Josef Selmayr

Josef Selmayr (born 7 July 1905 in Straubing, died 11 November 2005) was a German Brigadier General and intelligence officer, who is best known as the first Director of the West German Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) from 1955 to 1964. He is credited with building the organization. He started his career in intelligence in the Foreign Armies East unit that analysed the Soviet Union during WWII and worked for the CIA from 1951 to 1955. He is the father of Gerhard Selmayr and the grandfather of the Secretary-General of the European Commission, Martin Selmayr. At the time of his testimony at the Nuremberg trials on 28 August 1947, according to himself, he was married and had three children.

Early career and WWII

Selmayr was born to a Catholic family from Bavaria, as the son of the pharmacist Josef Selmayr (1877–1927) and Josefine née Betz (1879–1938). His grandfather Georg Selmayr (1852–1920) was the brother of the last mayor of Bogenhausen, now a district of Munich, also named Josef Selmayr.

He became a professional soldier in 1924 during the Weimar Republic and served as a lieutenant-colonel on the general staff of Army Group F in the Balkans and in the Foreign Armies East military intelligence organization, which focused on analyzing the Soviet Union and other East European states, during the Second World War. He received the German Cross in Gold and the Iron Cross First Class and Second Class. At the end of the war he initially became an American prisoner of war, but was later transferred to British control.

A document, "made on 12 March 1947 on behalf of the city of Belgrade in a court martial procedure by members of the National Commission for the Investigation of Crimes committed by the occupation forces and their accomplices, Belgrade" was produced on 28 August 1947, the last day of the prosecution's statements, at the Hostages Trial (USA v. Wilhelm List et al. 1947-48), the seventh of the Subsequent Nuremberg trials officially known as the "Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT7). Defense lawyer Hans Laternser objected to the introduction of the document as a witness statement, arguing that Selmayr was "brought in from the detention prison" for a "responsible interrogation, I assume, of a defendant". Theodore Fenstermacher, the chief prosecutor, replied by describing it as "simply an interrogation of a German soldier".^[1]

Imprisonment in Communist Yugoslavia

In 1946, he was delivered as prisoner of war from the British army to the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, then a one-party communist state ruled by Tito. In 1948 he was sentenced by the Yugoslav communist regime to 15 years in jail for war crimes, but was pardoned only two years later in 1950.^[2]

Work for the CIA and Director of the Military Counterintelligence Service

He then made it back to West Germany, and in 1951 he was employed by the Gehlen Organization, a CIA-affiliated intelligence agency focused on the East European communist regimes, especially the Soviet Union. In 1955 he was promoted to Brigadier General in the West German Bundeswehr and appointed as the first Director of the Military Counterintelligence Service, serving in the position for nine years until 1964. He is credited with building the organization.^[3]

Retirement

At the end of his career, Selmayr became known for contesting his retirement with legal means. The normal retirement age for senior military officers was 60 years, but the Ministry of Defence at the time sought to retire senior officers even before they reached 60 to make room for younger talent, and accordingly it was decided that Selmayr had to retire in 1964, the year he turned 59. Selmayr contested this decision in the Federal Administrative Court, but lost.^[4]

He has published several books about his own experiences as a soldier. He died in 2005 at the age of 100, 41 years after he retired.

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