From Nazi Criminal to Postwar Spy

German Intelligence Hired Klaus Barbie as Agent

By Georg Bönisch and Klaus Wiegrefe
Speigel Online

Barbie leaves the court in Lyon after being
sentenced to life imprisonment in July 1987.
 He would later die in prison in France.

Klaus Barbie was a notorious Nazi war criminal known as the "Butcher of Lyon" because of his horrific deeds in occupied France. Now new research has revealed that he also worked as a spy for Germany's BND intelligence agency while in hiding in Bolivia after the war. The agency almost certainly knew about his dark past.

The man who Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), listed in its files as Wilhelm Holm belonged to a unique species in the shadowy world of intelligence. The overweight German businessman with the carefully combed dark hair was a so-called "tipper."

Whenever Holm noticed someone during his travels around the world who seemed to have the makings of an agent, he would send a message to BND headquarters in Pullach near Munich. In 1965, for example, after he had spent four weeks in the Bolivian capital La Paz, he raved about a fellow German who had two important virtues: He was apparently a staunch German patriot and a "committed anticommunist" -- something that was practically a badge of honor during the Cold War era.

Barbie, 1944

A few weeks later, the BND hired the new man as an agent. He was given the code name "Adler" (eagle) and the registration number V-43118. "Adler" lived in La Paz under the name Klaus Altmann.

But Altmann wasn't his real name. In reality, he was one of the vilest criminals of the Nazi dictatorship: Klaus Barbie, the notorious "Butcher of Lyon." After the war, French courts sentenced Barbie, the former head of the Gestapo in Lyon, to death in absentia. There are many indications that the BND was aware of all of this when it decided to hire him.

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