…in the Algerian Insurgency
"It was a quiet evening in evening in Schwabing, an upscale suburb of Munich, on October 14, 1960. Very few neighbors even noted the bulky man who exited an apartment into a dark alleyway named Blütenstrasse. The man, Wilhelm Beisner, a former SS intelligence agent and currently a dubious businessman, travelled so frequently to the Middle East and North Africa that he was almost unknown in the neighborhood. From the windows of his Mercedes, the former SS spy was able to see his wife, Alice, who had just left the building with their two dogs. A second later, he started the engine and the car exploded. The Munich police that hastened to the scene opened an investigation, but the BND, West Germany's secret service, soon took over, and the entire affair was hushed up. The wounded victim did not want to speak, either. "A Beisner that sings is a dead Beisner," wrote one of the newspapers, ominously. To the chagrin of those who followed the story, the mysterious assassin was never found.
This forgotten story, which I read a long time ago in a German newspaper, aroused my curiosity. As I soon discovered, it was only the trip of the iceberg of an extraordinarily convoluted plot. Browsing the yellowish corners of old magazines, diplomatic correspondence, secret services documents and police reports, it soon became clear to me that Beisner was targeted by "The Red Hand," allegedly a rogue organization of French settlers that assassinated Germans who smuggled arms to the Algerian FLN insurgents. Recent studies, however, had shown that this was yet another deceit, because the "Red Hand" was merely a front for the French secret Service, SDECE…"
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Armand
