royal family to German wealth, no formal investigation began. Dulles was involved in Operation Sunrise, secret negotiations in March 1945 to arrange a local surrender of German forces in northern Italy. His actions in Operation Sunrise have been criticized by historians for offering German SS General Karl Wolff protection from prosecution at the Nuremberg trial, and creating a diplomatic rift between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. After the war in Europe, Dulles served for six months as the OSS Berlin station chief and later as station chief in Bern. The Office of Strategic Services was dissolved in October 1945 and its functions transferred to the State and War Departments.
== Post World War II career == In 1947, Dulles served as a senior staffer on the Herter Committee. Dulles was part of the informal but influential Georgetown Set of Cold War liberals after 1945, with many of its members involved in the founding of the CIA.
== CIA career ==