How the German government manipulated the trial of Adolf Eichmann

12 November 2026facebook iconAdolf Eichmann, the chief architect of the Holocaust, was put on trial in Israel 65 years ago. The German government at that time, headed by Konrad Adenauer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) and its intelligence service, feared that Eichmann could expose numerous former Nazis in the government, the judiciary, or other high-ranking positions and reveal their involvement in Nazi crimes. Foremost amongst those fearing exposure was Hans Globke, State Secretary in the Federal Chancellery and Adenauer’s right-hand man. Under the Nazis, Globke had played a key role in drafting and interpreting the Nazi’s Nuremberg Race Laws. To prevent Globke and others implicated from being exposed, the federal government and the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) dispatched numerous agents—equipped with generous salaries, expense accounts and broad powers—to the trial.

Recently, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on this aspect of the Eichmann trial under the somewhat misleading headline “The Man Who Betrayed Eichmann.” [1] Author Willi Winkler, who has written various articles and books on the Nazi past of West German elites, took the death of the last agent and eyewitness to the Eichmann trial as an opportunity to shed light on the network whose exposure the federal government feared—and apparently still fears to this day—as a result of the trial. By “betrayal,” Winkler refers to the legal concept of “breach of attorney-client privilege.” In fact, the German government’s actions went far beyond the legal realm.

The agent, who died in April 2025, was Dieter Wechtenbruch, the assistant to Robert Servatius, who defended Eichmann as his attorney during the trial. Until his death in 2025, Wechtenbruch practiced law in Munich and maintained silence throughout his life about his role as an agent in the Eichmann trial. The agent had one primary task: to keep Globke and other Nazi collaborators still active in politics—who at the time were active in all offices, parties, and government agencies of the Federal Republic of Germany—out of the proceedings at all costs.

Beginning in the summer of 1960, as Agent V-7461 under the code name “Laqueur,” Wechtenbruch reported everything he could learn about the prisoner—who was hermetically sealed off from the outside world—to Bonn via the BND headquarters in Pullach. His contract with the BND stated: “Attorney Wechtenbruch undertakes not to disclose to the press, publishers, or any other persons interested in publication any information regarding trial materials or proceedings, or regarding statements and communications from the client; nor shall he himself make any such disclosures.” Wechtenbruch abided by this contract and was not the only agent dispatched by the BND and the Adenauer government.

The Federal Intelligence Service and the government sought to convince the global public of a so-called “zero hour,” i.e. West Germany’s break with the Nazi era and its coming to terms with the past, while at the same time refuting the accusations of the Stalinist led East Germany (GDR) which, during the Cold War and based on the information at its disposal, denounced the Nazi past of representatives of the West German state.

Adolf Eichmann was put on trial in Israel in April 1961, sentenced to death, and executed on May 31, 1962. Eichmann was the chief organizer of the extermination of the Jews. The former SS officer was head of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” department within the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) during the fascist Third Reich. This central department of the RSHA, designated IV B 4, organized the persecution, expulsion and deportation of European Jews to the extermination camps. Eichmann thus bore decisive responsibility for the murder of an estimated six million people in Europe.

He had served as the minute-taker at the Wannsee Conference, where the extermination of Europe’s Jewish population was meticulously planned. He was responsible for organizing and ensuring the smooth logistics of the transports to the extermination camps from Germany and other European countries, as well as from the occupied territories. He reported to leading Nazi politicians, such as SS officer and General of the Police Reinhard Heydrich and his staff, and acted on their orders. He carried out his orders conscientiously and with extreme meticulousness. He was among the few leading Nazi criminals who were held accountable for their actions after the Nuremberg Trials.

The vast majority of those involved in the Nazi regime, however—high-ranking government officials, professors, judges, prosecutors, SS members, high-ranking party functionaries, police officers and military personnel—were able to continue their careers in West Germany more or less seamlessly, often holding very high-level positions until retirement.

Although the Nuremberg Tribunal, convened by the Allies after the end of Nazi rule, had convicted the regime’s main political figures and set important precedents for international law, the question of the responsibility of the Nazi judiciary and the Reich administration for the extermination of the Jewish population was not a central focus at the time.

Eichmann and many others were able to get away all the more easily because, after the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949, the Adenauer government had halted denazification on the grounds that it was necessary to draw a definitive line under the Nazi past. The amnesty laws of 1949 and 1954, which former Nazi lawyers played a leading role in drafting, pardoned tens of thousands of perpetrators. The Bundestag passed the so-called “Section 131” provision, which allowed anyone who had been classified as a “follower” in denazification proceedings to return to employment in the civil service.

The statute of limitations for murder had initially been set at 20 years after 1945. This sparked fierce protests. The debate over repealing the statute of limitations lasted until 1979. Only then was it possible once again to prosecute Nazi criminals, but many perpetrators, witnesses or victims were already dead or could no longer be located.

After the war ended, Eichmann initially went into hiding in Germany and lived for a time on Lake Chiemsee and in the Lüneburg Heath. In 1950, with the help of the Vatican, he managed to flee to Argentina via the so-called “Rat Line.” There, like many other war criminals and Nazi henchmen, he lived undisturbed. He assumed the alias Ricardo Klement and worked at a Mercedes-Benz plant. Two years later, his wife and three sons joined him.

Documents that came to light in 2011 reveal that the post war Gehlen Organization, which later became the BND, and the federal government had been aware of Eichmann’s whereabouts since the early 1950s, initially through rumors and, by 1952, with certainty. Both the intelligence service — in which numerous former Nazi officers and party members were employed with the express approval of the U.S. government and its intelligence agencies— and the Adenauer government had no interest in bringing Eichmann to trial and did everything in their power to prevent it. During the Cold War, both the German and U.S. intelligence agencies were interested not in prosecuting former Nazi members, but in exploiting them as anti-communists against the Soviet Union.

Hans Globke, head of the Chancellor’s Office, sat like a spider in its web and ensured throughout the entire state apparatus that proven personnel from the Third Reich filled the key positions in the bureaucracy as completely as possible. It was also thanks to him that Eichmann remained unmolested.

The fact that Eichmann could be brought to trial in Israel is primarily due to the efforts of the Hessian Attorney General Fritz Bauer (1903–1968). He had received tips about Eichmann’s whereabouts and wanted to bring him to trial in Germany. But that was not possible. CIA documents released in 2006 suggest that this was prevented at the highest levels of government. There were considerable concerns within Konrad Adenauer’s government about Eichmann’s potential testimony regarding Globke or other government officials.

It is largely thanks to Bauer that the West German elites in the 1950s and 1960s did not succeed in permanently casting a veil of oblivion over the crimes of the Nazis, even though he was only able to partially achieve his goal of bringing those truly responsible to trial in Germany.

His most significant achievement was the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials from 1963 to 1965, during which the extent of the cruelty and mass murder at the extermination camp became clear, even though it was not possible to bring those primarily responsible to trial. Bauer, a Jewish Social Democrat and lawyer, had himself been imprisoned in a concentration camp and had eventually fled from the Nazis. He encountered so much hostility and so many obstacles in his work after the war that he remarked that upon leaving office, he was entering a “hostile, foreign country,” since the judiciary was riddled with former Nazi officials who hindered him at every turn.

As for the Eichmann case, he had received information that the daughter of a Jew who had fled to Argentina to escape the Nazis had, by chance, befriended one of Eichmann’s sons. In 1957, the émigré wrote to Fritz Bauer and informed him of the Nazi criminal’s whereabouts in Buenos Aires, where he was living under an assumed name.

Bauer wanted to have Eichmann extradited to Germany, but based on his past experiences, he could not trust the German authorities. He inquired at the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt whether the Americans would help secure the extradition of a “proven Nazi criminal” from another country. But the U.S. official in charge apparently did not understand who was involved and took no action.

Bauer refused to give up, so he decided to inform the Israeli Mossad which was interested and organized Eichmann’s arrest and abduction from Argentina, bringing him to trial in Jerusalem.

The federal government was deeply alarmed when it learned of this. It feared that Eichmann might spill the beans in court and expose high-ranking civil servants and members of the government in Germany as former Nazis.

In his article in the Süddeutsche, Winkler quotes Adenauer’s speech on the eve of the Eichmann trial: “In the body of the German people, in the moral life of the German people, there is no longer any National Socialism today, no National Socialist sentiment. We have become a constitutional state.” At the same time, he expressed the hope “that the full truth will come to light in this trial and that justice will be served.”

This was a lie in more ways than one, for Adenauer was well aware that numerous Nazis still held important positions in the Federal Republic of Germany and that “National Socialist sentiment” certainly still existed. Time and again, swastikas appeared on walls and far-right youth organizations were up to no good.

Adenauer was by no means interested in the full truth. By the late 1950s, critical reports—such as the traveling exhibition “Ungesühnte Nazijustiz” (“Unpunished Nazi Justice”)—and probing questions from the younger generation had exposed some of the crimes and their perpetrators or accomplices, who remained active in the state and society.

For example, in 1959 there was the scandal of the Flensburg euthanasia trial against Dr. Werner Heyde. As a senior psychiatrist and SS officer, he was the chief medical official responsible for “Aktion T4.” In this capacity, he organized and oversaw the systematic murder of an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 sick and disabled people in the gas chambers of the Nazi front organizations. After the war, he settled in Flensburg as a doctor under the false name Dr. med. Fritz Sawade, while many high-ranking lawyers, doctors, and politicians in Schleswig-Holstein knew his true identity and covered for him.

Fritz Bauer played a key role in bringing him to justice. But after the trial had been delayed for five years, Heyde evaded conviction by committing suicide in custody. Trials against his accomplices and those who had covered for him largely came to nothing.

Following Eichmann’s arrest, the federal government immediately took steps to prevent Eichmann’s testimony from posing a threat to itself and to the former Nazis within its ranks—most notably Hans Globke, head of the Chancellor’s Office.

Globke, who held a doctorate in law, played a key role in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior during the Weimar Republic and throughout the Nazi era, dealing with legislation on names and race, civil status, and citizenship. As early as 1929, he was responsible for matters related to name changes and civil status at the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. He drafted a circular on this subject stating that any name change impaired the “recognition of one’s family origins,” facilitated the “obscuring of civil status,” and “concealed bloodline descent.” This circular was apparently already designed to make it more difficult for Jews to change their Jewish-sounding names. Globke was thus one of the pioneers of racial legislation even before the Nazi regime. [2]

Globke was never a member of the National Socialist Party. His application for membership had been rejected because, as a devout Catholic, he was not welcome in the party, but that did not prevent him from playing a key role in shaping racial legislation. Together with SS leader Wilhelm Stuckart, he drafted the Nuremberg Race Laws and the authoritative commentary on them. In these documents, he promoted a sense of unity among the “racially homogeneous German people” and discriminated against all persons of “foreign blood”—especially Jews—as racially inferior.

As a ministry official, he was responsible for the 1938 Name Change Ordinance, which made Jews recognizable as such and stigmatized them. Unless they already had distinctly Jewish first names, they were required to add the names “Sara” or “Israel” to their names.

In addition to general racial issues, Globke also dealt with the “immigration and emigration” of Jews and matters related to the anti-Semitic “Blood Protection Law,” that is, the so-called “racial defilement.” His area of responsibility also included the preparation of proposals and drafts for laws and ordinances. In this regard, Eichmann was certainly required to follow his ordinances and instructions, especially since the Ministerial Gazette of the Interior Administration had emphasized the involvement of the two authors, Stukart and Globke, in “racial legislation” and had effectively declared their commentary to be binding. Globke was also involved in implementing regulations for the Nuremberg Laws.

Globke was also held responsible for the deportations of Greek Jews. Max Merten, a former Wehrmacht (German army) administrative officer in Thessaloniki, made serious accusations against him. Globke was alleged to be complicit in the Holocaust (which was not yet called that at the time) in Greece.

A preliminary investigation against Globke, initiated by Fritz Bauer in 1960, was transferred to the Bonn public prosecutor’s office in May 1961 following the chancellor’s intervention and was subsequently dismissed due to insufficient grounds for suspicion. Bauer’s preliminary investigations had begun after he learned that Globke had prevented the rescue of 20,000 Jews in Thessaloniki. Adolf Eichmann is said to have contacted the Reich Ministry of the Interior at that time and asked Globke for permission to transport the Jews to extermination camps.

According to Wikipedia, Globke “created the administrative conditions for the Holocaust, which began in late 1941, by registering the population considered to be Jewish.” Historian Peter Schöttler suspects that in June 1940, Globke was likely also the author of a memorandum to Hitler in which Stuckart proposed a far-reaching annexation of territories in eastern France and Belgium, which would have entailed the deportation of around an additional five million people.

During his denazification proceedings, Globke was able to cite several co-conspirators from the resistance circle around Jakob Kaiser, Carl Goerdeler and Otto Lenz as exculpatory witnesses and was therefore deemed to have a clean record. Even the Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Kempner—who had known Globke since the Weimar Republic and whom Globke had assisted by agreeing to testify in the so-called Wilhelmsstraße Trial—exonerated him.

As Adenauer’s “gray eminence” and closest confidant, Globke was responsible, among other things, for personnel policy, cabinet affairs, the establishment and oversight of the Federal Intelligence Service and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, and for matters concerning the CDU party leadership. It should not be underestimated that, during their infamous joint walks in the garden of the Chancellery, Adenauer sought Globke’s advice on important political decisions, including the then-controversial emergency laws.

Although Globke was controversial because of his Nazi past, Adenauer stood by him until the end of his term in office in 1963. On one occasion, he commented on the debate surrounding Globke’s involvement in drafting the Nuremberg Race Laws with the words: “You don’t throw out dirty water if you don’t have any clean water.”

People like Fritz Bauer were apparently considered to be “dirty water,” i.e. “those who besmirch their own nest.” Bauer, along with several other Social Democratic politicians, were spied on by the Federal Intelligence Service (BND).

Globke was and remained Reinhard Gehlen’s direct link to the Federal Chancellor; Gehlen headed the Gehlen Organization from 1947 and the BND from 1956 to 1968. As early as the beginning of 1951, he had asked the head of the foreign intelligence service to also take the domestic political situation into account. Consequently, Gehlen—with Adenauer’s approval—deployed special contacts and informants against politicians from the SPD, FDP, and independent CDU members. Globke also managed the CDU’s corporate donations, which flowed through the “Staatsbürgerliche Vereinigung” (Civic Association). Here, too, he was able to rely on old networks.

Adenauer and his followers dismissed the GDR’s accusations against Globke as “communist propaganda.”

Many of the substantiated allegations against Eichmann were not mentioned at all during the trial, and Globke’s role in the Nazi regime was successfully kept out of the proceedings.

How could this happen in full view of the global public? The task was carried out by BND agents dispatched by the federal government. They ensured that nothing came to light that could have endangered Globke and his associates. The last surviving witness to this conspiracy was, as reported, Dieter Wechtenbruch, and it was only after his death that the entire conspiracy could be exposed. Until then, the BND had successfully withheld all information.

Reporters had traveled from all over the world to cover the trial, including the philosopher Hannah Arendt and the war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. Fifty journalists alone were reporting from Germany. Nevertheless, it was not the whole truth that came to light, for the Adenauer government and the BND had always been pulling the strings. Wechtenbruch, for example, briefed everyone who approached him—including Hannah Arendt—with the Adenauer government’s official version of events.

All of this is documented in a book whose publication the BND finally agreed to after some hesitation. Its author, Klaus-Dietmar Henke, was the spokesperson for the “Independent Commission of Historians for Research into the History of the Federal Intelligence Service, 1945–1968,” which concluded its work in 2022 and presented its findings in 15 volumes.

Based on BND documents that will not be declassified until 2026, Henke describes in detail in his book [3] the agency’s “Jerusalem Operation” to infiltrate the defense team in the Eichmann trial of 1961–62 with the informant Wechtenbruch.

The rise of the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the neo-Nazi riots in Chemnitz, and their defense by Hans-Georg Maaßen, head of the country’s domestic intelligence service (Office for the Protection of the Constitution), have outraged millions of people. But why are the fascists back seven decades after the fall of the Third Reich? One cannot understand this without examining the drastic changes in politics, the state apparatus and intellectual life.

Henke’s analyses make it abundantly clear that this attempt at “coming to terms with the past” in post-Nazi West Germany was not an unconscious repression of the horrific events, as was claimed for decades in the press and in historical accounts in the Federal Republic of Germany. It was “a matter of active defense through avoidance, obfuscation, trivialization, reinterpretation, or denial—that is, the highly personal as well as the state-level ‘defense against the past’” by Chief of the Chancellery Globke, but not just by him.

Through his role in the postwar period, Globke actively prevented crimes, their perpetrators and their accomplices from being held accountable. Indeed, for decades this was the “reason of state” in West Germany.

How did U.S. and West German intelligence agencies' recruitment of former Nazis for anti-communist purposes connect to similar practices elsewhere, like Operation Paperclip?What role did Stalinism in East Germany play in exposing Nazi pasts in the West, and how did this fit into the broader Cold War rivalry between the two German states?Ask more questions at SocialismAI.comThe Agent Rolf VogelKlaus Wiegrefe reported in Der Spiegel on another BND agent: It was Rolf Vogel, accredited as a journalist, who officially reported for the Deutsche Zeitung, which later merged into the Handelsblatt. In reality, he too was a BND agent who loyally reported to the Chancellery. [4]

Vogel, who was half-Jewish, felt indebted to Globke because Globke’s commentary had placed “half-breeds” like him in a better position than the Nazis had actually intended. Unlike his Jewish mother, he did not have to go to a concentration camp. As a reserve officer in the Bundeswehr, Vogel had already carried out several delicate missions for Globke, including brokering an arms deal with Israel.

He was personally commissioned by Adenauer to travel to Jerusalem. His mission was to provide Israeli prosecutors with exculpatory material regarding Globke to ensure that the indictment remained strictly limited to Eichmann and did not include any accomplices. In Jerusalem, together with a colleague from the Bild newspaper, he stole documents incriminating Globke from an East German lawyer who had attempted to influence the trial in the interest of the GDR and to incriminate West German politicians.

One must bear in mind that the Cold War was in a highly tense phase during the 14 months that Eichmann’s trial lasted. The Berlin Wall was being built; CIA troops landed in Cuba to overthrow Fidel Castro; and the Soviet Union wanted to station nuclear missiles there.

Consequently, the German government was anxiously striving not to appear to its allies as a “haven for the incorrigible.” After all, the number of German and Austrian perpetrators involved in the Holocaust is estimated at over 200,000 but only a very small number of them had been brought to trial by the time of the Eichmann trial.

The U.S. government was interested in ensuring that its important ally remained unblemished. It offered assistance through a CIA agent, which Adenauer welcomed, according to BND documents, since it was well known that investigating the Nazi past and tracking down those still-living perpetrators and accomplices was not exactly at the top of the government’s agenda. The aim was to convey at all costs the impression that Eichmann had acted merely as “a henchman of Himmler’s SS apparatus and not as an agent of the German Reich at that time.” This official line was intended to make it impossible to link West German officials with a Nazi past “to Eichmann’s crimes.” The aim was to keep the circle of those who knew about and participated in the Holocaust as small as possible.

To maintain control over all key government agencies and offices, a “Committee of State Secretaries for Matters of Secrecy” was established under Globke’s chairmanship, comprising representatives from the Foreign Office, the Ministries of the Interior and Justice, the Ministry of Defense, the Chancellery, the BND, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, and the Munich Institute for Contemporary History. The committee was to remain secret. Lorenz Bessel-Lorck represented the Office for the Protection of the Constitution on the committee. Before joining the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the lawyer had served as a public prosecutor in Flensburg, where he had helped ensure that the former euthanasia doctor Heyde could continue to practice under the alias Sawade. So much for the integrity of the committee members.

At one point, the committee considered attributing partial blame for the extermination to the Jewish victims. The Eichmann Task Force at the Foreign Office had a dedicated line to Jerusalem, as, in addition to BND agent Vogel, a representative from the Federal Press Office and a multi-member observer delegation from the Foreign Office had also traveled there.

The journalists and BND agents sent by Bonn as observers are said to have made a disastrous impression overall in Jerusalem, according to WDR journalist Klaus Bölling, who later became Helmut Schmidt’s government spokesperson. Their actual task was simply to follow the trial, but they got drunk, and some spread apologetic theories among journalists, diplomats, and the Israeli prosecutors.

The BND agents were primarily tasked with finding out what Eichmann was saying—or had said—about public figures in the Federal Republic of Germany, as well as “current or former employees of their own agency.” However, Eichmann had already commented on Globke on October 25, 1960: He had told his interrogators that the name Globke “meant nothing to him, at least nothing in connection with the ‘Final Solution.’ Consequently, he could not testify against Globke either.”

Apparently, his intention was, as a matter of principle, not to incriminate former Nazis who were living in freedom. Eichmann, who portrayed himself at the trial as merely a “paper pusher” who carried out orders, was and remained a fanatical Nazi and anti-Semite. This is evident from lengthy tape-recorded interviews that the former SS officer Willem Sassen conducted with him in Argentina in 1957. In them, Eichmann proudly admits to his actions and regrets only that he had not succeeded in murdering all the Jews. Transcripts of the tapes were available to the court, and excerpts were published, though the originals were not made available to researchers until decades later.

However, “Operation Jerusalem” would certainly not have gone quite so smoothly for Bonn if the Israeli government under David Ben-Gurion had not also played its part. As already mentioned, Vogel had arranged the Adenauer government’s first arms deal with Israel. Now the goal was to influence the Eichmann trial.

Adenauer had issued him a letter of recommendation for a meeting with Israel’s prime minister. Vogel was to find out what Eichmann had told the Israelis about Globke. Ben Gurion received Vogel at the resort town of Herzliya. Ben Gurion shared Adenauer’s anti-communism, as the Soviet Union supported Israel’s enemies, Egypt and Syria. There was no need to discuss Globke, he said: “Anyone Konrad Adenauer has by his side has been vetted more thoroughly by him than we ever could.”

It is well known that in 1960–61, the Israelis urgently needed weapons, submarines and tanks, as well as financial aid for their economy. Adenauer had promised both to the Israeli government shortly before, but negotiations on these matters had not yet been concluded. Apparently, the federal government was stalling, presumably because the Foreign Office feared the deal might jeopardize its relations in the Middle East. Globke argued to the Israeli negotiator that Bonn wanted to wait for the verdict against Eichmann to avoid giving the “wrong impression” that there was a connection between the trial and Bonn’s aid.

Wiegrefe quotes German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauß, who left no doubt during the negotiations that the Israelis would have to spare Bonn’s reputation if they wanted the weapons: “I considered it a given in my discussions with my counterparts that the Federal Republic, in its efforts to ensure Israel’s security, … should not then be held morally, politically, or in the media collectively guilty for the crimes of a past generation in connection with the Eichmann trial.”

Gabriel Bach, the last surviving witness from the prosecution team, confirms this: “We only introduced into the trial what was relevant to Eichmann.” The subject of Globke, he said, was simply not relevant. It is certain, however, that Eichmann’s attorney gave his client a book about Globke and that the prisoner wrote a 40-page paper on it. Attorney General Hausner is said to have asked Ben-Gurion whether there were any political reasons that would preclude the introduction of these notes into the trial. His reply was: “There are.” And, as is well known, Globke was not summoned as a witness, and Eichmann’s notes were set aside.

To this day, not all files related to the Eichmann trial have been made public. A few weeks ago, the Federal Administrative Court once again dismissed a lawsuit seeking the release of files related to the Eichmann case on the grounds that “there is reason to believe that their use would endanger the welfare of the Federal Republic of Germany.” [5]

In fact, the many blind spots in Germany’s postwar history and that of its representatives have facilitated the resurgence of right-wing radicalism in Germany. Many of the historical distortions, cover-ups, and lies from this period have repeatedly played into the hands of the far right and neo-Nazis, paving the way for forces such as the AfD, which now seeks to use its power to finally draw a line under the past and make Germany “GREAT” again.

The fact that the AfD and its supporters can once again spread far-right ideologies and ethno-nationalist ideas unhindered today shows that there has never been a “zero hour” in Germany, nor a thorough eradication of National Socialism and an exposure of its roots in the capitalist system.

[1] Willi Winkler, “The Man Who Betrayed Eichmann,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 28, 2026. Quotations refer to this article.

[2] Manfred Görtemaker, Christoph Safferling, The Rosenburg File: The Federal Ministry of Justice and the Nazi Era, Munich 2016, p. 118.

[3] Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Denial of the Past: Adenauer’s State Secretary Hans Globke, the BND, and the Eichmann Trial, Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2026.

[4] Klaus Wiegrefe, “The Curse of the Evil Deed: The Fear of Adolf Eichmann.” Der Spiegel, 15/2011.

[5] Willi Winkler, Süddeutsche Zeitung, August 28, 2026.