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What Makes People Traitors?
The answer is: "Mice".
The English word is the plural of "Mouse" and stands for the four most important motives that can lead agents to change sides.
"M" means "Money" - many traitors are driven by money.
For others, it's about ideological conviction - "I".
Still others have little choice because they are blackmailed - the "C" means "coercion".
Ultimately, one's own ego like “E” can become a reason for betrayal: Lack of appreciation by superiors or the awareness of one's own extraordinaryness can lead to disloyalty.
Heinz Felfe (1918-2008) was discovered at the end of 1961 as a KGB top spy in the BND
Source: picture-alliance / dpa
Heinz Paul Felfe, known as "Hans Friesen", was not a double or triple agent.
In the course of his life he made seven different secret services for which he spied.
Felfe was clearly an ace of his time, free from any scruples.
As a former staunch National Socialist, he committed himself to the KGB - and even remained loyal to it.
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For Hans-Henning Crome, former employee of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and contemporary witness, it is clear: Felfe drove his ego to first spy on the Gehlen organization, which was paid for by the USA, the BND forerunner, and then the West German foreign intelligence service itself for the Soviets .
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Crome knew Felfe personally and got to know him as willing and goal-oriented.
"He had a fetish career," explains the 89-year-old.
After the British foreign service MI6, for which Felfe worked temporarily after 1945, had sorted him out and he could not find a job with West German police stations either, the Soviets recognized his strengths.
They paid the longed-for recognition to the exaggerated ego of the ambitious man.
The chief historian of the BND, Bodo Hechelhammer, published the first biography about Felfe (1918 to 2008).
According to his analysis, as a staunch Hitler supporter, the multi-agent initially profited from the Nazi system.
He worked in the security service of the SS in the Reich Security Main Office, was promoted and was able to rise - up to Obersturmführer, corresponding to a first lieutenant in the Wehrmacht.
At the end of the war, however, he lost everything - a great defeat for his ego.
The consequence: Felfe never wanted to be on the wrong side again, on the side of the loser.
On the way to the courthouse in 1963, Felfe covered his face with a folder
Source: picture alliance / Fritz Fischer
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To this end, he adapted appropriately to a wide variety of life situations.
Felfe could think through situations quickly and make quick decisions.
For example, in 1945 he changed sides without hesitation and betrayed all his knowledge, all his comrades and sources, everything he had previously believed in to the victorious powers.
After the war he did not return to his beloved hometown Dresden, but lived with his family in the Bonn area.
The former profiteer of National Socialism lived in a confined space with his wife and two small children.
Without running water and enough money.
The trained criminal investigator felt humiliated and looked for work.
But nobody seemed to need him.
For the British foreign secret service MI6 he built up a circle of communist-minded students as an informant in order to keep these potentially dangerous students under control.
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Source: Polyband
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Hans Celmens and Erwin Tiebel - former regulars with contacts to the KGB - gave him internal Soviet information.
Felfe tried unsuccessfully to sell these to German news dealers or the MI6.
After a long period of estrangement, the British ended this collaboration on April 14, 1950.
Felfe's ego was badly offended.
Now the man, trimmed for success, put an end to the wait for other offers, for example for a use in the future Federal Criminal Police Office: he secretly committed himself to the KGB.
According to Hechelhammer, Felfe did not trust the young Federal Republic, but believed in the superiority of the Soviet system;
therefore he decided on the supposedly stronger side.
His commanding officer built trust in Felfe.
When the Gehlen Organization (abbreviated Org.) Recruited him a short time later, he remained internally loyal to the KGB, although he was also indirectly paid by the Americans, namely the CIA.
Now Felfe passed on Soviet information to the predecessor organization of the BND and earned recognition.
"Hans Friesen", internally called "Fiffi", was supposed to spy on the Soviet side for the org.
Ironically, he worked in the “Counter-Espionage Soviet Union” unit, which he also headed from 1958 onwards.
Moscow's mole was accurate and effective, and in retrospect the damage to the BND was enormous.
"I wanted to look like a one in the eyes of the Soviets," was Felfes' motto, who had the code name "Paul" at the KGB.
Despite some evidence, the wrong Fiffi was not found out for years.
Felfe proudly celebrated his ten-year service anniversary with both the KGB (secretly, of course) and the BND.
Reinhard Gehlen - man "without a face"
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The pensioner Reinhard Gehlen in front of his house on Lake Starnberg.
There are hardly any photos from his active time as BND boss.
Source: pa / Sven Simon
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It was a sensation when the “Spiegel” identified Gehlen in 1954 on a ten-year-old group photo of general staff officers.
Source: picture-alliance / dpa
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It was only years after his retirement that the first BND president put an end to his fear of photographers.
Source: picture-alliance / obs
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The photo shows him in 1975.
Source: picture-alliance / Sven Simon
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While he was writing his memoirs, Gehlen even let a professional photographer into his study.
Source: pa / Sven Simon
However, the master spy was unpopular with colleagues.
He was considered arrogant and lacking in empathy.
Felfe behaved obsequiously towards superiors;
if he wanted - if it did him good - he could be extremely charming towards colleagues.
He was always focused, goal-oriented and effective.
Worked meticulously for praise, recognition, and personal success.
When Heinz Felfe was exposed as a traitor in November 1961, his wife was amazed.
Ingeborg Felfe would never have expected her husband to spy for the KGB.
He was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
The Soviet side did everything in its power to replace its top spy as soon as possible.
After about half of his sentence the time had come: Heinz Felfe was allowed to leave prison and the Federal Republic in February 1969;
In return, 21 alleged and actual BND spies in GDR custody were released.
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A new existence was waiting for Felfe in the GDR: he was given a professorship for criminology at the Humboldt University in East Berlin, as well as a house and a car.
He was allowed to travel to socialist countries abroad.
In his new life, too, he pursued his passion, spying: As an IM, he worked for the Stasi.
Heinz Felfe (1918-2008) showed his expired West German passport and Soviet ID cards in 1985
Source: ullstein bild - Klaus Mehner
Nevertheless, his new life in the GDR did not fill him: In 1986 he published his memoir "Im Dienst des Gegners" in a West German publishing house.
At the press conference in East Berlin, he proudly showed his long-expired West German passport and emphasized his special status as a GDR professor with a West German passport and the formal status of a German citizen.
This amazed the West German press and angered the GDR.
Because actually Felfe was protesting against the restriction of the freedom of travel, thus criticizing the politics of the SED state.
Despite his loyalty to the KGB, Felfe did not support the communist system.
The consistent pattern in Felfes life became clear here too: His personal success was more important to him than anything else.
Ego, reputation and career came first, conviction for a cause or common moral concepts were in the shadows.
A few weeks after his 90th birthday, on which even the KGB successor SWR 2008 publicly congratulated him, Heinz Felfe died.
He had worked partly one after the other, partly in parallel for seven different secret services: the SD, the MI6, the KGB, the CIA and the Org., The BND and finally the Stasi.
His life is thus an extraordinary German-German parable.
Bodo Hechelhammer: “Spy without limits. Heinz Felfe - agent in seven secret services ”. (Piper, Munich. 410 pp., 24 euros).
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This article was first published in September 2019.