Six, Franz Alfred: A career in the shadows

Franz Alfred Six, though he had a low profile within the Nazi regime, was a university dean, a senior officer in the Reich Security Service, leader of an Einsatz unit, a diplomat and a leading Nazi ideologue. He was sentenced at Nuremberg for war crimes, then freed and recruited into the Gehlen organization where he is said to have taken part in the insertion of agents into eastern Europe, helped foment the Hungarian Uprising, assisted with the creation of the Green Berets and later trained Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. His career trajectory raises awkward questions about how de-Nazification was undermined by sections of Western intelligence, the role that Nazis played in post-war politics and about the very nature of the Cold War.