26 Facts About Heinz Felfe

At the age of eighteen in 1936, Felfe served in the SS, reaching the rank of Obersturmfuhrer.

Heinz Felfe was born in Dresden, in the southern part of what was then the central part of Germany.

On leaving school Heinz Felfe undertook an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic.

In 1931, the year of his thirteenth birthday, Heinz Felfe joined the Hitler Youth association.

Two years later, in January 1933, the NSDAP took power in Germany, and in 1936, the year of his eighteenth birthday, Heinz Felfe became one of Germany's nearly four million Nazi party members.

On 8 March 1945, Heinz Felfe allegedly participated in the mass executions of 263 hostages in reprisal for the assassination attempt on Hanns Albin Rauter.

Heinz Felfe was captured by the British Army in 1945, and spent the seventeen months from May 1945 till October 1946 as a British prisoner of war.

Under interrogation in July 1945, at Blauwkapel, Heinz Felfe stated that he had been "an ardent Nazi".

Heinz Felfe's assignments included reporting on Communist activism at Cologne and Bonn universities.

Heinz Felfe continued to work for the British at least till 1949, but amid growing suspicion by his handlers that he might be working for the Soviet intelligence services.

However, Heinz Felfe is believed to have become a "full blown" Soviet agent only in September 1951, following a meeting in late 1949 or early 1950 with Hans Clemens, a former colleague from their days in German Intelligence.

Heinz Felfe was employed as an interrogator, tasked with screening, among others, former members of East Germany's quasi-military police service and any identified associates arriving in the refugee camps.

Heinz Felfe rose quickly through the ranks of the West German intelligence service.

Heinz Felfe later claimed that he had been heading up a West German spy ring in Moscow from as early as 1953 and that information passed to the West from that exercise had included the secret minutes from meetings of the ruling party's central committee, featuring alleged criticisms of high-ranking party officials close to the East German leader, Walter Ulbricht: they had included the identities of KGB agents.

Heinz Felfe stated that he had provided the west with a detailed plan of the KGB headquarters in Karlshorst on the south side of Berlin, something which Gehlen loved to show high-ranking intelligence chiefs from his country's western allies.

Heinz Felfe later recalled that he had been able to pass his handlers plans for the creation of a European Defence Community and of the detailed diplomatic planning for the visit to Moscow undertaken in 1955 by the West German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer.

Heinz Felfe betrayed the leadership of the Federal Intelligence Service.

Heinz Felfe gave the Soviets the identities of ninety four West Germany overseas "field officers", including the agency chief in Bangkok.

The identities of these officers were known to only a very few, even within The Service, but Heinz Felfe proved adept at finding their names by sounding out the relevant colleagues.

Subsequent CIA analysis notes that following his arrest Heinz Felfe was open and cooperative on questions to which his interrogators already knew the answers, but in contrast to other more garrulous agents unmasked and quizzed at around the same time, he took care not to disclose matters on which he judged his interrogators were not already well informed.

Heinz Felfe was arrested on spying charges on 6 November 1961.

Clemens and Heinz Felfe admitted to having passed 15,000 classified documents to the Soviets.

The number of political detainees exchanged for him and the extent of the pressure the Soviets were willing to apply through their East German proxies in support of Heinz Felfe's release testify to his importance in the eyes of Soviet intelligence.

Heinz Felfe published his memoir in 1986 under the title In the Service of the enemy: Ten years as Moscow's man in the Federal Intelligence Service.

Public disclosure of Heinz Felfe's activities damaged the reputation of the West German Intelligence Service, which just three months earlier had been taken by surprise by the erection of the Berlin Wall.

In March 2008 Heinz Felfe received congratulations from the Russian FSB on the occasion of his 90th birthday.