What the East did, the West also could do. The Federal Intelligence Service (BND) needed new workers and found them among former members of the Secret State Police (Gestapo). They had been feared for their ruthless brutality in Nazi Germany. Nonetheless, only a few politicians expressed reservations.
In the 1960s, people who had been involved in Holocaust atrocities and other war crimes made up roughly 20 per cent of the BND workforce.