Background
Hans Bernd Gisevius was born in Arnsberg on 14 July 1904.
Hans Bernd Gisevius was born in Arnsberg on 14 July 1904.
After law school, he joined the Prussian Interior Ministry in 1933 and was assigned to the newly formed Geheime Staatspolizei, or Gestapo. After joining the Gestapo, he immediately had disagreements with his senior, Rudolf Diels, and was discharged. He continued with police work in the Interior Ministry. When Himmler took over Police functions in 1936 in the German Reich, he removed Gisevius from office.
At the outset of the Nazi régime, he joined the Gestapo though he had previously been a staunch conservative, a follower of von Hindenburg and a member of the Stahlhelm. During the four months he spent as a Gestapo official, Gisevius contributed to bringing down its first chief, Rudolf Diels. Subsequently transferred to the Police Department in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, Gisevius was involved in a number of conspiracies against Hitler which came to nothing.
During the war he entered the Abwehr, working for it from his base in Switzerland as German Vice-Consul. He was a frequent visitor to Allen Dulles, Chief of the US Office of Strategic Services, passing on messages from General Beck and Goerdeler and keeping him posted on the activities of the German Resistance. Gisevius survived an investigation by the Gestapo and escaped back to Switzerland, after the abortive July plot of 1944. He returned to Germany in 1945 as a privileged prosecution witness at the Nuremberg trials, testifying against Goering and on behalf of Schacht and Wilhelm Frick.
After the war. Gisevius spent some years in the United States and West Berlin, before eventually settling in Switzerland.
He died in West Germany on 23 February 1974.
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1946