In Herrsching there was a hiding place for deserters from the east.
From Schleissheim, the “Foreign Broadcast Information Service” of the CIA tried to eavesdrop on communications from the Soviet Union via satellite.
During the Cold War, intelligence services from all over the world were at home in the greater Munich area,
Pullach / Ismaning
- In the environs of the state capital, secret services maintained over 250 offices, which journalist Finn Overdick has been researching for years.
Now he has summarized his findings in a very exciting lecture for the adult education center in the north of the district.
Spider web in secret
The event could be followed in the stream, but also live, which was used almost equally.
Around 15 people had come to the Ismaning Adult Education Center, and 18 joined them from home.
As VHS director Lothar Stetz put it, they were given a “fascinating glimpse into a counter-world” with which, of course, there are no points of contact in everyday life.
“Unbelievable”, he found, “what a spider web” agents and the protection of the Constitution had woven in Upper Bavaria, “one is fascinated and scared”.
Prevents terrorist attacks
Of course, Finn Overdick also said, “we need intelligence services.
They are an important element of a state ”.
Of course, they would only be talked about when it comes to reporting failures.
“Some terrorist attacks in Germany could be prevented thanks to the work of the services.
That is important, it is not discussed. ”The BND was also very well informed about Afghanistan.
However, mishaps would occur when the information was transmitted, which, moreover, would not always be interpreted correctly once it had arrived: "That is the problem."
Secret service files in the online archive
It is exciting in itself how Overdick came to deal with this parallel world, one of the essence of which is that precisely what is happening in it is not made public. The journalist, who comes from Luxembourg, accidentally came across old secret service files in the CIA's public online archive in mid-2017, which also contained cover addresses for the Pullach BND. He then suffered from burnout, left the daily newspaper he had worked for and moved to Munich. Because of love. And it was here that he began to photograph the branches of the news service that he had come across and to post the pictures on Instagram and Twitter. He is “le cueilleur”, the collector, in the networks.
In Ismaning it became clear how large the collection of his stories already is.
Not a question to which he could not answer well and in detail.
He backed up his lecture with lots of exterior photos and a map on which he marked the various "branches" with green and red dots, of which nobody should know what was going on there.
The card was pretty colorful.
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The entrance to the BND in Heilmannstrasse in Pullach.
© Andrea Kästle
Camp Nikolaus becomes the BND
The area around Munich was the starting point for numerous operations, if only because of its geographically favorable location. The most important player was, of course, the "Organization Gehlen" financed by the USA, internally, because it had moved into quarters in the former Bormann settlement in Pullach "on December 6, 1946 or 1947", called "Camp Nikolaus", from which it then moved in April The BND emerged in 1956. Cover addresses, bogus companies, secret houses, apartments and conspiratorial schools and listening stations: everything was soon available in Upper Bavaria. In Munich-Solln on Heilmannstrasse there was the club “The Bridge” with a cinema and bar, to which the Americans gladly invited their German colleagues, although after the third beer the guests sometimes chatted more than Gehlen could have liked.Meanwhile, the CIA maintained paramilitary training centers in Murnau, among other places, with the aim of destabilizing communist countries. Unfortunately, only a few of the underground fighters who were sent to Albania or the Soviet Union after appropriate preparation survived. "Most were betrayed and killed."
BND depot in Hochbrück
So it went on and on, Overdick could hardly finish his list: In the Villa Amalienburg on the Tegernsee, employees were trained in psychological warfare against the Soviet Union, in Bogenhausen the American Defense Ministry maintained a luxurious connection point until 2010: “The villa with a bunkered basement is Still empty today. ”But there were also outposts of the BND in the middle of Munich - in the 1950s,“ six or seven ”on Türkenstrasse.
In Hochbrück, on the other hand, the Pullach intelligence service had a depot on a huge area until around 2006. "Many offices were there for years, others only for months."
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Intelligence expert Finn Overdick.
© private
Pool and tennis court in the secret area
Of course, the BND, with its former 7,000 employees, some of whom were exposed to Nazism, has been reformed and restructured several times, including downsized.
The area in Pullach and its use were also explained by Overdick that evening;
The employees had tennis courts at their disposal and also a pool, also available on site: their own petrol station, a washing facility, "until the beginning of the 1990s, trucks were ready to drive off in the garages".
In the event that the east would invade.
Talks with the Taliban
Under Klaus Kinkel, “unofficial talks with the Taliban” also took place in the “presidential villa”.
The relocation to Berlin, which has already taken place in parts, can be imagined as costly.
The top-secret documents were driven north in trucks at night, each time a truck was followed by a "heavily armed company car," said Overdick.
The BND office in the federal capital: the largest contiguous office building in Europe.
Secret service opens
In the meantime, the journalist did not fail to mention that, the BND is open to its past and has given outsiders an insight into its own structures.
Yes, said Finn Overdick in conclusion, he already intends to publish the knowledge he has gathered in book form.
But he is not quite finished with the research.