Partners at the Creation: The Men Behind Postwar Germany's Defense and Intelligence Establishments by James H. Critchfield

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Synopsis

Working for the Central Intelligence Agency in the years immediately following World War II, the late Critchfield served a central role in working with German generals Reinhard Gehlen and Adolf Heusinger in setting up the West German intelligence service, the BND, and the new armed forces the Bundeswehr. This text recounts his eight years of involvement with the new German security apparatus, describing a more central role for the CIA than has previously been officially acknowledged, as well as placing Chancellor Konrad Adenauer near the center of the narrative. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Foreign Affairs

As the United States approached war with Iraq in early 2003, some journalists turned to an 86-year-old retiree for perspective. A decorated World War II Army officer, James Critchfield later joined the CIA and became one of the nation's most influential spies. The journalists called him because of his stint supervising CIA activities in the Middle East in the 1960s, during which he helped arrange the 1963 coup that overthrew General Abd al-Karim Kassem and set in motion the Baath Party's 40-year domination of Iraqi politics. Had they been sharper, they would also have asked about the lessons of an episode from still earlier in his career: his creation of the foreign intelligence service of West Germany from the ashes of the Nazi state.

Critchfield died two weeks after the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad, but, fortunately, he had been able to keep his cancer at bay long enough to finish a detailed treatment of his experiences in postwar Germany. Part memoir and part history, the posthumously published Partners at the Creation tells the story of the men behind West Germany's emergence as a stalwart member of the Atlantic alliance in the 1950s. Its discussion of building new pro-U.S. security services from the remnants of a defeated tyranny could not be more timely: it serves as an uncannily appropriate backdrop to the agonizing dilemmas facing decision-makers in Iraq today.