Spying on Science: Western Intelligence in Divided Germany 1945-1961

SPYING ON SCIENCE

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Spying on Science Western Intelligence in Divided Germany 1945–1961 PAUL MADDRELL

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Paul Maddrell 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–926750–2

978–0–19–926750–7

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To my dear mother, who, at our table by the window overlooking the Vale of Clwyd, taught me how to read and write, I dedicate this, my first book, with love and gratitude.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to many people for the help, advice, and many kindnesses I have received from them while I have been engaged in writing this book. First among them are my parents. Once again in my life, they have been the most devoted and generous of supporters; without their support I would not have been able to begin this research project. James Sparling, Tim Hochstrasser, Helga Woggon, David Reynolds, Alan Sked, Antony Best, Len Scott, Mike Foley, Lothar Kettenacker, Stephanie and Johannes von Ahlefeldt, Tillmann Braun, Tatsuko Yamazaki, Susanne Eschke, Thomas Wild, Clemens Schöll, Wolfango Piccoli, and Horst Holstein have all been generous friends along the way and have given me help from which my research has greatly benefited. My warm thanks go to all of them. Responsibility for any errors, and for all opinions expressed, remains my own. I am especially grateful to the considerate and ever-helpful staff of the archives I have used. My particular thanks go to Frau Ursula Sigmund at the BStU in Berlin. I am also grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, the German Historical Institute London, and Cambridge University’s Board of Graduate Studies for the financial support they gave me in the course of this research project. My thanks go too to Anne Gelling, Kay Rogers, and Sally McCann at Oxford University Press.

Contents List of Abbreviations Glossary Note on Sources and Terminology Introduction

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1. The Soviet Exploitation of German Science and the Origins of Scientific Containment

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2. Refugees and Defectors

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3. Other Key Sources of Intelligence

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4. The Prisoners-of-war Come Home

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5. Mass Espionage: Western Spying in Germany 1945–61

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6. The Scientific and Military Spy Networks

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7. The Inducement of Defection

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8. Operation ‘Dragon Return’

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9. The Western Secret Services and the Wall

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10. The Uses of the Intelligence Gathered

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Conclusion: The Years of the Germans

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Appendix Bibliography Index

303 304 315

Abbreviations ‘ABC’ weapons ABM AEG

atomic, biological, and chemical weapons anti-ballistic missile Allgemeine Elektrizitätsgesellschaft (General Electric Company)

Bf V

Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the West German security agency) British Intelligence Organization (Germany) (1952–4), the successor to Intelligence Division (1945–52) British Intelligence Objectives Sub-committee Bundesnachrichtendienst (West German Federal Intelligence Service, which until 1956 was the Gehlen Organization, or ‘Org’). British Occupation Zone Biological Warfare

BIO(G) BIOS BND BOZ BW CAAIU CCG(BE) CDU CIA CIC CIOS Comecon Comint CW

Combined Anglo-American Intelligence Unit (a British–American atomic intelligence unit) Control Commission for Germany (British Element) Christian Democratic Union Central Intelligence Agency (BOB refers to its Berlin Operations Base) Counter-intelligence Corps Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-committee Council for Mutual Economic Assistance communications intelligence Chemical Warfare

D.At.En.Int./ D.At.En. DDR DPs DRPC DSI

intelligence unit of the Department (later Division) of Atomic Energy of the Ministry of Supply Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic) Displaced Persons (British) Defence Research Policy Committee Directorate of Scientific Intelligence

DVL

Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (German Aeronautical Testing Institute)

ECA Elint EUCOM

Economic Co-operation Administration electronic intelligence US European Command

Abbreviations FCD FDGB FDP FIAT

FRUS GRU

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First Chief Directorate (of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (Federation of Free German Trade Unions) Freie Demokratische Partei (Free Democratic Party) Field Information Agency, Technical (a division of SHAEF). EPES(Br) and EPES(US) refer to FIAT’s British and American Enemy Personnel Exploitation Sections) Foreign Relations of the United States

GW

Glavnoye Razvedivatelnoye Upravlenie (Main Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet army) Guided Weapons

HA IX HICOG HMG Humint HVA

Hauptabteilung IX (Main Department IX of the MfS) (US) High Commissioner for Germany Her Majesty’s Government human intelligence Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (Main Intelligence Directorate of the MfS)

ICBM ID Imint INS IRD IREX

intercontinental ballistic missile Intelligence Division imagery intelligence Intelligence and National Security (an academic journal) Information Research Department (of the Foreign Office) International Researchers Exchange Programme

JEIA JCH JHS JIB JIC JIC(G) JSIG(G) JS/JTIC

Joint Export–Import Agency Journal of Contemporary History (an academic journal) Juristische Hochschule (High School for the study of law) Joint Intelligence Bureau (responsible for economic intelligence-gathering) Joint Intelligence Committee Joint Intelligence Committee (Germany) Joint Services Intelligence Group (Germany) Joint Scientific and Joint Technical Intelligence Committees

KGB

the Committee of State Security. This was the USSR’s security and foreign intelligence service. It was first known as the Cheka (1917–22), then as the GPU (1922–3), then as the OGPU (1923–34). Between 1934 and 1943, with one brief interruption, it formed part of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs, the NKVD (one of several occasions when it was merged into that ministry). In 1943, it regained its independence as the NKGB. Between 1946 and 1954, it was known as the Ministry of State Security (MGB), like its East German counterpart. In 1954, it was given its final name: the KGB. In this book, that term is used to denote it which was used at the time concerned.

x KPD KVP

Abbreviations Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist Party of (West) Germany) Kasernierte Volkspolizei (Barracked People’s Police, the forerunner of the NVA)

LDPD

Liberaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Liberal Democratic Party of Germany)

MfS

Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (the DDR’s Ministry of State Security). It was often known as the Stasi. at the time, this was how the British Security Service was universally known. at the time, this was how the British Secret Intelligence Service was universally known. Its cover name in Germany until 1949 was No. 1 Planning and Evaluation Unit (No. 1 P&EU). Military Intelligence Detachment Military Intelligence Service Military Intelligence Service Austria the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs

MI5 MI6

MID MIS MISA MVD (until 1946 NKVD) NATO NDPD

NTS NVA

North Atlantic Treaty Organization Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (National Democratic Party of Germany) (US) National Intelligence Estimate Nauchno-issledovatelskii/ispitatelnyi institut (Scientific Research or Testing Institute) Narodno-Trudovoi Soyuz (People’s Labour Alliance) Nationale Volksarmee (East German National People’s Army)

OPC OSI OUN

Office of Policy Coordination Office of Scientific Intelligence (of the CIA) Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists

PoWs

prisoners-of-war

RAF R&D RCM REG

Royal Air Force research and development radio counter-measures Returnee Exploitation Group (US intelligence unit)

NIE NII

Abbreviations

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RFT RIAS RIS

Rundfunk- und Fernmeldetechnik (radio and communications technology) Radio im amerikanischen Sektor (Radio in the American Sector) Review of International Studies (an academic journal)

SAC SAM SBONR

Strategic Air Command (of the United States Air Force) surface-to-air missile Soyuz borbyi za osvobozhdenie narodov Rossii (Union of the Struggle for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia) Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the DDR’s ruling Communist party) Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force signals intelligence Soviet Military Administration in Germany, later the Soviet Control Commission Soviet Occupation Zone Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party of Germany) Soviet Socialist Republic another name for the Mf S Scientific and Technical Intelligence Branch (of Intelligence Division of the CCG(BE)) Stasi-Unterlagen-Gesetz (Law on the Records of the State Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic)

SED SHAEF Sigint SMAG SOZ SPD SSR Stasi STIB StUG

TCS Tech. Sec. TsAGI UfJ

Technical Co-ordinating Section (of MI6) the Technical Section of Intelligence Division, CCG(BE), until 1954. From then on it formed part of MI6 Germany Central Aero-Hydrodynamics Institute

UN USAF USAFE

Untersuchungsausschuß freiheitlicher Juristen (Investigative Committee of Free Jurists) United Nations United States Air Force United States Air Force Europe

VHF VHSIC

Very High Frequency very-high-speed integrated circuit

ZLF

Zentralforschungslaboratorium (Central Research Laboratory)

Glossary Abschöpfung: probing for useful information in the course of ordinary business or professional dealings Abwerbung: the inducement of defection Auslandskader: a DDR official based abroad Befragungsstellen: Questioning Offices (branches of the Hauptstelle für Befragungswesen) Betreuungsmaßnahmen: measures taken to look after scientific returnees Bundesnotaufnahmeverfahren: Federal Admission Procedure in Circumstances of Need Deutschmark: the West German currency Fluchthelfer: flight assisters (people, mainly based in West Berlin, who, after the building of the Berlin Wall, helped East Germans to escape from the DDR) Geheimnisträger: people in possession of secret information Grundlagenvertrag: Treaty on the Basis of Relations between the two German states, concluded in 1972 Landsmannschaft: associations of German expellees, bringing together people from a particular region Order-of-Battle intelligence: intelligence on the strength, command structure, and disposition of the personnel, units, and equipment of a military force Ostbüro: Eastern Bureau Ostmark: a commonly used term for the East German currency, the Mark der DDR Reisekader: a DDR official authorized to travel abroad Schweigefunker: agents equipped with radio sets and kept in reserve; they were meant to transmit in time of war Sichtungsstelle: observation point (actually, an interrogation point) Sudetenland: north-western region of Czechoslovakia, whose ethnic German population, the Sudetendeutschen, was expelled after the Second World War Technische Hochschule: Technical High School, the equivalent of a university Volksdeutsche: people of German race living outside Germany Volkspolizei: East German People’s Police

Note on Sources and Terminology This book draws heavily on records of the former East German Ministry of State Security (MfS). Often, in its reports, the MfS used such general terms as der amerikanische Geheimdienst (‘the American secret service’), not specifying which particular American agency was at work. Therefore, I can often be no more specific than to say ‘an American service’. All the primary documents referred to in the footnotes are held in the National Archives in London (formerly the Public Record Office), unless otherwise stated. All documents whose citation begins with ‘MfS’ are held in the Zentralarchiv of the Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (BStU, ZA).

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Introduction This book concerns the acquisition of intelligence on current and future Soviet weaponry by Western—chiefly British—intelligence agencies in Germany during the period between the end of the Second World War and the building of the Berlin Wall. This was the phase of the Cold War in which fear of actual war was greatest; intelligence on weaponry was therefore desperately needed. Though entitled Spying on Science, the book examines the collection of intelligence from all human sources: spies, defectors, refugees, released prisoners-of-war, contacts, and attachés. It also examines systematic efforts to diminish the scientific potential of East Germany by inducing the defection of scientific personnel to the West. It argues that the scientific units of the Western intelligence services played a significant part in their governments’ efforts to maintain their superiority over the Soviet Bloc in war-related science and technology. This was a strategy of scientific warfare. Since it was secret, it has received too little attention up to now. The book demonstrates that the Western secret services adopted a strategy of inducing defection both to obtain scientific intelligence and to hamper scientific development. It was a way of trying to stay ahead in the arms race; the Americans briefly saw it as a way of bringing about the collapse of Communist power in East Germany. The scientific intelligence obtained from human sources was consistently used to ensure that NATO’s weaponry was superior to that of the Warsaw Pact. Intelligence on current and future weaponry has a military name, which is ‘scientific and technical intelligence’. This term will be used throughout this book. During the Cold War, it meant intelligence of the arms race between the Soviet Union and the West, which got underway as soon as Nazi Germany was defeated. NATO military strategy made its collection a high priority because the alliance intended to wage war with superior weapons. Scientific intelligence is intelligence of research projects, scientific ideas, or capabilities (so future weapons). A great variety of research projects and scientific ideas can be relevant to war even though that is not the original intention behind them. Technical intelligence is intelligence of weapons in being, whether at the planning stage or in production. The distinction between the two is the drawing board: once plans exist for a weapon, intelligence of it is technical intelligence.¹ Often, scientific intelligence will be used as a short form for both. Inevitably, such intelligence influenced the weapons development and military strategy of both sides throughout the Cold War. The breakneck development of technology after 1945, much of which was relevant to ¹ ‘Preliminary Notes for Dr Blount’, 29/7/1949, DEFE 40/26.

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waging war, caused a new term to be coined, ‘scientific and technological intelligence’ (S&TI), which will also be used. These forms of intelligence are gathered from a country’s military-industrial complex: research institutes, laboratories, factories manufacturing for the military, and ministries. Consequently, also much sought-after is ‘scientific Order-of-Battle intelligence’: information on the scientific and technical personnel and institutions which make up a country’s military-industrial complex. Intelligence services keep detailed and thorough records of the scientific personnel and institutions of foreign countries because people—scientists, engineers, technicians, laboratory assistants, and others—are very important to scientific intelligence collection. Efforts to induce their defection also depend on having such information. Britain’s Joint Intelligence Bureau established a Scientific Order-of-Battle Section in 1947, taking over the job from MI6’s scientific intelligence unit, the Technical Co-ordinating Section. It took the information both from secret sources and open sources such as scientific journals.² Scientific intelligence collection is still very much the preserve of human spies and defectors. Scientific research and development—especially the former—are very hard targets for technical collection systems, but can be penetrated by human sources. A scientific idea exists in a scientist’s head; it cannot be photographed there by spyplane or satellite, or overheard by radio interception devices, but a human being can report on it. A development project yields better intelligence collection opportunities for technical systems but, once again, a scientist or technician working on the project will be able to provide penetrating intelligence. Technical collection systems become highly effective only when the weapons are tested and deployed. During the Cold War, the best intelligence on Soviet weapons projects was gathered when they reached the testing stage. Until then, they were very difficult even to detect, let alone penetrate deeply. After testing, when the weapon was deployed, many of its characteristics were hidden.³ Unsurprisingly, some of the most famous spies and defectors in history have been scientists, engineers, and technicians working on secret weapons development projects, or people connected with them: examples are Paul Rosbaud, Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, Bruno Pontecorvo, Allan Nunn May, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, David Greenglass, Grigori Tokaev, Vladimir Pasechnik, and Adolf Tolkachev.⁴ By contrast, during the Iraq crisis of 2002–3, the lack of human sources reporting on Saddam Hussein’s programmes to develop an atomic bomb and manufacture biological and chemical weapons was an important reason why the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was so ill-informed about them. (Admittedly, in the 1990s intelligence ² JIC(47)15(0), ‘The Collection of Scientific Intelligence’, 7/3/1947, CAB 158/1. ³ H. Scoville, ‘Verification of Soviet Strategic Missile Tests’, in W. Potter (ed.), Verification and SALT: The Challenge of Strategic Deception (Boulder, Colo., 1981), 163. ⁴ M. Urban, UK Eyes Alpha (London, 1996), 129–35, 226–8; C. Andrew and O. Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (London, 1990), 257–9, 311–13. See also A. Kramish, The Griffin (London, 1987); J. Albright and M. Kunstel, Bombshell: The Secret Story of America’s Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy (New York, 1997).

Introduction

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had been obtained on Saddam’s bomb project from defectors, including scientists who had worked on it.)⁵ Fuchs shows just how uniquely penetrating a source on research and development a scientist working on the targeted project can be. His information, handed over in June 1945, on the design of the Americans’ plutonium bomb, was so detailed that it enabled the Soviets to prepare their own blueprint. Fuchs sketched the bomb’s design, revealed all its important dimensions, and listed its components and the materials from which they were made. Indeed, the Soviets had such confidence in his information that they used the design for their own bomb. Just how early the warning is that a scientist can provide of a momentous weapons development programme is demonstrated by further intelligence obtained by the Soviets from a spy or spies at Los Alamos. In the view of David Holloway, in his excellent history of the Soviet atomic bomb project, it was probably intelligence from Los Alamos (perhaps from Fuchs) on discussions there in April 1946 about the possibility of a thermonuclear bomb which initiated Soviet work on one. This intelligence enabled Soviet scientists to begin serious research on a hydrogen bomb only shortly after it had started in the United States; Soviet research, development, and testing did not lag far behind those of the USA in the nine years that elapsed between the first research papers and the testing, in 1955, of the USSR’s first true thermonuclear weapon.⁶ During the Cold War, the Americans also acquired very valuable intelligence from scientific spies. The intelligence of a single spy, the avionics expert Adolf Tolkachev, on Soviet research into electronic guidance, advanced radar, and Stealth technologies is said to have saved the US government ‘billions of dollars in development costs’.⁷ The paradoxical effect of the breakneck development of science and technology has been both to bring about the domination of intelligence collection by technical means and to keep the human spy an important source. Indeed, part of the technical collection effort in the scientific intelligence field nowadays consists of monitoring the activities and movements of particular scientists. For this purpose the Americans feed the names of scientists and their laboratories into the computers of the National Security Agency.⁸ Such was the difficulty of recruiting and running scientific spies in the police states of the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War that good ones were the exception rather than the rule. According to Richard Bissell, the CIA’s Deputy Director of Plans under Allen Dulles, the Bloc’s scientific and technical journals and the open contacts with its scientific community which were permitted were consistently much better sources of information.⁹ Goods which shed light on the quality of Soviet science, like antibiotics and electronic ⁵ The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the President of the United States, 31/3/2005, Overview, 15—available at: http://www.wmd.gov/report/; K. Hamza, Saddam’s Bombmaker (New York, 2001). ⁶ D. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb (New Haven, 1994), 137–8, 295–7. ⁷ J. Richelson, The US Intelligence Community (Boulder, Colo., 1999), 262. ⁸ K. Eichner and A. Dobbert, Headquarters Germany: Die USA-Geheimdienste in Deutschland (Berlin, 1997), 240–2; J. Bamford, Body of Secrets (London, 2001), 409–10. ⁹ V. Marchetti and J. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (London, 1974), 384–5.

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devices, were also bought and carefully examined.¹⁰ However, East Germany did not have a fully effective police state in the years 1945–61 and many spies provided penetrating information on science and technology. Refugees, defectors, and former prisoners-of-war also provided important information. British intelligence learned during the Second World War that human sources could be valuable to intelligence collection on research and development. The Oslo Report, information posted to the British embassy in Oslo in November 1939, revealed a number of very important developments in German military electronics, including the use of radio to give remote control to rockets, torpedoes, and glider bombs. The report also mentioned that the glider bomb was being developed at Peenemünde, the missile development and testing centre on the Baltic coast which was then unknown to British intelligence. The author of the report, though the British did not then know it, was a very well-placed source: Hans Mayer, the director of the Central Laboratories of Siemens & Halske, which played a key role in the Nazis’ military electronics development programme.¹¹ Since scientific development depends on people, their knowledge and ideas, to deprive one’s foe of leading scientific workers will hamper his scientific progress and is a worthwhile form of subversion. This book shows how Western secret services all sought to weaken East German science and industry, and any benefit which the Soviet Union might be deriving from them, by inducing scientific workers to defect to the West. Such operations were a standard method of containment and were carried out throughout the Cold War.¹² Efforts at depriving an enemy of scientific knowledge can take extreme forms and still do so. In the Second World War, the British tried to kill the scientists and engineers working at Peenemünde. The RAF’s night attack on 17–18 August 1943 targeted the living quarters of the scientific workers, killing some 130 of them.¹³ In 1944 the USA’s Office of Strategic Services sent an agent to Switzerland to attend a lecture by the outstanding German atomic physicist Werner Heisenberg. The agent, who carried a gun, was authorized to kill Heisenberg if his lecture indicated that he and his colleagues were close to making an atomic bomb.¹⁴ In 1990 a secret service, presumably the Mossad, murdered the Canadian ballistician Dr Gerald Bull to prevent Iraq from developing the ‘supergun’ which he had designed. His unfinished design for a gun—the biggest ever assembled—firing rocket-assisted projectiles thousands of kilometres died with him.¹⁵ In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the United States of 11 September 2001, President Musharraf of Pakistan detained two of his country’s nuclear scientists on suspicion that they had been giving Al-Qa’eda information ¹⁰ DSI/JIC(51)4, ‘Shopping Lists’, 19/2/1951, DEFE 10/498. ¹¹ R. V. Jones, Reflections on Intelligence (London, 1989), 265–337. ¹² Hamza, Saddam’s Bombmaker, 331. ¹³ R. V. Jones, Most Secret War (London, 1978), 346. ¹⁴ J. Richelson, ‘When Kindness Fails: Assassination as a National Security Option’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-intelligence, 15/2 (2002), 248–9. ¹⁵ W. Lowther, Arms and the Man: Dr Gerald Bull, Iraq and the Supergun (London, 1991), 5–9, 185–91, 270–83.

Introduction

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on how to manufacture nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.¹⁶ Counterproliferation of destructive technology depends upon the denial of resources. Even today, many historians do not accept that the West tried systematically to weaken the German Democratic Republic (DDR)’s science and industry by inducing defection, dismissing the claim as a Communist ‘conspiracy theory’.¹⁷ Even when they quote the DDR’s leader, Walter Ulbricht, denouncing it, they do not look to see whether there was some truth to the allegation.¹⁸ According to Matthias Uhl and Armin Wagner, Ulbricht’s claim that East Germans’ free access to West Berlin was exploited to induce defection reflects his ‘ideologically distorted perspective’.¹⁹ Though Ulbricht exaggerated the impact of Western subversion, the secret services of the United States, West Germany, and Britain did indeed induce the defection of East German scientific personnel in the 1940s and 1950s. This is established by East German state security records, British intelligence records, and American policy documents, as the following chapters show. These sources are in accord in depicting the operations as directed at leading, experienced personnel. Readers will not doubt the accuracy of British and American government records concerning the operations of their own secret services. However, they may doubt the accuracy of records of the DDR’s Ministry of State Security. They should not. The MfS was a police ministry and, to suppress espionage and subversion, needed reliable evidence of them. It was in its interest to examine evidence carefully and reach well-founded conclusions; this was easier in relation to spying than other categories of political crime. The DDR’s courts did not have the same incentive to examine evidence critically and their records are less reliable sources (which does not mean that the evidence presented to them was false). The MfS files used in the writing of this book refer consistently to the evidence which supports the Ministry’s conclusions. This is persuasive and often confirmed by Western sources. Much of it is confession evidence. Admittedly, the MfS was cruel. However, from the mid-1950s it made little use of physical violence and was reluctant to rely entirely on a confession.²⁰ Important sources in the writing of this book have been the monthly reports of HA IX, the MfS’s investigation department which, among other tasks, interrogated arrested spies. These reports refer consistently to evidence other than the spy’s confession which indeed proves that he was a spy. The reports relating to the late 1950s and early 1960s are good examples. The MfS was then arresting spies who had been notified by their controllers of hiding places (‘dead letter boxes’) and supplied with alternative communication equipment; these they were to use if the sectoral boundary in ¹⁶ D. Albright and H. Higgins, ‘A Bomb for the Ummah’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 59/2 (2003), 49–55. ¹⁷ C. Ross, Constructing Socialism at the Grassroots: The Transformation of East Germany 1945–65 (Basingstoke, 2000), 144. ¹⁸ H. Harrison, Driving the Soviets up the Wall: Soviet–East German Relations, 1953–1961 (Princeton, NJ, 2003), 195–207; G. Wettig, ‘Beweggründe für den Mauerbau’, in H.-H. Hertle, K. Jarausch, and C. Kleßmann (eds.), Mauerbau und Mauerfall (Berlin, 2002), 111–17. ¹⁹ M. Uhl and A. Wagner (eds.), Ulbricht, Chruschtschow und die Mauer (Munich, 2003), 16–17. ²⁰ J. Schwarz, Bis Zum Bitteren Ende (Schkeuditz, 1995), 48–9.

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Berlin were sealed. The reports state that hiding places and spying equipment had been found. Invisible ink, codebooks, and dead letter boxes are indeed evidence of spying. Use is also made of dissertations (Diplomarbeiten) on operations against Western espionage and subversion written by MfS officers at the Ministry’s institute of higher education, the Juristische Hochschule. The dissertations are also good sources: the writers’ discussion of Western secret service operations is based on extensive personal experience and they consistently refer to evidence yielded by security investigations. Not merely did the East German Communists gather this information, they also made it public in the 1950s. In books, newspapers, and trials they alleged that inducing the defection of scientific and technical personnel formed part of the West’s economic war on their fragile state and was a manifestation of its ‘Policy of Strength’. The claim was true and much of the evidence presented was genuine. The Communists’ word for induced defection was Abwerbung. It was denounced in numerous propaganda publications, most importantly those commissioned by the MfS. One of the Ministry’s main channels for making public information about Western spying and subversion was Julius Mader. Considered the DDR’s leading expert on Western intelligence, he posed as a freelance writer. In fact, he was an undercover officer of the MfS’s Agitation Department.²¹ Mader’s book from this period condemning the CIA, Gangster in Aktion, does indeed accuse it of Abwerbung; indeed, he presents accurately information he had received from the MfS. When the DDR celebrated its twentyfifth anniversary, in 1974, the National Front, the Communist-dominated alliance of the parties permitted there, rightly maintained that by means of, among other things, ‘embargo measures . . . the induced defection of skilled workers, skilled people of all kinds, and scientists, imperialism waged an economic war on the DDR. Imperialism invested substantial resources in networks of agents and spies which operated from West Berlin.’²² This stream of Communist revelations has continued since the DDR’s collapse. Former MfS officers have published memoirs which shed much light on Western espionage and subversion. Works such as Eichner and Dobbert’s Headquarters Germany and Josef Schwarz’s Bis Zum Bitteren Ende are obviously largely reliable. For one thing, their authors show much concern for convincing evidence. This book draws on such works too. There was also truth to the Communists’ allegation of Menschenhandel (dealing in people). This was their term for the collection of hostile activities which, in their view, drew people from the DDR. They claimed that these activities represented an effort to destroy it; indeed, Menschenhandel was used as an excuse for the construction of the Berlin Wall.²³ Induced defection was one of these activities. ²¹ Beurteilung des Genossen Major Julius Mader, Juni 1989, MfS-ZAIG 16380, 188. See P. Maddrell, ‘What We have Discovered about the Cold War is What we Already Knew: Julius Mader and the Western Secret Services during the Cold War’, Cold War History, 5/2 (2005), 235–58. ²² Nationalrat der Nationalen Front der DDR, 25 Jahre DDR (Berlin, 1974), 19. ²³ Wagner, ‘Stacheldrahtsicherheit’, in Hertle et al., Mauerbau, 126; Ministerium für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten der DDR, Memorandum über den von Westdeutschland und Westberlin aus betriebenen Menschenhandel mit Bürgern der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Berlin, 1961).

Introduction

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Others were anti-Communist propaganda, an exchange rate for the Ostmark which was considered too low, and the benefits received by East Germans who fled to West Germany. Of course, most of the refugees left because they sought a better life in the West; they were not genuinely induced to migrate. But, by bombarding the DDR with anti-Communist propaganda, the United States did actively and deliberately seek to undermine Soviet control and force the Kremlin to give it up. The admitted aim of the West Berlin broadcaster ‘Radio in the American Sector’ (RIAS) was to encourage flight and in particular that of skilled people, so as to make the DDR unviable.²⁴ The Americans, British, and West Germans worked closely together. British agencies energetically gathered scientific and technical intelligence in Germany in the years 1945–61 and were regarded as leaders in the field. Their energy reflects Britain’s sense of vulnerability to the USSR and fear of its growing military superiority. Several British organizations were active in Germany. One was the Scientific and Technical Intelligence Branch (STIB) of Intelligence Division (ID). ID was the intelligence staff of the Control Commission for Germany (British Element); STIB was a small specialist team of interrogators which questioned defectors, refugees, and ex-PoWs with scientific and technical information. Another organization, briefly, was the British element of the Field Information Agency, Technical (FIAT), a division of SHAEF which outlived SHAEF itself. Chapters 1–4 and 7–8 are largely based on the archives of these two units; they consequently concern British intelligence. A third organization was ID’s Technical Section, a secretservice unit which specialized in scientific intelligence collection. In 1954 it was merged into MI6 when ID’s successor, the British Intelligence Organization (Germany), was dissolved. The gathering of scientific intelligence on the Soviet Union and its Bloc was MI6’s top priority throughout the period.²⁵ Scientific intelligence also had top priority in the field of signals intelligence (Sigint).²⁶ Very little information is available on MI6’s scientific intelligence operations; Chapters 5–6 and 9 chiefly concern the espionage of West Germany’s Bundesnachrichtendienst and the CIA. In carrying out their espionage and subversion, the three services pursued the same policies using the same methods; they also collaborated and exchanged intelligence. Theirs was a concerted assault on the DDR; it was led by the Americans. Hence the subtitle of the book: Western Intelligence in Divided Germany. The years 1945–61 were the period of the greatest revolution in military technology in history. Both the USA and the USSR developed atomic and thermonuclear weapons, and guided missiles and long-range bombers to carry ²⁴ B. Stöver, Die Befreiung vom Kommunismus: amerikanische ‘Liberation Policy’ im Kalten Krieg 1947–1991 (Cologne, 2002), 428. ²⁵ JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 21/7/1947, DEFE 41/68; G. Blake, No Other Choice (London, 1990), 167–8. ²⁶ JIC(48)19(0), ‘Signals Intelligence Requirements 1948’, 11/5/1948, annexed to R. Aldrich and M. Coleman, ‘The Cold War, the JIC, and British Signals Intelligence, 1948’, Intelligence and National Security, 4/3 (1989), 546–9.

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them. By 1961, each had intercontinental ballistic missiles with which it could do the other devastating harm using weapons fired from its own soil. Spurred on by intelligence of a mighty Soviet arms build-up, Britain in this period tested its own atomic and hydrogen bomb, developed a nuclear strike force, manufactured chemical weapons, launched a number of missile development projects, and conducted research into agents of biological warfare.²⁷ This transformation in weaponry, and the huge commitment of resources required to achieve it, led to the formation in advanced countries of what have been called ‘MilitaryIndustrial-Academic Complexes’; scientists were key members.²⁸ This book focuses on the five military technologies of most concern to defence planners in this period: atomic, biological, and chemical weaponry (‘ABC’ weapons), guided missiles, and electronics. These were the technologies on whose development in the USSR intelligence was most sought. On the same level of priority was Orderof-Battle intelligence on Soviet science. In the early years of the Cold War, fear of biological and chemical weapons was great. The nerve gases developed by Nazi Germany were much feared. Almost colourless, almost odourless, and highly toxic, they could, unlike the older war gases, be delivered in concentrations which were both lethal and very difficult to detect.²⁹ Since the USSR might be unable to develop an atomic bomb quickly, it might make considerable efforts to develop biological weapons. Biological agents were cruder weapons of mass destruction, more easily within the reach of Soviet science than the atomic bomb, easier to mass produce, and perhaps capable of development into weapons of devastating power. In 1947, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which co-ordinates the work of the British intelligence community and prepares intelligence assessments for the government, thought it probable that, ‘the atomic bomb will remain the most potent destructive weapon within the foreseeable future, but . . . biological warfare will be a close second’.³⁰ Scientific developments menaced Britain by strengthening the arsenal of its potential attackers. The atomic bomb would enable sudden and devastating attacks to be made without warning. The only defence would be to threaten to use the bomb in retaliation. Long-range guided missiles would also make Britain more vulnerable to bombardment. Submarines powered by hydrogen peroxide or atomic energy, with range and speed underwater much greater than the submarines at sea in 1945, and armed with fast, long-range torpedoes, would present a great threat to Britain’s sea communications.³¹ However, no possible aggressor ²⁷ See M. Gowing, Independence and Deterrence: Britain and Atomic Energy, 1945–52 (London, 1974); S. Twigge, The Early Development of Guided Weapons in the United Kingdom, 1940–1960 (Reading, 1993); G. Carter, Porton Down: Seventy-five Years of Chemical and Biological Research (London, 1992); and E. Spiers, Chemical Weaponry: A Continuing Challenge (London, 1989). ²⁸ Stuart Leslie, drawing on Senator William Fulbright: see Leslie, The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford (New York, 1993); and Fulbright, ‘The War and its Effects’, in H. Schiller and J. Phillips (eds.), Super-state: Readings in the Military-Industrial Complex (Urbana, Ill., 1970), 173–8. ²⁹ Spiers, Chemical Weaponry, 57. ³⁰ Paras. 62–3, JIC(47)7/2, ‘Soviet Interests, Intentions and Capabilities’, 6/8/1947, CAB 158/1. ³¹ Paras. 8–9, 12, 65–6, COS(45)402(0), ‘Future Developments in Weapons of War’, 16/6/1945, CAB 80/94.

Introduction

9

could prepare to make such an attack without indications of its intentions becoming noticeable. Consequently, Britain’s intelligence services were its first line of defence and their activities after the war were not sharply cut back, as they had been after the Great War.³² To give warning of what was in the wind, Scientific Intelligence was reorganized in 1945 by a committee chaired by the physicist P. M. S. Blackett.³³ Following his recommendations, intelligence was assessed by two committees, the Joint Scientific Intelligence Committee and the Joint Technical Intelligence Committee (known as the ‘Joint Committees’). The former was replaced by the Directorate of Scientific Intelligence in 1950. The arms race with the West resumed by Stalin in 1945 was a cause of the Cold War, albeit a secondary one. In 1945–6 the United States and Britain turned from co-operation with the Soviet Union to competition with it, because they came to regard it as aggressive and threatening. The primary reason for this was that they concluded Stalin was aiming at territorial and ideological expansion which went beyond any simple security interest. He had extended Soviet political hegemony into Eastern Europe and seemed to be seeking control of Turkey and Iran. They feared that he planned to use the worldwide Communist movement to make a global ideological challenge to democracy and capitalism. Reinforcing this threat was hard information of a huge arms build-up, particularly using German arms. He clearly intended to challenge the West’s militarytechnological superiority. The two threats together caused fear of war, which was seen as very likely. The arms build-up was both a preparation for it and made it likelier. Britain was disturbed by it. The USSR’s development of atomic weapons and delivery systems presented a grave threat to Britain years before it menaced the United States. This, together with Britain’s inferiority to the USSR in conventional military strength, made it an early Cold Warrior. Since Britain could not win a war with the Soviet Union, it was dependent for its security on the United States, and military co-operation with the Americans became the overriding aim of Britain’s policy. In their defence review of 1950, after NATO’s creation and the first Soviet atomic test, the British Chiefs of Staff maintained that, ‘Today it makes no sense to think in terms of British strategy or Western European strategy as something individual and independent. Full collaboration with the United States in policy and method is vital.’³⁴ Military collaboration required intelligence collaboration; this book shows how US and British intelligence came to work closely together. ³² R. Aldrich, ‘British Intelligence and the Anglo-American “Special Relationship” during the Cold War’, Review of International Studies, 24/3 (1998), 331–2. ³³ R. Aldrich, ‘Secret intelligence for a post-war world: reshaping the British intelligence community, 1944–51’, in R. Aldrich (ed.), British Intelligence, Strategy and the Cold War 1945–51 (London, 1992), 28–30. On US scientific intelligence in this period, see R. Doel and A. Needell, ‘Science, Scientists, and the CIA: Balancing International Ideals, National Needs, and Professional Opportunities’, Intelligence and National Security, 12/1 (1997), 59–81. ³⁴ Para. 2, DO(50)45, ‘Defence Policy and Global Strategy’, 7/6/1950, in H. Yasamee and K. Hamilton (eds.), Documents on British Policy Overseas, Ser. II, Vol. 4 (London, 1991), 411.

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The Americans also interpreted Stalin’s arms build-up as preparation for war. In the summer of 1946, when his policy of ‘getting tough with Russia’ was evolving into a settled policy of resistance to Soviet expansion, President Truman asked his special counsel, Clark Clifford, to prepare a report on relations with the USSR. Clifford concluded that, for ideological reasons, the Soviet leaders considered war with the West inevitable. He reported: ‘They are increasing their military power and the sphere of Soviet influence in preparation for the “inevitable” conflict . . .’³⁵ War to extend the boundaries of the Communist world was possible at any time. The military strength of the Soviet Union compared with that of the United States would strongly influence the time chosen to go to war. Consequently, the Americans sought to keep abreast of the development of Soviet armaments and ensure that they, and their allies, retained military superiority. The arms race was thus both a cause of the Cold War and one of the motors which kept it going. Each side saw itself as threatened by the other and therefore sought to increase its military strength so as to be able to assert its interests. As Gregory Mitrovich has shown recently in his stimulating book Undermining the Kremlin, the possession of greater military strength than the USSR formed the basis of the United States’s aggressive policy of containment. Only if the United States’s military power was decisively greater than that of the Soviet Union could it pursue an aggressive policy without excessive risk of war. Intelligence of Soviet military strength was, therefore, essential and had much influence on foreign policy. Only five months after receiving intelligence of the USSR’s first atomic test, President Truman ordered that the hydrogen bomb be developed.³⁶ The United States was now racing the Soviet Union, and racing to stay ahead. Eisenhower was so concerned about the speed of Soviet weapons development that he appointed a special adviser on science and technology, whose job was to keep him informed about ‘the relative progress of Soviet and US science and technology’.³⁷ The CIA’s report on the Soviets’ ‘Joe-4’ fusion bomb test in August 1953 made him consider launching a preventive nuclear strike to destroy the Soviet thermonuclear threat while it was still small and the United States had overwhelming superiority.³⁸ Soviet imperialism presented opportunities as well as threats. The use of German scientific workers, prisoners-of-war, and material resources in post-war weapons development and military reconstruction made Germans potential informants. Although security measures largely prevented them from learning much about Soviet research and development, they were able to betray to the West, for the first time, the skeleton of the USSR’s military-industrial complex. They revealed the location of atomic plants, missile testing sites, uranium mines, processing facilities, research institutes, airfields, and aircraft and other war-related ³⁵ Quoted in J. L. Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New York, 1972), 321–2. ³⁶ Holloway, Stalin, 301. ³⁷ G. Kistiakowsky, A Scientist at the White House (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), 1. ³⁸ G. Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin (Ithaca, NY, 2000), 157.

Introduction

11

factories essential to the Soviet Union’s ability to fight a modern war. This intelligence was vital. Without it, efforts to gather imagery, signals, and human intelligence on the Soviet Union’s advanced weapons would not have been successful. German sources helped to stabilize the Cold War. They also provided information on how science and industry were managed by the Soviet bureaucracy, and enabled the West to realize the superiority of the free market as an instrument of technological progress. Owing to its imperial policy, the USSR was indeed successfully penetrated—in Germany. Some of the intelligence acquired on Soviet atomic development from ex-PoWs, scientific returnees, and spies would, if obtained on German atomry, have been valuable even during the Second World War. Despite Ultra, overflight, and some human intelligence (Humint), neither the British nor the Americans knew in 1945 how far the German atomic programme had progressed, though information obtained from Paul Rosbaud indicated that they were not close to making a bomb.³⁹ By contrast, the British and Americans knew long before the first Soviet atomic bomb was tested that its fissionable material would be plutonium. Intelligence-gathering from human sources assumed disproportionate importance in the early years of the Cold War because of the difficulty of penetrating the Soviet Union by other means. Other sources of intelligence on the Soviet Union itself then promised little. Soviet security presented a bigger obstacle to communications intelligence (Comint) operations than to Humint measures. The Americans’ ‘Venona’ success against Soviet foreign intelligence cables only related to communications between 1940 and 1948.⁴⁰ That was the result of an extraordinary slip by Soviet intelligence and there is no evidence that later high-grade communications were similarly decrypted. The US government’s Brownell Report of June 1952 on American Comint operations indicates that the Americans had little success in the early years of the Cold War in decrypting Soviet communications.⁴¹ So long as the ‘one-time pads’ used for their encipherment were employed correctly, Soviet high-grade communications should have been secure, and British and American surprise at such events as the Tito–Stalin split in 1948 and the Soviet atomic test in 1949 suggests that they were. Lower grade voice and cipher communications were intercepted in vast quantities, but most of the intelligence obtained was of little value.⁴² By way of exception, the Americans managed for a time in the late 1940s and early 1950s to intercept radio messages transmitted within Russia about shipments of uranium from the Erzgebirge ³⁹ Jones, Reflections, 283–4. ⁴⁰ M. Warner and R. Benson, ‘Venona and Beyond: Thoughts on Work Undone’, Intelligence and National Security, 12/3 (1997), 1. See R. Benson and M. Warner (eds.), Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response 1939–57 (Laguna Hills, Calif., 1996); and J. Haynes and H. Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, 1999). ⁴¹ G. Brownell, The Origin and Development of the National Security Agency (Laguna Hills, Calif., 1981), 63, 77–8. ⁴² C. Andrew, For the President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush (London, 1995), 219.

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(Ore Mountains) in East Germany.⁴³ The Soviets’ extensive use of landlines for communication also made interception very difficult.⁴⁴ Comint of real value began to flow in considerable quantity from Vienna and Berlin in the 1950s, when MI6 and the CIA succeeded in tapping high-security communication cables of the respective Soviet Military Administrations.⁴⁵ It was only in the early 1950s that the Americans began to ring the USSR with Sigint stations that could intercept signals transmitted within it.⁴⁶ It was only from the mid-1950s, using their ground stations in Turkey—the great radar at Samsun, with a range of 1,000 miles, and the Karamursel and Diogenes Sigint stations—that they were able to use radar detection and interception of telemetry and communication signals to gather information on missiles being test fired at the Soviet testing range for medium-range missiles, Kapustin Yar. Imagery intelligence was sparse. Overflight of the USSR was occasional because it involved great diplomatic and some operational risks. The USAF flew missions over Soviet territory (even in daylight) during this period, taking both radar and visual photographs, but these were relatively rare. Some RAF overflights in the early 1950s were night flights which took advantage of the fact that Soviet fighters carried no radar sets and so could not find the intruders in the dark. Their cameras took photographs of the radar images of their targets. At that time the British Canberra was the only aeroplane able to fly high enough to be well out of the range of Soviet air defences. In 1953 it set a world altitude record of 63,668 feet. The Americans’ U-2, operational from 1956, could fly above 70,000 feet, but even it was eventually shot down. During the early part of the Cold War, most intelligence flights against the Soviet Union were electronic (‘Ferret’) or photographic reconnaissance flights along its borders.⁴⁷ From the late 1940s on (at the latest), specially equipped RAF aircraft flew missions along the East German border and coastline and along the southern border of the USSR, intercepting radio communications and radar and other electronic emissions. Such aircraft, like the RAF signals base at Ayiou Nicolaos in Cyprus (completed in 1949), may well have picked up VHF radio signals emitted in the Soviet Union and propagated beyond the line of sight by ‘super refraction’ caused by weather conditions.⁴⁸ As far as the creation of networks of secret agents is concerned, for a long time MI6 and the CIA beat their heads against a brick wall. They had to start from ⁴³ D. Murphy, S. Kondrashev, and G. Bailey, Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (New Haven, 1997) 14–15. ⁴⁴ Aldrich, RIS (1998), 343. ⁴⁵ J. Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (London, 1986), 138–42, 288–96; Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 205–37. These were Operations ‘Silver’ (1949–55) and ‘Gold’ (1955–6). ⁴⁶ J. Richelson, American Espionage and the Soviet Target (New York, 1987), 77–80. ⁴⁷ P. Lashmar, Spy Flights of the Cold War (Stroud, 1996), 67–78, 84–91, 133–4; Richelson, American Espionage, 100–26. ⁴⁸ A. Thomas, ‘British Signals Intelligence after the Second World War’, Intelligence and National Security, 3/4 (1988), 105–7. The range of VHF radio is usually limited to the line of sight, but refraction, brought about by weather conditions in the lower atmosphere, causes the signals to travel further.

Introduction

13

scratch. MI6 had had no station in Moscow between the two World Wars; it had operated against the USSR from neighbouring countries, chiefly Finland and the Baltic States. The United States did not even have a foreign intelligence service until 1941. For most of the Second World War, neither the British nor the Americans undertook intelligence operations against the Soviet Union. Fearing a Soviet invasion of Sweden, Swedish intelligence began to send refugees back into the Baltic States in 1944 on brief intelligence missions. MI6 followed suit; shortly before the war ended, it sent agents into Latvia to make contact with the resistance movement there and report back. But when Germany capitulated, the British and Americans had no agent networks on Soviet territory worth speaking of. Such networks were very difficult to establish and run. Care had to be taken in infiltrating spies into the USSR because its borders were watched by informers and guarded by political police units and troops. It was difficult for networks to operate in conditions of blanket social surveillance and terror. Obsessive secrecy made valuable information hard to obtain. The internal passport system made it hard for spies to move around. It was impossible to take up residence in a different town without the permission of the police because the holder’s passport had to be registered with them in the new place of residence. Even people travelling around had to register their passports with the police in the places they visited.⁴⁹ The interception of post and monitoring of radio transmissions made it risky for them to try to communicate with the outside world. In its first efforts, MI6 concentrated on infiltrating agents into the Baltic States. Infiltration was easiest there: the sea journey from Sweden was an easy one and the agents landed on deserted stretches of the coast. It was almost five years later, in the autumn of 1949, that the CIA’s efforts to infiltrate agents into the USSR began; the first ones were flown by air and parachuted into the Ukraine. The CIA’s operation was codenamed ‘Redsox’. The two services’ operations to infiltrate agents into the Baltic States and the Ukraine were collaborative ones. In time, refugees from the Baltic States, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and even Russia were recruited by both services wherever they could be found, and infiltrated back to their countries by plane, by boat, and on foot. Many were recruited in ‘Displaced Persons’ camps in West Germany; others were drawn from the members of anti-Soviet émigré organizations. Some defectors from the Soviet army were sent back. Refugees had obvious advantages as spies: they knew the language of the target country and had friends with whom they could hide. Owing to the prevailing fear of war, their principal task was to provide early warning of Soviet military aggression. Agents equipped with radios were despatched into the USSR to keep watch on Soviet airfields and report on goings-on there. Others had to report on atomic installations, missiles, and other weapons. Some of the targets they were sent to spy on lay deep within the USSR, though most lay on its fringes. In addition to radios, the spies were equipped with invisible ink and other secret writing materials. These operations produced no significant results. ⁴⁹ R. Tucker, Stalin in Power (New York, 1990), 198–9.

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William Sloane Coffin, then a CIA officer who infiltrated agents into Russia, called them ‘a spectacular failure’.⁵⁰ The same applies to MI6’s operations. During his time as Director of Scientific Intelligence (from September 1952 to December 1953), R. V. Jones attended a meeting with MI6’s chief, Sir John Sinclair, who said that he had sent thirty agents into the USSR and none had come back.⁵¹ Agent infiltration failed because the Soviet security service, the MGB, knew how to defeat it. It sent its agents as refugees to West Germany and Sweden, where they could be recruited and penetrate the infiltration operations. It also created phantom resistance groups which made contact with MI6 and the CIA, which proved only too willing to believe that they existed. MI6 was also fatally penetrated. Both as station chief in Turkey (1947–9) and as liaison officer to the CIA (1949–51), Kim Philby was perfectly placed to betray both British and American operations to the MGB. Since MI6 and the CIA told one another the times and co-ordinates of their airdrops, he was able to despatch the men directly into the MGB’s hands. In his memoirs, he comments cruelly, ‘I do not know what happened to the parties concerned. But I can make an informed guess.’⁵² By 1954, the failure of these operations was so obvious that they were, for the most part, terminated.⁵³ Refugees, defectors, ex-PoWs released from captivity in the USSR, and spies in the satellites had to take the place of agents on Soviet territory. The DDR was far more vulnerable to espionage than was the Soviet Union. The main reason for this is that its border was not secure. Refugees could flee to the West across it, particularly in Berlin. In law the city was occupied by the Four Powers jointly—the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France—and the border between the Soviet and Western Sectors was open. The flight of refugees was the main cause of the DDR’s spying crisis. They were questioned, and named people they knew who had suitable jobs and would be willing to spy. This is how most spies were recruited. The recruitment took place in West Berlin; the spies also went there to hand over their information. Although DDR citizens bore identity documents, these did not prevent short-term travel. Any East German could make a quick visit to West Berlin. In this period, West Berlin was therefore a crucial gap in the Iron Curtain which created opportunities for large-scale Western espionage and subversion which would not otherwise have existed. The importance of strict border security to the Communist regimes has not been sufficiently realized. Of course, democratic states also need to keep a close watch on their borders. The ⁵⁰ W. Coffin, Once to Every Man (New York, 1977), 112. ⁵¹ Interview with Professor Jones. ⁵² K. Philby, My Silent War (New York, 1983), 165. ⁵³ C. Andrew and V. Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West (London, 1999), 149–50, 158, 184, 204, 717; Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 316–22; C. Andrew, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (London, 1985), 285; H. Rositzke, The CIA’s Secret Operations: Espionage, Counter-espionage and Covert Action (Boulder, Colo., 1977), 15–29, 37–8; T. Bower, The Red Web: MI6 and the KGB Master Coup (London, 1989), 38–47, 59–79, 97–117, 139–40; J. Prados, Presidents’ Secret Wars (Chicago, 1996), 40–4, 56–60; A. Cavendish, Inside Intelligence (London, 1997), 51–9.

Introduction

15

US government, urged on by the national commission of inquiry, has introduced stricter controls on entry into the United States since the 9/11 attacks.⁵⁴ However, it was important to the Communist states to control exit as well. From its very inception the Soviet regime made strenuous efforts to close, guard, and watch all the USSR’s borders, particularly those with the West. As soon as the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which fixed the German–Russian border, was signed in March 1918, the border was closed and an armed force, the Frontier Troops, created to guard it and prevent people passing over it, in either direction, without permission. When the Civil War ended, troops were redeployed to guard Russia’s other borders. Political police units were also stationed on the borders to examine identity documents and travel permits. They were assisted by networks of informers who kept the border zone under observation. As later along the East German border, an exclusion zone ran along the USSR’s frontier; special permission was required to enter it.⁵⁵ Since the two were connected, spies in East Germany could provide intelligence on the Soviet Union and its military-industrial complex.⁵⁶ Refugees were also an important source of information. Defectors, both Soviet and German, could likewise provide information on Soviet war-related research and development. Many were induced to defect for this very reason. Valuable sources were people the Germans called Heimkehrer (homecomers). These were Germans returning to their homeland, having been displaced by the war and its consequences. The homecomers of the 1940s and 1950s on which this book focuses are ex-prisoners-of-war and deported scientific workers. Consequently, Germans were valuable sources of scientific intelligence until the Berlin sectoral border was sealed in 1961—and, thereafter. Indeed, until 1956, when the U-2 took its maiden flight, exploitation of human sources was the principal means by which the Western intelligence services obtained information on the Soviet militaryindustrial complex. Thanks to Soviet policy towards Germany and Germans, such sources abounded in both of the Germanies, where they were accessible to Western intelligence. The second Berlin crisis of 1958–61 was therefore a security crisis, as the East German Communists claimed it was. The building of the Berlin Wall was, to some extent, their response to the West’s subversion and espionage. Admittedly, the Wall was built to stop the refugee stream. But what has not been appreciated until now is that the refugee stream was the main cause of the DDR’s profound security crisis and the Wall served to bring this under control as well. Some of the refugees had, in fact, been induced to defect; the operations to induce defection ⁵⁴ National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report (New York, 2004), 383–98. ⁵⁵ G. Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police (Oxford, 1981), 90–3, 227–9; A. Knight, The KGB: Police and Politics in the Soviet Union (Boston, Mass., 1988), 227–43. ⁵⁶ For a short summary of this argument, see P. Maddrell, ‘Einfallstor in die Sowjetunion’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 2/2003, 183–227.

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were run from West Berlin and the defectors made their escape from the airports in the Western Sectors. West Berlin was essential both to spying and to inducing defection; it was a thorn in Ulbricht’s side and he wanted it out. It was a gap in the security screen built by the Soviet secret police and the MfS around East German society. The closing of the border markedly increased the DDR’s security. During the Second World War, intelligence like that gathered from Germans would, for the most part, have been much less significant, because other sources yielded a wealth of better information. Aerial reconnaissance had been possible and interpretation of aerial photography had proved very accurate. This was why, on his assumption of the presidency in 1953, Eisenhower pressed for aerial reconnaissance of the USSR.⁵⁷ During the war, priceless communications intelligence had been acquired in abundance. The British had broken the versions of the Enigma machine cipher of all three of the German armed forces, while the Americans had cracked Japan’s military, naval, and highest-grade diplomatic ciphers.⁵⁸ However, when the Cold War began intelligence assessments of the USSR consisted of little more than guesswork. As the JIC conceded in 1946: Any study of Russia’s strategic interests and intentions must be speculative, as we have little evidence to show what view Russia herself takes of her strategic interests, or what policy she intends to pursue. We have practically no direct intelligence, of a detailed factual or statistical nature, on conditions in the different parts of the Soviet Union, and none at all on the intentions, immediate or ultimate, of the Russian leaders. . . . Our present appreciation is based, therefore, on the limited evidence which we have, on deductions made from such indications of policy as Russia has given, and on reasonable conjecture concerning the Soviet appreciation of their own situation.⁵⁹

By contrast, the Bolsheviks had always regarded all the main Western countries as their enemies, and both during and after the war had well-placed agents in the centres of government and scientific research of Britain and the United States. Furthermore, the openness of Western societies meant that the USSR had less need of secret intelligence than did the West. The information on atomic installations, airfields, and missile sites in the USA which the Soviets could gather without difficulty, and often lawfully, the West could only acquire by undertaking intelligence operations. The information obtained from Germans was therefore crucial because, whatever its shortcomings, it was the best information available on the current and future military capability of the USSR. ⁵⁷ Andrew, President’s Eyes Only, 220–1. ⁵⁸ See F. H. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War (London, 1979–90); R. Lewin, The Other Ultra (London, 1982); E. Drea, MacArthur’s Ultra (Lawrence, Kan., 1992); D. Alvarez, Secret Messages: Codebreaking and American Diplomacy, 1930–1945 (Lawrence, Kan., 2000). ⁵⁹ Para. 3, JIC(46)1(0), ‘Russia’s Strategic Interests and Intentions’, 1/3/1946, CAB 81/132.

1 The Soviet Exploitation of German Science and the Origins of Scientific Containment INTERROGATIONS In the mid- and late-1940s, scientific intelligence operations against the Soviet Union were among the causes of the East–West hostility known as the Cold War. A decade later, they helped to stabilize it. The first post-war penetration of Soviet military capability by British intelligence was a by-product of its effort to complete the victory over Germany. In 1945–6, British and American intelligence agencies had the task of finding out all they could about German weapons so that in a future war Germany would have no weapon with which they were not familiar. Installations engaged in weapons development and manufacture and war-related scientific research were visited by Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-committee (CIOS) teams.¹ CIOS, as a division of SHAEF, was wound up in the summer of 1945, when SHAEF was dissolved. In its brief lifetime, it produced reports on 3,377 targets.² Its work amounted to the biggest single scientific intelligence operation ever conducted by any group of powers against another. British Intelligence Objectives Sub-committee (BIOS) teams did the same work in Britain’s interest alone. In the last months of the war German scientists and technicians, like others, moved West so as to fall into Western hands. Thus the leaders of the German guided-missile project (including its directing mind, Wernher von Braun) were captured by the Americans and the leaders of the German atomic energy and nerve-gas development projects ended up in ‘Dustbin’, the Allied interrogation centre which was first situated at Chesnay, near Versailles, and was, in June 1945, moved to Schloß Kransberg, near Frankfurt. The Americans and British also evacuated scientific workers from the Soviet Zone to deny them to the USSR. In June 1945, they evacuated from central Germany some 2,000 German scientific workers, many of them very important, before the region was handed over to ¹ ‘History of ‘T’ Force Activities’, FO 1031/49. ² BIOS minutes, 12/9/1945, FO 1031/50.

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Soviet control. Also evacuated were their families and vast quantities of equipment. Since the Americans would not give the Germans jobs in their (war-related) fields of expertise, in 1946 many made their way back to the Soviets, who had no such qualms.³ ‘Dustbin’ was established to hold scientists and administrators from whom information on Germany’s great advances in military technology could be gathered. This information was of importance for assessments of the future military strength of the USSR as well, since Soviet forces would have overrun people, documents, components, and weapons which would reveal the advances the Germans had made. The ‘Dustbin’ interrogators interviewed the leading administrators and scientists of the Nazi military-industrial complex. One important task was the interrogation of members of the special research staff of the Reichforschungsrat (Imperial Research Council), including the director of its planning office, Professor Werner Osenberg.⁴ Personnel from the Ministry of Armaments and War Production, including the Minister, Albert Speer, were interrogated there for information on war production. The interrogators sought information on radar and radio signalling, which had greatly increased the effectiveness of air power during the war. Professor Abraham Esau, the supervisor of all German wartime research into radio, was held at ‘Dustbin’ from October 1945 to March 1946. Directors of Telefunken, a company which manufactured anti-aircraft and fighter-control radar sets, were interrogated in the summer of 1945. Electro-magnetic radiation allowed distant objects to be remotely controlled; Professor Friedrich Gladenbeck, the plenipotentiary on the Reichforschungsrat for research into remote control, was admitted to ‘Dustbin’ in July 1945. Industrialists whose companies had been heavily involved in Germany’s war effort, such as the steel barons Fritz Thyssen and Hermann Röchling, and Volkswagen’s Professor Ferdinand Porsche, were likewise questioned.⁵ Leading figures in the great chemical company I. G. Farben were interrogated in ‘Dustbin’. Systematic interrogation of chemists and administrators revealed the chemical composition of the nerve gases the company had developed, their toxicity and mode of operation, the places where they had been made, the chemists involved in their development and production, and the extent of the company’s involvement in the Nazis’ armaments projects. The nerve gases are so called because they attack the nervous system. Tabun, first synthesized in 1936, had been mass produced at a plant in Dyhernfurth, near Breslau in Silesia. Sarin, first synthesized in 1938, had only been made in the laboratory, at the Heeresgasschutzlaboratorium (Army Gas Protection Laboratory) in Berlin-Spandau, but a pilot plant for its manufacture had been three-quarters built at Dyhernfurth, and a plant for its mass production had ³ Wilson to BIOS Secretariat, 15/8/1946, FO 1031/67. ⁴ Bennett to Interrogation Section, G-2, US Army, 2/12/1946, FO 1031/69. ⁵ Periodic State Reports, FO 1031/52; Periodic State Report 43, 21/3/1946, FO 1031/70. On Telefunken’s radar sets, see A. Price, Instruments of Darkness: The History of Electronic Warfare (London, 1977).

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been under construction at Falkenhagen, not far from Frankfurt an der Oder, when the war ended. All three plants were in Soviet hands. Although all chemical weapons and all traces of the nerve gases were removed from the Dyhernfurth plants before they were abandoned, the plants were not destroyed. Shells and bombs containing approximately 10,000 tons of tabun had been hidden in places in the Soviet Zone and so had to be presumed to be in Soviet hands. The most profitable interrogation of all was that of the inventor of tabun and sarin, Dr Gerhard Schrader. Schrader did not know how tabun had been given its name, but knew that sarin stood for Schrader, Ambros, Rittler, and von der Linde (the other three were chemists who had helped to turn his invention into a weapon in production). Also interrogated was Professor Richard Kuhn, the inventor of the most toxic of the gases, soman.⁶ Owing to its importance to Germany’s war effort, all factories, properties, and assets of I. G. Farben were, in November 1945, taken into the ownership and control of the Allied Control Council by its Law No. 9.⁷ Since tabun-filled weapons, the plants at Dyhernfurth and Falkenhagen, and quite possibly documents relating to nerve-gas manufacture had all fallen into Soviet hands, it had to be assumed that the Soviets would soon be capable of making the gases. The Germans’ submarines, torpedoes, aerodynamics, fuels, infra-red detection, and V-1 engine were all superior to the Allies’ counterpart technologies, and the Soviets came by German knowledge in all these fields as well.⁸ However, in the field of atomic warfare the Germans had not advanced beyond the level of Soviet science. When the war ended, the atomic energy project under Werner Heisenberg was still at a rudimentary stage. Research had made good progress until 1942, when the project’s army supervisors had concluded that, such was the difficulty of making a bomb, none could be made during the war. The prevailing view among them, and among the scientists working on the project, was that the war could be won in a year or two; accordingly, from 1942 more attention was given to the development of advanced weapons which might be completed quickly enough to be decisive within this space of time. As the prospect of defeat loomed, ever-greater efforts were devoted to putting ‘wonder weapons’ into service quickly. The atomic project remained a civilian research and development programme. Unlike the Manhattan Project, it never moved from the laboratory to industrial-scale production. A self-sustaining atomic reactor was not built. Nor was any fissionable material manufactured for use as explosive in an atomic weapon.⁹ Interrogation of captured scientists established that Allied fears of Nazi Germany’s biological warfare capability had been exaggerated as well. German ⁶ Periodic State Report 47, 25/4/1946, FO 1031/70; Periodic State Report 63, 12/9/1946, FO 1031/70; CIOS Evaluation Report 26, 21/5/1945; ‘Abstract from Notes on Interrogations at Frankfurt’, 18/5/1945, FO 1031/81; Alsos report, 26/9/1945, FO 1031/82; Schrader interrogation reports, FO 1031/239. ⁷ Control Council Law No. 9, 30/11/1945, FO 1031/53. ⁸ S. Goudsmit, Alsos (Los Angeles, Calif., 1983), p. xvii. ⁹ M. Walker, German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power, 1939–1949 (Cambridge, 1989), 44–51, 149–56, 173–5; Goudsmit, Alsos, pp. x–xiii.

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research into methods of waging biological warfare (BW) had started later than in other countries (for instance, the USSR and France) and was a response to the Wehrmacht’s discovery in 1940 of evidence of French research. Three groups of scientists studied the matter. According to one of those involved, Professor Heinrich Kliewe, Hitler hated the project and forbade research into the offensive use of biological agents. His order frustrated progress and only three experiments of any significance were carried out. The Alsos Mission, an American scientific intelligence team, concluded that the programme had been a defensive one.¹⁰ Research into the offensive use, on a strategic scale, of biological warfare agents did not progress beyond a rudimentary stage. Nor were weapons developed to defend German troops against a biological attack. Therefore, there was nothing the Soviets could learn from German research. Soviet scientists had, before the war, conducted considerable research into BW agents.¹¹ Kliewe had been sent intelligence reports on Soviet research to help him in his own. Drawing on them, he specified pathogens the Soviets might be seeking to use as weapons—anthrax, plague, and tularaemia, for example—and means by which they might be disseminated. For a time, information acquired from such prisoners and from captured German and Japanese documents, indicating that there had been ‘considerable activity in the past’, influenced intelligence assessments of Soviet biological warfare capability. It formed the basis of the Joint Intelligence Committee’s 1947 assessment, simply because it was the only information the Committee then had on the subject.¹² However, within a couple of years the scientific intelligence community had lost all confidence in the information and preferred to resort to guesswork. It now considered the earlier information to be inconsistent with more recent intelligence, both overt and covert.¹³ As a result, it had almost no information on Soviet research into biological warfare. The situation improved slightly late in 1948 when an important Soviet microbiologist defected in London. He had been sent to Britain with a Trade Delegation to buy equipment for the manufacture of penicillin. He claimed to be the director of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute for Penicillin and Other Antibiotics. Debriefed under the codename ‘Wildcat’, he said that small-scale research into biological warfare agents was being carried out at Kuibyshev by microbiologists working for the Soviet army. Though he provided much information on Soviet microbiologists, microbiological institutes, and antibiotics factories, ¹⁰ Alsos report, 24/6/1945, FO 1031/83; J. Hart, ‘The Alsos Mission, 1943–1945: A Secret US Scientific Intelligence unit’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counter-intelligence, 18/3 (2005), 508–37. ¹¹ DSI Memorandum No. 15, ‘Science in the German Democratic Republic’, 17/5/1952, DEFE 41/153; S. Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare 1932–1945 and the American CoverUp (London, 2002), 211. ¹² JIC(47)22(0), ‘Present State of Progress in Biological Warfare in Foreign Countries’, 25/4/1947, CAB 158/1; Alsos report, 13/5/1945, FO 1031/83. ¹³ JS/JTIC(49)47, ‘Present State of Progress in Biological Warfare in Foreign Countries’, 14/7/1949, DEFE 41/150.

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he was not connected with any military research. Consequently, even by 1949 no intelligence had been obtained of any weapons research, development, or testing. The Joint Committees were reduced to making an educated guess, using the information provided by ‘Wildcat’ on Soviet efforts to manufacture penicillin. The techniques for the large-scale production of antibiotics and those for the large-scale production of BW agents are similar. Therefore, if the Soviets could mass produce the former, they could mass produce the latter as well. However, ‘Wildcat’ had made it clear that penicillin was in short supply in the USSR and that its planned future production was on a much smaller scale than in the United States or Britain. Therefore, Soviet scientists could not yet be capable of the mass production of BW agents. However, given their intellectual interest (evident from articles in the Soviet press), their skill in medicine and biology, and their efforts to produce antibiotics, it was forecast that they would be able to produce bacteria and toxins for war purposes on a large scale within three years (i.e., by 1952). By 1952, it was indeed clear that the Soviets had established an antibiotics industry manufacturing a number of antibiotics. Eight factories were known to be manufacturing penicillin and there might well be more. The improvement in the quality of Soviet penicillin had been quick, and it was reasonable to assume that equally rapid progress had been made with efforts to mass produce pathogenic bacteria. It could, therefore, be assumed that the mass cultivation of some pathogenic bacteria could have begun in the USSR in 1951 and that from 1952 several tons of weapon charging per day could be in production.¹⁴ The information yielded by the interrogations of German scientists and administrators about their success in developing new weapons brought with it fear for the future: fear that the USSR would incorporate into its arsenal the German military technology which had come into its hands and would, sooner or later, use it in a war with the West. By 1946, the interrogations in ‘Dustbin’ had the aim of finding out about Soviet development projects as well as German wartime achievements. Scientific workers threatened with kidnapping by agents of other countries, chiefly the USSR, were held there. Scientists and technicians who had worked on Soviet development projects, or had otherwise come by information on them, were also held in ‘Dustbin’ for questioning.

PHOTOGRAPHS AND REPORTS Britain and the United States obtained much crucial information from the Luftwaffe’s wartime aerial photographs of the western USSR, which were overrun in depositories throughout Germany and exploited in a joint operation codenamed ‘Dick Tracy’. It started in 1945 and lasted for years. The photographs were sorted, ¹⁴ JS/JTIC minutes, 16/3/1949, DEFE 41/72; ‘Wildcat’ Preliminary Notes 1–5, DEFE 41/120; Young to Evans, 1/5/1952, DEFE 41/156.

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catalogued, examined, and stored. Known as ‘GX’, until the 1960s they formed the core of the RAF and USAF’s target intelligence for an air assault on the USSR. Using them, predicted radar images of targets were created and used for pilot training. They were also useful to scientific intelligence analysts; even in 1953 the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) considered them to be the best source available on conditions in the USSR.¹⁵ Use was also made of the maps of Siberia and Central Asia made by the Wehrmacht’s cartographers. The Luftwaffe’s intelligence reports on the Soviet Air Force were likewise exploited and German air intelligence officers were brought to Britain to provide as much information on the subject as they could.¹⁶ Intelligence reports derived mainly from the millions of Soviet troops who had been taken prisoner by the Germans were exploited from 1946 in an operation codenamed ‘Apple Pie’. The Americans did the same and the two exchanged the results. German intelligence experts on the USSR were tracked down to provide more information. Among them were officers of the SS’s Wannsee Institute and agencies connected with it, who were commissioned to write up their knowledge (for a fee). The institute had examined all published information available on the USSR.¹⁷ Intelligence documents were dug up wherever they had been hidden— even in the Soviet Zone of Austria.¹⁸ A great deal of the intelligence obtained was economic intelligence.¹⁹ The exploitation of this source continued into the 1950s; the economic intelligence obtained was considered even then to be of great value. The British and Americans learned much about the industrial areas of the USSR; ‘Apple Pie’ reports like that on ‘The Formation and State of Development of the Industrial Areas of the USSR’ provided source material for the map set out in the Appendix (p. 303). Documents were recovered which gave excellent information on the Caucasus, Turkmenistan, and Tartarstan. Among them were maps of the Caucasus and German economic reports on the area. ‘Apple Pie’ reports were produced which contained technical intelligence of interest, among them reports on the Luftwaffe’s experience of radio intelligence on the Eastern Front and on the Soviet tank and gun industries.²⁰ Valuable technical intelligence was acquired from high-ranking German officers on such subjects as Soviet engineering and factory markings on Soviet matériel.²¹ Interesting snippets of scientific intelligence were also acquired. Nevertheless, the yield of scientific and technical intelligence was limited because German intelligence ¹⁵ G. Pedlow and D. Welzenbach (eds.), The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954–1974 (Washington, DC, 1998), 22. ¹⁶ R. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand (London, 2001), 206–12; C. Peebles, Shadow Flights: America’s Secret Air War Against the Soviet Union (Novato, Calif., 2000), 7. ¹⁷ Memorandum No. 5, 13/1/1947; JIC(G) minutes, 10/2/1947, DEFE 41/62; Stöver, Befreiung, 134. ¹⁸ JIC(G) minutes, 30/6/1947, DEFE 41/63. ¹⁹ JIC(G) minutes, 17/4/1952, DEFE 41/67; memorandum No. 6, JIC(G) minutes, 24/3/1947, DEFE 41/62. ²⁰ JIC(G) minutes, 13/2/1951, DEFE 41/66; memorandum No. 7, JIC(G) agenda, 19/5/1947, DEFE 41/62. ²¹ Major Birch, G(Int)BAOR, MI10 Technical Intelligence Conference 1951, DEFE 41/125.

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agencies had not made systematic efforts to collect it.²² A knowledgeable figure who fell into British hands was Professor Steinmann, once the director of the Büro Steinmann, which had briefed those charged with carrying out sabotage attacks on industrial installations in the Soviet Union.²³ The Germans’ interrogation of Soviet prisoners-of-war had yielded valuable information on the military capability and strategy of the USSR. For example, before the war British intelligence had managed to come by indications that some 8–10 factories in the USSR might be manufacturing war gases. The Soviet PoWs in German hands named about 100 chemical and other factories at 80 or so places scattered throughout the old industrial areas of European Russia, and the newer ones in the Urals and Siberia, which, they said, were engaged in war gas production. The British drew up a shortlist of 25–30 factories, the involvement of which in war gas manufacture was most credible.²⁴ The information on the list was of long-term significance. Factories in Moscow, Leningrad, Chapayevsk, Beresniki, and Beketovka were on it. Another was at Shikhani, on the southern part of the Volga, not far from Volsk. German intelligence documents described it in detail and gave its precise location. Moreover, they established that there was more than a factory there: the Soviet army’s principal chemical weapons testing range, the Central Military Chemical Range, was also situated there. This confirmed and added to information received before the war that chemical weapons were tested at Shikhani (indeed, the Soviet army and German Reichswehr jointly developed poison gases there in the years 1925–33, in defiance of the ban in the Versailles Treaty on German development of these weapons). The Shikhani plant and testing ground played an important role in Soviet post-war chemical weapons development. In 1987, following a landmark admission that the USSR possessed chemical weapons, representatives of 45 states were invited to inspect a large and top-secret weapons factory. This was Shikhani. There they witnessed the demonstration of 19 types of chemical weapon, including cannon shells and rocket warheads, containing such poisons as mustard gas, lewisite, sarin, soman, CS gas, and, most advanced of all, VX gas. They were told that most of these weapons had been developed in the 1950s and 1980s, and that means of chemical warfare had been actively developed in the USSR until very recently.²⁵ Although there was hard evidence that the Soviets were interested in chemical weapons, it was unclear how they would use them in war. Interrogation of Soviet PoWs had revealed to the Germans how the Soviet army planned to defend itself against chemical attack; this information gave rise to a British report giving details of the defensive equipment against gas issued to Soviet troops. However, since the Soviets ruled out the offensive use of chemical weapons, the PoWs had been ²² Haydon to Blount, 29/12/1949, DEFE 41/83. ²³ JIC(G) minutes, 12/8/1947; JIC(G) minutes, 4/11/1947, DEFE 41/63. ²⁴ JS/JTIC(49)69, ‘Chemical Warfare in the USSR’, 4/8/1949, DEFE 41/150. See also STIB file list, DEFE 41/29. ²⁵ U. Albrecht and R. Nikutta, Die Sowjetische Rüstungsindustrie (Opladen, 1989), 76.

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unable to say how their army planned to use them if it felt it had to. The Germans acquired no proof that offensive gas units existed in the Soviet army. Information obtained before the war indicated that the Soviets would use most of the well known war gases and that derived from captured intelligence documents broadly supported that conclusion. The Germans had also discovered that the Soviets had filled a wide variety of weapons with war gas. However, they actually captured quite a narrow range of gas-filled weapons. Their intelligence documents contained very precise information on these, as well as useful information on ones which did not fall into their hands. Of the captured weapons, aircraft weapons were far and away the most numerous, indicating that the air force had been given the leading role in delivering chemical weapons. The Wehrmacht overran both stocks of gas-charged bombs (more than 12 types of them) and 6 different types of gas spray apparatus. Soviet manuals on chemical warfare and translations of them in the satellites which came into British hands confirmed that the Soviets planned to spray lethal chemicals from the air. This was consistent with information acquired before the war. It was British strategy as well. German chemical warfare experts also wrote reports on Soviet doctrine which were referred to for a long time afterwards, probably because of a dearth of intelligence on top-level Soviet military thinking, at least until Oleg Penkovsky was recruited as an agent.²⁶

INTELLIGENCE OF THE SOVIET EXPLOITATION OF GERMAN SCIENCE Whatever rivalries existed between them in July 1945, the wartime Allies were agreed, at least formally, that their main enemy was still Germany. The Potsdam Agreement insisted that ‘the production of arms, ammunition, and implements of war as well as all types of aircraft and sea-going ships shall be prohibited and prevented’; Germany’s capacity to make war was to be destroyed. To control German science, in April 1946 the Allied Control Council adopted Law No. 25, which prohibited applied scientific research in the areas of most concern and permitted it in other areas only under licence; the law also prohibited fundamental research ‘of a wholly or primarily military nature’ and forbade the Germans to possess certain kinds of apparatus.²⁷ It applied to all four Zones and came into effect on 7 May 1946. Although the Soviets gave their assent to it in the Control Council, they never observed its terms or those of the Potsdam Agreement. Although the leaders of German war-related science managed for the most part to fall into the hands of the Western Allies, Soviet forces overran an army of scientific workers and a great number of war-related factories and laboratories. The ²⁶ JS/JTIC(49)70, ‘Russian Chemical Warfare Equipment’, 7/9/1949, DEFE 41/150; Capt. Hogwood, MI10B, MI10 Conference 1952, DEFE 41/126. ²⁷ Articles II and III, Control Council Law No. 25: Control of Scientific Research, in B. Ruhm von Oppen (ed.), Documents on Germany under Occupation, 1945–54 (London, 1955), 42–4, 132.

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Germans’ know-how addressed urgent needs of Soviet defence. The first post-war Five Year Plan, for the years 1946–50, gave priority to the advanced technologies which had emerged from the war: atomic energy, guided missiles, radar, and jet propulsion. For the first time, there was a separate Technical Plan.²⁸ Germany had made great progress in three of these fields and had able atomic scientists as well. In July 1945 the Americans handed Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt, and parts of Saxony over to the Soviets, as the Yalta Agreement required. The region was the core of the Nazi military-industrial complex. Included in the gift were Nordhausen and Bleicherode, two towns in the Harz mountains which contained nearly all the V-2 and most other guided missile activity in Germany. The Mittelwerk at Nordhausen was the only German production assembly plant for the V-2 rocket. Nearby Lehesten was an important testing site. The Zentralwerk at Bleicherode specialized in the design of guided missiles. These were not the only key war factories which the Soviets overran intact. The region had fallen into the Allies’ hands without much of a fight, and the CIOS teams had had too little time in May and June 1945 to remove everyone and everything worth removing. Consequently, the Soviets took over some 60 per cent of the Nazis’ aeronautical industry, including undamaged aircraft and jet-engine factories.²⁹ The Soviet rocket programme started in East Germany; it had to because in the USSR neither the skilled personnel nor the infrastructure were yet available to undertake the venture. The Soviets took possession of the German designers’ surfaceto-surface missiles, the V-1 (actually called the FZG-76), and the V-2 (or A-4). Intelligence interest focused not only on these already developed missiles but also on plans for future missiles which the Soviets could take further. These were the A-4b and the A-9 (winged versions of the V-2, with a longer range), and the A-10. The last of these, a design for an enormous two-stage rocket, was only in the early stages of a paper study when the war ended and was not being actively developed. Indeed, the design had been at such an early stage of development that, according to a British–American assessment, even if it had fallen into Soviet hands it could not have been of any benefit to them.³⁰ According to the same assessment, American removals meant that the Soviets acquired no completed V-2s, few (if any) components for the V-2’s control system, and probably few technical drawings for the missile, but they nevertheless came by intact production facilities for the V-1 and V-2, a stock of complete V-1s, V-1 components, and lots of important components for the V-2. The assessment was over-optimistic: the Soviets found enough V-2 parts to assemble many missiles and came by parts of the control system. They also captured a host of missile engineers and technicians and thus a plentiful stock of expertise. These people were placed under the command of the 30-year-old Helmut Gröttrup, ²⁸ Holloway, Stalin, 144–9. ²⁹ N. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 215; U. Albrecht, A. Heinemann-Grüder, and A. Wellmann, Die Spezialisten: Deutsche Naturwissenschaftler und Techniker in der Sowjetunion nach 1945 (Berlin, 1992), 124. ³⁰ Appendix C, A Study of the Soviet Guided Missile Programme, DEFE 41/160.

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the former assistant to the director of the Guidance, Control, and Telemetry Laboratory at Peenemünde. Gröttrup was put in charge of the Institut Rabe³¹ and rocket development was resumed in Bleicherode and its environs (in 1946 the institute was expanded and renamed the Institut Nordhausen). The institute was given the task of manufacturing a small number of V-2s. To undertake it, design data had to be reassembled in their entirety. Once this had been done, complete working drawings, necessary for manufacturing the missiles, were made once more, to replace those the Americans had made a point of taking West with them. Then the manufacturing programme was recommenced, albeit on a small scale. About 40 V-2s were made, mainly using important components found in the area. The Germans also designed a lengthened V-2 with a range of 600 kilometres. The Soviet project managers ensured that the Germans’ expertise was transferred to Soviet engineers and technicians by giving German workers a Soviet shadow. The shadows quickly came by the Germans’ knowledge and learned their production methods. Soon, almost 1,000 Soviet scientific workers had learned all the Germans knew. Thus, the Soviets compensated for their loss of the leading German missile engineers and laid the foundation for their own swift progress in rocket development. The huge quantities of fine machinery and missile parts which were transported from the Soviet Zone to the USSR also speeded their progress.³² German expertise threatened to help the USSR strengthen its air defences. Many scientific workers who had worked on the development of surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles were captured. In 1945 the Germans had been developing four guided missiles (Wasserfall, Enzian, Schmetterling, and Rheintochter). One unguided missile, Taifun, had almost reached the production stage. The Schmetterling was probably one year away from completion; the Wasserfall and Rheintochter, supersonic missiles for use against faster targets than the Schmetterling could cope with, were probably a couple of years from completion. The Taifun was believed likely to appeal to the Soviets: not only would its supersonic speed and ceiling of 40,000–50,000 feet make it an effective weapon capable of doing terrible damage to slow-moving bomber fleets, but it was also easy to manufacture. This underestimated the Soviets, who, in fact, showed most interest in Wasserfall. German scientists had also developed hydrogen peroxide as fuel for submarines, torpedoes, aircraft, and guided missiles. To power any of these it had to be of a concentration of 80 per cent or more. Until 1945, Germany was the only country in which it had been manufactured at this concentration in large quantities. But the I. G. Farben plant at Heydebreck fell intact into Soviet hands, together with full details of the company’s process for hydrogen peroxide manufacture. By 1949 intelligence had reached London that high-concentration hydrogen ³¹ ‘Rabe’ stood for ‘Raketenbau und Entwicklung’ (Missile Construction and Development). ³² M. Uhl, Stalins V-2 (Bonn, 2001), 63, 81–106, 116–20; M. Uhl, ‘Stalins V-2’, Osteuropa, 51/7 (2001), 856–8; Appendix D, Soviet Missile Programme Study, DEFE 41/160.

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peroxide was being produced at the Stalin Dye Plant in Moscow and at a factory near Dzerzhinsk.³³ Indeed, British intelligence soon learned that, far from controlling German science, Soviet policy was to exploit it thoroughly. By July 1946 the British had evidence of three principal ways in which the USSR was seeking to use German expertise to increase its scientific knowledge and military power. The Technical Commission of the Soviet armed forces played a key role in each of these activities, indicating that all might be contributing to weapons development. Special commissions of the Deutscher Normenausschuß (German Standards Committee), working in collaboration with the Technical Commission, were responsible for the open exploitation of German scientific knowledge. Each commission prepared a report on the standards in force in a particular German industry for the corresponding Soviet industry. On completion, the report was handed over to the Technical Commission, which sent it on to Moscow. By July 1946, 74 such commissions had been set up for this purpose. Furthermore, very many USSR ministries (some 40 at least, and perhaps all of them) had established technical offices in East Germany which were administered by the Soviet Technical Commission. These offices wrote reports on German science and technology of military and general industrial application, and sent them back to their ministries in Moscow. These ministries’ responsibilities ranged from Communications to Machine Tools to Iron and Steel to Non-Ferrous Metals to Shipbuilding to Armaments to Vehicles to Rubber to Pharmaceuticals to the Construction of Heavy Industrial Plants, and many more. Although the work of these offices was meant to be secret, they did not do work so sensitive that the Soviets were determined that the Western Powers should not learn of it. This was indicated by the fact that the offices commissioned scientific workers who lived in other sectors of Berlin than the Soviet Sector, and even in other Zones of Germany than the Soviet Zone, to write reports. The security regime at another group of establishments was stricter. At these places, weapons were developed for the Soviet armed forces. Their work was meant to be wholly secret and they employed only those who lived in, or were willing to move to, the Soviet Sector of Berlin or Soviet Zone. Some of the scientific and technical personnel were reporting to the British; using them, the British made, in the words of one report, ‘considerable penetrations of security at the development stage of the production of new weapons’.³⁴ Some establishments were engaged only in research and development; others had, by the summer of 1946, moved to production. The most important of them was the reactivated V-2 factory at Bleicherode in the Harz mountains, the Institut Rabe. The Soviets also showed great interest in German aeronautics, initiating development work at the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (German Aeronautical Testing Institute) in Berlin-Adlershof. Other establishments which, by July 1946, were carrying out ³³ Appendices A and P, Soviet Missile Programme Study, DEFE 41/160. ³⁴ ‘The organisation of Scientific and Technical Intelligence’, 21/4/1947, DEFE 40/26.

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development work on weaponry included the Torpedo Versuchsanstalt (Torpedo Testing Institute) at Zwickau in Saxony, the Technisches Spezialbüro 4 in Berlin-Friedrichshagen (charged with rocket developments), the Technisches Spezialbüro der Gummi-industrie in Berlin-Weissensee (charged with applying rubber to various military purposes), the Ingenieurbüro SKG in Berlin-Köpenick (working on a variety of rocket and radar tasks), the Büro für Nachrichtenwesen in Berlin-Ostkreuz (concerned with telecommunications developments), and the SU works at Burgstädt in Saxony (responsible, among other tasks, for developing a missile-control apparatus).³⁵ Production was resumed at aircraft and aero-engine factories such as the Junkers plant in Dessau, the BMW plant in Staßfurt, and the Siebel plant in Halle. Various factories in the SOZ manufactured torpedoes and parts for U-boats.³⁶ Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee promptly proposed that some of these places—for example, the missile development installations around Bleicherode and at Peenemünde and the Junkers and Heinkel factories in Dessau—be overflown and photographed as ‘first priority targets’.³⁷ The operational risks were seen as small and the political risks acceptable, provided that the flights were few in number and confined to targets likely to reveal long-term plans. This intelligence was much sought-after. Intelligence also established that Stalin was trying to obtain American, British, and Canadian technology as well as German. Counter-espionage successes demonstrated that he was seeking to acquire the key military technologies developed during the war, above all the atomic bomb. His intelligence service, the NKGB, had created spy-rings whose reach extended throughout North America. It had even penetrated the Holy of Holies of American science, Los Alamos itself. To cite only the main discoveries, the questioning of Igor Gouzenko, a GRU cipher clerk at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa who defected in September 1945, revealed that Soviet intelligence had penetrated the Manhattan Project. On the basis of Gouzenko’s information, the British scientist and GRU spy Allan Nunn May was arrested in 1946 in Montreal, where a British, French, and Canadian team had been engaged in atomic research. The ensuing investigation by a Canadian Royal Commission established that the GRU spy-ring of which Nunn May had been a member had gathered ‘information of the greatest importance’ on radar, asdic (sonar), explosives, propellants, and a proximity fuse. The most significant breakthrough was the Americans’ decryption of cables sent from Soviet offices in the United States to Moscow. These decrypts, codenamed ‘Venona’, revealed that atomic and thermonuclear research at the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory had been deeply penetrated. In August 1949, an NKGB message was decrypted which brought Klaus Fuchs under suspicion. Between 1944 and 1946 he had worked at Los Alamos. In the first half of 1945 ³⁵ Economic Information Section reports, 19/7/1946 and 6/9/1946, FO 371/55906. ³⁶ JIC(46)61(0), ‘Evidence of Russia’s Contravention of Potsdam Agreement’, 27/6/1946, CAB 81/133. ³⁷ JIC(46)80(0), ‘Photographic Reconnaissance of Certain Territories’, 29/8/1946, CAB 81/134.

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Fuchs had provided the NKGB with a detailed description of the design of the plutonium bomb, including the complicated implosion method of detonation, which was to be tested at Alamogordo, New Mexico, in July. This information was so good that it enabled an engineer to draw up a blueprint of the bomb; indeed, the first Soviet atomic bomb, tested on 29 August 1949, was an exact copy of the Alamogordo weapon. Information provided by Fuchs on discussions at Los Alamos about whether and how a thermonuclear bomb could be made probably initiated the Soviet hydrogen bomb project. When he confessed, in January 1950, Fuchs revealed the full extent of the information he had betrayed. Further ‘Venona’ decrypts indicated that there had been four more NKGB spies at Los Alamos; unmasked Donald Maclean, formerly a British representative at the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, DC, as a spy; and led to the identification of the Rosenbergs as scientific spies. One of the other spies identified at Los Alamos was the young physicist Theodore Hall, who had, in fact, given the NKGB information on the implosion method before Fuchs.³⁸ The evidence established that Stalin had launched an arms race with the West and that the USSR’s military capability was growing fast—fuelled, in large part, by German military technology. This greatly alarmed the JIC, which warned a year after the war’s end that, ‘The alliance of German brain-power and Russian resources may well prove to be the most important outcome of the occupation of Germany.’³⁹ Only 500 miles from London, a greater military power than Nazi Germany was coming into being. This was particularly menacing when set against evidence of Soviet hostility to the West and a policy of expansion. By 1946 the Foreign Office thought it quite possible that Stalin planned to bring all Europe within the Soviet orbit. The establishment, by force, of Communist one-party regimes in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe strengthened this view. By 1947 the Foreign Office and JIC believed that the Soviets would permit a single German state to be re-created only if it were a Communist satellite of the USSR. Rivalries in Iran, Greece, Turkey, and the Far East provided further evidence of Soviet expansionism.⁴⁰ The JIC, while it saw Stalin’s policy as concerned in the short term with ensuring Soviet security, thought that his long-term aim was the worldwide elimination of capitalism by Communism.⁴¹ Control of Germany would be decisive in the struggle for control of Europe. It therefore had to be divided to prevent the USSR from controlling it through all-German institutions. The British, observing political developments in the Soviet Zone, were hostile to the USSR by the spring of 1946. A key event, in British eyes, was the ‘forced ³⁸ Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 258, 305–13; Holloway, Stalin, 107, 138, 222, 295–7; Benson and Warner, Venona, pp. xix, xxv–xxvi; Albright and Kunstel, Bombshell, 122–7. ³⁹ JIC(46)51(0), ‘Russian Attempts to Entice German Scientists and Technicians from the British Zone of Germany’, 2/7/1946, CAB 81/133. See A. Craig, ‘The Joint Intelligence Committee and British Intelligence Assessment’, Ph.D. thesis (Cambridge, 2000), 33–6. ⁴⁰ D. Reynolds, Britannia Overruled (Harlow, 2000), 147–54; Gaddis, United States, 319. ⁴¹ JIC(47)7/2, CAB 158/1.

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unification’, in April 1946, of the Zone’s Social Democratic and Communist parties to form the Socialist Unity Party (SED). This seemed a decisive step in the suppression of democracy in East Germany and established that the Soviets had no interest in abiding by the Potsdam Agreement. By the autumn of 1946, the British considered it probable that Germany would be divided and took measures to strengthen their Zone as a bulwark of liberal democracy and the free-market system.⁴² Covert policy followed suit: from the end of 1946 they evacuated valuable scientific workers from East Germany to reduce the pool of scientific knowledge available to the USSR. The Americans moved at the same time towards accepting that Germany would be divided.⁴³

SOVIET DEPORTATIONS OF GERMAN SCIENTISTS, ENGINEERS, AND TECHNICIANS German scientific workers were taken to the USSR in the years immediately after the war to exploit their knowledge. There were two particularly significant deportations. The first occurred between May and November 1945, when scientists, engineers, and technicians involved in the German atomic programme were taken there.⁴⁴ The second, codenamed Operation ‘Osoaviakhim’, occurred in the night of 21–2 October 1946. Approximately 2,300 Germans working in a range of warrelated industries were rounded up, together with their families, and transported east by train.⁴⁵ According to one estimate, approximately 84 per cent of the German scientific workers deported to the Soviet Union in the years after the war were taken in this operation. They worked in technological fields in which Germany was very advanced and the USSR was determined to catch up, above all rocketry, aeronautics and aero-engine design, communications technology, and ship construction. Specialists in aircraft or aero-engine construction made up the largest group of deportees; specialists in electronics and electrical engineering formed the second largest group.⁴⁶ Factories particularly affected were the Junkers plant in Dessau, the BMW plant in Staßfurt, and, in East Berlin, the Askania works ⁴² A. Birke and G. Heydemann (eds.), Großbritannien und Ostdeutschland seit 1918 (Munich, 1992), 81–92. ⁴³ Gaddis, United States, 330–1. ⁴⁴ Albrecht et al., Spezialisten, 176. ⁴⁵ Naimark, Russians in Germany, 220–8; C. Mick, Forschen für Stalin (Munich, 2000), 15–17. Recent research has corrected earlier, exaggerated estimates of how many scientific workers were deported. Heinemann-Grüder and Wellmann consider any estimate in excess of 3,500 impossible to document and suggest 3,000 as a justifiable figure (Albrecht et al., Spezialisten, 177–8). Christoph Mick’s figure, based on documents in Russian archives, is also 3,000 (plus some 5,000 dependants). This estimate accords with STIB’s own figures. Early in 1954 it had news of the return of 1,890 deportees, which meant that, according to its information, 1,202 remained in the Soviet Union. Their total number was therefore 3,092 (handwritten note, 10/2/54, DEFE 41/90). Most of this information came from intercepted letters. ⁴⁶ B. Ciesla, ‘Der Spezialistentransfer in die UdSSR und seine Auswirkungen in der SBZ und DDR’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 49-50/93 (3/12/1993), 24–6.

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(radar, automatic piloting systems), the Oberspree works (radio transmitters, radar and high-frequency apparatus), and the GEMA institute (gyroscopic research, range finders and sights).⁴⁷ There was a third deportation of some 30–40 scientists, mostly chemists and chemical engineers, between February 1947 and February 1948, but only one of these deportees, Dr Bernd von Bock of the Buna works in Schkopau, was of much intelligence interest.⁴⁸ The deportations gave the Western intelligence services an opportunity. If the deportees were ever allowed to return to East Germany, they could be brought West and questioned about the Soviet military-industrial complex. Urgent domestic needs lay behind ‘Osoaviakhim’. Some scientific ministries in Moscow demanded the return of Soviet scientific workers then busy in East Germany with the exploitation of its technology; these people were needed if their factories were to meet the requirements of the new Plan. However, they were also needed for the exploitation of the expertise available in the Zone. The best way to achieve both objectives was to transfer the most important research and development centres in the main fields of interest, together with the scientific workers employed there, to the USSR. Soviet R&D was also suffering from a shortage of scientific workers which German experts could alleviate. Moreover, they were needed to install plant which the Soviets had decided to bring to the USSR.⁴⁹ The Western Allies misunderstood the operation, believing that the main reason for it was fear that they would insist on Four-Power rights of inspection of war-related installations throughout Germany. The British, in the months leading up to ‘Osoaviakhim’, had been planning a diplomatic campaign against Soviet exploitation of German war-related science, and intended to use intelligence of Soviet armaments projects to show that the Potsdam Agreement had been infringed.⁵⁰ THE POLICY OF DENIAL OF SCIENTIFIC WORKERS Operation ‘Osoaviakhim’ deprived British intelligence of targets in the Soviet Zone. Most importantly, it ended almost all development work there on guided missiles, advanced aircraft, and aero-engines. However, projects which did not enjoy the same priority continued.⁵¹ One example is naval technology. Soviet naval research and development projects continued at several establishments.⁵² In one respect the British profited from ‘Osoaviakhim’. Throughout 1946 German scientists, engineers, and technicians (particularly the younger ones) had tended to accept employment in the Soviet Zone, or even in the USSR itself, because there was no work for them in the Western Zones.⁵³ The Soviets offered large salaries and other inducements. The British–American policy of suppressing the ⁴⁷ ⁴⁹ ⁵¹ ⁵² ⁵³

Naimark, Russians in Germany, 222. ⁴⁸ Albrecht et al., Spezialisten, 12. Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 80–92. ⁵⁰ Minute by P. Dean, 2/8/1946, FO 371/55906. Ciesla, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 49-50/93, 27–8. JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee agenda, 2/9/1947, DEFE 41/68. FIAT Forward Periodic Intelligence Reports Nos. 2 (6/8/1946) and 3 (9/9/1946), FO 1031/59.

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war-related science and industry of their Zones prevented them from doing much to reverse the flow. However, the forcible deportation of thousands of German scientific workers and their families to the USSR sent a wave of panic through those left working for the Soviets in the Eastern Zone, who realized that they might suffer the same fate. Consequently, they were more willing to be evacuated West. West Berlin was the place where they could most easily apply to be taken to West Germany. In the weeks after ‘Osoaviakhim’, the FIAT Forward office there was inundated with Germans working for the Soviets applying to be taken West.⁵⁴ Intelligence Division seized this opportunity to deny scientific workers to the Soviets. It launched an operation, codenamed ‘Matchbox’, to bring to the British Zone German scientists, engineers, and technicians who could add significantly to Soviet military capability. It drew on the experience of persuading scientific workers in the Soviet Zone to leave their jobs there and work in Britain. The offer of a job had been made either by coded letter or by telegram or, most commonly, by an agent who did not know for which country he was working.⁵⁵ An unsuccessful attempt had even been made to entice Helmut Gröttrup to leave his job as director of the Institut Rabe at Bleicherode and take up work in Britain.⁵⁶ However, the main criterion for making an approach to scientific workers in the Eastern Zone prior to ‘Matchbox’ was that the target would be of value to British science. For years after the war, Britain, like the other Occupiers, exploited German science to benefit itself. As well as recruiting scientific workers in the Western Zones, the British had made secret offers to ones in the Soviet Zone. Such operations, carried out by the British element of FIAT’s Enemy Personnel Exploitation Section, targeted an élite among Germany’s scientists, engineers, and technicians who could make a contribution either to defence research or general industrial research. They were employed on defence research under the Deputy Chiefs of Staff ’s (DCOS) scheme and on industrial research under the Darwin Panel scheme. The former was Britain’s counterpart to the Americans’ Operation ‘Overcast/Paperclip’. The two operations reflected a common policy, agreed on by the Combined Chiefs of Staff, and were co-ordinated, scientific workers being allocated to one or other on the basis that the results of their research would be shared. The British recruited far fewer under the DCOS scheme than the Americans did under ‘Overcast/Paperclip’: in 1952 the comparative figures stood at 172 to 642. The number of Germans allowed into Britain under the Darwin Panel scheme was likewise strictly limited (initially 200, though it was raised to 500 in June 1947). These were denial operations of a sort, since such people would also be of value to the Soviets if they remained in their hands or accessible to them. Indeed, even before ‘Matchbox’ the need to deny scientists, engineers, and technicians to the USSR had given a further spur to measures to exploit them. The FIAT Forward office in West Berlin evacuated from the city scientific workers who were under heavy pressure ⁵⁴ FIAT Forward Special Intelligence Report No. 2, 1/10/1946–5/11/1946, FO 1031/59. ⁵⁵ Malet-Warden to Chief, FIAT Main (British), 18/12/1946, FO 1031/68. ⁵⁶ Malet-Warden to EPES, FIAT Main, 29/7/1946, FO 1031/59.

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from the Soviets to work for them, and who were important enough to be wanted for work in Britain or the United States. ‘Osoaviakhim’ spurred on FIAT Forward’s evacuation measures still more. By January 1947 its British section was evacuating all those scientific workers of importance who were in immediate danger of deportation and who wanted to come West.⁵⁷ The DCOS scheme was widened in December 1946 to include scientists who needed to be denied to the Soviets.⁵⁸ Non-military scientific research was already being encouraged in the British Zone as a way of permanently suppressing war-related research. Now such encouragement was also seen as a further means of keeping scientific personnel in West Germany. The British placed more research and development contracts in their Zone so as to give further impetus to the recovery of scientific research there, and encouraged their own industry to recruit Germans on their denial lists.⁵⁹ By October 1947 they were pressing the Americans to allow German scientific workers to emigrate to friendly countries so that they would not have to accept Soviet offers of work.⁶⁰ ‘Matchbox’ was a systematic attempt to deny scientific workers to the USSR and so retard its military-industrial development as much as possible. Using agents in the Soviet Zone, war-potential scientists, engineers, and technicians were induced to defect and evacuated. In the West they were provided with work and paid for it. Such people had to fall into one of three categories: scientific workers of genuine eminence, who would obviously be of considerable value to Soviet research and development programmes; those, not actually eminent, whose removal or denial would ‘have a serious effect’ on Soviet programmes; and those who, irrespective of their denial value, could provide the British with intelligence on Soviet-sponsored R&D. Thus, the first two categories related to denial value; the third to intelligence value. The operation yielded an even greater intelligence benefit than planned, because scientific workers evacuated for denial purposes were also able to provide very useful and penetrating intelligence on Soviet war-related research and development and on the installations involved. Although ‘Osoaviakhim’ did not initiate the enticement of scientific workers from the East, it gave the British a chance to evacuate some of the more important Germans still working for the Soviets in their Zone. Some evacuations were carried out in the last few weeks of 1946, but ‘Matchbox’ itself formally started at the beginning of 1947. At the same time, greater measures were taken to prevent scientific workers who were living in the British Zone and had knowledge of military application from going over to the Soviets. The Defence Committee of the Cabinet gave the operation its approval on 11 December 1946.⁶¹ ⁵⁷ Wilson to Chief, FIAT (British), 14/8/1946, FO 1031/59; FIAT Forward Special Intelligence Report No. 3, 1–31/1/1947, FO 1031/60. ⁵⁸ M. Uttley, ‘Operation “Surgeon” and Britain’s Post-war Exploitation of Nazi German Aeronautics’, Intelligence and National Security, 17/2 (2002), 9, 17–21. ⁵⁹ Jenkins to Robertson, 23/6/1947, FO 1032/251B. ⁶⁰ Foreign Office to Washington, Telegram No. 4304, 13/10/1947, FO 1032/251B. ⁶¹ ‘Matchbox’ Directive, 10/1/1947, DEFE 41/122; Jenkins to Robertson, 6/1/1947, FO 1032/ 246. For a short summary of the operation, see P. Maddrell, ‘Operation “Matchbox” and the Scientific Containment of the USSR’, in P. Jackson and J. Siegel (eds.), Intelligence and Statecraft: The Use and Limits of Intelligence in International Society (Westport, Conn., 2005), 173–206.

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Scientists, engineers, and technicians who fell into the above categories were selected for evacuation for four years. Government departments in London sponsored their evacuation. ‘Industrial scientists’ were targeted as well as ‘defence scientists’ because, if it came to war, the Soviets could recruit the latter from industry.⁶² The easy accessibility of West Berlin was crucial to the operation. Most of those selected for evacuation, together with their families, simply made their way to West Berlin and were then flown out to the British Zone, where a car picked them up and took them to the ‘Transit Hotel’, spa rooms in Bad Hermannsborn. More ‘Transit Hotels’ opened subsequently.⁶³ There the evacuees were screened for security and interrogated. The intelligence acquired from such interrogations concerned not just Soviet exploitation of scientific and technical knowhow in their Zone but also developments in the USSR itself. Others were not enticed at all. They simply fled to West Germany, using British intelligence to do so as easily and comfortably as possible. They contacted the British in West Berlin and handed over a curriculum vitae. This was sent on to STIB; STIB forwarded it to the Joint Committees in London. If it was decided to evacuate this man, he likewise simply made his way to West Berlin (with his family if he had one) and they were flown to the British Zone.⁶⁴ The great majority of the evacuees were, on arrival at the ‘Transit Hotel’, accepted as ‘consultants’ to the Control Commission and were accommodated, at least for a time, in the hotel. The British tried to find employment for all the evacuees, whether accepted as consultants or not. As many as possible of the consultants were to be found jobs in Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or the United States. This was to ensure that these countries, rather than others, profited from the evacuees’ expertise in armaments. The British had not weakened their policy of suppressing war-related research, development, and production in their Zone, and a further aim was that the greatest possible number of the evacuees were to be found jobs in its civilian economy. Acceptance as a ‘Matchbox consultant’ meant that, while a job was being found for the evacuee, he was paid a small salary for performing research tasks for the Control Commission. His research became the property of the Control Commission. Wherever consultants were accommodated, they were well fed, being provided with the equivalent of a heavy worker’s ration. They also received a specially large ration of fuel. The consultancy arrangement and salary were meant to provide them with ‘employment at reasonable subsistence level’. By 1949, the operation was being run down. It was pronounced dead in February 1951.⁶⁵ The operation included within its ambit refugees who had fled the East quite independently of STIB; all refugees who entered the British Zone were referred to the nearest intelligence unit and there interrogated. The interrogation reports ⁶² ⁶³ ⁶⁴ ⁶⁵

DCOS minutes, 22/10/1946, CAB 82/8. JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 20/10/1947, DEFE 41/68. STIB-Production Directorate liaison minutes, 21/8/1948, DEFE 41/82. JIC(G) minutes, 13/2/1951, DEFE 41/66.

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were then assessed by STIB at Intelligence Division’s HQ and, if the refugees clearly had denial value, they might be made ‘Matchbox consultants’ to ensure that they did not go back East. If a scientific worker already working in the British Zone was known to be being induced to move to the Soviet Zone or the USSR, he could be made a consultant to keep him where he was. Many specialists in aerodynamics, aeronautics, remote control, and ballistics who had worked during the war at the Aeronautical Research Institute at Völkenrode fell into this category. When they finished writing up reports for the RAF on their wartime work, they were made ‘Matchbox’ cases. Others were flown to Britain under the DCOS scheme.⁶⁶ In 1950 Dr Paul Schröder was made a ‘Matchbox consultant’ for a further two years to save him from the jaws of the Soviets. During the war, he had been chief of the ballistics department of the missile development centre at Peenemünde and was, in the opinion of a British scientist who advised the Joint Committees on his case, ‘the greatest mathematical authority on rockets alive’.⁶⁷ Professor Kurt Blome, who, in 1943, had assumed responsibility for all research into biological warfare sponsored by the Wehrmacht, was also made a ‘Matchbox consultant’ to keep him in the West. During the early phase of the operation at least, the ratio of those evacuated from East Germany to those kept in West Germany was approximately 2 : 1.⁶⁸ However, later in its life evacuees from the SOZ represented a larger proportion of the total: by November 1949 332 scientific workers had been evacuated from the Eastern Zone, while ‘Matchbox’ benefits had been extended to 103 in the British Zone.⁶⁹ From the summer of 1945 the Americans had likewise had a denial policy of sorts, known as Operation ‘Overcast’ (from March 1946 ‘Paperclip’). This operation provided for 1,000 German scientific workers to be evacuated to the USA for employment there. Under ‘Overcast’, they were to be employed on military R&D, but this restriction was abandoned when the name was changed. Like early British policy, the operation was partly concerned with exploitation and partly with denial. The Americans were, above all, keen to make use in their own R&D of German expertise in rocketry.⁷⁰ However, the ‘Overcast/Paperclip’ list of 1,000 Germans to be prevented from falling into the hands of a ‘potentially hostile Power’ suffered from two weaknesses as a denial list. Firstly, it reflected American ⁶⁶ Brownjohn to Jenkins, 29/8/1947, FO 1032/251B; Uttley, INS (2002), 5–9. ⁶⁷ Report on Schröder, 10/3/1950, DEFE 41/132; Secretary, JS/JTIC, to Director STIB, 17/3/1950, DEFE 41/132. ⁶⁸ Evans to Hitchcock, 16/4/1948, FO 371/70955. ⁶⁹ Report on ‘Matchbox’, 6/12/1949, DEFE 41/83. ⁷⁰ J. Gimbel, Science, Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Postwar Germany (Stanford, Calif., 1990), 37–59; B. Ciesla, ‘Das “Project Paperclip”—deutsche Naturwissenschaftler und Techniker in den USA (1946 bis 1952)’, in J. Kocka (ed.), Historische DDR-Forschung: Aufsätze und Studien (Berlin, 1993), 292–4, 298; T. Bower, The Paperclip Conspiracy (London, 1987), 210–11, 222–3. See also C. Lasby, Project Paperclip: German Scientists and the Cold War (New York, 1971); J. Gimbel, ‘The American Exploitation of German Technical Know-How after World War II’, Political Science Quarterly, 105 (1990–1), 295–309; J. Gimbel, ‘US Policy and German Scientists’, Political Science Quarterly, 101 (1985–6), 433–51.

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scientific needs—often ones purely of civilian science—not urgent needs of Soviet war-related science, which were often more basic or at least different. Secondly, the list was fixed. Consequently, the burden of evacuating those who applied for evacuation and were not listed as desired rested at the beginning of 1947 on the shoulders of the British.⁷¹ The US military soon created projects to supplement ‘Paperclip’. Scientists, including scientific defectors, were among those who, from 1947, were allowed to go to the United States under the ‘National Interest’ scheme and placed in privatesector jobs there. ‘Project 63’, which began in 1950, was a proper denial programme. Offices in Germany offered jobs in the United States to German scientists; they were also given money and visas to go to America to look for work. Most took up jobs at universities or with defence companies.⁷² In varying degrees, all these operations were attempts to hold back the USSR’s scientific and technological development. They complemented the political, economic, and military initiatives, both declared and secret, which the Truman administration took in the years 1947–9 and which became known as its policy of ‘containment’. Further measures of scientific containment were taken. The Americans forbade important scientists in their Zone to leave it without official permission. Scientists believed to be threatened with kidnap were given protection.⁷³ The first few months of ‘Matchbox’ were its most active phase. By April 1947, 106 scientific workers had been assessed to determine whether they should be evacuated and some 74, together with their dependants, had actually been brought over from the East. Entire specialist teams were evacuated: for example, the Schön group, which specialized in the manufacture of the V-2 rocket; the Stenger group, which also specialized in guided missiles; the Agfa colour film research development group; and the fifteen-strong Technical Directorate of the Brückner-Kanis company, headed up by the celebrated engineer Paul Kanis. Kanis and his colleague Rudolf Friedrich both qualified as outstanding specialists. The Admiralty, which had requested the evacuation of the last group, considered that it had removed an important war-related industry from the Soviet Zone and that Soviet development of high-speed underwater propulsion turbines and of all kinds of naval machinery would probably be delayed for a considerable time. Within the second category of those whose evacuation would have a serious effect on Soviet armaments projects were people skilled in such technologies as rocketry, aircraft construction, optical equipment, electronics, radar, remote control for rockets, aircraft engines, and other engines.⁷⁴ The British targeted specific parts of East Germany’s skills base so as to retard the USSR’s military-industrial development. Machine-tool designers were targeted, ⁷¹ Wilson to Chief, FIAT (British), 9/1/1947, FO 1031/67; Brownjohn to Jenkins, 10/12/1946, FO 1032/251A. ⁷² L. Hunt, Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists, and Project Paperclip, 1945–1990 (New York, 1991), 125–42, 175–83. ⁷³ Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 35–41. ⁷⁴ Report on ‘Matchbox’, 12/4/1947, DEFE 41/122.

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in the belief that the standard of skill of the Soviet industrial workforce was low. Soviet workers would therefore need German machine tools with a high degree of automatic control to make the machinery which would enable them to manufacture weaponry with the necessary precision. In 1947, learning that key machine-tool designers were likely soon to be deported from Chemnitz to the Soviet Union, British intelligence made contact with them and other designers in Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, and Plauen and offered to fly them to the British Zone if they left their jobs and came to West Berlin. The men originally targeted made up a majority of the key machine-tool designers in the Soviet Zone (they were some 20 designers, supported by 45 staff ). The tools they designed were intended for armament construction.⁷⁵ One naval intelligence officer argued that ‘the removal of these men in the Russian Zone would have a strangling effect on the Russian War potential’.⁷⁶ The operation, codenamed ‘Top Hat’, was carried out in September 1947, earlier than planned; only 35 men (plus their dependants) were targeted for evacuation, rather than the 65 originally contemplated. Very disappointingly, only 15 reached the British Zone. Some of the targeted men were imprisoned by the Soviet security police. As they had been promised, many of the evacuees were found jobs with engineering companies in Britain. The following year, other machine-tool designers at Chemnitz agreed to be evacuated. At least one, Herbert Biernatzki, did indeed come West and was made a ‘Matchbox consultant’.⁷⁷ The British tried to diminish the Soviets’ ability to use East German skill to acquire the ‘ABC’ weapons and guided missiles. In July 1948, Professor Erich Traub was secretly evacuated from the Soviet Zone; he was ‘the key man’ at an important intelligence target, a microbiological research institute on Riems Island.⁷⁸ He was evacuated because the British feared that the institute was playing a role in the Soviet biological warfare programme. The evacuation was intended both to deny him to the USSR and find out what was going on at the institute. He brought with him some of the viruses and serums which he had been developing for the Soviets. However, when interrogated, Traub maintained that it was purely a veterinary institute and that the Soviet scientists who had been transferred to it, or had visited it, were themselves only interested in veterinary science. Scientific Intelligence in London therefore told STIB that it no longer considered ‘the Institute and its workers to be intelligence targets, and that its sole interest was in the future to be on the denial aspects’.⁷⁹ Development groups working on guided missiles, such as Elektrobau Sondershausen and Technisches Büro 11, were also ⁷⁵ Draft Staff Study, 6/6/1947, DEFE 41/109; Staff Officer (Intelligence), Naval Branch, Berlin, to STIB, 25/4/1947, DEFE 41/109. ⁷⁶ Staff Officer (Intelligence), Naval Branch, Berlin, to STIB, 28/4/1947, DEFE 41/109. ⁷⁷ JIC(G) minutes, 20/10/1947, DEFE 41/63; report on ‘Top Hat’, 23/10/1947, DEFE 41/109; Saunders to Studdert, 31/12/1947, DEFE 41/109. ⁷⁸ ‘Second Slip’ Directive, 23/6/1948, DEFE 41/20. ⁷⁹ Traub interview report, 28/7/1948, DEFE 41/148.

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targeted. A few of the evacuees were spies in the Soviet Zone who had to be evacuated, presumably for their own security.⁸⁰ Whenever a factory was sent back to Germany from the USSR, this revealed that it was important to the Soviets, with the result that it became a target for ‘Matchbox’ evacuation operations. The largest number of applications to grant ‘Matchbox consultancies’ made by STIB in Germany to the Joint Committees in London concerned scientific workers experienced in the design or construction of naval craft or weaponry.⁸¹ This reflected the kind of war-related expertise left in the Soviet Zone after ‘Osoaviakhim’, rather than the denial priorities of the Joint Committees. Evacuations were a different matter and consultancies different again. In mid-1950 the ‘Matchbox consultants’ were listed by profession. The largest group on the list of 317 people were stated to be ‘machine-building engineers’ (126 people). There were 35 ‘ship and ship machine building engineers’, 25 working in ‘aerodynamics and aircraft construction’, 24 ‘high-frequency and telecommunications’ specialists, and 25 physicists. There were relatively few in other fields, in most cases the number of evacuees being in single figures (for example, only 6 ‘tool-machine building engineers’ had been evacuated).⁸² However, the large categories (such as ‘machinebuilding engineers’) divided into a large number of specialities and the specialities of the evacuees covered a remarkably wide range of fields. By the autumn of 1950, when the operation was coming to an end, 461 ‘Matchbox’ cases had passed through STIB’s hands. Their combined expertise embraced many fields, including: electronics and high-frequency techniques; dynamics (including aerodynamics and supersonic aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, and ballistics); aeroplane construction (including that of jet fighters); U-boat and shipbuilding; submarine and destroyer design; helicopter design and development; speedboat design; rocketry; rocket and torpedo construction and steering (including those of the V-2); rocket fuels; remote control (including missile-control systems); biological warfare; television development; telecommunications; radar; acoustics and underwater sounding techniques; machine, machine-tool, and precision machine-tool design and construction; artillery; machine gunnery (including aircraft gunnery); proximity fuses; wind tunnels; navigational instruments; gas dynamics; the design and construction of engines and turbo-jets; colour film production; physics; mathematics; organic and inorganic chemistry; physical chemistry; photo-chemistry; explosive chemistry; chemical engineering; metallurgy; fine mechanics and optics; electrical engineering; and electro-medical research.⁸³ The operation was a small-scale one. It had to be, for it was difficult to find the evacuees jobs in the West. They had to be found work, otherwise they would simply return to the SOZ. That was no easy matter, owing to the Western Allies’ policy of suppressing West Germany’s war-related industry. Indeed, some of the ⁸⁰ ⁸¹ ⁸² ⁸³

Report on ‘Matchbox’, 11/12/1948, DEFE 41/131. Exec. Section to Wise, 4/4/1949, DEFE 41/54. Wise to Director STIB, 7/6/1950, DEFE 41/53. ‘Matchbox’ State Report, 28/10/1950, DEFE 41/132.

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evacuees were simply unemployable in Britain or West Germany in their field of expertise. For example, in the late 1940s, those who specialized in warship construction were not wanted in Britain and were not allowed to practise their speciality in West Germany. By July 1949, 399 scientific workers had benefited from the operation, of whom 241 had found jobs, most in West Germany; 63 had found work outside Germany, most in Britain, the Commonwealth, and the USA. By the autumn of 1950, STIB had handled 461 ‘Matchbox’ cases; 29 were still living in ‘Matchbox’ accommodation; 309 were living in protected accommodation elsewhere in West Germany (if unemployed or only partially employed, they were still being paid consultancy fees). Most (344 out of 461) had found jobs. More than two-thirds of these 344 people were employed in West Germany, which indicates a lack of success in finding as many consultants as possible work in Britain, its former dominions, or the USA. Only 71 had found work in these countries.⁸⁴ The final figure for the number of ‘Matchbox’ cases was 469.⁸⁵ The operation was not only small scale; it also came too late. The scientific workers most important to the USSR had already been taken there. Nevertheless, it succeeded in its aim of removing from the Soviet Zone, or denying to the Soviets, a considerable number of useful people with war-related knowledge and skills. How much damage it did to East Germany’s war economy is impossible to establish, but it hampered the Soviets’ drive to extract military benefit from their Zone, and they made considerable efforts to stop the flow of workers to the West. They reacted by making attractive offers to scientific workers themselves. Security was also stepped up: surveillance of development centres was increased and the employees’ post intercepted.⁸⁶ Intelligence Division believed that the operation was very successful in disrupting R&D programmes in the Eastern Zone by removing key members of the teams concerned. For instance, when, in 1947, STIB forced the aerodynamicist Friedrich Keune to defect, it interrogated him about the aerodynamics institute in East Berlin at which he had worked, the Wissenschaftlich-Technisches Büro für Gerätebau (Scientific-Technical Office for Instrument Construction). It succeeded in identifying four key technicians in the very large R&D team there whose induced defection would, in the director’s words, ‘have the effecting of wrecking the whole scheduled programme’.⁸⁷ The disruption caused by evacuations extended to the USSR. The British maintained that some of the German development teams deported in ‘Osoaviakhim’ were unable to carry out the tasks expected of them because they lacked scientific workers who had been evacuated to the West in 1945–6. The evacuations had weakened the German teams and, in a number of cases, had even destroyed the development programmes entirely.⁸⁸ ⁸⁴ ⁸⁵ ⁸⁶ ⁸⁷ ⁸⁸

‘Matchbox’ State Report, 28/10/1950, DEFE 41/132. DSI/JTIC(51)1, ‘Operation “Matchbox” ’, 3/1/1951, DEFE 10/498. JS/JTIC minutes, 1/6/1949, DEFE 10/493; Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 37–8. JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 10/2/1948, DEFE 41/68. Director STIB’s notes for MI10 Conference 1951, DEFE 41/125.

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All in all, the British concluded that the operation had achieved ‘to a satisfactory degree’ its objectives of denying German scientific and technical skills to the USSR and of gathering intelligence on Soviet development projects. Its intelligence value is clear: the Joint Committees commented in 1949 that, ‘we are satisfied that we have received a very large amount of information on Russian developments which could not have been obtained without the facilities afforded by the Operation’.⁸⁹ ‘Matchbox’ yielded information on key intelligence targets in the Eastern Zone. One was the Soviets’ uranium-mining organization in the Erzgebirge, known as Wismut AG. Alfred Hertz, who was made a ‘Matchbox consultant’ in 1949, had, prior to his flight, been employed in Wismut’s headquarters at ‘Objekt 176’. He prepared an administrative survey of ‘the whole of the Wismuth AG set-up’ and a map of the region for STIB.⁹⁰ He was one of four men formerly employed by Wismut who had been made ‘Matchbox consultants’ by the autumn of 1950. Another key target was the Oberspreewerk, the great valvemanufacturing factory in Berlin-Oberschöneweide which was taken into Soviet ownership after the war.⁹¹ Previously, it had belonged to AEG. At least two evacuees from the factory, one a former laboratory director there, were considered to be of ‘high denial and intelligence value’.⁹² Among other important scientific and technical installations from which ‘Matchbox’ evacuees were taken were: the Wissenschaftlich-Technisches Büro für Gerätebau, which conducted research into aerodynamics; the GEMA research and development institute, also in Berlin; the Elektrochemisches Kombinat (Electro-chemical Combine), Bitterfeld; the Junkers aircraft factory in Dessau and that of BMW in Staßfurt; the great chemical works near Merseburg, the Leunawerk; the glass-manufacturing factory, Carl Zeiss, Jena; the telecommunications factories, the RFT-Arnstadt and the Sachsenwerk-Radeberg; the Askania works in Berlin; Technisches Büro 11 and the Elektrobau Sondershausen.⁹³ Questioning a ‘Matchbox’ evacuee after his defection was just one way of acquiring information. If the ‘Matchbox’ candidate applied for evacuation (for example, because he feared deportation to the USSR), he would for a little while be an agent-in-place while his application was being considered. If the candidate had been writing reports on his wartime work or on scientific problems for the Soviets (which was true of many), he would give these reports to the British in support of his application. Moreover, ‘Matchbox’ evacuations were not the only defections of German scientific and technical personnel. Evacuations intended to exploit the scientific or technical knowledge of the defector continued alongside them; these evacuees also provided information on Soviet weapons development. A substantial amount of valuable information was acquired without evacuation, both before and after ‘Osoaviakhim’, from sources in place in Soviet-controlled ⁸⁹ ⁹⁰ ⁹¹ ⁹² ⁹³

JS/JTIC(49)57, ‘Operation “Matchbox” ’, 21/7/1949, DEFE 41/150. Manwaring to JS/JTIC Secretariat, 9/12/1949, DEFE 41/132. Ciesla, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 49-50/93, 27. ‘Matchbox’ State Report, 28/2/1949, Appendix F, DEFE 41/131. ‘Matchbox’ State Report, 28/10/1950, DEFE 41/132.

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factories and research institutes or from scientific workers who had received Soviet offers of employment. FIAT Forward had many opportunities of forging links with German scientific workers. Owing to disagreements between the four Occupiers, there was then no Patent Office in Germany and many scientific workers visited FIAT Forward’s office in West Berlin to try to register their patents or offer them to the Allied Powers for commercial exploitation.⁹⁴ Many applied there for work in the USA or Britain, and were willing to discuss the offers of work at Soviet defence research establishments which they had received. Such men were often sympathetic to the West; moreover, they were willing to give information to FIAT Forward’s Intelligence Group so as to have the option of a job in the Western Zones. Information would help them procure their evacuation. Some of FIAT Forward’s informants were actual agents. By January 1947, the British section of the FIAT Forward office in West Berlin alone had an agent in ‘most of the more important factories engaged in warlike production’ in the Soviet Zone.⁹⁵ MI6 had its own network of agents. FIAT Forward’s network yielded valuable intelligence on Soviet use of German scientific and technical know-how. For example, one expert on V-2 manufacture, who, in the summer of 1946, accepted a Soviet offer of work in Magnitogorsk told FIAT Forward that that was where V-2s were being made. In the same period, intelligence was gathered from the same type of source of the reactivation of war production at important factories in East Germany—for example, manufacture of missile motors at the Siebel factory in Halle; aircraft engines and missile hulls and motors at the Junkers works in Dessau; and range-finders and periscopes at Carl Zeiss, Jena.⁹⁶ An informant on the further development of the V-1 motor at Junkers-Dessau was ‘one of the leading V-1 experts’. He told FIAT Forward that the Soviets had insisted that in actual flight the engines carry the weapon beyond a ‘safety margin’ of 80 kilometres; the informant believed that this was so that the V-1 could carry an atomic warhead.⁹⁷ Intelligence of other menacing development projects was obtained, for instance of remote-control steering devices for longer versions of the V-2, apparently known as the V-3 and V-4, at the GEMA institute in Berlin. Such sources naturally provided a lot of information on which of their former colleagues had accepted work in Soviet defence research establishments. In fact, most of the intelligence on Soviet recruitment activities gathered by the summer of 1946 had been acquired by FIAT Forward in Berlin. The specialisms of these men indicated the weapons the Soviets were seeking to develop. Information on Soviet R&D establishments was also gleaned from letters written by employees which entered the British Zone or Sector. ⁹⁴ FIAT Forward Periodic Intelligence Report No. 4, 28/10/1946, FO 1031/59; Malet-Warden to Chief, FIAT Main (British), 18/12/1946, FO 1031/68. ⁹⁵ FIAT Forward Special Intelligence Report No. 3, 1–31/1/1947, FO 1031/60. ⁹⁶ FIAT Forward Periodic Intelligence Report No. 2, 6/8/1946, FO 1031/59. ⁹⁷ FIAT Forward Periodic Intelligence Report No. 3, 9/9/1946, FO 1031/59.

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After ‘Osoaviakhim’ even more than before it, many German scientific workers employed on Soviet projects made contact with FIAT Forward to explore the possibility of evacuation. Information was taken from them. By January 1947, some 150 scientific workers had either applied for evacuation to the British Zone or for employment with the British Military Government. They gave the office penetrating and up-to-date information on the work their plants and bureaux were doing. Just after ‘Osoaviakhim’ important figures at the Oberspreewerk passed information to FIAT Forward on the work of their departments. In 1947, there was a ‘steady trickle of medium-grade technicians’ to the FIAT Forward office from the factory. Although only very few of them were sufficiently well qualified to be candidates for evacuation, they kept the office well informed as to developments there. Most ‘medium- and low-grade technicians’ did not have the qualifications to justify evacuation, but those who seemed as if they might be of use to the Soviets and who had connections with the Western Zone were sent there for a short period to look for work. If they found a job there, the British tried to help them take their belongings there. This was the best way of supplementing ‘Matchbox’, which was necessarily limited in its scope, and doing further harm to the skills base of the Eastern Zone.⁹⁸ In the spring of 1947, intelligence was gathered from a well-placed source on the work of the film department at the Agfa-Wolfen plant following ‘Osoaviakhim’ and the defection of the colour-film development team the previous January. The source, a Dr Rossbach, was only one of many scientific workers at the factory who were keen to leave the Soviet Zone and were in touch with the FIAT Forward office.⁹⁹ An informant called Beust, an employee in the decimetre research department of the Sachsenwerk-Radeberg who also feared deportation, brought with him information on the progress of the development and production of radio and radar apparatus at this important factory and on its plans for the future. Those wanting to be evacuated greatly exceeded the room available for evacuees at the ‘Transit Hotel’ in Bad Hermannsborn.¹⁰⁰ Some scientific workers made contact with the FIAT Forward office in West Berlin to apply for evacuation while on their way from one Soviet-controlled factory to another. Such people attracted considerable interest as possible agents. Much information on naval developments was obtained after ‘Osoaviakhim’. The Soviet navy’s principal centre for armament design in the Soviet Zone was at 9–10, Junker-Jörgstraße, within the compound of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany in Berlin-Karlshorst. Workers there became British informants because its planned dissolution threatened a few with deportation and the rest with unemployment; they therefore tried to buy their evacuation with information. They betrayed highly prioritized projects for the development of ⁹⁸ FIAT Forward Special Intelligence Report No. 10, 1–31/8/1947, FO 1031/61. ⁹⁹ FIAT Forward Special Intelligence Report No. 6, 1–30/4/1947, FO 1031/61. ¹⁰⁰ FIAT Forward Special Intelligence Report No. 9, 1–31/7/1947, FO 1031/61.

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naval technology.¹⁰¹ At least three members of staff, Hermann Meincke, Ursula Stiller, and ‘Source No. 412’ (a technician working on radar development), were evacuated to Bad Hermannsborn, partly in return for information.¹⁰² Meincke was evacuated in December 1947. He was the head of the ballistics and artillery design section; he applied for evacuation when he heard that he and other leading weapons designers at the centre would shortly be sent to Leningrad. Among other weapons, he had worked on the development of armour-piercing projectiles for an anti-tank gun and on the manufacture of high-velocity projectiles. The connection between the centre and R&D in the USSR enabled him to provide information on Soviet work on projectiles. He stated that Soviet designers were aiming to achieve projectile velocities of some 2,000 or 3,000 metres per second. Meincke had been told that Professor Andreyev in Leningrad had already made propellants capable of giving an initial velocity of more than 1,000 metres per second.¹⁰³ In May 1948, he was taken to London for interrogation at the Admiralty.¹⁰⁴

THE STRATEGIC EMBARGO, ECONOMIC WARFARE, AND EVACUATION Evacuations formed part of the West’s policy of denial of war-making resources. They were aimed at a key resource for the Bloc’s war economy: scientifically and technically qualified people. This policy had other elements. Its centrepiece was an embargo on the export to Bloc states of ‘strategic goods’—military goods or commercial goods which contributed significantly to war-making capability. The NATO countries, and others besides, maintained this strategic embargo, under the leadership of the United States; their vehicle was an organization called the Consultative Group-Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom), which was founded in November 1949. CoCom had the task of deciding which technologies were significant to the capacity to make war; it also tried to identify bottlenecks in military production which denial could exacerbate. Obviously, good intelligence was essential to the performance of these tasks, and within CoCom the member states pooled intelligence reports on the Bloc’s war economy and its procurements from the outside world.¹⁰⁵ Its greatly superior intelligence collection resources were one reason why the United States always dominated CoCom. The difficulty of obtaining good intelligence meant that the organization often simply guessed, on the basis of its members’ experience, which goods were significant for ¹⁰¹ Air Intelligence Report, 2/9/1947, DEFE 41/48. ¹⁰² Air Intelligence Report, 24/7/1947; Air Intelligence Report, 16/8/1947; Staff Officer (Intelligence) to DHND, 26/11/1946; Intelligence Report, 11/12/1947, DEFE 41/48. ¹⁰³ Report (marked 63A), ‘Research Department of the High Command of the Russian Navy for Armament Development (German Section)’, DEFE 41/48. ¹⁰⁴ Undated list (marked 7A), DEFE 41/54. ¹⁰⁵ F. Cain, ‘Exporting the Cold War: British Responses to the USA’s Establishment of CoCom, 1947–51’, Journal of Contemporary History, 29 (1994), 513.

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the USSR’s military development and where bottlenecks existed. CoCom’s membership became broadly that of NATO, created in April 1949. Indeed, it was an instrument of defence policy. The United States and Britain were founding members of both organizations. Japan, which did not belong to NATO, was a crucial CoCom member. CoCom’s export control lists were liberalized in the détente era when President Nixon sought, by means of expanded trade with the USSR, to wield influence over its policy. CoCom was dissolved in 1994. The strategic embargo’s purpose was to enable the West to improve its weapons, both conventional and nuclear, faster than the Bloc by being able to make use of the most advanced military and ‘dual-use’ technology (‘dual-use’ means technology with both military and civilian applications). The embargo denied this technology to the Communist states. The denial of goods of military significance would hold back their research and development and would restrict the volume of military production. Accordingly, it would ensure that the West’s weapons remained superior, thus countering the Bloc’s numerical superiority in troops and many types of weapon, and so deterring aggression. The US itself pursued a policy going beyond war-related denial: until the early 1970s it waged economic warfare. It maintained a broader embargo, embracing industrial goods which did not contribute significantly to war-making capability, with the aim of weakening the Bloc’s economies, aggravating bottlenecks throughout them, and so diminishing the resources which could be devoted to military production. The Communist states would be denied hard currency with which to build up their military strength or improve the working of their economies. From 1950 until 1954 this was CoCom’s policy as well. The West hoped for influence over the Bloc resulting from its economic inferiority. In 1951 Congress deprived the Soviet Union of Most Favoured Nation trading status, with the result that Soviet exports to the US became subject to heavy tariffs. Particular resources were stockpiled to deny them to the Bloc. The US stockpiled rubber in the late 1940s. By means of the Combined Development Trust, the US and Britain had been trying since the war years to control the world’s principal sources of uranium and thorium.¹⁰⁶ One reason for all such denial measures was that there was relatively little Western countries could do to harm an enemy on whom they did not want to wage war.¹⁰⁷ The United States was the driving force behind the imposition of a strategic embargo. Pressed by the Secretary of Commerce, Averell Harriman, the National Security Council had, by December 1947, concluded that, in the interest of national security, the US had to stop supplying to the USSR and its satellites ‘all commodities . . . which would contribute to the Soviet military potential’.¹⁰⁸ The Commerce Department then drew up lists of the goods traded with the East. ¹⁰⁶ Gowing, Independence and Deterrence, i. 349–92. ¹⁰⁷ M. Mastanduno, Economic Containment: CoCom and the Politics of East–West Trade (Ithaca, NY, 1992), 13–15, 20–3, 40–52. ¹⁰⁸ NSC report, ‘Control of Exports to the USSR and Eastern Europe’, 17/12/1947, FRUS, 1948, Vol. IV, 511–12.

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In March 1948, using wartime legislation, the export of goods to Europe was made subject to obtaining a licence. By denying licences for the export of goods to the Soviet Bloc, the Commerce Department aimed to stop altogether the export to it of goods of military significance (‘Class 1A’) and reduce to a minimum trade in other goods (‘Class 1B’). Power to use this licensing system to control American export trade in peacetime was given to the president by the Export Control Act 1949. The Americans’ lists formed the basis for CoCom’s lists, though the former were stricter.¹⁰⁹ It was not enough for the United States to prevent such exports. For the embargo to be effective, all advanced countries had to enforce it, and the United States quickly put them under pressure to do so. Marshall Plan aid gave it a lever with which to do this: it was distributed only to recipients which undertook to abide by the Americans’ control lists. The ban was extended to the Western Zones of Germany in October 1948, when the Joint Export–Import Agency (JEIA) was created. It required that West German trade with the East be approved by the Marshall Plan organization, the Economic Co-operation Administration (ECA), if it was to take place. The ECA applied the IA and IB lists. The JEIA was dissolved in October 1949 but the Federal Republic soon afterwards agreed in a treaty with the USA to apply its control lists. Nevertheless, even in 1951 a committee of the US Senate was complaining that West Germany represented a ‘veritable open channel’ through which the Bloc obtained huge quantities of strategic goods.¹¹⁰ Using the leverage of Marshall Plan aid, the Americans imposed their embargo on the members of the Organization for European Economic Co-operation. The result was CoCom. Co-operation with the willing was supplemented by prescription for the unwilling. By the Mutual Defense Assistance Control Act 1951, Congress gave the president power to cut off all military and economic aid to countries which knowingly violated the embargo.¹¹¹ Britain used an identical regulatory system to deny strategic goods to the USSR and its satellites. Under wartime legislation, the government had sweeping powers to prohibit or regulate the export of goods; in the late 1940s repeated additions were made to the lists of goods subject to an export licence. The war-related goods on the lists ranged from uranium and thorium ore to electronic computers, cyclotrons, missiles, rocket motors, aero-engines, and specialized machinery and machine tools. In short, the embargoed goods fell within the same fields of technology as the ‘Matchbox’ cases’ expertise.¹¹² ¹⁰⁹ Mastanduno, Economic Containment, 68–82. ¹¹⁰ Ibid., 101. ¹¹¹ A. Stent, ‘Economic Containment’, in T. Diebel and J. L. Gaddis (eds.), Containing the Soviet Union (Washington, DC, 1987), 59–64; Office of Technology Assessment, US Congress, Technology and East–West Trade (Montclair, NJ, 1981), 112–14, 189–91; Stöver, Befreiung, 469–75; Cain, JCH (1994), 501–22. ¹¹² The Export of Goods (Control) (Consolidation) Order 1949, No. 2466, Statutory Instruments 1949 (London: HMSO), 1/1, 1272–96; ‘Questions Asked and Answered in Parliament’, Board of Trade Journal 1949, 358, 748, 1163.

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The United States’s economic warfare policy took covert as well as overt forms. Moreover, economic warfare was only one element, albeit a very important one, in the policy which, the US government hoped, would achieve its Cold War objectives. American policy, formulated above all by the brilliant George Kennan, was to reduce Soviet power without resort to war, and thus force the USSR to abandon aggression and subversion. By assertion of all the United States’s forms of strength, overt and covert, the expansionism of Soviet-controlled Communism would be defeated and Soviet power contained within the borders of the USSR. The Soviet regime would be forced to conduct itself like any other state, respecting the principles set out in the United Nations Charter. From the beginning, therefore, the policy of containment involved a powerful effort at rollback: the Soviet Union was to be forced to give up its new Eastern European satellites. Indeed, Kennan envisaged that even the Baltic States would only remain within the USSR as part of a genuine federal structure.¹¹³ This policy was thought to have a reasonable chance of success because the Soviet regime and its satellite puppets were seen as inherently weak and unstable, and a good, hard push might cause them to collapse. This thinking was too optimistic and the West’s subversion was consistently defeated by the Communists’ ruthlessness and brutality. Their security services also proved to be formidable opponents. By the mid-1950s, the US government had retreated from aggressive containment and inclined towards a policy of competitive coexistence.¹¹⁴ The bloody suppression of the Hungarian Uprising in November 1956, and the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, confirmed how little subversion could achieve as long as the Communists were willing to act ruthlessly to maintain their rule. The Truman administration’s basic statement of national security strategy, largely written by Kennan, was NSC-20/4, of November 1948. It ruled that the United States would use ‘all methods short of war . . . to reduce the power and influence of the USSR to limits which no longer constitute a threat to the peace, national independence, and stability of the world family of nations’. The administration’s covert action directive, NSC-10/2, of June 1948, gave authority for a wide range of secret measures intended to weaken the USSR and the worldwide Communist movement. Among other things, it authorized ‘economic warfare’ and ‘preventive direct action, including . . . evacuation measures’.¹¹⁵ This authority was repeated in the Eisenhower administration’s covert action directive, NSC5412/2, of 1955.¹¹⁶ The CIA’s Office of Policy Co-ordination responded to NSC-10/2 by initiating a series of covert actions against the Bloc. Much of its effort was directed against East Germany, which was the most vulnerable satellite ¹¹³ Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, 28–34. ¹¹⁴ Ibid., 7–10, 163–76. ¹¹⁵ NSC-10/2, ‘Office of Special Projects’, 18/6/1948, in T. Etzold and J. Gaddis (eds.), Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945–1950 (New York, 1978), 127. ¹¹⁶ NSC-5412/2, ‘Covert Operations’, 28/12/1955, Folder ‘President’s Papers 1955(1)’, White House Office, OSANSA: Records, 1952–61, Special Assistant Series, Presidential Subseries, Box 2, DDEL.

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of all. West Berlin made it so, and most of the operations were carried out from there. West Berlin’s open border with the Communist Bloc made it an open plughole through which the East German population could drain; Western influence could also enter East Germany over the sectoral border. That explains the city’s importance in the West’s strategy of subversion. As one US government paper on psychological warfare strategy notes: ‘Nowhere else in the world do we have such effective instruments of penetration and propaganda.’¹¹⁷ As later chapters will show, economic warfare was one of OPC’s priorities; evacuation of defectors, including ones enticed into defecting, came to be its main device for reducing East Germany’s scientific potential.¹¹⁸ Inducing defection had the general aim of putting Soviet power under as much strain as possible by challenging the Communists’ control of the populations in their grip; it formed part of the effort to undermine the Soviet regime and force it to abandon its satellites. It was an element in the United States’s ‘psychological warfare’ strategy. Defection was seen as having a powerful psychological impact on ‘the slave states’, as American policy-makers called them. Inducing it was viewed as a way of undermining the Communist regimes’ power and prestige. Firstly, defection denied a key resource, valuable people, to the USSR and its satellites; it also made these people available to the West. Secondly, it could be exploited in propaganda, for it contradicted the claim that Communism was a better social system and threw the Communists onto the political defensive. It also caused resentment to grow behind the Iron Curtain by stressing that a better life was to be had in the West. Defection discredited local political leaders and military commanders, often causing surveillance of them to be increased and creating tension within the regimes themselves. Often local leaders were dismissed, which caused significant disorganization. If defection were induced from the security services and armed forces, the regime might start to doubt their reliability and purge them, thus undermining the very basis of its power. The Communists feared the psychological effects of defection, as their condemnation of American efforts to encourage it showed. The Americans’ hope was that the Communists’ power would decline to the point at which it could be overthrown in an uprising, one perhaps incited by the United States. Intelligence was a further benefit.¹¹⁹ The policy of inducing defection thus helped to reduce Communist power (as NSC-20/4 required) and increase that of the West (as NSC-68, of April 1950, required). When exactly the US government first began operations covertly to encourage defection is unclear. However, from 1950 it was seen as having a large role to play both in covert anti-Soviet policy and in intelligence collection. A study by a Yale ¹¹⁷ Carroll to Gray, 1/11/1951, Folder ‘091.411 Agenda for PSB Meetings, 1951–2’, Box 14, SMOF-PSB Files, HSTL. ¹¹⁸ Prados, Presidents’ Secret Wars, 26–9; Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 103–4. ¹¹⁹ ‘A National Psychological Program with Respect to Escapees from the Soviet Orbit: Phase B’, PSB D-18a/1, Working Draft, 5/11/1952, Folder ‘383.7 Report of Richard Brown on Escapee Program File#2’, SMOF-PSB Files, Box 33, HSTL.

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academic called Frederick Barghoorn concluded that the Soviet regime viewed defection as very damaging to its prestige, and argued that it would be possible to induce the defection of more people in leading positions.¹²⁰ It would be particularly easy in East Germany, given its open border with the West and the numerous Western contacts of its people. Consequently, a US government study, the Carroll-Speier Report of December 1950 on ‘Psychological Warfare in Germany’, pressed for key people in the East German economy to be prompted to defect.¹²¹ Further impetus to the inducement of defection, as well as to other forms of covert action, was provided by NSC-68. In it, the National Security Council, reacting to the Soviet atomic test, demanded that greater efforts be made to ‘contain’ the USSR.¹²² These greater efforts included varied, often sophisticated, and aggressive covert action on a very large scale in places throughout the world. Indeed, it was seen as a weapon with which to win the Cold War. NSC-68 insisted that it was essential that the United States and its allies always have ‘superior overall power’, including military power. In the economic field, American technology was considered to be far better than that of the USSR and the American workforce was considered far more skilled and productive. But the directive added the caveat, ‘In the field of scientific research, however, the margin of United States superiority is unclear, especially if the Kremlin can utilize European talents.’ As Chapter 7 will show, in the 1950s the CIA tried to persuade important East German nuclear physicists to defect. NSC-68 called for the West’s scientific and technological advantage to be increased. The authors’ ‘comprehensive and decisive programme to win the peace’ included not only intensified measures of covert economic warfare against selected Bloc states but also ‘overt psychological warfare calculated to encourage mass defections’. One aim of covert economic warfare was to force the Soviets to spend more of their resources trying to catch up than they would otherwise have to.¹²³ Another, more ambitious, was to stir up unrest in ‘selected strategic satellite countries’ in the hope that the regimes there might be overthrown.¹²⁴ The prescriptions in NSC-68 were too extreme for Truman, but in September 1950, once the Korean War had started, he adopted it ‘as a statement of policy to be followed over the next four or five years’ and instructed that ‘its implementing programs . . . be put into effect as rapidly as feasible’.¹²⁵ ¹²⁰ Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, 72–4, 78–80, 97–101. ¹²¹ C. Ostermann, ‘US Intelligence and the GDR’, in H. Bungert, J. Heitmann, and M. Wala (eds.), Secret Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (London, 2003), 137. On Wallace Carroll and Hans Speier’s involvement in US psychological warfare, see C. Simpson, Science of Coercion (New York, 1994). ¹²² At this time the British government decided that the Communist Bloc was too strong to be safely provoked and that covert action could not liberate the satellites. It therefore saw MI6’s primary role as intelligence-gathering and sought to win the Americans over to a covert action programme with more modest aims: see Aldrich, Hidden Hand, 315–33. ¹²³ E. May (ed.), American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC-68 (Boston, 1993), 36–7, 41, 72–4; Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, 58–60. See also ‘Memorandum for the Record, Policy Guidance’, 19/4/1950, in M. Warner (ed.), The CIA under Harry Truman (Washington, DC, 1994), 323. ¹²⁴ May, American Cold War Strategy, 74. ¹²⁵ Ibid., 14.

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American covert action greatly increased as a result of NSC-68 and the Korean War. In response, the CIA sought approval from the National Security Council for big increases in staff and spending and guidance on the character of its operations. The Council gave approval and guidance in NSC-10/5, of October 1951. The directive reiterated that covert operations were to ‘place the maximum strain on the Soviet structure of power, including the relationships between the USSR, its satellites, and Communist China’, ‘contribute to the retraction and reduction of Soviet power’, and ‘develop underground resistance’.¹²⁶ The full significance of the last provision will be shown in Chapter 5. NSC-10/5 authorized a big increase in covert action, and the inducement of defection from the Soviet Bloc was one of these initiatives. Reacting to Barghoorn’s study, in April 1951 the National Security Council laid down policy towards defectors from the Bloc in NSC-86/1. Most of this directive remains classified, though two annexes are open to public inspection.¹²⁷ However, other documents released by the US government either quote or refer to the directive, and thus establish what some of its provisions were. The directive authorized the encouragement of defection, though it ruled out a general call for the populations of the satellites to take flight. One operation approved pursuant to it was ‘A National Psychological Plan with Respect to Escapees from the Soviet Orbit’, codenamed ‘Engross’. It was divided into two parts (called ‘phases’). Phase ‘A’ was a programme to give assistance to ‘escapees’ from the Bloc (a term which did not include East Germans). One aim of providing assistance was to encourage further defection. Phase ‘B’ applied to defectors as well as escapees and involved measures to induce defection; it also envisaged the creation of guerrilla forces within the Bloc. A summary of psychological warfare plans describes it as ‘concerned with the stimulation of defection and examination of the psychological and subsidiary military advantages which would result from the proper utilization’ of the defectors.¹²⁸ As the DDR courts claimed in the 1950s, its aim was not only to weaken the Bloc but also to ‘enhance the power of the United States and the pro-democratic world by selective acquisition and utilization of the human resources of the Soviet orbit’ (that is to say, it was meant to achieve the objectives of NSC-68 as well as those of NSC-86/1).¹²⁹ As the DDR courts also claimed, high-level officials throughout the Bloc were targeted, though Soviet defectors were considered even more important. A draft of the Phase ‘B’ plan quotes NSC-86/1 as providing that, ‘The United States should . . . encourage and induce the defection of the maximum possible number of persons from all parts of ¹²⁶ NSC-10/5, ‘The Scope and Pace of Covert Operations’, 23/10/1951, Folder ‘Memorandum Approvals: 10/2’, PSF-Subject File, 1945–53: National Security Council, Box 168, HSTL; Bedell Smith to National Security Council, 8/5/1951, Folder ‘091.411 Legislative Background to NSC10/5’, SMOF-PSB Files, Box 13, HSTL. ¹²⁷ NSC-86/1, ‘United States Policy on Soviet and Satellite Defectors’, 3/4/1951, Folder ‘Meetings: 89, 18/4/1951’, PSF-Subject File, 1945–53: NSC Meetings, Box 182, HSTL. ¹²⁸ Draft report, ‘PSB Planning Activities’, 7/2/1952, Folder ‘383.7 Escapee Program—Section 2 [3 of 5]’, SMOF-PSB Files, Box 33, HSTL. ¹²⁹ ‘Terms of Reference for Phase B of Psychological Operations Plan for Soviet Orbit Escapees (Codename: ‘Engross’), PSB D-18a/1, 21/2/1952, Folder ‘383 Psychological Aspects of Phase “A” Defection Program [1 of 2]’, SMOF-PSB Files, Box 32, HSTL.

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the USSR . . . ’ By contrast, only ‘key personnel’ among satellite nationals were to be induced to defect.¹³⁰ The directive clearly contemplated that defection might take place on a considerable scale: Appendix B is entitled, ‘Practical Problems Involved in a Large-scale Defector Program’. According to a working draft of Phase ‘B’, dated 5 November 1952, programmes for the inducement of defection were even then underway.¹³¹ Although inducing defection had high priority, it might not be undertaken if there were a compelling case for recruiting the person concerned as a spy. The Phase ‘B’ Plan, PSB D-18a, was approved in December 1952 and added to the so-called ‘Packet’ of covert operations prepared by the CIA. The first targets were soldiers: the Truman administration’s psychological plan for Germany, codenamed ‘Plutonic’, stated that policy was ‘to encourage . . . defection from the Soviet and East German military or paramilitary forces . . . ’.¹³² Support for aggressive covert action was on the wane at the top levels of the US government from 1952 onwards. This was so for two reasons: growing doubts as to whether Eastern Europe could be liberated by such means; and increasing alarm over Soviet military strength. The first Soviet test, in August 1953, of a fusion bomb persuaded the new Eisenhower administration that aggressive covert action was too risky; it threatened American security rather than promoting it. In the years 1953–5 the administration developed a policy of seeking stable coexistence with the USSR; its anti-Soviet measures, both overt and covert, were aimed at producing gradual change for the better. Efforts to exploit the weaknesses of the Communist regimes so as to prevent them from being able to expand their influence continued, but the measures taken became less aggressive. They fell short of inciting revolution or seeking the forcible detachment of satellites like East Germany from the Bloc. Covert action concentrated on restraining the growth of the Bloc’s military and economic potential, and aggravating troublesome problems for it. Induced defection was well suited to both of these aims and, naturally enough, according to the MfS’s investigations, American efforts to induce defection intensified in the mid-1950s. They were also not seen as involving the risk of war. The United States carried out two types of operation: ones which might cause the USSR to change its international behaviour ‘without challenging Soviet internal authority’; and ones which ‘do or could challenge Soviet internal authority’. The former were obviously less provocative and inducing the defection of satellite nationals fell into this category.¹³³ While his enthusiasm for covert action ¹³⁰ Morgan to Lay, 4/5/1953, Folder ‘PSB 383.7 Escapee Program Section 4 (3)’, White House Office, NSC Staff: Papers, 1953–61, PSB Central Files Series, Box 27, DDEL. ¹³¹ PSB D-18a/1, ‘A National Psychological Program with Respect to Escapees from the Soviet Orbit: Phase B’, Working Draft, 5/11/1952, Folder ‘383.7 Report of Richard Brown on Escapee Program File#2’, SMOF-PSB Files, Box 33, HSTL. ¹³² ‘A National Psychological Plan with respect to Germany’, PSB D-21, 9/10/1952, Folder ‘Master Book of PSB Documents, Vol. II(1)’, White House Office, NSC Staff, 1948–61: NSC Registry Series, 1947–62, Box 14, DDEL. ¹³³ Report on US Policy for the Exploitation of Soviet Vulnerabilities, 8/6/1954, Folder ‘USSR— Report on US Policy for the Exploitation of Soviet Vulnerabilities’, White House Office, OSANSA: Records, 1952–61, NSC Series, Briefing Notes Subseries, Box 18, DDEL.

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declined, Eisenhower thought it right to undertake some as a way of weakening the USSR and so forcing it to the negotiating table. In NSC-158, of 29 June 1953, the administration authorized measures designed to exploit the unrest in the Bloc which had become manifest since Stalin’s death. Eisenhower ordered US intelligence to ‘intensify defection programs, aimed at satellite police leaders and military personnel (especially pilots) and Soviet military personnel’ and ‘launch black radio intruder operations to encourage defection’.¹³⁴ The administration’s statement of national security policy, NSC-162/2, of October 1953, resolved that the US would take ‘such feasible political, economic, propaganda, and covert measures designed to create and exploit troublesome problems for the USSR . . . and retard the growth of the military and economic potential of the Soviet Bloc’ (words also contained in the covert action directive, NSC-5412/2, of December 1955). One aim was to ‘induce the Soviet leadership to be more receptive to acceptable negotiated settlements’.¹³⁵ NSC162/2, in effect, adopted as American policy Konrad Adenauer’s ‘Policy of Strength’: the United States would negotiate with the Soviet Union, but from a position of maximum strength. Inducing the defection of East German scientific workers obviously had a role to play in this strategy, since it would diminish the DDR’s scientific potential while increasing that of the West, while also striking a blow at the SED’s already very limited prestige. The administration’s statement of policy towards Eastern Europe, NSC-174, of December 1953, declared that the United States would try to ‘minimize satellite contributions to Soviet power’ and force the USSR to occupy itself with problems in the Bloc at the expense of an assertive policy in the wider world. The satellites would also be undermined. US government agencies were instructed to ‘exploit . . . the special opportunities offered by West Berlin and the facilities of the Federal Republic to undermine Soviet power in East Germany’. Though the section on covert operations has been removed from the published version of NSC174, the directive calls for ‘measures . . . slowing down Soviet exploitation of the human and material resources of the satellites’.¹³⁶ The previous year the CIA, in a report on possible ways of reducing Soviet power, had identified a ‘shortage of scientists and technicians’, ‘uncertainty of the entire cultural and scientific base’, and ‘certain critical shortages of . . . skilled labor’ as being among the main weaknesses of the Communist Bloc.¹³⁷ American records show that particular categories of people were targeted. An early draft of ‘Engross Phase B’ refers to plans both for ¹³⁴ NSC-158, ‘United States Objectives and Actions to Exploit the Unrest in the Satellite States’, 29/6/1953, Folder ‘President’s Papers 1953(5)’, White House Office, OSANSA: Records, 1952–61, Special Assistant Series, Presidential Subseries, Box 1, DDEL. ¹³⁵ NSC-162/2, ‘Basic National Security Policy’, 30/10/1953, FRUS, 1952–4, Vol. II, 595. ¹³⁶ NSC-174, ‘United States Policy towards the Soviet Satellites in Eastern Europe’, 11/12/1953, FRUS, 1952–4, Vol. VIII, 114–15, 125. ¹³⁷ ‘CIA Approach to the Development of a National Psychological Strategy’ (Means Paper), 15/5/1952, Folder ‘091.411 Agenda for PSB Meetings, 1951–2’, SMOF-PSB Files, Box 14, HSTL.

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‘general or focused inducement of defection’.¹³⁸ NSC-158 shows that police and military personnel were targeted categories. State Department records establish that in 1956 the CIA was trying to induce East German scientists and officials to defect.¹³⁹ MfS files, examined in Chapter 7, show how it went about this. In the years 1957–60, recruitment of German scientists under the employment programmes—‘Paperclip’, ‘National Interest’ and ‘63’—increased.¹⁴⁰ It is likely that among those who took up jobs in the US were scientists induced to defect. Other defectors will have been given jobs in West Germany. ¹³⁸ ‘Psychological Operations Plan for Soviet Orbit Escapees Phase A’, PSB D-18/a, 20/12/1951, Folder ‘383.7 Escapee Program—Section 1 [5 of 6]’, SMOF-PSB Files, Box 33, HSTL. ¹³⁹ Ostermann, ‘US Intelligence and the GDR’, 139. ¹⁴⁰ Hunt, Secret Agenda, 199–200.

2 Refugees and Defectors REFUGEES The breakup of Germany into several parts, the expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe, and the establishment of Communist systems there gave rise to mass flight. Though increasingly well fortified, the Demarcation Line, the border between Soviet-controlled and Western Germany, could be crossed. It contained one gaping hole in particular: Berlin. The city’s importance as the escape hatch from Stalin’s empire grew quickly. By the end of the 1940s it was the only easy way out of the Eastern Zone. The inner-German border was effectively sealed in the last days of May 1952, when the DDR’s Ministry of State Security and police created a 5 kilometre-wide exclusion zone along it. Special permits were henceforth required to enter it. The resulting border regime was similar to that of the USSR and, like its Soviet counterpart, was said to be necessary to prevent saboteurs, terrorists, and spies from crossing into East Germany.¹ Those people living in the new exclusion zone who were regarded as politically unreliable—several thousand people in all—were evacuated from it. The DDR government intensified its efforts to seal West Berlin off from East Germany, which surrounded it, directing railway traffic around the Western Sectors and putting up fencing. Any West German or West Berliner wishing to visit the DDR henceforth required a permit to do so. For a time, efforts were made to cut the links between the two halves of the city. By the end of September 1952 about 200 of the 277 streets which ran into the Western Sectors from the East were closed to traffic. In addition, all workers and employees of nationalized factories, among others, had to sign a declaration that they would not visit West Berlin; they were told that if they did so they would be immediately dismissed. Thousands of telephone connections were also cut. Nevertheless, the city remained the last gap in the border.² The number of refugees fleeing via West Berlin surged thereafter. A large refugee camp was needed to accommodate them. One was duly opened in August 1953: this was the great Durchgangslager für Aussiedler und Zuwanderer (Transit ¹ Knight, KGB, 237–43. ² Bundesministerium für Innerdeutsche Beziehungen, Die Sperrmaßnahmen der DDR vom Mai 1952: Die Sperrmaßnahmen der Sowjetzonenregierung an der Zonengrenze und um Westberlin (Bonn, 1987), 7–28.

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Camp for Emigrants and Immigrants) at Marienfelde, in the American Sector. There, as at the other designated camps, Uelzen and Gießen, the refugees passed through the Bundesnotaufnahmeverfahren, the West German resettlement procedure for them. Its name is difficult to translate; the best translation is ‘Federal Admission Procedure in Circumstances of Need’. An admission committee in each of the camps interviewed the refugees and issued residence permits to them. They were given only a very small sum of ‘welcome money’; consequently, many faced a very hard existence and would be tempted to return to the DDR. It was essential that political refugees not do so and therefore the admission committee also decided whether or not the refugee had fled for political reasons; if he had, another certificate was issued entitling him to special financial assistance.³ The refugees were then allocated to the West German Länder and most flown out of Berlin. The Western Powers saw to it that spies defecting West, or people induced to defect, did not have to pass through a refugee camp.⁴ The refugees had to be flown to West Germany because the road and water routes across the DDR could be closed to prevent their passage. The legal basis for these routes was very slender as well. So the air routes were essential to the refugees’ escape and, as will be shown below, the refugees were essential to espionage and subversion. The air routes were therefore crucial to the Western powers in their efforts to undermine the DDR; they administered a double blow. But they were very vulnerable. They could easily be made very dangerous. They could either be filled with planes or radio interference could be used to disable air navigation aids and so prevent any flight at night or in bad weather. Flights in conditions of good visibility could supply the Allied garrisons indefinitely but not the population of West Berlin.⁵ As Chapter 9 shows, understanding the vulnerability of all the access routes is essential to understanding why Khrushchev’s ultimatum of November 1958 was so threatening to Western interests, and why the construction of the Berlin Wall took Western governments by surprise. Considering only refugees (so leaving aside more than 2 million expellees from Eastern Europe) and taking into account about 0.5 million migrants from West to East, East Germany suffered a net loss of approximately 2.75 million people between the end of the Second World War and the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. This was about one-sixth of its population. A large majority had been members of East Germany’s working population before their flight; about half were aged under 25.⁶ West Berlin was swamped with refugees. Driven by the suppression of the workers’ uprising in June 1953, some 300,000 people passed through the camp at Marienfelde in its first year of operation; approximately ³ Gesetz über die Notaufnahme von Deutschen in das Bundesgebiet, 22/8/1950, GVBl. Berlin 8/1, 1952. ⁴ Vernehmungsprotokoll, 27/4/1959, MfS-AU 600/59 (Band 1a), 153–8. ⁵ CIA Current Intelligence Weekly Summary, 30/4/1959, in D. Steury (ed.), On The Front Lines of the Cold War: Documents on the Intelligence War in Berlin, 1946–1961 (Washington, DC, 1999), 493–6. ⁶ H. Heidemeyer, Flucht und Zuwanderung aus der SBZ/DDR 1945/1949–1961: Die Flüchtlingspolitik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland bis zum Bau der Berliner Mauer (Düsseldorf, 1994), 42–53.

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150,000 passed through it annually in subsequent years. In the years 1955–7 East Germans could more easily obtain permits to visit West Germany, and used this opportunity to escape, but, in consequence, far fewer permits were issued from 1958 and West Berlin again became the refugees’ main way out, and remained so until the sectoral boundary there was closed in August 1961.⁷ Crises provoked waves of refugees. Immediately after ‘Osoaviakhim’ and the plant dismantlings that accompanied it, Intelligence Division interrogated all refugees who had worked in dismantled factories to find out what plant was being shipped to the USSR.⁸ The dismantling programme destroyed the jobs of those who worked at the factories concerned and drove many to seek work in West Germany. The refugees were questioned as they passed through the reception camps of West Berlin and West Germany; many of them were then given a full interrogation by the Western intelligence services. The first questioning, the ‘pre-screening’, concentrated on identifying a valuable source or a security suspect. The prescreening was part of the Federal Admission Procedure. Every refugee had to provide much information about himself. First of all, he filled in a long questionnaire giving personal information, naming his/her relatives in the DDR, Federal Republic, and West Berlin, stating the jobs he had had and the places where he had lived, and listing the parties and mass organizations of which he had been a member. He was then ‘pre-screened’ at the camp by Allied representatives (at a Sichtungsstelle). They questioned him about the information he had provided; the standard questions focused on political, social, economic, and military conditions in the DDR. If he seemed to any of them to be a security suspect or a valuable informant, he was taken to an Allied base for detailed and specialized questioning. Security interrogations were necessary because mass emigration was a double-edged sword. The penetration agents of the MGB and the MfS’s foreign intelligence service, the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA), gained access to West Germany by claiming to be refugees. The HVA owed many of its later achievements to such emigrants. Some of its agents were scientists or students of science, and almost all of them were successful in finding work at companies, universities, or research institutes of intelligence interest.⁹ The security interrogation was, in practice, compulsory; the intelligence questioning was not, and only half of the refugees asked to attend turned up. In West Berlin, refugees were taken daily from Marienfelde to the various Allies’ secretservice headquarters. Later a ‘Joint Allied Refugee Operations Center, Berlin’ was established, bringing together the intelligence services of the Allies and the Federal Republic. The Americans took refugees with useful information to their main interrogation centre, Camp King in Oberursel, near Frankfurt am Main, for ⁷ P. Major, ‘Innenpolitische Aspekte der zweiten Berlinkrise (1958–1961)’, in Hertle et al., Mauerbau, 99–101. ⁸ Instruction from Chief, Intelligence Division, 1/11/1946, FO 1031/68. ⁹ M. Wolf, Man Without a Face (London, 1997), 70; A. Silver, ‘Questions, Questions, Questions: Memories of Oberursel’, Intelligence and National Security, 8/2 (1993), 206–7.

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further questioning. Until the 1970s, a large proportion of them were interrogated there. Refugee interrogation in West Berlin was actually pioneered by the British in September 1948, during the Berlin Blockade.¹⁰ It yielded a mass of intelligence. Harry Rositzke, a CIA officer in Germany at the time, writes of refugee reports ‘flooding the military intelligence desks in Washington and the American zone’.¹¹ Most of this information was of little value; the West German Foreign Office claimed in 1956 that, according to its information, only about 6 per cent of the refugees had useful information. They also tended to provide information in very piecemeal fashion. However, the bits and pieces were fitted together to form a valuable fund of knowledge. Moreover, some of the information was very valuable: one British report of 1953 states that refugees provided ‘intelligence of great value to the Army on the order of battle, organization, and equipment of Soviet forces in the Eastern Zone’.¹² They also provided information useful in encouraging defection. Though chiefly a source of information on East Germany, the Soviets’ exploitation of its industry and mineral resources meant that many East German refugees shed some light on the USSR’s arms build-up. Some even provided information on the USSR itself. Refugee interrogation even extended to those from China. In all, there were more than 11 million refugees from the whole Bloc in the years 1945–61.¹³

Refugees, Espionage, and Induced Defection Many refugees were recruited as spies, for example in West Berlin or Camp King. They had clear advantages as spies: they knew the language of the target area and people with whom they could hide. Though they often agreed to spy for ideological reasons, for most the decisive factor was that, like the ‘Matchbox’ defectors, they were offered material benefits such as work or a visa to another country. All the Western secret services exploited West Germany’s resettlement procedure.¹⁴ Refugees who were not considered political refugees often had to endure terrible hardship. Spies recruited from among them were sent back into the DDR and other Bloc states. There they spied on or photographed a particular target (often one on which they had themselves provided information). Or they established a local network of spies by contacting people they knew to be anti-Communist, or whom other information established to be likely prospects. Or they found out who there was anti-Communist enough to be willing to work as a spy and brought them West for recruitment. It was also common to send them back from West Berlin to the job—perhaps in East Berlin—which they had just left, before their absence was noticed. Good ¹⁰ BK/A(56)12, ‘Allied Processing at Marienfelde Refugee Camp’, 23/8/1956, FO 1005/187; Appendix B to BK/A(56)14, 20/11/1956, FO 1005/187; Eichner and Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, 206–8. ¹¹ Rositzke, Secret Operations, 41, 45. ¹² JIC delegation report, 7/5/1953, DEFE 41/129. ¹³ A. Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence (London, 1963), 137. ¹⁴ Tätigkeits- und Auswertungsbericht der HA IX für November 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11206.

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sources were recruited in this way. A secretary who had worked for the central committee secretariat of the Liberal Democratic Party in East Berlin fled to the Western Sectors in April 1951, was questioned by the Americans, and asked to return to her job. This she did; under the codename ‘Marianne’ she reported on the party for the next eight years, until she was uncovered as a spy.¹⁵ A refugee who fled early in 1957 had worked as an export salesman at an important factory in East Berlin, the Elektro-Apparate-Werk, and provided information on it when questioned in the Marienfelde camp. The Americans recruited him as a spy, promising him that he would be given a good job in West Berlin as a reward. He returned to East Berlin and resumed work in the factory. He met his controller in West Berlin and supplied intelligence on the factory’s exports to and imports from both the Communist Bloc and the West. He also supplied the names of engineers and administrators whom the Americans could entice by letter to come to West Berlin, where they could be recruited. In September 1957 he finally defected and was given a job in West Berlin.¹⁶ This method was used against all the Bloc states and West Berlin was the infiltration point for all of them. A Polish refugee who made his way to the Marienfelde camp had a cousin in the Polish air force. He was sent back to Poland and told to bribe his cousin to fly an aircraft of the latest design to West Germany. If he did so, he would be paid 250,000 dollars. If he refused, he was to be supplied with invisible ink and a cover address so that he could send intelligence reports to the Americans.¹⁷ Refugees from the USSR were infiltrated back into it. Moreover, East German agents supplied with false identity documents also travelled to Poland and Czechoslovakia to spy on military and industrial installations there.¹⁸ They also identified infiltration routes over the DDR’s borders with the two countries.¹⁹ Poles living in France were recruited for espionage and smuggled into Poland via the DDR.²⁰ The intelligence interrogation focused in part on the people they knew; in intelligence parlance, these were their ‘connections back’ to the DDR (Rückverbindungen, in German). The refugees were asked to identify those they knew who might be sympathetic or useful to the West. The information they provided on former colleagues, friends, and relatives was the principal resource exploited by the Western secret services to build up their agent networks in the Bloc. Refugees who had had important jobs were the CIA’s ‘usual source for new . . . leads’ to possible agents behind the Iron Curtain.²¹ Other services used refugees of all kinds for this purpose. The refugee was usually asked to write ¹⁵ ¹⁶ ¹⁷ ¹⁸ ¹⁹ ²⁰ ²¹

Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11188. Vernehmungsprotokoll, 14/7/1959, MfS-AU 314/61 (Band 2). Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1957, MfS-HA IX, MF-11170. Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1956, MfS-HA IX, MF-11159. Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1956, MfS-HA IX, MF-11153. Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1956, MfS-HA IX, MF-11151. Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 351.

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a letter inviting a possible spy to meet him in West Berlin. He would give a telephone number so that the addressee could specify a place to meet. To defeat interception of the letter by the MfS, it would often be taken to the DDR by courier and there put in a postbox. The meeting would be held at a secure location and would be attended by an intelligence officer, well supplied with cigarettes or dollars, who would try to make the recruitment.²² The MfS’s records show that, considering arrested spies alone, hundreds were recruited in this way. The number of those approached is even greater: one single agent controller who, in the years 1948–55, built up a network for the French Deuxième Bureau, wrote to more than 350 East Germans inviting them to a meeting in West Berlin. Their addresses he had obtained from refugees in the Western Sectors and from search lists relating to homecomers.²³ Politics favoured the West: there were many East Germans who despised Communism enough to be willing to become Western spies. The only difficulties to be overcome in recruiting agents were to identify those East Germans who would be valuable spies and then organize a way of making the recruitment. The refugee stream was the principal way of doing the former; the refugees and West Berlin together allowed the latter to take place. Moreover, after May 1952 West Berlin was the main escape route from the DDR. In 1958, more than 75 per cent of all refugees made their way West via West Berlin. Consequently, from 1952 it both threatened the DDR with collapse owing to loss of population, and enabled the Western secret services to engage in spying and induce defection on a scale and with a degree of success which gravely undermined East Germany’s security and weakened that of the USSR. The assistance West Berlin gave to espionage and subversion is a further reason for the second Berlin crisis of 1958–61. Refugees were also systematically interrogated for their knowledge of people who in some way or other knew Soviet citizens. Of course, people they named were invited to West Berlin in the hope that they could be persuaded to bring their Soviet acquaintances there. If any Soviet turned up in West Berlin, the CIA or other Western service would, of course, hope either to recruit him as a spy or talk him into defecting. Almost all the social contacts between Germans and Soviets mentioned in the refugee interrogations were romantic or sexual relationships between East German women and Soviet men; in fact, most of the women were prostitutes. The Soviet authorities warned their people to keep clear of Germans of all kinds. As a rule, the men were so scared of visiting the Western Sectors that as soon as the girlfriend or prostitute suggested a trip there, he broke off all contact with her. To diminish this fear, the CIA turned to the anti-Soviet resistance organization NTS and had it spread leaflets in the DDR explaining how easy it was to cross into West Berlin from the Eastern Sector.²⁴ ²² Eichner and Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, 205–6; Schlußbericht, 5/3/1958, MfS-AU 253/59 (Band 7), 24–5. ²³ Tätigkeitsbericht für März 1958, MfS-HA IX, MF-11175. ²⁴ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 238–40.

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Refugee Interrogation and Economic Warfare An MfS report records that an engineer who fled to West Berlin in the late 1950s was considered promising enough as a source to be driven from Marienfelde to the British secret-service headquarters in Charlottenburg and to the American centre in Dahlem. The British interrogated him no fewer than eight or nine times. He had worked at an important factory for transformer manufacture in East Berlin and the questioning focused on its exports and the countries which bought them. He was also asked to provide information on officials at the factory and in industry and political life generally. His interrogators were particularly interested in a particular engineer who worked there, and the refugee was told to describe his character, his political opinions, his skills, and whether an approach could be made to him. Obviously, this was done either because he seemed as if he might be a promising spy or because, if induced to defect, he would be a loss to the factory. It was hinted to the refugee that, if he co-operated, the British would support his application to be recognized as a political refugee.²⁵ He later returned to the DDR and was interrogated by the MfS. Such lines of questioning served the West’s two main policies designed to weaken the East German economy: the embargo; and induced defection. East German propagandists during the Cold War likewise stressed that the Western Powers pursued a hostile trade policy so as to cause economic harm. Intelligence gathered on the East German economy was studied to find out whether the embargo was being complied with and to identify further weak points which could be exploited. Naturally, this meant that they wanted to know as much as possible about the DDR’s trade. Charisius and Mader, in their book Nicht Länger Geheim, claimed that during the 1950s the West German services sought to control trade between the two German states; at the end of that decade West Germany tried to make the DDR economically dependent on it so that political pressure could be brought to bear; in the 1960s and 1970s policy shifted towards influencing the DDR’s trade with advanced and developing countries, so retarding its technological development. In pursuit of all these policies, intelligence was constantly sought on exports and imports, international collaboration agreements, and research and development. A BfV interrogator who defected to the DDR, K. H. Falk, told an international press conference in 1961 that the previous autumn he and his colleagues had been ordered to concentrate their questioning of refugees, and in particular engineers, technicians, and planners, on bottlenecks in the economy, and above all in the heavy and mechanical engineering industries. The West German government was seeking to aggravate these weaknesses.²⁶

²⁵ MfS-Allg. P. 8086/76. ²⁶ A. Charisius and J. Mader, Nicht Länger Geheim (Berlin, 1980), 311–16.

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The Intelligence Obtained from the Refugees A mass of other intelligence was acquired from the refugees. Much was political and economic intelligence. They also provided information on the location and function of industrial and military installations in the Bloc, and on the strength, weaponry, and equipment of the armed forces there (Order-of-Battle intelligence, as it is called). If there were points about which refugees were not sure or about which more information was sought, they often wrote to friends or relatives still living behind the Iron Curtain for confirmation or further information.²⁷ Many refugees were low-grade sources. As with the released PoWs, well-briefed interrogation allowed significant conclusions on quite difficult scientific issues to be made on the basis of information provided by low-grade refugee sources.²⁸ However little information each refugee had, their sheer number allowed a precise, detailed, and up-to-date picture of the DDR’s scientific, industrial, and military institutions to be built up; this was, indeed, the aim of the procedure. The same was true of the other Bloc states and China. A quarter of a million people fled from Hungary after the bloody suppression of the 1956 Uprising. Eisenhower’s Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles, revealed that questioning them ‘brought us up to date on every aspect of technical, scientific, and military achievement in Hungary and gave us an excellent forecast of likely capabilities for years to come’. Many of the huge numbers of refugees from the DDR, China, and other Bloc countries were able to provide information of the same kinds and quality.²⁹ In addition to being very large, the flow of refugees was persistent and contained very good sources. As a British secret-service officer explained to an agent who was also reporting to the MfS, the information the West needed on what the DDR’s factories were producing was obtained from the refugees. Consequently, much of the spying effort went into the high-level penetration of the political and economic bureaucracy, to find out what policy decisions were being made.³⁰ British intelligence files show that this was correct; the refugee stream broke East Germany’s key factories open. Examples are the Tewa concern in Neustadt, which manufactured fine wire mesh for the Soviet atomic project, the Elektrochemisches Kombinat Bitterfeld,³¹ RFT-Köpenick,³² RFT-Arnstadt,³³ Jenapharm,³⁴ the Carl Zeiss works in Jena,³⁵ the Sachsenwerk-Radeberg,³⁶ the ²⁷ JIC(G) minutes, 20/9/1949, DEFE 41/64; J. Erdmann, ‘The Wringer in Postwar Germany’, in C. Egan and A. Knott (eds.), Essays in Twentieth-century American Diplomatic History Dedicated to Professor Daniel M. Smith (Washington, DC, 1982), 166. ²⁸ Director STIB, MI10 Conference 1951, DEFE 41/125. ²⁹ Dulles, Craft of Intelligence, 134. ³⁰ Information, MfS-HA IX 4350, 310. ³¹ STIB Interview Report No. 112 (Rudolf Schulze), DEFE 41/99. ³² STIB Interview Report No. 87 (Werner Noack), DEFE 41/98. ³³ STIB Interview Report No. 95 (Alfred Roehn), DEFE 41/98. ³⁴ STIB Interview Report No. 111 (Rudolf Seidel), DEFE 41/99. ³⁵ STIB Interview Report No. 121, DEFE 41/100. ³⁶ Berlin/1202, 8/3/1956, DEFE 41/136.

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EFEM factory in Berlin-Oberschöneweide,³⁷ and the Werk für Fernmeldewesen³⁸ (the former Oberspreewerk). Though not as good as an agent, refugees could provide information equivalent in value to one, especially if, over time, there was a steady stream of them from a particular target.³⁹ An example of a high-grade refugee informant who provided very precise technical information, equivalent to that of a well-placed agent, on a key scientifictechnical target was Nikolai Treu, who was interrogated in January 1951. He was a Volksdeutscher from Lithuania (he could therefore speak Russian as well as German) and an expert on weaving, who, in 1950, was appointed by the Soviet Control Commission as its inspector at the Tewa factory in Neustadt. Treu’s job was to check the wire mesh before it was sent off to the USSR. Both British and US intelligence were very interested in it, for the finest wire mesh, containing millions of submicroscopic openings per square inch, was used to separate the isotopes of uranium and so produce uranium-235, which is fissionable. They had come by news of the factory’s work before Treu’s flight. To retard the Soviet atomic programme, the CIA induced the defection of key workers at the factory.⁴⁰ Its agents even brought back samples of nickel wire mesh.⁴¹ In interrogation, he recalled the total size of the deliveries made to the USSR in 1951—approximately 103,000 square metres of fine wire mesh with 7,400 meshes per square centimetre, 85 per cent of it Grade 1 in quality—and knew the deliveries to be made in the first six months of 1952, which added up to some 75,000 square metres, 95 per cent of it Grade 1. The agency in Moscow which placed these reparations orders was ‘Rasno-import’, the Berlin office of which instructed the reparations office of the Soviet Control Commission to arrange for the required quantity of mesh to be made. He gave details of the weaving process and the width and tolerance of the meshes specified by the Soviets. The most important information he provided was that concerning the dimensions and technical characteristics of the wire mesh, for the likeliest use of such fine mesh was for isotope separation. He even told the British of experiments late in 1951 to increase the number of meshes per square centimetre to 15,000 so as to allow an even more efficient separation.⁴² Another example of a refugee who passed on intelligence of Soviet orders from a targeted factory was Kurt Steinfurt, who fled from the Werk für Fernmeldewesen. He told his interrogators of large Soviet orders for a particular series of metalceramic valves. He even handed over a list of valves which, in January 1954, had reached the stage at which production samples had been constructed, and he gave full technical details of the valves. This was sought-after information, for this was ³⁷ Berlin/1144, 8/2/1956, DEFE 41/137. ³⁸ STIB Interrogation Report No. 302 (Karl Martin), DEFE 21/41; STIB Interview Report No. 177 (Kurt Steinfurt), DEFE 41/115. ³⁹ Manders to JS/JTIC Chairman, 12/8/1948, DEFE 41/130. ⁴⁰ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 14. ⁴¹ Rositzke, Secret Operations, 43. ⁴² STIB Berlin Report Nos. 744 and 746, DEFE 21/44; STIB Interview Report No. 72 (Nikolai Treu), DEFE 41/97.

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a time of revolutionary development in electronics and valves were, in consequence, devices of considerable intelligence interest. A valve is essentially a switch. Controlling the flow of electrons and thus enabling commands to be given, large numbers of valves formed a crucial part of early computers, missile guidance systems, and proximity fuses (among other military applications). The invention in the United States in December 1947 of the transistor, which initiated the revolution in semiconductors which transformed electronics and gave birth to microelectronics, sounded the death knell of the valve. The transistor is a superswitch and rapidly replaced the valve in guidance systems and other technologies in the West.⁴³ It was essential to the emergence of the intercontinental ballistic missile as the key element in the strategic arsenals of the superpowers, because it allowed guidance systems to be developed which could direct warheads with great accuracy to their targets.⁴⁴ The transistor is smaller than the valve, more reliable, and much more efficient. The modern semiconductor is made up of racks of closely packed silicon transistors. Naturally, British intelligence sought information on East German attempts to develop the transistor, so as to determine how well the guidance systems of Soviet missiles and various other Soviet weapons and machines might function. With the same aims in mind, it also sought intelligence on valve production in the DDR. If the Soviet Bloc were still heavily reliant on valves, this would show that it was not keeping up with the electronics revolution in the West. Intelligence interest focused on R&D work on silicon and germanium for use in transistors and detectors, and on efforts to develop miniature and sub-miniature valves.⁴⁵ Much intelligence was obtained from refugees from electronics factories, as well as spies and West German business contacts, on East German valve production, and efforts to develop and manufacture transistors and semiconductors.⁴⁶ Another example of a useful source on electronics was Willy Liedtke, a skilled engineer and the director of the Magnetic Materials Laboratory at a telecommunications research laboratory in Berlin. Among his various jobs prior to his flight had been the position of secretary of a specialist committee on magnetic materials which drew its members from all over the DDR, and a position on the editorial board of the publication Funktechnik. In these capacities, he had travelled throughout the DDR and was therefore able to give the British much information about the principal electronics enterprises in East Germany, what they were making, and who was running them. He also brought a great number of technical papers with him. Liedtke told them, for example, that the EFEM factory was meeting orders from Moscow for very accurate measuring instruments; it was also ⁴³ G. Hartcup, The Silent Revolution: The Development of Conventional Weapons 1945–85 (London, 1993), 23. ⁴⁴ D. Holloway, ‘Military Technology’, in R. Amann, J. Cooper, and R. W. Davies (eds.), The Technological Level of Soviet Industry (New Haven, Conn., 1977), 446–7. ⁴⁵ STIB to STIB Berlin, 19/9/1955, DEFE 41/136. ⁴⁶ e.g., OLB/BL/57/298, 11/3/1957; OLB/BL/57/302, 18/3/1957; OLB/B/57/306, 26/3/1957; OLB/BL/57/320, 20/5/1957; OLB/BL/57/347, 5/7/1957, DEFE 41/141.

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working on secret tasks, involving research into alloys, in collaboration with an iron research institute in Leningrad. His interrogator, referring to the possibility of recruiting a source at the factory, then noted: Ober. Ing. Schierz of EFEM, who is said to be pro-West, works on Moscow orders for electro-magnetic test gear development. He told Liedtke that the Russians show particular interest in iron-cored moving coils of high sensitivity.⁴⁷

The Uranium Mines in the Erzgebirge The uranium mines in the Erzgebirge, in the south of the Soviet Zone, which were worked by tens of thousands of miners under the control of the MVD, have been aptly described as ‘a German Kolyma of sorts’.⁴⁸ Most of the miners worked there only under duress. Tens of thousands of people, most without any experience of mining, were compulsorily selected for mining work in the cities of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia, and sent to the Erzgebirge. Black marketeers, thieves, and people who had been caught trying to flee from the Zone were sent to the mines as punishment. With insufficient accommodation for them in the places to which they were sent, living conditions were very poor. But working conditions were even worse. Mining equipment was in very short supply, so for the most part they were required to excavate the shafts with pick-axes. No measures were taken to protect the health of the miners, who were exposed to radioactivity as well as to the severe and dangerous conditions of the mines. The work itself was very strenuous. Accidents were common and often fatal. Unlike those of the MVD in Siberia, the labour camps of the Erzgebirge were close to a border with the West. The result of the terrible conditions in the mines was mass flight. Refugee miners were valuable intelligence sources on the Soviets’ atomic project and the British interrogated them thoroughly.⁴⁹ Estimates of the USSR’s future atomic stockpile were based on their information. They were questioned about the location of uranium mines in Central and Eastern Europe, and their output of all grades of uranium mined, the efficiency of the processing plants in which low-grade ore was turned into concentrate, and the throughput of the depots to which the crude ore and concentrate were taken for transportation to the USSR. What atomic analysts thus sought to establish were the precise quantities of uranium ore and concentrate, and of their respective uranium contents, sent to the USSR. Samples of each grade of uranium were greatly prized. All the penetration of the mining and transportation organizations in the Soviet Bloc could achieve was an estimate of the amount of uranium transported East. It could not reveal how the Soviets planned to use it. However, information from German sources would provide some compensation for the lack of intelligence ⁴⁷ STIB Interview Report No. 117, DEFE 41/114 (my italics). ⁴⁸ Naimark, Russians in Germany, 239. ⁴⁹ ‘STIB: Review of Future Commitments’, 1/11/1949, DEFE 41/83.

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from the Soviet Union itself. It was believed that the USSR suffered from a serious shortage of uranium and that a large part of its supply came from its satellites. The British thought that this would be ‘the governing factor in [the Soviets’] programme’.⁵⁰ Consequently, an estimate of the amount of uranium mined in the Soviet Bloc would help to establish how many bombs the Soviets might be able to make, and thus answer the question put by the Chiefs of Staff to atomic intelligence analysts, ‘When would the Soviets have a stockpile of atomic bombs sufficient to justify the risk of open warfare?’⁵¹ For the British, as for the Americans, the chances of an aggressive Soviet foreign policy would increase as the USSR’s military capability grew. Two months before the first Soviet atomic test, the British were forecasting that, in the light of its ore supply, the USSR would probably have only seven bombs in mid-1953.⁵² Once the USSR started to test atomic weapons, monitoring the radioactive fallout from the tests provided further data with which to estimate the size of its atomic stockpile.⁵³ These data, while valuable, looked back, not forward: they enabled analysts to determine characteristics of weapons which had been tested but not to predict the power of future ones. Refugee miners provided the British with much intelligence on the progress and expansion of the mining work in the Erzgebirge and Jachymov mining areas. STIB held files on at least 54 separate Objekte (mines) there.⁵⁴ Some of this intelligence was penetrating. The miners revealed the existence of the shafts in which they had worked, those shafts’ yield of ore, and its quality. The reports abound with estimates of the amount of ore mined. For example, a source called ‘ECIC 14/234’, who had been made to transport ore from the Brüderlichkeit shaft at Jachymov (over the border in Czechoslovakia) between September 1947 and May 1948, informed his interrogators that the shaft’s ‘daily production, in three shifts, is 650 truckloads, i.e., about 3,000 to 4,000 kg of ore’.⁵⁵ Another source, ‘H-191’, gave the production targets for September 1948 of six different mines in the Freiberg area. Since only 60–70 per cent of the production quota was achieved, he estimated that some 2,300 tons of active ore had been mined in that month.⁵⁶ Some miners brought samples of uranium with them.⁵⁷ During the six years between 1947 and his flight in 1953, Hasso Spott had worked as an analyst in three successive analytical laboratories in Oberschlema and Chemnitz. This had given him wide experience of ore analysis in the Erzgebirge; particularly interesting to his interrogators were the three years ⁵⁰ Annexe to JS/JTIC(49)55, ‘Summary of Intelligence on Russian Development for the DRPC’, 22/6/1949, DEFE 41/150. ⁵¹ Commander Welsh, D.At.En., MI10 Conference 1952, DEFE 41/126. ⁵² Annexe to JS/JTIC(49)55, DEFE 41/150. ⁵³ S. Twigge and L. Scott, Planning Armageddon (Amsterdam, 2000), 240. ⁵⁴ STIB Technical Meeting minutes, 1/9/1950, DEFE 41/10; STIB file list, DEFE 41/29. ⁵⁵ STO/41/DE/48, DEFE 41/145. See also: STO/22/NO/48, STO/6/DE/48, and STO/25/ DE/48, DEFE 41/145; and JSJT/STO(49)21, JSJT/STO(49)53, JSJT/STO(49)58, JSJT/STO (49)59, JSJT/STO(49)74, and JSJT/STO(49)77, DEFE 41/146. ⁵⁶ STO/40/DE/48, DEFE 41/145. ⁵⁷ STIB Berlin Report No. 307, JSJT/STO(49)73, DEFE 41/146.

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(1947–50) he had spent as an analyst in laboratories engaged in the analysis of a complete range of concentrates and ores, first (1947–9) in the Central Uranium Laboratory at Oberschlema, and then (1949–50) in a laboratory at Chemnitz. This work had ceased in 1950 because it had been ordained, as a security measure, that no Germans could work in the Chemnitz laboratory in which he was then employed and he was transferred to another laboratory in the city, ‘Chemnitz 30’, which formed part of the Objekt 37 complex. Spott’s value as a source was all the greater since, during these years, he had specialized to an unusual extent in the analysis of uranium ores of high concentration. In consequence, he was very well informed on the ranges of concentration of uranium within the ore mined, and could provide reliable intelligence. Spott also gave his interrogators chapter and verse on the analysis procedure, and on laboratories and personnel engaged in the work of ore analysis.⁵⁸ Valuable intelligence was acquired when a high-ranking Wismut logistics officer—a Russian codenamed ‘Icarus’—defected to the Americans in June 1950. His information ‘greatly expanded US knowledge of the Soviet atomic program in East Germany’.⁵⁹ In particular, he had served in Moscow as well as East Germany, and was therefore able to name many Soviet personalities involved in the atomic project.⁶⁰ Flight of miners from the Erzgebirge was genuinely mass flight. One intelligence report, based on information obtained in one week in October 1948 and concerning mines in ten different places, set out the intelligence acquired from no fewer than 250 miners who had fled West.⁶¹ A year later, the stream had diminished considerably. An STIB document from October 1949 records that over the previous three months, ‘22 line crossers, mainly refugees via Berlin from the Uranium mines arrived’.⁶² The information they provided on the amounts of uranium ore yielded by the shafts they had worked was supplemented by information on uranium deposits throughout the Bloc obtained from pre-war geological surveys. Using these two types of information, the total amount of ore available to the Soviets was estimated and the number of atomic bombs they could make was calculated.⁶³ By 1949, intelligence on uranium mining in the Soviet Zone had convinced the Joint Committees that, ‘the Russians are obtaining more uranium from the Erzgebirge than was previously thought possible, but the scale of the effort which is being applied to extract the utmost from this area, where the average content is relatively low, is in line with the supposition that the Russians have no rich deposit within their territory’. Despite the amount of uranium which was being mined in the Erzgebirge, the Committees concluded that, ‘the Russian ore ⁵⁸ STIB Interview Report No. 132 (Hasso Spott), DEFE 41/100; STIB Interview Report No. 157 (Spott), DEFE 41/101. ⁵⁹ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 15. ⁶⁰ H. Lowenhaupt, ‘On the Soviet Nuclear Scent’, Studies in Intelligence (Fall 2000), 60. ⁶¹ STIB Berlin Report No. 312, STO/30/DE/48, DEFE 41/145. ⁶² S.O. (Ex) to Director STIB, 28/10/1949, DEFE 41/83. ⁶³ JS/JTIC minutes, 6/4/1949, DEFE 41/72; J. Prados, The Soviet Estimate: US Intelligence Analysis and Soviet Strategic Forces (Princeton, NJ, 1982), 22.

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supply position, as known at the present time, is quite inadequate to maintain two piles in operation continuously at full power’.⁶⁴ The mining in the Erzgebirge formed part of a gigantic search for uranium conducted by the MVD throughout Eastern Europe and the USSR. It may be owing to links between relatively easy intelligence targets in East Germany and much harder targets further East that British intelligence became aware of uranium mining and processing installations in Poland and parts of the Soviet Union. The reports on the USSR rightly focused on Central Asia. In mid-1950 STIB received two reports of a ‘possible concentration plant near the Tibetan border’.⁶⁵ It also received word of uranium mining in the Fergana Valley, in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.⁶⁶ Both pieces of information were correct. Small-scale mining operations had started in and around the Fergana Valley during the war.⁶⁷ One of the most important Soviet mines, that at Taboshary, lay in this region and mining there and elsewhere in Central Asia was extended after the war. At Chkalovsk in the Fergana Valley lay one of the processing plants operated by Combine No. 6. In 1947 a Jewish refugee had given the Americans the location of several concentration plants operated by the Combine in the region.⁶⁸ Both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan lie close to Tibet. A report was received that uranium was mined further south in Tajikistan, at Stalinabad. STIB even received news of the uranium mining being undertaken in Vladivostok. The reports received of mining in Poland were also correct: uranium mining began in Lower Silesia in 1947.⁶⁹

Homecomers (Heimkehrer) The refugee stream also contained Germans who had spent time in the USSR and provided information about goings-on deep within the main target itself. Many of the deportees of the years 1945–8 fled West after their return to Germany and were fished out of the refugee stream; the results of their interrogation are discussed in Chapter 8. Another German who supplied information on the Soviet Union was a 77-year-old retired bookkeeper called Alexander Koch, a Volksdeutscher born in Estonia. Since his wife was Russian, the two, then in Vienna, were forced to return to the USSR when the city was taken by Soviet forces in 1945. They were sent to a Volksdeutsche community at a place called Mikhailovka in the Altai region, north of Kazakhstan and not far from Mongolia. They made repeated applications to return to Germany and were finally allowed to go in April 1956. Arriving in Leipzig, they at once crossed over to Hannover ⁶⁴ Annexe to JS/JTIC(49)55, DEFE 41/150. ⁶⁵ STIB Technical Meeting minutes, 7/7/1950, DEFE 41/10. ⁶⁶ STIB Technical Meeting minutes, 8/3/1951, DEFE 41/10. ⁶⁷ T. Cochran, R. Norris, and O. Bukharin, Making the Russian Bomb: From Stalin to Yeltsin (Boulder, Colo., 1995), 8. ⁶⁸ Peebles, Shadow Flights, 173–4. ⁶⁹ STIB Technical Meeting minutes, 1/9/1950 and 24/11/1950, DEFE 41/10; Holloway, Stalin, 175–7; V. Gubarev, Arsamas-16: Wissenschaftler der geheimen russischen Atomstadt brechen das Schweigen (Berlin, 1992), 11.

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and were questioned. Koch said that on a day in August or September 1955 the community in Mikhailovka had heard a nuclear weapon being tested at a site which they thought was located some 400 kilometres to the south.⁷⁰ The nuclear testing site known as Semipalatinsk does indeed lie some 210 kilometres southsouth-west of Mikhailovka (it is in Kazakhstan, approximately 160 kilometres west of the city of Semipalatinsk).⁷¹ Moreover, on 2 August 1955 a fission bomb was tested there.⁷² However, the approximate location of the testing site had been known since the August 1949 atomic test. In the refugee stream were also former prisoners of the Soviet security police who had been forced to work in Sharashki, special institutes which formed part of prison camps and in which the expertise of the scientifically qualified was exploited. Some were people with knowledge of electronics or mechanics who had become prisonersof-war. Others were arrested by the MVD or MGB as they repressed the civil population of East Germany; some of these people were, sooner or later, deported to the USSR and put to work.⁷³ They had been made to work on security-related R&D projects which drove home the disturbed defensiveness of the Soviet state. Electronics was rightly seen as having a considerable role to play in ensuring Bolshevik-style security. Jean Clasen, an engineer who had worked at the political police’s Signals Research Institute at Kuchino, some 35 miles east of Moscow, reported that its research section was occupied chiefly with analysis and testing of American and British measuring apparatus, tape recorders, midget cameras, and midget transmitting and receiving sets.⁷⁴ Horst Lucius, another returnee from Kuchino, brought news of the work of another German prisoner there, Dr Gottfried Polster. His main project was the development of an apparatus to heal cancer by electro-medical means, but he was also working on the development of an electronic device for producing unconsciousness at a distance, using ultrasonic methods, and on ‘an apparatus for portraying the thoughts and mental inclinations of an individual, and for influencing them’. To his note of the last project, the source’s interrogator added the remark: It is perhaps noteworthy that the Soviets took this latter project quite seriously and spent considerable sums of money to purchase equipment for the project. Also, at regular intervals persons described by Informant as highly-placed scientists visited Polster and inquired after the progress of the work.⁷⁵

Perhaps Stalin was trying to read the minds of secret Trotskyists! However, all Polster’s projects went badly. The machine for producing unconsciousness was a particular flop. Not merely did it not bring about unconsciousness from a distance, it even failed to do so when the electrodes were applied to the head. He was sent off to Vorkuta to mine coal. ⁷⁰ OLB/B/57/287, 22/2/1957, DEFE 41/141. ⁷¹ Plate 43, The Times Atlas of the World, comprehensive edn. (London, 1992); Cochran et al., Russian Bomb, 11. ⁷² Holloway, Stalin, 323. ⁷³ STIB Interview Report No. 139 (Walter Pahl), DEFE 41/114. ⁷⁴ STIB Interview Report No. 153 (Jean Clasen), DEFE 41/114. ⁷⁵ STIB Interview Report No. 186 (Horst Lucius), DEFE 41/115.

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Another returnee from Kuchino who had been engaged on a variety of securityrelated tasks which reflected the Soviet regime’s virulent xenophobia was Dr Otto Maar. His research had formed part of the MGB’s infra-red development project. One application of infra-red of great interest to it was for securing the border. Maar had worked on the development of an infra-red warning set which was wanted by the Border Protection Service to guard the USSR’s immense borders. Maar’s job was to set an infra-red tripwire along them. Posts would be put up at intervals along the Soviet Union’s borders and beams of modulated infra-red radiation would be strung between them. Anyone breaking the beams would cause a relay on the receiver post to trip. Three models were developed, and Maar thought that one of them had been put into service, although he did not know whether it had been put into mass production. (The institute, though not Maar himself, had worked on the development of a barbed wire fence for the Border Protection Service: electricity was passed along the fence so as to hold to it any one who touched it.) Maar had also developed a test apparatus for checking parabolic mirrors, which were to be mass produced for the Border Protection Service. Another of his tasks was to work on the copying of infra-red telescopes seized from German tanks during the war. The Soviets learned how to make the AEG-type picture convertors used in the telescopes from an article in an American magazine, which described them in detail. The MGB was also concerned to secure the Soviet Union’s coast, which was to be done with sound rather than infra-red radiation. Submerged microphones were to sense the passage of ships overhead. However, Maar was instructed to cease work on this project, and he later heard that it had been abandoned altogether.⁷⁶

DEFECTORS Among the refugees were sources of particular value: Soviet defectors. Defection was a product of the Soviet system itself, a natural consequence of disaffection with Communist totalitarianism and the wretchedness of life in Stalin’s USSR, which contrasted ill even with war-shattered Germany. There had been inter-war cases of defection, but the number grew as soon as, in 1945, the Soviet Union acquired a border with the West. The Occupation of Germany brought the armies of the USSR and the Western Powers within sight of one another. All Soviet soldiers had to do was run for the Western lines. (Some even wandered over the Demarcation Line by mistake and were handed back, but not until any weapons or equipment they had brought with them had been carefully examined.) Desertion from the Soviet forces thus, for the first time, could have an intelligence benefit for the West. Indeed, the West discovered the defector in post-war Germany. ‘Defector’ became a term of art. In the eyes of JIC (London), all ⁷⁶ STIB Interview Report No. 188 (Otto Maar), DEFE 41/115.

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refugees, whether deserters or not, had two hurdles to jump before they qualified as defectors. They had to be ‘of considerable intelligence value’ and they had to fall within specific categories which it had established as being of intelligence interest. These categories, clearly, included scientists and high-ranking deserters from the Soviet armed forces, but not non-commissioned officers and ordinary soldiers.⁷⁷ Defection was such an important source of intelligence for the Western Allies that, when they came in 1952 to renegotiate their intelligence-gathering powers with the government of the Federal Republic, they demanded an exclusive right to handle Soviet and Eastern European defectors, and a prior right to interrogate former prisoners-of-war, refugees, and ‘line-crossers’ (East Germans who worked in West Germany or West Berlin). The West Germans gave them rights in relation to these people.⁷⁸ The Soviet armed forces lost a considerable number of troops through desertion in the late 1940s. Harry Rositzke relates that there were well over 500 defections of Soviet soldiers and civilians to the West between 1945 and 1951.⁷⁹ It was reported to the Joint Intelligence Committee (Germany) in August 1948 that over the previous year 65 Soviet deserters had passed through British hands, 20 of them being officers and 45 ‘Other Ranks’.⁸⁰ Until 1949, scores of Soviet troops defected to the British every year. The Americans received more deserters than the British did. The French received fewer than either because their Zone had no border with the Soviet Zone.⁸¹ The main value of deserters from the Soviet armed forces lay in the Order-ofBattle intelligence that they provided. Such intelligence was of great importance during the Blockade, for it indicated that Stalin did not intend war. Information from many deserters in the latter months of 1948 showed that Soviet army units were being maintained well below their full strength. In March 1949, all 22 Soviet divisions in East Germany were established to be below strength and only 14 of them could be operational immediately.⁸² However, deserters were disappointing as sources of technical intelligence. Soviet troops tended to be taught less about their weapons than were British or American troops, and so had less knowledge to pass on. Inevitably, they had to rely largely on memory. Many were not technically minded and had therefore made no effort to acquire knowledge which would have interested their interrogators. Such men obviously had no scientific intelligence to provide.⁸³ ⁷⁷ The JIC report in which a ‘defector’ was defined was JIC(49)107, which is referred to and, in part, quoted in the minutes of the JIC (Germany) meeting on 4 April 1950, DEFE 41/65. The report also laid down the policy of inducing the defection of Soviet and satellite representatives who fell within the categories of interest. Unfortunately, JIC(49)107, which should be in CAB 158/8, is stated in that file to have been retained by the Cabinet Office under Section 3(4) of the Public Records Act 1964. ⁷⁸ JIC(G) minutes, 12/2/1952, DEFE 41/67. ⁷⁹ Rositzke, Secret Operations, 40–1. ⁸⁰ JIC(G) minutes, 24/8/1948, DEFE 41/63. ⁸¹ JIC(G) minutes, 4/4/1950, DEFE 41/65. ⁸² JIC(G) minutes, 16/11/1948, DEFE 41/63; JIC(G) minutes, 29/3/1949, DEFE 41/64. ⁸³ Major Irwin, G(Int)BAOR, MI10 Conference 1952, DEFE 41/126.

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Nevertheless, deserters gave an insight into the weaponry and equipment they had handled. They revealed the existence of unknown weapons or pieces of equipment. For example, during the war 49 American SCR-584 radar sets had been supplied to the Soviet Union under Lend–Lease. It was natural to assume that the Soviets had copied the apparatus. Intelligence was acquired from at least one deserter supporting this assumption. He described a radar set called the Malakhit, which resembled the SCR-584 and which, it was thought, might be the Soviet copy.⁸⁴ One very interesting snippet of information, acquired in 1948 from a sergeant and chemical warfare instructor in a heavy tank regiment, called Dovorov, was that new filters, specially designed to protect against tabun, had been fitted to gasmasks issued to Soviet troops. Dovorov added that training in chemical warfare had been greatly increased during the course of 1948, indicating that the Soviet High Command gave greater importance to chemical warfare.⁸⁵ Another defector, Mikhail Fileonkin, without prompting, mentioned tabun as a standard gas and said that it was likely to be used in a future war.⁸⁶

Grigori Tokaev Grigori Tokaev, who defected to the British in Berlin in 1948, was an unusual Soviet defector in that he brought with him scientific intelligence and information on weapons development policy.⁸⁷ Prior to his defection, he had worked in the Air Force Department of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany. He claimed to have been its chief rocket scientist but, in fact, was an ordinary member of staff. He had never actually been involved in the Soviet rocket programme, though he had probably been engaged in studying German wartime achievements in rocketry on behalf of the SMAG. Matthias Uhl, in his studies of the Soviet rocket programme, therefore concludes that most of Tokaev’s information must have been hearsay.⁸⁸ This is a correct assessment. Nevertheless, some of it was accurate hearsay. That it did not come from his own knowledge was one reason why his interrogators gave his information only a ‘B’ rating. Another was that much was unconfirmed (indeed, some of it actually conflicted with intelligence already acquired).⁸⁹ The third was that from Germany he had had little insight into what was happening in the USSR. Nevertheless, he was the only source they had on the aims of Soviet guided missile development and his information was highly influential. He was also able to provide much useful scientific Order-ofBattle intelligence on Soviet long-range rocket research.⁹⁰ ⁸⁴ Capt. Harding, MI10C, MI10 Conference 1952, DEFE 41/126. ⁸⁵ STO/10/NO/48, DEFE 41/145. ⁸⁶ JSJT/STO(49)61, DEFE 41/146. ⁸⁷ He was from North Ossetia and Tokaev was a Russianized version of his actual surname, Tokaty, to which he reverted as a British citizen. His codename during his debriefing was ‘Excise’: see his debriefing reports (301/48, 302/48, 303/48, and 304/48) in DEFE 21/40 and DEFE 40/25. ⁸⁸ Uhl, Stalins V-2, 17; Uhl, Osteuropa (2001), 851 n. 14; cf. G. Tokaty, ‘Foundations of Soviet Cosmonautics’, Spaceflight, 10/10 (1968), 335. ⁸⁹ Para. 5, Paper 304/48, DEFE 40/25. ⁹⁰ Preliminary Note No. 24, DEFE 21/40.

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He gave some insight into the thinking behind the arms build-up ordered by the Soviet leadership. Though probably mere hearsay, this view of Soviet intentions was accurate. But it did not go far enough and so gave a distorted view of Stalin’s policy towards rocketry, one which greatly exaggerated the role that the German wartime missiles would play in it. From Berlin he, and whoever he had talked to, had had a poor view of the Soviet leadership’s intentions. So, crucially, he was unable to give his interrogators any insight into development work in the USSR itself. This was the key flaw in his information. It was perceived by his interrogators, who described his views as: ‘An unconfirmed opinion by a moderately well placed source as to the actual policy of the Politburo. This opinion . . . is almost certainly incomplete, but is probably accurate on a broad basis as far as it goes.’ They added that ‘the method of approach is indirect, speculative, and inherently liable to gross error, and its unsatisfactory nature is fully realised.’⁹¹ Hindsight shows this to be a good assessment, though it overrates Tokaev’s status in the SMAG. He confirmed that a transformation of Soviet armaments had been launched. The war had shown the Soviet leadership the superiority of German aeroplanes, and modern aircraft were to be put into service fast. In 1946 a Long-Range Air Force had been created; Stalin evidently aimed to make strategic use of large bombers. By 1953 the Soviets had deployed approximately 1,000 of their copy of the B-29, the Tu-4, and were manufacturing 10–25 a month. This air force became a key intelligence target.⁹² Furthermore, the Soviet leadership was giving close attention to long-range missiles. The Soviet Union had carried out no development work on guided missiles until its forces overran the development and production facilities of Eastern Germany. There it found striking evidence of the superiority of German military technology. The Soviet leadership’s overriding aim was to acquire such technology fast. Its emphasis on speed was partly motivated by the foreign policy imperative of being as strong as possible and partly by the propaganda value of putting such weapons into service quickly. Very influentially, Tokaev maintained that the immediate Soviet aim was to make, as quickly as possible, a Soviet version of the V-2 which was more accurate than the original German weapon. This accorded with the JIC’s prediction in 1947.⁹³ Concurrently, longer term research was to proceed, with the aim of creating a guided rocket, probably winged, with a very much longer range. Basing its conclusion to a significant extent on the intelligence Tokaev had provided, a joint British–American conference concluded, in March 1949, that these were the aims of Soviet development of surface-to-surface missiles. Tokaev’s interrogator quoted him as saying that: The immediate aim of the Soviets is to get a selection of reasonably effective guided weapons into service as soon as possible. . . . To this end they are prepared to accept relatively unsatisfactory weapons which are available to-day, rather than to wait for greatly

⁹¹ Paras. 3–4, Appendix Q, Soviet Missile Programme Study, DEFE 41/160. ⁹² Prados, Soviet Estimate, 39–40. ⁹³ JIC(47)7/2, CAB 158/1.

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improved designs which may not be ready for many years. The only way in which the Soviets could achieve this aim was by exploiting German weapons which were in operation or in an advanced stage of development at the end of the war . . . [as modified by] such improvements to accuracy and range as would be possible in a relatively short time. Source is most insistent that the Soviets will go for modifications which show some improvement and can be achieved quickly rather than for those which promise the greatest dividends in theory. The Soviets also intend to carry out long-term research concurrently with the programme of immediate development.⁹⁴

British and American analysts adopted this explanation of Soviet missile development policy because it was consistent with their intelligence of Soviet exploitation of German missile know-how and they had no other intelligence of Soviet intentions.⁹⁵ They had intelligence from four main sources, all of which pointed to the importance of German designs: Tokaev; penetration of Soviet projects exploiting German expertise and technology in the Eastern Zone; German ex-prisoners-ofwar who provided information on what they had observed when employed in reconstruction work in the USSR; and intercepted letters sent by Germans in the Soviet Union. In addition to this, intelligence analysts had only their knowledge of German achievements in rocketry. In 1949 the available sources on Soviet rocketry were both inadequate in quality and quantity and deteriorating. Tokaev’s knowledge was limited and so distorted the reality. Although the manufacture of an improved V-2 was an immediate aim, it was not the Soviet leadership’s main aim. This was that Soviet missile designers should make longrange missiles to defend the USSR against the new Glavnyi Protivnik (Main Adversary), the USA. The development of long-range missiles was the main aim of the plan for rocket development prepared at the end of 1946. Sergei Korolev, the leading Soviet missile designer, told his design team in March 1947 that they had been instructed to develop missiles ‘with a range many times greater’ than that of the V-2 (the maximum range of which was 300 kilometres). Set such a demanding task, Korolev planned to explore novel designs—precisely what Tokaev had said Soviet missile designers would not do.⁹⁶ Indeed, late in 1946 Soviet planners drew up a very ambitious twenty-year plan for rocket development, which envisaged the development of a full range of missiles by 1965: surface-to-surface, surfaceto-air, air-to-ground, air-to-air, air-to-ship, and even a missile which would fly into space and serve as a satellite.⁹⁷ Exploitation of sources available in Germany, while better than nothing, permitted only a shallow penetration of Soviet weapons development. The result was a distorted picture. So Tokaev encouraged his debriefers to underestimate the USSR’s missile engineers. They inclined in this direction anyway. Very impressed, as they were, with German achievements in rocketry, both the British and the Americans ⁹⁴ Para. 11, Appendix Q, Soviet Missile Programme Study, DEFE 41/160. ⁹⁵ Summary, ibid., DEFE 41/160. ⁹⁶ Holloway, Stalin, 246–9. ⁹⁷ Uhl, Stalins V-2, 193.

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assumed that the Soviets would aim to improve the models designed and developed by the Germans. Consequently, they assumed that the effort allotted to short-term research is concentrated on the German missiles, and hence that during the next five years no purely Soviet-designed missile will appear. This assumption is held to be fully justified by the evidence presented.⁹⁸

This assumption was wrong. Although it was rightly predicted that, in the immediate future, Soviet missiles would not depart fundamentally from German designs, Soviet ability to develop their own designs was gravely underestimated. The Americans were particular sinners. A British paper criticizing the Americans’ approach summarized it as follows: ‘The American approach has . . . been to superimpose factual intelligence upon the framework formed by their assessment of what constitutes the optimum development of German projects.’ Since there was no consideration by the Americans of Soviet intentions, such an approach tended ‘to turn what is an estimate of technical ability into an estimate of Russian intention’.⁹⁹ Consequently, the Americans were assuming that the Soviets intended to achieve all that was technically possible within the framework of the Peenemünde designs. Since they took those designs as their framework for development, they tended to set them in stone. Such an assumption of maximum aim was also made in the 1950s in estimating Soviet bomber and missile strength and led to claims, particularly on the part of the USAF, of bomber and missile ‘gaps’.¹⁰⁰ Tokaev could not, and did not, reveal how high was the priority given to intercontinental missiles in the development plan drawn up at the end of 1946, nor how quickly Soviet designers had been instructed to make them, nor how vast were the resources which would be made available to them to ensure that they achieved success. He does not seem to have been aware of the plan. All he provided was an indication that Stalin was trying to develop long-range missiles. Thus he did make them aware of the strategic importance of rocketry to the Soviet leadership as a means of offsetting American possession of strategic air power and the atomic bomb. To underline this point, he claimed that, in 1945, he and others had discovered in Germany notes made by a scientist called Eugen Sänger for a supersonic, long-range, very-high-altitude, rocket-boosted bomber. Sänger had called his design the ‘antipodal bomber’ and, rather like the Space Shuttle today, it was a cross between a missile and an aeroplane. It had two rocket engines. Unlike the Space Shuttle’s rockets, neither became detached from the craft in flight. A set of rocket boosters, with 1,345,000 pounds of thrust, took it out of the earth’s atmosphere at 1,000 miles per hour. Unlike the Space Shuttle, it took off horizontally, travelling along a slightly inclined ramp some 3 kilometres long. The bomber’s own rocket engine, with 220,000 pounds of thrust, then powered it, at 13,700 miles per hour, to its targets. It would then drop its bomb load of 6 tons. ⁹⁸ Para. 15, Summary, Soviet Missile Programme Study, DEFE 41/160. ⁹⁹ DSI/JTIC(52)16, ‘Anglo-American Guided Weapons Conference’, 28/7/1952, DEFE 41/153. ¹⁰⁰ F. Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon (New York, 1983), 155–73.

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The whole raid would take 80 minutes. Tokaev regarded the idea as ‘semiUtopian’, but claimed that the Kremlin was very interested in it—so much so that he was summoned to discuss it with Malenkov and others, in April 1947. He also claimed that he was ordered to brief Stalin himself the following day and that Stalin insisted that such a rocket plane be constructed immediately. Whether either claim is true is very uncertain. However, there were indeed meetings on missile development in the Kremlin in April 1947 and recent research has established that Stalin took a close interest in the subject. Moreover, that very month Khrunichev, the Minister for Aircraft Production, and Air Marshal Vershinin reported to Stalin on the design, urging him to order further work on it and to offer Sänger the opportunity of working in the USSR.¹⁰¹ Tokaev’s information was of some use. According to Wernher von Braun and Frederick Ordway, Sänger’s idea did stimulate other rocket development projects in both the Soviet Union and the United States.¹⁰² Tokaev provided scientific Order-of-Battle intelligence on places of great interest. He named installations engaged in the design and manufacture of aircraft. He identified the leading centre, in Leningrad, for the production of gyros for missile guidance. It was he who first indicated to the British the approximate location of the great guided missile testing site, Kapustin Yar, which lies on the steppes beyond the Volga, some 75 miles east of Stalingrad. Tokaev had only heard that a testing site had been established, and could not give its precise location, but believed that it lay ‘in the lower Volga area between Stalingrad and Astrakhan’. Such a choice made sense: this region had good railway and water links with the main industrial areas of the USSR, while to the east of it lay desert and the Caspian Sea, constituting a suitable wilderness for test-firing.¹⁰³ The scientific Order-of-Battle intelligence Tokaev provided allowed the British–American conference to estimate the rate of Soviet guided missile development. For he was their principal source on the facilities and resources available to Soviet missile projects, which would act as constraints on them. To make rapid progress, the Soviet programmes would need a generous allocation of highly skilled scientific and technical manpower; research and test facilities, such as supersonic wind tunnels; development facilities, such as measuring equipment and test sites; and industrial support sufficient to provide the projects with large quantities of precision-manufactured equipment, including all the components of the missiles designed (unless these components were obtained from abroad). With regard to each of these factors, Tokaev provided intelligence of constraints which would hold Soviet missile projects back. He rightly said that guided missile ¹⁰¹ Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 208. ¹⁰² Preliminary Note No. 20, DEFE 21/40; G. Tokaev, Stalin Means War (London, 1951), 115–17; Holloway, Stalin, 423 n. 183; W. von Braun and F. Ordway III, History of Rocketry and Space Travel (London, 1967), 119. ¹⁰³ Paras. 43–4, Appendix Q, Soviet Missile Programme Study, DEFE 41/160; cf. Richelson, American Espionage, 139; J. Schecter and P. Deriabin, The Spy Who Saved the World (Washington, DC, 1995), 70.

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research enjoyed a high priority, and that skilled manpower had therefore been transferred to it from general aeronautical research. But he indicated that these people retained their previous jobs, which would limit the amount of time they could devote to their new responsibilities. Anyway, the USSR suffered from a shortage of engineers experienced in missile development. Supersonic wind tunnels were essential to guided missile development; Tokaev told his interrogators that the USSR suffered from a severe lack of them. Such intelligence as there was on other essential equipment, such as large digital computers, indicated that, in the years immediately after the war, the Soviets were far behind the West. They were probably trying to catch up in these fields, but that would take time. It was therefore ‘unlikely that the USSR is in a good position to undertake the design of radically new missiles at the present moment’.¹⁰⁴ Just as crucial to progress was a testing site and measuring equipment to record the behaviour of the missile from launch to impact. Tokaev believed that small-scale test firing had begun at the range in the lower Volga region in the summer of 1947. He was probably right: the first important set of test firings was held there in October and November 1947. (Significantly, among those who test fired the missiles and observed the tests were German rocket engineers deported to the Soviet Union in Operation ‘Osoaviakhim’ who would later return to Germany.) The British–American conference concluded that neither the test installations there nor the staff operating them could, as at March 1949, have reached the standard of efficiency attained at Peenemünde. The Soviets might reach that standard later in 1949, but until they did the testing staff and range could give only limited support to the project of which they formed an essential part. As far as industrial support for the programme was concerned, the conference believed that, owing to Soviet backwardness in valve manufacture, large-scale aircraft, ground radar, and guided missile development projects could not be sustained concurrently. Nevertheless, by massive application of resources the Soviet war economy did sustain them. Indeed, by the early 1950s the Soviets were both designing missiles by themselves and manufacturing them on a small scale.¹⁰⁵ The highly bureaucratic nature of the Soviet system of management of science would prevent missile projects from making quick progress; Tokaev was an early source of information on structural weaknesses in the Soviet system. Strict security measures would hinder the exchange of ideas between research workers in different institutes. Scientific research also had to yield politically correct results. Strict surveillance sapped the morale of the leading scientists and engineers and the risk of arrest for ‘sabotage’ if they failed to meet planned targets was everpresent. Tokaev maintained that insistence on the need to fulfil the Plan caused scientists to play safe and keep the tasks allotted to them within the bounds of what they knew to be achievable. Sometimes they even withheld publication of ¹⁰⁴ Para. 34, Appendix Q, Soviet Missile Programme Study, DEFE 41/160. ¹⁰⁵ Uhl, Stalins V-2, 192–202.

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research results so as to avoid being given further tasks. Another source (probably ‘Wildcat’) agreed with him that this placed Soviet scientists under terrible strain, maintaining that it reduced their efficiency by some 50 per cent. Knowledge of what went on in Soviet research institutes was at this time so limited that ‘Wildcat’ was asked to write a report on how the director of one and a member of the scientific staff spent an ordinary day. The British–American conference concluded that it was in the nature of Soviet research to proceed less quickly than Western research. As they put it, ‘the cumulative effect of these adverse factors cannot be ignored, and it suggests that man for man the output of Soviet research is likely to be somewhat below that of Western countries’. However, it was thought important not to be too smug, and so the conference concluded more cautiously that, ‘in general, considering the personnel situation only, the rate of Soviet progress is unlikely to exceed that of the West on an over-all basis’.¹⁰⁶ This was a theme which would be taken up by later intelligence. For their part, the Joint Committees realized that, thanks to the command system, Soviet weapons development projects could quickly be successful. Nevertheless, overall they thought the free system better, concluding in 1949 that It seems certain . . . that the scientific potential of the USSR, though immense in numbers, is in fact less formidable than it appears. It is perhaps a reasonable further deduction that, while much competent and original work is being and will continue to be done, Soviet scientists are unlikely to rise to the greatest heights of scientific thought and imagination, from which the major advances in human knowledge proceed.¹⁰⁷

Influenced by all of these considerations, the British–American conference underestimated the speed of Soviet missile development. It suggested that an improved version of the V-2, with a range of 500 kilometres, might be ready for pilot production by 1952, at the earliest. In fact, the R-1, which was an improved V-2, went into service with the Soviet Army in 1950. The R-2, a much-improved V-2 with a range of 600 kilometres (twice that of the V-2 or R-1), was put into service in 1951. A few prototypes of a lengthened V-2 with a range of 600 kilometres had been made at the Nordhausen-Bleicherode missile development complex in 1946, and news of them had reached the British. However, the British–American team believed that, although it would be possible for the Soviets to develop the design to completion, they would need ‘a considerable period’ to do so.¹⁰⁸ And Korolev’s plans were greater still. In March and April 1953 (within the five-year period the British and Americans thought would yield only Soviet rockets derived from German models) his R-5 was flight-tested. It went into service later that year. It was strikingly different from the V-2, having a separable nose cone, integral fuel tanks, and a range of 1,200 kilometres. By contrast, the British–American team had thought that the longer range, winged version of ¹⁰⁶ Paras. 23–4, Appendix Q, Soviet Missile Programme Study, DEFE 41/160; ‘Wildcat’ Preliminary Note 8, DEFE 41/120. ¹⁰⁷ Annexe to JS/JTIC(49)55, Section VI, DEFE 41/150. ¹⁰⁸ Para. 80, Appendix D, Soviet Missile Programme Study, DEFE 41/160.

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the V-2, the A-4b, could not be put into service until 1955, since its development demanded wind-tunnel facilities which did not exist in the USSR in 1947. Starting from the wrong assumption, and armed in fact with evidence too weak to justify the conclusions reached, the British and Americans greatly underestimated the Soviets’ ambition and skill in the guided missile field and consequently the speed of their development. Even by 1954 they had not corrected this mistake.¹⁰⁹ Their misconceptions applied not only to Soviet intentions but also to the USSR’s capability. They doubted whether Soviet industry was capable of manufacturing the fine machinery and equipment required on the necessary scale.¹¹⁰ Late in 1949 the British received their first defector with atomic intelligence, codenamed ‘Gong’. Useful information was obtained from him but, again, it was very limited. In the early years of the Soviet atomic project he had worked at the heart of Soviet scientific research: at several institutes of the Academy of Sciences. For a time he had worked under a professor called Dmitri Petrov on isotope separation by gaseous diffusion—an activity of direct relevance to the construction of an atomic bomb. From him, his interrogators learned which agency directed the Soviet atomic project. Late in 1946, he recounted, the Institute of Physical Chemistry in Moscow had been ordered to carry out special research for the First Chief Directorate of the Council of Ministers. He also provided useful information typical of a scientific source: information on people. In 1947 his work had taken him to a ‘Special Laboratory’, in another part of Moscow, which he believed worked on the separation of isotopes by gaseous diffusion (later intelligence established that this was Special Laboratory No. 2). He knew who the deputy director of the laboratory was—Professor Isaak Kikoin—because he had talked to him. The conclusion correctly drawn from this was that Kikoin directed efforts to enrich uranium by gaseous diffusion for the atom bomb project. Indeed, ‘Gong’s’ superior, Petrov, had published papers relevant to gaseous diffusion; these showed the lines along which he was thinking. ‘Gong’ also knew of two other Special Laboratories which worked for the First Chief Directorate.¹¹¹

The Inducement of Defection The British and American intelligence services adopted a policy of inducing defection because of its intelligence benefits as well as the damage it would do to research and development. Tokaev’s defection brought home to British Scientific Intelligence the potential intelligence value of Soviet defectors. By June 1948 the Joint Committees were emphasizing to the Joint Intelligence Committee the ‘urgent need to avail ourselves of all possible means of encouraging scientific ¹⁰⁹ Para. 371, DSI/JTIC Report No. 13, April 1954, ‘USSR-Guided Weapon Development’, DEFE 44/2. ¹¹⁰ Blount to Evans, 6/3/1951, DEFE 41/124. ¹¹¹ Lowenhaupt, Studies in Intelligence (2000), 59, 65–6; JS/JTIC minutes, 15/11/1949 and 21/12/1949, DEFE 41/73; JS/JTIC minutes, 15/3/1950, DEFE 41/74. His real name seems to have been Balashov.

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defectors’.¹¹² The JIC had adopted a policy of inducing defection by September 1948; in that month JIC (Germany) considered a paper from it stating the categories of ‘foreign nationals’ who should be encouraged to defect. A working party charged with considering how Soviet Bloc representatives might be induced to defect seems to have been set up at the same time. A little later, the JIC gave authorization for such operations to proceed.¹¹³ British policy towards defection, which was co-ordinated with that of the Americans, had a military focus: induced defection was designed to obtain scientific and military (Order-of-Battle) intelligence. MI6 targeted scientists and ‘high-grade Service defectors’. There was particular interest in Soviet scientists holding important positions in East German industry and science. Such people worked as factory directors or in research institutes, and would be able to provide intelligence both on East German projects and on Soviet R&D. Tokaev’s defection provoked interest in inducing the defection of people who could provide information on missile technology. It was believed that they would probably be able to provide ‘the best information on Russian policy and intentions’.¹¹⁴ There is no evidence that such a source was persuaded to defect. In a number of fields induced defection seemed more likely than any other measure to yield information on war-related R&D. Until that time, all the Soviet defectors who had come over to the British had done so entirely unprompted and a relatively small number of them had provided intelligence which compared very well with that acquired from all other sources.¹¹⁵ This reflects how closed and secretive the Soviet system was. A defector with knowledge of Soviet electronics was much sought after, but even by October 1951 none had come over. ‘Everything possible must be done to encourage the defection of such a man’, said the DSI.¹¹⁶ It was only in the early 1950s that the CIA adopted a policy of inducing the defection of Soviets for the intelligence it yielded. It preferred to obtain intelligence from spies and considered induced defection an inferior option. If a Soviet official defected, then all the people he knew would come under suspicion of espionage and it would be harder to recruit them. However, the Korean War caused fear that war might be imminent; in particular, it was feared that West Germany might be invaded, as South Korea had been. There was therefore an urgent need for intelligence on Soviet military intentions. The intelligence value of defectors was clear; by this time the agency obtained more information on the Soviet regime from defectors who came over unprompted than from any other source. Moreover, as was shown in Chapter 1, there was strong support at the very top of the US government for a strategy of inducing defection. So in 1950 the CIA ¹¹² JS/JTIC minutes, 30/6/1948, DEFE 10/493. ¹¹³ JIC(G) minutes, 24/9/1948 and 5/10/1948, DEFE 41/63; JIC(G) minutes, 23/10/1951, DEFE 41/66; JIC(G) minutes, 22/1/1952 and 17/4/1952, DEFE 41/67. ¹¹⁴ JS/JTIC(49)43, ‘Guided Weapons Intelligence’, 16/5/1949, DEFE 41/150. ¹¹⁵ Lang-Brown to Neville, 6/9/1949, DEFE 40/26. ¹¹⁶ DSI/JTIC(51)16, ‘The Improvement of Intelligence on Soviet Electronics’, 19/10/1951, DEFE 10/498.

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initiated a worldwide operation, codenamed ‘Redcap’, to entice Soviet citizens to come West. ‘Redcap’ had two prongs. The targeted Soviet would first be asked to become an agent-in-place; only if he refused and insisted on defecting would the CIA help him do so. West Berlin was the great base from which defection operations were conducted. The Americans’ position in the city was very valuable to the operation, since a mighty Soviet army was close by. Like the British, the CIA’s Berlin Operations Base targeted scientists in East Germany (including atomic scientists), soldiers in all the main Soviet garrison areas, officials of the Soviet Control Commission, and prominent intelligence officers. The names of suitable East German intermediaries—generally prostitutes and women romantically involved with Soviet officials—and information about them, were obtained, often from refugees. Those named were then invited to visit West Berlin.¹¹⁷ Shortly after British intelligence adopted a policy of enticing the defection of specific and particularly valuable types of informant, it was forced into a general effort to entice Soviet soldiers to come over to the West. The hostility between East and West, and the universal feeling that war might be near, brought about by the Berlin Blockade caused the number of unprompted defections from the Soviet armed forces to fall sharply. This decline began during the crisis and continued thereafter. By the beginning of 1949 the number of defections to the British had gone down considerably. There was a fitful trickle of deserters in the spring and early summer of that year. December 1949 was the first month in a period of two and a half years in which not a single defection to the British Zone from the Soviet armed forces took place. No defectors came over in the following two months either. The position was the same in the American Zone and in Austria. At a technical intelligence conference in June 1952, it was reported that there had been only two defections from the Soviet army to the British Zone of Austria since November 1948. Consequently, the British badly lacked intelligence of the troop strength of Soviet units.¹¹⁸ They reacted by trying to stimulate a flow of deserters from the Soviet forces in East Germany. They made use of one simple tool above all in doing so: radio. From 1949 the BBC stressed in its broadcasts to Germany that deserters from the Soviet armed forces who sought political asylum in the British Zone would not be handed back, and people who had already deserted broadcast an approving view of life in Britain to their former comrades in the Soviet Zone. At one stage, broadcasts by Soviet defectors were going out at the rate of two a week. The Russian Service of the BBC carried similar programmes for the benefit of any Soviet soldier in Germany who tuned into them. Deserters who had fled to the American Zone were lent to the British so that they could provide further material for the propaganda campaign. Such broadcasts were intended to contradict the Soviet ¹¹⁷ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 238–40, 248–56. ¹¹⁸ JIC(G) minutes, 14/2/1949, 4/3/1949, and 10/5/1949, DEFE 41/64; JIC(G) minutes, 10/1/1950 and 21/2/1950, DEFE 41/65; Silver, INS (1993), 212; Capt. Hallett, Int. Org. BTA, MI10 Conference 1952, DEFE 41/126.

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propaganda then current, which was directed at their own people and put about the lie that the Western Allies handed back all Soviet deserters. The BBC’s programmes were relayed by Nordwest Deutscher Rundfunk and an Austrian radio network. The BBC even agreed to put together, twice a year, a pocket-sized Russian edition of its magazine, ‘The Listener’, which would present its best broadcasts. Those by defectors would feature prominently. This publication was put on sale in Berlin, Brussels, Paris, and Ankara, and it was naturally hoped that it would find its way to the DDR. But the British propaganda campaign, managed by the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office and waged from the early summer of 1949, made use of all possible channels to put the message across. A publicity campaign was conducted in the press. Journalists closely connected with the IRD turned interviews with deserters into articles publicizing the policy of asylum. Articles on the theme were placed in the West German, Dutch, and Scandinavian press, although the West German press was very reluctant to serve as a British propaganda organ in this respect. That the British did not hand back deserters was made known throughout the Soviet Zone by means of the clandestine distribution there of pamphlets in Russian and the despatch of letters to particular people. At the time almost no Soviet troops were deserting to the British at all. It soon became obvious that these broadcasts were having little effect. The importance of the operation was such that the British persisted with it despite consistent disappointment. Naturally, the Soviets took counter-measures to stop desertion. The British stepped up their campaign. On 1 September 1952 the BBC began to transmit a service in Russian to the Soviet Zone and even more leaflets than before, directly inciting Soviet soldiers to desert, were covertly distributed in the DDR. Despite such special measures, the period of the operation had by this time seen only a handful of defectors, most of whom returned to the USSR, and was abandoned. Examination of the cases of defection showed that the majority had only come over because they were in some kind of trouble.¹¹⁹ However, secret approaches to highgrade sources—scientists and army and KGB officers—continued. Defectors offered opportunities for intelligence collection and subversion which the Western secret services had to seize. The repressiveness of the Communist police state hampered their work in many ways. However, it gave rise to resistance and flight, which benefited Western intelligence and which it thoroughly exploited. The opportunities for assisting resistance and receiving refugees were greatest where the border with the Bloc was open, as it was in Germany and above all in Berlin. However, the scientific defectors who came over to the West were not well informed enough to reveal how fast key weapons projects were progressing. Indeed, they tended to confirm deep-seated assumptions about Soviet scientific and technological inferiority. Korolev and his colleagues were underestimated ¹¹⁹ JIC(G) minutes, 10/5/1949, 9/8/1949, 30/8/1949, and 18/10/1949, DEFE 41/64; JIC(G) minutes, 10/1/1950, 14/3/1950, 25/4/1950, 10/5/1950, 17/7/1950, and 19/9/1950, DEFE 41/65; JIC(G) minutes, 23/1/1951 and 17/4/1951, DEFE 41/66; JIC(G) minutes, 22/1/1952 and 21/10/1952, DEFE 41/67; interview with Sir Peter Wilkinson, former deputy head of the IRD.

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for years, even as they were moving ahead of American development. Though the British saw that the command system could speed projects up, they likewise assumed that the Soviet bomb project could not be making faster progress than theirs. Intelligence was too poor to correct this mistake and the British were surprised by the first Soviet atomic test, three years before their own.¹²⁰ ¹²⁰ M. Goodman, ‘British Intelligence Estimates of the Soviet Nuclear Weapons Programme and their Impact on Strategic Planning, 1945–1958’, Ph.D. thesis (Nottingham, 2004), 102–3.

3 Other Key Sources of Intelligence BRITISH–AMERICAN COLL ABORATION AND INTELLIGENCE EXCHANGE The British and Americans increased the amount of intelligence they obtained on the Soviet Union by exchanging it. This they did in relation to their intelligence activities worldwide: the post-war years saw agreements for the exchange of signals intelligence, air-target intelligence, naval intelligence, military intelligence, and more. The most famous of these agreements is the UKUSA Agreement to cooperate in the gathering of communications intelligence, concluded between the USA, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in 1948. One of its main aims was to gather scientific and technical intelligence.¹ The difficulty of gathering intelligence on the USSR required collaboration, and the successful example of the Second World War encouraged it.² It made particular sense to collaborate in Germany. It offered more opportunities than anywhere else and collaboration would yield a very large volume of intelligence. Moreover, it would prevent them from undermining one another’s operations. Collaboration between the British and Americans was close; the Americans involved the West Germans in it as well. In 1946, the US army created a German spying agency, the Gehlen Organization, to help it penetrate the Bloc. It was often known as the ‘Org’. It rapidly emerged as the single most important service operating against the DDR, and necessarily collaborated with the British and Americans. The three of them carried out operations with the same objectives and using the same methods. In the case of Operation ‘Dragon Return’ (see Chapter 8), they co-ordinated activities which might otherwise conflict. They collaborated in infiltrating agents into the USSR. They also shared intelligence extensively. One can therefore genuinely speak of a Western effort against the ¹ B. Smith, The Ultra-Magic Deals (Novato, Calif., 1993), 217–29; Aldrich, Hidden Hand, 213–15; C. Andrew, ‘The Making of the Anglo-American Sigint Alliance’, in H. Peake and S. Halpern (eds.), In the Name of Intelligence: Essays in Honor of Walter Pforzheimer (Washington, DC, 1994), 104–6. ² For a more detailed discussion, see P. Maddrell, ‘British–American Scientific Intelligence Collaboration during the Occupation of Germany’, Intelligence and National Security, 15/2 (2000), 74–94.

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DDR. It was led by the Americans. This is certainly how the East Germans saw it. For example, in Nicht Länger Geheim Charisius and Mader claim that throughout the Cold War ‘not individual secret services but alliances of imperialist secret services work, under the direction of the American’ against the Bloc.³ The human sources available in West Germany were treated as a common pool of informants. The information taken from them was widely shared between British and American agencies; the West Germans later became involved in this document exchange. Huge quantities of reports were handed over; the British Liaison Officer at the US army’s European Command (EUCOM) in Heidelberg sometimes received more than 50 kilograms of paper a day.⁴ Among it was much scientific and technical intelligence; indeed, there was ‘practically a total interchange’ between the two of this kind of intelligence.⁵ Reports on atomic energy formed an exception to this rule: it was exchanged (to the extent that it was) between London and Washington, DC. This changed in 1952, when it was agreed to lift the ban on exchange in Germany.⁶ In the early 1950s the British were giving EUCOM six copies of all refugee interrogation reports, six copies of all interrogation reports of German ex-prisoners-of-war who had returned from the USSR, and five copies of all interrogation reports of deserters from the Soviet armed forces. The British and Americans told one another about every deserter and defector who came over to them. Each was entitled to interrogate deserters and defectors held by the other. Each could also question any ex-prisoner-of-war in the Zone of the other. Those British and American officers involved in the questioning of ex-prisoners-of-war, refugees, and deserters frequently visited their counterparts in the other Zone. From the late 1940s on the two consulted closely on how to entice Soviet soldiers to desert. Copies of all interrogation reports prepared by the various branches of the British armed forces in Germany were sent to their American counterparts, as were copies of all STIB’s specialist interrogations.⁷ ‘Apple Pie’ reports were also exchanged.⁸ The Americans received copies of British reports on intercepted post received in the Zone from the USSR; there are copies of American intercepts in their Zone in British intelligence files.⁹ The Americans even had the right to request that a watch be placed on the post of specific individuals or groups of people in the British Zone.¹⁰ There was collaboration in interception of post (see below). It was dominated by the Americans. ³ Nicht Länger Geheim, 35. ⁴ Major Birch, G(Int)BAOR, MI10 Conference 1951, DEFE 41/125. ⁵ STIB to Rhodes, 19/9/1947, DEFE 41/81. ⁶ Haydon to Evans, 28/2/1949, DEFE 41/16; Evans to Hagstette, 17/12/1953, and Hagstette to Evans, 6/1/1953, DEFE 41/16. ⁷ Haydon to Perrin, 15/10/1949, DEFE 41/16; Legry to JIC (London), 25/11/1950, DEFE 41/119. ⁸ JIC(G) minutes, 23/1/1947 and 10/2/1947, DEFE 41/62; JIC(G) minutes, 30/6/1947 and 10/2/1948, DEFE 41/63. ⁹ JIC(G) minutes, 29/8/1950, DEFE 41/65; copies of American intercepts are in DEFE 41/3, DEFE 41/25, and FO 1047/67. ¹⁰ Evans to Haydon, 15/4/1950, DEFE 41/16.

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The Americans tipped the British off about companies in the British Zone which might be exporting strategic goods to the USSR. Joint visits were made to such companies, to check up on their activities.¹¹ The ‘Osoaviakhim’ deportees returned to Germany at intervals between 1949 and 1958. Selected people were induced to defect and questioned in an operation codenamed ‘Dragon Return’. The number of defections induced by the Americans soared between 1951 and 1952, which may show the impact of NSC-86/1 and Operation ‘Engross’. In July 1951 the Americans were accusing the British of ‘taking too many low-grade scientists’ and urging them to target only ‘key men’.¹² By November 1952 their policy had changed; according to David Evans, the Director of STIB, the British were trying to ‘restrain them from a wholesale exploitation on mass production lines’ so that the Soviets would not be provoked into stopping the Germans from returning.¹³ Following their usual practice, STIB and its American counterparts exchanged copies of their interview reports, covering a wide range of scientific fields. The CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence considered STIB’s reports ‘an important source of information’.¹⁴ The operation required co-ordination of approaches to the scientific workers on their return to Germany: if too many services pursued a particular target, the MfS would be bound to become aware of them. Effective co-ordination was only periodically achieved. To direct and discipline their own competing agencies, the Americans created a special body, the ‘Returnee Exploitation Group’ (REG) in 1951. It was controlled by the CIA. Until then STIB had a working agreement with EUCOM and USAFE that neither would approach a returnee and take intelligence from him without consulting it first. The British and Americans exchanged their records of scientific workers in the USSR and created composite lists. They then met to decide which scientific workers should be invited to defect and shared out targets between them.¹⁵ However, REG was created just as competition to exploit the returnees was intensifying. Co-ordination between STIB and REG provided for targeted returnees to be allocated to the service which first made contact with them. Ways of making an approach to all the returnees were developed separately. The agency concerned made contact with the scientific worker when he returned to East Germany. Once it had done so, the man’s name was passed to the other side so that no rival approach was made and to prepare the way for joint questioning. This also allowed security information to be exchanged and enabled both sides to see how many returnees were being induced to defect. The names of those whom MI6 and ¹¹ Cowman to Haydon, 7/9/1950; Graham to Evans, 23/10/1950, DEFE 41/84. ¹² Smith to Evans, 25/7/1951, DEFE 41/6. ¹³ Evans to Turney, 10/11/1952, DEFE 41/16. ¹⁴ Chadwell to Blount, 7/7/1951, DEFE 41/9. ¹⁵ Evans to Hutchinson, 24/9/1952, DEFE 41/16; Evans to Blount, 3/1/1951, DEFE 41/9; Evans to Blount, 20/8/1951, DEFE 41/9; Evans to Haydon, 9/12/1950, DEFE 41/5; Evans to Smith, 20/7/1951, DEFE 41/6; ‘Dragon Return’ Progress Reports, DEFE 41/5 and DEFE 41/6; report EG-230, 20/11/1952, DEFE 21/39.

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the CIA were trying to recruit as spies were ‘buried’ with the others in the lists of names exchanged, no mention being made of their interest in him.¹⁶ Many of the returnees were interrogated jointly. Most importantly, when the atomic scientists returned to Germany in 1954–5, most of those who defected were interviewed by the British and Americans together.¹⁷ The information taken from them could therefore be exploited by the air forces of both countries in their spyflights over Soviet territory. The Gehlen Organization, as a German agency, had excellent prospects of making contact with targeted people and persuading them to defect; consequently, in the course of time, it was allowed to join the concert party (it met stiff British resistance though). By 1955, at the latest, the Americans were conceding to it prior access to atomic returnees in all cases it had developed.¹⁸ In 1958, as the BND, it was clearly a full partner; it was allocated targets in the last batch of missile engineers with whom it was to make contact.¹⁹ There was even a measure of collaboration in spying. The operation carried out between 1949 and 1955 to infiltrate agents into the Baltic States and Poland from fast-moving E-boats was a joint operation of MI6, the CIA, and the Org. The agents were refugee Balts and Poles; they were often found by the Org in ‘Displaced Persons’ camps in West Germany. The Org also found the crew, which was led by a German wartime E-boat commander called Hans-Helmut Klose. The CIA provided funds for the operation. The Royal Navy’s ‘British Baltic Fishery Protection Service’ provided cover for the voyages up the Baltic. Gehlen and the CIA also co-ordinated their operations against the Soviet military and intelligence compound in Karlshorst, since it was so difficult to penetrate.²⁰

London–Washington DC Exchange Directing agencies in London and Washington DC also exchanged scientific and technical information. Less information was exchanged on atomic science than on other scientific fields. The reason for this was the US Congress’s Atomic Energy Act of 1946, known as the McMahon Act. Congress passed it to prevent other countries from being given information on atomic energy and thus to keep the US the only atomic power. However, the act inevitably hampered the sharing of atomic intelligence as well.²¹ Its exchange was hesitant and limited in the late 1940s. Owing to amendments to the McMahon Act, it was more substantial in the 1950s.²² By contrast, there was close co-operation in monitoring Soviet nuclear tests and exchanging the fallout from them. There was also much joint ¹⁶ Evans to Young, 4/2/1953, DEFE 21/26. ¹⁷ Director to STIB, 25/3/1955, DEFE 41/142. ¹⁸ Record of conversations marked ‘P/261’, 20/5/1955, DEFE 41/142. ¹⁹ Progress Report No. 5, 908 Group, 21/3/1958, DEFE 41/138. ²⁰ S. Dorril, MI6 (London, 2000), 290–9; Prados, Presidents’ Secret Wars, 40–4; Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 432–3. ²¹ J. Helmreich, Gathering Rare Ores: The Diplomacy of Uranium Acquisition 1943–54 (Princeton, NJ, 1986), 81, 118. ²² Aldrich, INS (1989), 540–1.

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analysis of the fallout, particularly from 1954. Lastly, the two countries collaborated in the 1950s in determining how much krypton-85 was present in the earth’s atmosphere; their aim was to calculate how much plutonium the USSR had produced.²³ The British unit responsible for exchanging information was the intelligence section of the Department of Atomic Energy (D.At.En.) of the Ministry of Supply. A ‘Combined Anglo-American Intelligence Unit’ also made joint estimates of Soviet atomic progress using information supplied by both countries. The British representatives came from D.At.En. The Americans were drawn from the OSI’s Nuclear Energy Group; they supplied the unit with classified information provided by the US Atomic Energy Commission. Some of the intelligence pooled by the Americans was very important. The British also contributed valuable intelligence. For example, when they learned in 1948 of the location of the Soviet Union’s first plutonium production reactor, ‘Cheliabinsk-40’, they passed the information on.²⁴ Intelligence received from the Americans influenced British estimates of Soviet atomic strength. For instance, sometime between the issue of the estimate for 1948 and the preparation of that for 1949, the Americans obtained information from ‘a single source considered reliable’ that the mines were yielding between five and eight times as much uranium as the British thought likely, and between four and six times more than they thought possible.²⁵ The source supplied ‘fairly detailed information . . . on actual shipments of ore and concentrates from one section of the Erzgebirge area over a period of 39 days’²⁶ and samples of uranium from these shipments (and so must have been either a spy or a defector). The British duly concluded the mines’ actual output was higher even than the existing figure for the mines’ maximum potential and revised their estimates of the USSR’s capacity to produce atomic bombs accordingly.²⁷ There was greater exchange of broader scientific and technical intelligence. Even by 1946 the policy of the British Chiefs of Staff was that the Americans should receive ‘all scientific and technical information up to and including Top Secret’.²⁸ Scientific intelligence was exchanged on a ‘quid pro quo’ basis.²⁹ The reports passing between London and Washington DC embraced the whole field of scientific and technical intelligence. British and American analysts exchanged assessments and their comments on them, and met to discuss their conclusions. By 1950 the Directorate of Scientific Intelligence was sending three copies of all suitable documents to the CIA, two copies each to the USAF and US army, and one copy to the ²³ Goodman, ‘British Intelligence Estimates of the Soviet Nuclear Weapons Programme’, 207–58, 304–15, 373–84. ²⁴ STO/18/NO/48, DEFE 41/145. ²⁵ CAAIU, ‘Estimate of Russian Atomic Weapons Programme and Timetable, November 1948’, Appendix A, 28/1/1949, DEFE 21/45. ²⁶ Draft report JIC/1647/49, DEFE 21/45. ²⁷ Atomic Energy Intelligence Unit report, 31/7/1949, DEFE 21/45. ²⁸ JS/JTIC minutes, 26/9/1946, DEFE 10/493. ²⁹ JS/JTIC minutes, 27/1/1947, DEFE 10/493.

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US navy.³⁰ All its reports were passed to the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence. Accordingly, the Americans received the interview reports of important defectors to the British, such as Helmut Gröttrup, which were, exceptionally, issued as DSI papers.³¹ To prevent duplication of effort, the two agencies’ work on translating Soviet scientific papers was co-ordinated. They also helped one another to obtain such publications. The armed forces passed scientific and technical information directly to their counterparts in Washington. By 1950 American liaison officers were attached to a number of intelligence bodies in London, among them the Department of Atomic Energy, the Directorate of Scientific Intelligence, and MI6.³² One way or another, the Americans received from the British scientific and technical intelligence taken from all the principal sources. Relations between British and American intelligence bodies were of varying closeness, which affected the degree of exchange which was made. Relations between the two countries’ Air Intelligence services were close. They exchanged all raw technical intelligence on aeronautical subjects and frequently consulted one another about how to assess it. The exchange of liaison officers between them ensured a ‘complete interchange of ideas at pretty nearly every stage’.³³ By the early 1950s not merely did the British Joint Services Mission in Washington liaise with American analysts but American exchange officers were serving with the Air Ministry in London, the British Intelligence Organization (Germany), and the RAF in Germany. A British officer was serving with the United States Air Force (Europe) in Wiesbaden. These close links enabled working parties from the two countries to prepare together, in 1949, the highly influential joint study of Soviet guided missile development referred to in Chapter 2.³⁴

The Hauptstelle für Befragungswesen and its Branches The Federal Republic came to play an ever-larger role in questioning refugees and migrants. This was natural, since by 1955 it was a sovereign and independent state and the questioning was taking place on its territory. Nevertheless, the refugees were such an important source of information that they were still made available to the main Western intelligence services. The vehicle for this was the Hauptstelle für Befragungswesen (Main Office for Questioning), which the West German government founded in 1958. It assumed the main burden of interviewing refugees and migrants, continuing the work of the Americans’ ‘Historical Research’ teams (see next chapter) and of British interrogation staffs like STIB. The remnant of STIB, the DSI’s Overseas Liaison Branch, was indeed dissolved at about this time. ³⁰ DSI/JTIC minutes, 12/12/1950, DEFE 41/74; DSI/JTIC minutes, 23/1/1951, DEFE 41/75. ³¹ Ministry of Defence to British Joint Services Mission, Washington, 25/3/1954, DEFE 21/27. ³² Welsh to Haydon, 2/10/1950, DEFE 41/84; Blount to Welsh, 8/9/1950, DEFE 41/135; R. Cline, Secrets, Spies and Scholars (Washington, DC, 1976), 124; Cavendish, Inside Intelligence, 45. ³³ Wing-Commander Cribb, MI10 Conference 1952, DEFE 41/126. ³⁴ Soviet Missile Programme Study, DEFE 41/160.

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The new agency operated under the aegis of the Interior Ministry, but was essentially a cover organization of the West German foreign intelligence and security services, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (the renamed Org) and the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz. They provided its staff. The American intelligence services also placed representatives in it. While the West Germans and Americans dominated the organization, according to the MfS’s information representatives of a number of Western secret services worked in the interviewing centres, frequently taking part in interviews, and the intelligence gathered was made available to their agencies as well. A JIC report of 1953 provides support for this, stating that a secret agreement with the West German government ‘provides for our continuing to enjoy facilities for interrogating refugees’ in West Germany.³⁵ Interviewees were sometimes transferred to secret-service offices for further questioning (for example, to Camp King in Oberursel). The agency is described in one MfS report as an ‘auxiliary of the NATO secret services’.³⁶ It obtained and stored a huge amount of information, military information having the highest priority. It also maintained a large card index of East German factories. These records were available to government ministries and secret services.³⁷ The agency had branches (Befragungsstellen) in all of West Germany’s main cities as well as the reception camps in Berlin-Marienfelde, Gießen, and Friedland. Like the British and American units they succeeded, these branches sent refugees from the East who had settled in their area a letter calling them for interview.³⁸ In December 1960 the MfS put together information it had received on the Munich branch. It used the refugees in four ways, all typical of secretservice work at this time. Firstly, it gathered information from them, above all on the Warsaw Pact forces in East Germany, airbases, and air-defence installations. Information on important factories, laboratories, and scientific research institutes was also much sought after. Most emphasis was given to questioning people who had once served in, or worked for, these targets (such as deserters from the NVA). Secondly, all the NATO secret services recruited refugees as spies and sent them back into East Germany. The interviewees were always asked about their relatives, friends, and acquaintances in the DDR. This was to find out whether an approach to these people would be worthwhile. The branch’s third activity was to use these relatives and friends for intelligence purposes: they were either recruited as spies, or used as cover addresses, or asked to create routes by which people could be infiltrated across the border. Lastly, the refugees were used to induce defection; they wrote to their relatives and friends and pressed them to defect.³⁹ ³⁵ JIC delegation report, 7/5/1953, DEFE 41/129. ³⁶ MfS-HA IX/Nr. 3832. ³⁷ Die Funktion der ‘Hauptstelle für Befragungswesen’ im Mechanismus des staatsmonopolistischen Herrschaftssystems der BRD, 19/7/1967, MfS-ZKG/Nr. 2077. ³⁸ E. Schmidt-Eenboom, Schnüffler ohne Nase: Der BND—die unheimliche Macht im Staate (Düsseldorf, 1993), 64–7; H. Wagner, Schöne Grüße aus Pullach (Berlin, 2001), 162. ³⁹ MfS-HA IX/Nr. 3832. This document bears no date. However, the BSU has dated it December 1960.

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The Befragungsstellen were only one tier in a three-tier system of questioning. Allied intelligence units—and particularly those of US Military Intelligence— continued to question refugees. Questioning also continued to be carried out by the Sichtungsstellen in the main refugee camps. The questioning carried out by all three was very similar in character. Why, then, were the Befragungsstellen needed? MfS records show that in the early 1960s refugees with military information who fled to Bavaria were taken first to US Military Intelligence units, then to the nearest Befragungsstelle, and only lastly to a reception camp.⁴⁰ It was the Sichtungsstellen which the new interviewing offices put in the shade. The Befragungsstellen gave greater importance to the West German intelligence services (the dominant element in them) and made the refugees’ and migrants’ information available to several NATO secret services equally (those of the countries with troops stationed in West Germany—the United States, Britain, France, Canada, the Netherlands, and Belgium). Consequently, refugee interrogation was no longer principally a matter for the Allies (they also lost their special position with regard to monitoring post and telephone calls, as will be shown below). Where one NATO member had a large military force, as the Americans did in Bavaria, it went to the top of the list. There is also some evidence that the Sichtungsstellen dispensed with questioning if it had been carried out by another body.⁴¹ All three tiers of interrogation continued to operate throughout the Cold War. They carried out the longest and largest programme of refugee interrogation in history.

CONTACTS Another key collaborator was West German business. Many contacts were recruited among West German businessmen, engineers, scientists, technicians, and other professional people. They performed four tasks. Firstly, they found jobs for people STIB wanted to bring over from East Germany; they were therefore essential to the policy of inducing defection. Secondly, they supplied information they had obtained on the science and industry of East Germany, the other satellites, and, best of all, the USSR. This information they obtained from East Germans applying for jobs with them, from East German engineers they knew, on business trips to Soviet factories, and at conferences. They also put the British in touch with others—generally refugees looking for work in the West—who could supply further information. Computers and television are examples of important new technologies discussed at conferences in the mid-1950s attended by STIB contacts. Some of the most important contacts were returnees from the Soviet Union. Since many could speak Russian, they could pump Soviet visitors for ⁴⁰ MfS-HA IX/Nr. 3849–52 and 3854. ⁴¹ Information zu den NAL Giessen und Berlin-Marienfelde sowie zu den Zweigstellen der Hauptstelle für Befragungswesen Hamburg und Lübeck, 14/11/1977, MfS-ZKG/Nr. 2077.

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information at conferences and exhibitions.⁴² Such conversations with Soviet visitors revealed the location and production of particular factories in the USSR.⁴³ Thirdly, they came by news of former colleagues working in the USSR and so facilitated an approach to them. Fourthly, they supplied information on orders for technical equipment placed by Soviet purchasers with them. STIB even had informants in East German institutions. One was the Research Institute of Solid State Physics in Berlin. Its informant was a leading figure at this important institute and had seen Soviet publications on semiconductor research. He told the British in 1957 that these indicated that Soviet scientists had not yet achieved Germany’s level of development in the field.⁴⁴ Hostility to Communism and the USSR was the principal motive for collaboration; most cards in STIB’s card index of contacts bear the words ‘ideological: unpaid’.⁴⁵ Big business in the Federal Republic also lost a great deal of property in the SED’s nationalizations of industry. The DDR’s collapse was a precondition of recovering it. These nationalizations also deprived many smaller industrialists of property and they fled West, where some became contacts.⁴⁶ West German business also felt menaced by the MfS’s Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung and the KGB, which were trying to penetrate it.⁴⁷ STIB started to cultivate such contacts in 1949, just as the Federal Republic was coming into being. Its aim was to acquire intelligence on Soviet science. The operation was initially known as ‘Project Pat’; in January 1950 the codename became ‘Kidney’, and in March 1951 ‘Judas’.⁴⁸ It began with ‘Matchbox consultants’ who had—with British help—taken up jobs in industry. By 1955 recruitment of contacts had been successful enough for David Evans to claim that, ‘throughout Western Germany there is a body of informed experts who . . . inform HMG’s representatives if something which they think interesting in the scientific and technical field comes to their notice’.⁴⁹ The principal location of STIB’s contacts was Berlin because there—uniquely—scientists from East and West could meet regularly. The operation was part of a general policy of exploiting links, and particularly trading ones, with the Soviet Union. In Britain by the mid1950s MI6 was very active in debriefing businessmen, academics, and others who often travelled to the USSR.⁵⁰ A celebrated example of a businessman, who, fatefully for himself and others, fell into its net, was Greville Wynne, a salesman who made frequent visits to the Soviet Bloc on behalf of British companies and through whom the GRU officer Oleg Penkovsky in 1961 offered to become a British spy.⁵¹ The CIA’s counterpart operation was codenamed ‘Redskin’. STIB’s ⁴² ⁴³ ⁴⁴ ⁴⁶ ⁴⁷ ⁴⁸ ⁴⁹ ⁵¹

STIB Interview Report No. 239, DEFE 41/116. OLB/BL/L/366, 9/9/1957, DEFE 41/141. OLB/BL/57/359, 20/8/1957, DEFE 41/141. ⁴⁵ DEFE 43/1. e.g., STIB Interview Report (‘Kidney’) No. 2, DEFE 41/88. Wolf, Man Without A Face, 69–70. Secretary, JIC(Germany), to Director STIB, 17/1/1950, DEFE 41/79. Evans to Young, 21/1/1955, DEFE 41/86. ⁵⁰ Blake, No Other Choice, 183–4. Schecter and Deriabin, Spy Who Saved the World, 23–4.

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work shows that British intelligence was also successful in persuading Germans to share information with it. Likewise, the travellers interviewed in ‘Redskin’ came not only from the USA but also from countries in Europe and elsewhere.⁵² Naturally, the service which in the 1950s built up the widest network of contacts in West German industry and science was the Bundesnachrichtendienst. STIB above all targeted West German companies and what it called ‘Old Boys’ Networks’—groups of former employees of Nazi-era companies, to which both East and West Germans belonged. It was successful in building an extensive network of contacts in West German industry and science. Its list of files refers to institutions at which it had well-placed contacts. The companies mentioned are such well-known names as Auergesellschaft; Bayer and Höchst (successor companies of I. G. Farben); Blaupunkt; Henkel; Junkers; Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz; Krupp; Kupferhütte; Mannesmann; Merck; Philips; Rheinmetall-Börsig; Schering; and Zeiss. STIB’s firmest friend was Telefunken. A copy of Telefunken’s in-house journal was sent to STIB Berlin.⁵³ It had a number of contacts in leading positions in the company.⁵⁴ Several senior figures at Telefunken’s parent, AEG, gave information to the British. STIB had a full ‘Siemens intelligence net’,⁵⁵ which included several leading directors, personnel directors being strongly represented. These people were very well placed to pick up news of former employees working for the Soviets, including the atomic scientists Max Steenbeck, Gustav Hertz, and Heinz Barwich. The chairman of both Telefunken and AEG, Hans Heyne, assisted STIB, though quite how much remains unclear. The East Germans were furiously hostile to him. Julius Mader alleged obscurely that, as a member of the Bundesverband der Deutschen Luftfahrtindustrie (Federal Association of the German Aeronautical Industry), Heyne ‘engages in activities which damage the people’.⁵⁶ Representatives of both AEG and Siemens kept STIB informed of arrivals at their factories of scientific workers from the East (including some who had worked in the Soviet Union) and put it in touch with these sources. Some contacts reported visits by employees to the USSR or visits there by acquaintances working in East German factories.⁵⁷ STIB also had contacts at professional associations such as the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Luftfahrttechnik (Professional Society for Aeronautical Technology), the Verein Deutscher Eisenhüttenleute (Union of German Ironfounders), the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (Union of German Engineers), and at the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Such contacts gave it information on research and development in a number of industries in the East, electronics, engineering, mining, chemicals, iron and steel, and aircraft manufacture being the main ones. A network of academic contacts was used to acquire intelligence of research at ⁵² ⁵⁴ ⁵⁵ ⁵⁶ ⁵⁷

Richelson, American Espionage, 53. ⁵³ STIB/252/X/1438, 3/8/1955, DEFE 41/136. Horner to Evans, 7/12/1951, DEFE 41/2. ‘STIB: Review of Future Commitments’, 1/11/1949, DEFE 41/83. J. Mader, Geheimnis von Huntsville (Berlin, 1967), 221, 408–9. STIB/252/X/1440, 13/6/1955, DEFE 41/136; OLB/BL/56/29, 24/4/1956, DEFE 41/159.

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universities and research institutes. It had well-placed sources at such places as the Technische Hochschulen in Aachen, Braunschweig, and Hannover, and the Technische Universität, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (Federal PhysicalTechnical Institute), and Robert Koch Institut in Berlin.⁵⁸ One of STIB’s contacts at the Robert Koch Institut was Professor Josef Fortner, the head of the institute’s Veterinary Department, who provided it with information on animal research institutes in the Soviet Zone. With the help of such veterinary contacts, STIB could look for evidence of research into agents of biological warfare. As regards the weight of effort made to cultivate the various types of contact, an early progress report shows that companies were the main targets. Scientists involved in industrial R&D and industrial managers represented 69 per cent of those cultivated in the opening phase of the operation. Academics with strong industrial links represented 17 per cent and academics pure and simple 11 per cent.⁵⁹ STIB’s file list also mentions contacts in the Federal government itself. These file names refer only to organizations with which the British had strong connections, and not to all of those. STIB’s card index of contacts reveals that it had sources working for even more companies, academic institutions, and technical journals. STIB’s ‘best all-round source’, at least in the late 1940s, was a woman called Ester Fessel, a manager at the electronics company Rohde & Schwarz.⁶⁰ At the reunions of ‘Old Boys’ Networks’ information was picked up on, chiefly, where and for whom German scientists were working and what they were working on. The I. G. Farben network was prized because it had many connections with East Germans. The chemicals company had had many plants in the East, for which, as nationalized factories, its former staff continued to work. It had been so huge a company that the Leunawerk, at least, had its own network, the ‘Ex-Leuna Association’, of which STIB made use.⁶¹ Another German institution which had existed before 1945 and which provided networks of ex-employees which STIB exploited for information was the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt.

Abwerbung These networks provided contacts who played an essential role in operations to induce defection. Two of the most important were Hans Kerschbaum and Karl Steimel. Both were returnees from scientific work in the USSR. As director of research at Siemens & Halske, Kerschbaum was an important contact and he was one of the few to be given a codename (‘Kingpin’).⁶² Like other influential company directors, he was asked to find employment for scientific workers in ⁵⁸ STIB file list, DEFE 41/29. ⁵⁹ Operation ‘Kidney’ Progress Report No. 1, DEFE 41/87. ⁶⁰ STIB card index, DEFE 43/1. ⁶¹ STIB Technical Meeting minutes, 1/9/1950, DEFE 41/10. ⁶² ‘Lister Return’ Progress Report, 26/11/1949, DEFE 41/4; Ransome to Warner, 28/7/1954, DEFE 21/14.

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whom the British had an intelligence interest, and particularly for people who had previously been employed by his company. He also provided information about the ‘Osoaviakhim’ deportees, using his company’s links with colleagues and relatives they had left behind.⁶³ Other companies’ grapevines—Carl Zeiss’s, for example—were exploited in the same way. Kerschbaum also used his connections with Siemens people, past and present, to obtain for the British information on research and development work being done in East Germany and the USSR. Steimel returned to Germany in 1952; he immediately defected to the West and became Telefunken’s director of research and development. In 1956 he moved over to AEG where, the East Germans alleged, he found jobs for technical personnel from the DDR.⁶⁴ Former employees of I. G. Farben, Junkers, and Carl Zeiss, and members of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (Society of German Chemists) were also used to make contact with returned scientific workers and encourage them to defect to the West.⁶⁵

Information The main yield of STIB’s network of contacts was a great deal of information on research and development in the DDR. The technology on which most intelligence was gathered in the 1950s was electronics. Contacts made STIB fully aware of one fact. This was that the value to the Soviet Union of East German electronic know-how was diminishing, because the SED regime was failing to establish an advanced electronics industry. The reason was the mass flight of skilled personnel to the West. Steimel probed Dr Kurt Richter, his fellow-returnee from NII. 160 at Fryazino, near Moscow, for information. Richter had become the chief valve development engineer at the Werk für Fernmeldewesen. He told Steimel about the damage being done to electronics development by mass flight, explaining that the defection of scientific workers had led to crippling skills shortages, which made new development in the valve field ‘practically impossible’ in East Germany.⁶⁶ The British received information to the same effect from Steimel’s superior, Dr Wiegand, the director of all Telefunken’s valve factories. He received job applications from refugees from all the DDR’s valve factories and, when interviewing the candidates, heard all about valve development in East Germany. In the autumn of 1955, he painted a picture of an industry in crisis, prevented from undertaking original development and reduced to copying Western devices.⁶⁷ Richter, who was also responsible for the production of semiconductors and diodes at the Werk für Fernmeldewesen, told an STIB contact in 1957 that the government had asked the factory to undertake the mass production of germanium ⁶³ ⁶⁴ ⁶⁵ ⁶⁶ ⁶⁷

STIB Technical Meeting minutes, 7/7/1950 and 25/1/1951, DEFE 41/10. S. von Weiher (ed.), Männer der Funktechnik (Berlin, 1983), 178–9. Horner to Evans, 11/3/1952, DEFE 41/92. STIB/252/X/1055, 22/9/1955; STIB/252/X/1402, 4/5/1955, DEFE 41/136. STIB/252/X/1450, 15/9/1955; STIB/252/X/1415, 11/10/1955, DEFE 41/136.

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transistors, but it had refused to do so until the middle of 1958. The reason for this, inevitably, was a severe lack of experienced engineers and suitably skilled workers. Dr Falter, the director of all transistor development in the DDR, was developing ‘thin-layer-transistors’.⁶⁸ Three months later, a source described as ‘the leading engineer of the Werk für Fernmeldewesen’ (and therefore probably Richter) told an STIB contact that the factory had finally refused to undertake the manufacture of transistors, the main reason being the shortage of skilled personnel. The only source of transistors in East Germany was therefore the Werk für Bauelemente der Nachrichtentechnik (Communications Technology Components Factory) in Teltow, which could manufacture no more than 4,000 per month. Work had, at one time, begun on the construction of a transistor factory in Berlin-Weissensee, but the project had been suspended because it seemed foolish to build such a factory so close to West Berlin, to which a significant proportion of the workforce would therefore probably flee. As regards diodes, the government had demanded that the Werk für Fernmeldewesen manufacture 2 million germanium diodes in the following year, but it was unlikely that the factory would produce more than 1.2 million.⁶⁹ An informant who talked to technicians at the Werk für Bauelemente der Nachrichtentechnik was told that the factory was unable to mass produce any semiconductor. It followed that, as Richter had implied, there was no mass production of semiconductors in the DDR.⁷⁰ Contacts also provided information on the USSR. At the very least, this confirmed that the Soviet economy suffered from severe structural weaknesses which were frustrating its efforts to manufacture the high-technology goods made in the West. An example of intelligence which the operation was above all designed to acquire is a report on Soviet work on magnetic materials. The information was given to the British by a West German contact who had met an East German acquaintance at a convention. This source had a few months before been a member of a delegation which had visited Soviet institutes and factories concerned with research into, and manufacture of, magnetic materials. In addition to scientific Order-of-Battle information—all research was done in institutes in the western part of Leningrad, the principal factories were in Moscow and were organized on Western European lines—the source provided evidence of swift Soviet progress in ferrite development and manufacture.⁷¹ The visitors were all agreed that the ‘Krasnajar’ factory in Leningrad manufactured hard and soft ferrites in greater quantity and of better quality than those manufactured by the HeschoHermsdorf works in Thuringia. This had military significance. The ‘Krasnajar’ factory had recently supplied ferrites it had developed and manufactured to factories producing electronic components for military use. Near the ‘Krasnajar’ factory was an institute for research into soft ferrites which was conducting research into high-efficiency ring-cores for electronic computers and control ⁶⁸ OLB/BL/57/362, 30/8/1957, DEFE 41/141. ⁷⁰ OLB/BL/57/376, 24/9/1957, DEFE 41/141.

⁶⁹ OLB(B)57.11.19.3, DEFE 41/141. ⁷¹ OLB(B)57.12.6.3, DEFE 41/141.

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apparatus. This was a high-priority task being carried out under the supervision of the Ministry of Telecommunications. Companies which passed information to the British on their dealings with, and exports to, the Soviet Bloc, or on inquiries from such countries about products for export, included AEG,⁷² Askania,⁷³ Deutsche Elektronik,⁷⁴ Siemens & Halske,⁷⁵ Telefunken,⁷⁶ Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz,⁷⁷ Bayer,⁷⁸ and probably Rohde & Schwarz.⁷⁹ Obviously, this was confidential information which they would never have given to a competitor. In the case of the Siemens group, board directors of the whole group provided information on approaches made to all the group’s companies by, or on behalf of, the Soviet Union and its satellites.⁸⁰ Among the exports concerned were such electronic products as broadcast valves and ultrasonic equipment. There was considerable demand for heavy machinery. Approaches were even made for entire power stations. Contacts also supplied information on Soviet approaches to West German companies about goods which were subject to the embargo.⁸¹ When representatives of Soviet or other Soviet Bloc trading organizations visited Telefunken, it, like other enterprises, told the STIB team in West Berlin what the visitors had been shown and what they had said and shown interest in (the company even handed over photostats of its report on the visit).⁸² Contacts at AEG informed STIB when trade delegations from the Bloc were going to visit a particular factory. The British would then brief the contact on what information was sought (generally, who the visitors were and what they showed interest in).⁸³ They would also coach him how to elicit this information. Such contacts were no mere informants. They actually performed intelligence-gathering tasks, and did so successfully. When a Soviet trade delegation visited Telefunken in West Berlin in 1955, questions were put to it which elicited the following figures for the production of television transmitters in the Soviet Union: 630,000 (1954) and 800,000 (1955).⁸⁴ Several companies—again, Telefunken among them—gave the British copies of internal reports on the visits of Soviet delegations to their stands at industrial exhibitions, noting the visitors’ interest in each of the devices on display.⁸⁵ ⁷² STIB Report No. 260, DEFE 41/116; Berlin/1417, 3/2/1956, DEFE 41/136; Berlin/1213, 14/2/1956, DEFE 41/136. ⁷³ STIB/252/X/1117, 12/12/1955, DEFE 41/136; OLB/BL/57/279, 1/2/1957, DEFE 41/141. ⁷⁴ STIB Interview Report No. 241, DEFE 41/116. ⁷⁵ STIB/252/X/1210, 29/12/1955, DEFE 41/136. ⁷⁶ STIB Report No. 259, DEFE 41/116. ⁷⁷ OLB(C)57.11.18, DEFE 41/141. ⁷⁸ OLB/B/57/368, 13/9/1957, DEFE 41/141. ⁷⁹ OLB(B)57.11.21, DEFE 41/141. ⁸⁰ STIB Interview Report No. 240, DEFE 41/116. ⁸¹ OLB/BL/57/300, 14/3/1957, DEFE 41/141. ⁸² OLB/BL/57/369, 13/9/1957, DEFE 41/141; STIB/252/X/1230, 12/12/1955, DEFE 41/137; STIB/252/X/1500, 9/12/1955, DEFE 41/137. ⁸³ STIB/252/X/0900, 18/11/1955; STIB/252/X/1100, 10/10/1955, DEFE 41/144. ⁸⁴ STIB Report No. 259, DEFE 41/116. ⁸⁵ STIB/252/X/1115, 13/9/1955, DEFE 41/136; STIB/252/X/1225, 29/9/1955, DEFE 41/136; STIB/252/X/0915, 18/10/1955, DEFE 41/136; STIB Interview Report No. 94 (Hans Bosch), DEFE 41/98.

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The USSR recognized the Federal Republic in 1955. Trade missions were soon afterwards exchanged between the two countries. The West German delegations contained informants willing to share their impressions of what they had seen in the Soviet Union with STIB officers. They passed on a great deal of information about factories and atomic plants. Like the ‘Dragon Returnees’, they were expert observers and the information they gave STIB contained points of real interest which confirmed important strands of ‘Dragon Return’ intelligence. For instance, they stressed the lower productivity of Soviet factories. Despite having dismantled and shipped home a very large part of the East German machine-tool industry in the 1940s, the Soviets were, by the mid-1950s, very keen to buy West German machine tools, and in 1957 invited a delegation from the Verband Deutscher Werkzeugmaschinen Fabriken (Federation of German Machine Tool Works) to visit the USSR. The delegation was told in Moscow that the Soviet machine-tool industry could then only manufacture half of the machine tools needed to meet domestic needs and to supply the satellites with that proportion of their needs which the USSR had agreed to provide. The delegation was asked to lobby for the lifting of the embargo on the export of heavy machine tools to the Soviet Bloc. From their visits to machine-tool factories, the delegation formed the rough estimate that some 5,000 Soviet workers could manufacture approximately the same quantity of machine tools as a modern West German factory employing 2,000 workers.⁸⁶ Another Soviet industry which, it was conceded officially to a group of visiting German experts, could only supply half the USSR’s needs was the instruments industry.⁸⁷ A group of representatives of West German steel companies, on its return from a visit to Soviet steel works, metallurgical plants, and rolling mills late in 1956, handed a copy of its report to the British. The group maintained that both the technology and workforce of Western works were superior to those of the Soviet Union.⁸⁸ Representatives of West German companies manufacturing measuring instruments visited the USSR in 1957 and, on their return, maintained that Soviet designs were generally of German or American origin and the products were of inferior quality. They added that lack of competition held back the development of Soviet skill in this field. Competition caused the technological standard of goods manufactured to rise and their price to fall; the absence of competition in the USSR meant that measuring instruments there were inappropriate to the tasks they had to perform and extremely expensive. The visitors thought that pressure to produce goods in quantity caused their quality to deteriorate. They had come across a measuring-instruments factory in Leningrad which had learned from Honeywell-Brown during the war how to design and manufacture recording potentiometers. The factory was, in 1957, still producing the same obsolete models in large quantities.⁸⁹ This intelligence is consistent with ⁸⁶ ⁸⁷ ⁸⁸ ⁸⁹

OLB/B/57/353, 16/8/1957, DEFE 41/141. OLB/BL/57/367, 12/9/1957, DEFE 41/141. OLB/BL/57/319, 16/5/1957, DEFE 41/141. OLB/BL/57/390, 31/10/1957, DEFE 41/141.

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later studies of the backwardness of Soviet high-technology products (see Chapter 8). A high-powered group, including directors of a number of great electrical engineering companies, visited the USSR late in 1957 and were shown round valve factories, metal works, factories manufacturing electrical equipment, and power stations. They made documents available to the British, from which a report containing their impressions of the places they visited was compiled.⁹⁰ Much telling information was therefore gathered from ‘Kidney’ contacts and it covered a wide range of fields.

INTERCEPTED LET TERS AND MONITORED TELECOMMUNICATIONS Germany’s value as a place to gather intelligence was increased by the extraordinary powers possessed by its Occupiers. They could intercept all letters circulating, and all telephone calls and other telecommunications made, within their Zones, and all letters and telecommunications arriving in their Zones from the other Zones and from the outside world. A very broad range of intelligence and counter-intelligence was derived from intercepted letters and monitored telecommunications. Most importantly, all letters and telephone calls coming from the East could be intercepted. Every East German who wrote a letter, or made a telephone call, to West Germany, was an informant, as was every deported West German languishing in the USSR who wrote a letter home. During the years of the Occupation, almost all the letters passing between the Soviet Union and the British Zone of Germany were examined for suspect correspondence and, in the summer of 1948, of every 90 letters, 1 was intercepted.⁹¹ The Commander of the British Intelligence Organization (Germany) commented in 1952 with regard to interception of mail, ‘40 % of the effort is on mail from the USSR and Poland’; the rest was devoted to mail from the other satellites, principally East Germany.⁹² Intercepts and monitored calls were, in 1952, the main source of all low-grade intelligence obtained by the British in Germany, providing about 70 per cent of it, and about 90 per cent of all the intelligence on extreme right-wing and militaristic German movements. Unsurprisingly, Intelligence Division’s Security Directorate, to which the latter intercepts were passed, seems to have targeted (among other groups) associations of former soldiers and former members of the German wartime General Staff, as well as the Gehlen Organization.⁹³ Most of the intercepted letters and monitored telecommunications yielded economic intelligence.⁹⁴ However, they did yield some scientific intelligence⁹⁵ ⁹⁰ ⁹² ⁹³ ⁹⁴ ⁹⁵

OLB(B)57.12.13, DEFE 41/141. ⁹¹ JIC(G) minutes, 3/8/1948, DEFE 41/63. Commander BIO(G) to Deputy Commander, 9/12/1952, DEFE 41/129. JIC(G) minutes, 12/2/1952 and 30/12/1952, DEFE 41/67. Major Birch, G(Int)BAOR, MI10 Conference 1951, DEFE 41/125. JIC(G) minutes, 15/11/1951, DEFE 41/66.

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and were in other ways crucial to scientific and technical intelligence-gathering. As Chapter 7 will relate, they were the principal means of coming by news of the scientific workers deported in Operation ‘Osoaviakhim’. Using this information, STIB prepared to obtain scientific intelligence from the deportees. The British and Americans exploited this source in collaboration: most of the letters arriving in West Berlin and West Germany were intercepted by the US Army Security Agency; the DSI in London was responsible for analysing the information obtained. Many of the deportees were Berliners and the interception of letters arriving in West Berlin from the USSR was particularly important. There the British allowed all post from the Soviet Union, which arrived first at a post office in the American Sector, to be intercepted by the Americans; in return, they received a copy of each and every letter, and not just of every letter addressed to the British Sector. Other copies went to REG.⁹⁶ Letters being sent from West Berlin also passed through the hands of the Americans, who made copies of them for the British.⁹⁷ Intercepted letters revealed scientists and engineers who were unhappy with their lot in the Eastern Zone and so might be receptive to an offer to take them West or to a request for information on the factory or institute at which they worked.⁹⁸ Numerous intercepts revealed approaches to German scientific workers by representatives of such countries as the Soviet Union, France, Yugoslavia, Argentina, Peru, and India. Almost every power left on its feet after the Second World War was in the business of enticing German scientists, engineers, and technicians to work for it, and the consequent movement of scientific expertise throughout the world was of great concern since it presaged the proliferation of military power. If a scientist wrote to a foreign country applying for a job there, then his letter was confiscated as a matter of course; policy was that German scientific workers should, as a rule, be kept in Germany. Early in 1947 it was still standard practice to confiscate such letters, though this was causing increasing controversy because many felt that letting scientists emigrate to friendly or neutral countries would do no harm and would deny them to the USSR.⁹⁹ Letters which revealed that the writer had received an offer of work in the Soviet Bloc or elsewhere were very common.¹⁰⁰ Letters intercepted in 1946, for example, revealed that the Soviets were making strenuous efforts to reverse the effect of the evacuations carried out by the Americans in Thuringia, Saxony, and Saxony-Anhalt in the summer of 1945, before the region was handed over to the Soviet army, by enticing the evacuees back to their Zone.¹⁰¹ Intercepts established that the Soviets used the West German Communist Party (KPD) to contact scientists in the ⁹⁶ STIB/252/X/1400, 21/7/1955; Director to STIB Berlin, 28/7/1955, DEFE 41/144; Lowenhaupt, Studies in Intelligence (2000), 58–9. ⁹⁷ Record of conversation marked ‘S/61’, 14/7/55, DEFE 41/142. ⁹⁸ Hallam to JS/JTIC Secretariat, 19/9/1949, DEFE 41/131. ⁹⁹ TS/STRB/P(46)17, ‘Denial of German Aeronautical Scientists to the Russians’, February 1947, FO 1032/251B. ¹⁰⁰ Control Committee minutes, 14/10/1948, DEFE 41/78. ¹⁰¹ FIAT Forward Periodic Intelligence Report No. 3, 9/9/1946, FO 1031/59.

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British Zone and persuade them to work on armaments projects.¹⁰² Letters mentioning the deportation of scientific workers were intercepted.¹⁰³ The British even managed to monitor telephone conversations within the Soviet Zone from which intelligence of Soviet recruitment of scientific personnel was acquired.¹⁰⁴ France also actively recruited German scientific workers with knowledge of military application. Since the Americans passed intercepts of interest to the British, the latter’s net was all the wider in its scope. Many German scientific workers did not need to be enticed anywhere. In the years immediately after the war, a flood of letters passed through the hands of the British, in which scientists, engineers, and technicians in the British Zone applied for jobs in foreign countries, or offered to sell inventions to foreign companies, or asked friends abroad to register patents on their behalf.¹⁰⁵ In these letters they often gave details of inventions they had made, thus giving Censorship Branch of Intelligence Division an idea of what technology a foreign power might be about to acquire, and providing it with valuable intelligence of scientific and technical advances to boot. Scientific personnel trying to make a living were not the only unwitting sources. Opening their letters and listening to their telephone calls turned the entire population of the British Zone into a network of informants. News (often simple rumours) of Soviet activities in their Zone often passed by post or phone call to the British Zone. In the late 1940s, letters from East Germany made up the majority of reports received on uranium mining there. Of course, many of these were very unreliable, but the correspondence as a whole gave a useful general picture of what was going on in the Erzgebirge.¹⁰⁶ For example, the Knauer family, of Aue in Saxony, wrote to the Korte family, of Hamm in Westphalia, in late December 1946 that, ‘more and more Russians are taking up their abode here and are opening up new experimental mines, where they suppose the ore for atombombs to be, and to a certain extent are finding it’.¹⁰⁷ Intercepts identified warproduction factories that were working for the Soviets and others which had been dismantled and transported to the USSR. A letter-writer called Anneliese Osten wrote that blackboard notices at the Zeiss works in Jena were advertising for 1,000 young workers as production was being greatly increased for the Soviet Military Administration.¹⁰⁸ In another intercepted letter, the writer told of the dismantling of the armaments factory, belonging to Sauer & Sohn, in which she was working. All its machinery was being transported to the Soviet Union. Every day freight trains packed with machinery were setting off for the East.¹⁰⁹ ¹⁰² ¹⁰³ ¹⁰⁴ ¹⁰⁵ ¹⁰⁶ ¹⁰⁷ ¹⁰⁸ ¹⁰⁹

Civil Censorship Submission, 31/8/46, FO 1031/65. Civil Censorship Submission, 8/4/1947, DEFE 41/25. Censorship Civil Communication, 10/4/1947, DEFE 41/25. See FO 1031/16 and FO 1031/24. CAAIU, ‘Summary of all intelligence reports on Erzgebirge’, 29/5/1947, DEFE 21/45. Censorship Civil Communication, 26/12/1946, FO 1031/16. Censorship Civil Communication, 8/8/1946, FO 1031/65. Censorship Civil Communication, 10/8/1946, FO 1031/65.

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For the most part, the Western Occupiers’ interception rights ended when the Occupation ended. However, in their capacity of NATO Powers with troops on West German soil, they got them back again. They agreed with the West German government in 1952 to abandon ‘internal censorship’ (the interception of post and telecommunications within West Germany). They also gave up the right to intercept post and telecommunications arriving in West Germany from the USSR (‘external censorship’), though there was more dispute about this. In West Berlin, where they continued as Occupiers, they continued to intercept post and telecommunications until the end of the Cold War. Their interception rights were among the matters recorded in a secret protocol, or ‘Memorandum of Understanding’, to the General Treaty of 1952. The three countries seem originally to have demanded the right to intercept all mail and monitor all telecommunications, but the West Germans put up a fight over some of these powers, which they regarded as violations of Article 10 of the Basic Law (since until 1968 there was no law of the West German Bundestag making the interception of letters and monitoring of telecommunications lawful). The compromise reached was that external censorship by the Allies would continue but internal censorship would not. It did not apply to mail circulating within Berlin. Article IV of the General Treaty, by giving the Allies rights to ensure the security of their forces in West Germany, in very general terms gave them authority for their intelligence activities. Specific authority to continue to examine external communications was conceded by the protocol. This was to have been signed by Adenauer, as federal chancellor, at the same time as the treaty. However, Adenauer instructed his state secretary to sign the protocol on his behalf; it was signed towards the end of May 1952, at the same time as the General Treaty. Of course, that was not enough for the Allies, who insisted that Adenauer, in a separate document, give written consent to the interception agreement. The General Treaty failed when the French Assemblée Nationale rejected the European Defence Community in 1954. Very similar arrangements came into being in May 1955 when the Paris Agreements of the previous year entered into force and West Germany became a sovereign state. However, strictly speaking, the Paris Agreements gave rise to a different interception regime: a JIC report of 1953 states that both internal and external censorship by the Allies would end when they were ratified.¹¹⁰ However, by further treaties in the 1950s and 1960s the Federal Republic conceded to all NATO countires which stationed troops on its soil special rights to collect intelligence there, including the right to participate in external censorship. The West Germans themselves increasingly assumed the leading role in it. A close watch was kept on letters going from East to West across the German–German ¹¹⁰ JIC delegation report, 7/5/1953, DEFE 41/129; JIC(G) minutes, 11/9/1951, 15/11/1951, and 7/12/1951, DEFE 41/66; JIC(G) minutes, 12/2/1952, 6/5/1952, 27/5/1952, 17/6/1952, and 19/8/1952, DEFE 41/67; Schmidt-Eenboom, Schnüffler ohne Nase, 157–8; D. Bark and D. Gress, A History of West Germany, i (Oxford, 1989), 300–2, 330–3.

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border, and even on those going from West to East. In 1978, about 1.6 million of the 188.4 million letters which passed between the two states were opened. The telephone traffic between the Federal Republic and West Berlin, on the one side, and the DDR, on the other, was monitored, as was that between the Federal Republic and West Berlin.¹¹¹

Brixmis As much use as possible was made in Bloc countries of military, naval, and air attachés. Each of the Occupiers had a further asset in Germany: the liaison staffs the Commander in Chief of each maintained with the other Powers under the London Agreement of November 1944. The British and the Soviets put this agreement into effect in the autumn of 1946 in a liaison agreement concluded by the British Deputy Military Governor, Lieutenant-General Robertson, and Colonel-General Malinin. Crucially, the Robertson–Malinin agreement recognized the right of the liaison staffs to travel around the Zone in question (with the exception of certain restricted areas). The British Mission (known as Brixmis) maintained a base in Potsdam, in Soviet-held territory, from which journeys through East Germany were made. Although officially responsible for liaison, the Mission’s main work (like that of the Soviets, French, and Americans) was intelligence-gathering. Brixmis collected intelligence of weaponry, troop movements, and army strength by driving around as much of East Germany as it was allowed to ‘tour’, as the phrase went. Brixmis was an active intelligence-gathering unit until its dissolution in December 1990. By the early 1950s, it was the only accredited British military unit operating behind the Iron Curtain. Though its tours of East Germany took place under continual MfS and Soviet surveillance and harassment, it had considerable freedom of movement, which distinguished it from the military and other attachés in the Bloc states. Brixmis even had aircraft with which to overfly, or fly near, military targets; excellent photographs were taken of such targets. Under the Potsdam Agreement, the Mission’s planes were permitted to fly in the air zone of Berlin itself, and anywhere beyond it within a radius of 20 miles. This area contained a considerable showing of Soviet military force. Occasional careful trespassing beyond this permitted area on to the DDR’s airspace yielded valuable photographs. On one occasion, in 1959, after attempts to photograph the radar directing a new surface-to-air missile system from the ground had failed, one of the Mission’s Chipmunks overflew the site. Its photographs revealed the capability of the missile system. Copies of the photographs were passed to the Americans, and Brixmis was told that they were on President Eisenhower’s desk within a week of being taken. By 1959 photographs of some 85 per cent of the frontline units of the Soviet 24th Air Force had been taken from these planes. ¹¹¹ Schmidt-Eenboom, Schnüffler ohne Nase, 61–3; Eichner and Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, 201–4; Charisius and Mader, Nicht Länger Geheim, 269, 402.

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Most of Brixmis’s spying work was done from cars. In the early 1950s, as a general rule, the Mission went on, at most, 28 tours a month. Ministries in London specified targets which were to be observed and provided background information on them. As a military staff in a frontline state, Brixmis’s intelligence tasks related to NATO’s military plans. The targets it was instructed to observe were, generally speaking, the military, naval, and air forces of the Warsaw Pact in East Germany, together with their weaponry. Among the Mission’s targets were vessels in the port of Rostock, beaches on the Baltic coast (to see whether, in the event of war, they were suitable for landings), the island of Rügen, which stood off the Baltic coast and was sealed off from Brixmis tours, the uranium mines in the Erzgebirge, and artillery and tank training areas west of Berlin. The RAF pressed for intelligence of airfields in East Germany, and particularly of their runways, which it planned to destroy if war came. These were overflown, while in tours of the DDR Brixmis officers tried to get a closer look at them. After a Soviet military exercise had taken place, Brixmis would generally tour the area to search for any items of equipment or weaponry which had been left on the battlefield. From such intelligence, strategic conclusions could sometimes be drawn. Word of Soviet military exercises in parts of East Germany sometimes came to the Mission from refugees. Brixmis supplied a great deal of intelligence on the deployment, for the first time, of Soviet weapons in East Germany (for example, the T-54 tank was first photographed by a Brixmis officer in 1955 and the T-62 tank in 1962; an abandoned IS-2 tank was actually examined in 1949). It is claimed that intelligence Brixmis acquired on Soviet weaponry and military equipment gave indications of the preparations being made by the Soviet armed forces for a nuclear or a chemical war. But subjected to harassment, as they were, and with little time to observe any particular target, the Mission was most effective when checking information provided by agents in East Germany.¹¹² Most observation and photography had to be done in seconds. Therefore, those principally responsible for the gathering of accurate technical intelligence in the DDR were spies. Nevertheless, despite these severe constraints, Brixmis acquired technical intelligence of real value. Like the other sources discussed in this chapter and the refugees and defectors examined in Chapters 1 and 2, Brixmis was a consequence of Germany’s division. Letters and phone calls passed between the two German peoples because they remained connected with one another despite their separation in two states. The migrants questioned by the Befragungsstellen were only moving from one German state to another. Contacts passed on useful information because they still had dealings with East Germans. The innumerable connections between the two German peoples made West Germany a vital asset to Western intelligence until 1961 and, indeed, beyond. ¹¹² T. Geraghty, Beyond the Frontline: The Untold Exploits of Britain’s Most Daring Cold War Spy Mission (London, 1996), 5, 9, 38, 63, 88–90, 291–4; Major Sedgwick, MI10 Conference 1951, DEFE 41/125; Major Hallett, MI10 Conference 1953, DEFE 41/126.

4 The Prisoners-of-war Come Home FLUSHING AT FRIEDL AND The first two chapters concerned the acquisition of intelligence from sources, most of them Germans, who had either worked for the Soviets in East Germany or had worked in the DDR’s economy. This chapter concerns an even more valuable type of informant: Germans forced to work in the Soviet Union itself. The war showed the Soviet leaders that their country was backward in military technology, particularly with regard to Germany and the USA. As soon as it ended, Stalin set the USSR the aim of catching up with the West in the most crucial military technologies. Three were of such outstanding importance that special supraministerial committees, subordinate to the Council of Ministers, were created to direct development work and allocate resources, overcoming any bureaucratic resistance. The manufacture of an atomic bomb had the highest priority. A Special Committee for Atomic Energy, chaired by Lavrenti Beria, was established in August 1945 to direct the atomic project. Its executive arm was the First Chief Directorate of the Council of Ministers, headed up by the Munitions Minister, Boris Vannikov. Another weapon to which high priority was given was the surface-to-surface missile (and, from 1950, the surface-to-air missile, for use in air defence).¹ Special Committee No. 2 was created in May 1946 to supervise the development of guided missiles. Though first Malenkov and then Bulganin served as chairman, the driving force in missile development was Dmitri Ustinov. The Committee set up a number of research institutes and design bureaux to undertake missile development, led by such outstanding designers as S. P. Korolev, M. K. Iangel’, V. P. Glushko, and G. N. Babakin.² The third key technology was radar. A Council for Radar, chaired by Malenkov, had been created in 1943; in 1947 it became Special Committee No. 3. The development of jet propulsion also received Stalin’s strong support. The first post-war Five Year Plan gave priority to these technologies.³ German scientific workers were involved in the development of all of them. ¹ V. Zubok and C. Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), 141–2. ² W. Lee, ‘Soviet Nuclear Targeting’, in D. Ball and J. Richelson, Strategic Nuclear Targeting (Ithaca, NY, 1986), 94; Uhl, Osteuropa (2001), 857–64. ³ Holloway, Stalin, 129, 144–9, 365; Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 119–23.

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The war left the Western USSR in ruins. The country also suffered from a crippling lack of manpower. Of its 27 million or so war dead, most had been men between the ages of 18 and 30.⁴ Because of the desperate shortage of able-bodied men, German prisoners-of-war were used to build a substantial number of warrelated factories, research institutes, and other installations. Once the war was over and there was no longer any danger of sabotage, many were also used as factory workers. The first deep penetration of the Soviet military-industrial complex—and certainly of its new post-war parts—was achieved, on their release to their homeland, with the help of these men. That the Soviets handed over such a valuable source of information to the West caused bewilderment. The released prisoners-of-war were a godsend. Surprisingly, the Soviets continued to hand them over throughout the Berlin Crisis of 1948–9. The ex-PoWs were an extraordinary source of intelligence which came when most needed. When they returned to Germany, flights by foreign aircraft over the USSR were not permitted. In the diplomatic flights to Moscow which were occasionally made the Soviet pilots took care not to fly over cities. The military attachés in Moscow of the Western Powers were confined to the capital and its environs, generally being denied passports to visit other parts of the Soviet Union. The other Germans returned to their homeland in the 1950s, the scientific workers deported in 1945–8, were too few in number to provide as broad a perspective on developments in the USSR as the exPoWs, and they began to return in any numbers only in 1950. Trade with the USSR was minimal at the end of the 1940s, with the result that commercial links could not be exploited for intelligence as profitably as they later could.⁵ The Chief of Intelligence Division, Major-General Haydon, paid tribute to their intelligence value when he told the Joint Intelligence Committee (Germany) late in 1949: There was no doubt that returning prisoners-of-war formed one of the most fruitful and steady sources of information on Russia available in Germany, and it was impossible to over-estimate either the value of the information obtained or the loss that would be experienced when the flow ceased.⁶

There was a great flow of prisoners-of-war from the USSR to the West in 1948 and 1949. The urgent need to find out more about the USSR meant that they had to be questioned. The Soviets regularly brought to the Demarcation Line transports of PoWs being released to the British Zone. They were met by the British and taken to nearby Friedland Camp, not far from Göttingen. There the men’s particulars were recorded and those who might have valuable intelligence, whatever its nature, were ‘flushed’ (separated) from the body of returnees. Those with technical intelligence formed approximately 5 per cent of the whole; they were generally interrogated at Friedland by a specially briefed interrogator.⁷ Sources ⁴ Zubok and Pleshakov, Kremlin’s Cold War, 6. ⁵ Erdmann, ‘The Wringer’, 165. ⁶ JIC(G) minutes, 20/9/1949, DEFE 41/64; cf. Rositzke, Secret Operations, 19. ⁷ Major Birch, G(Int)BAOR, MI10 Conference 1951, DEFE 41/125.

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with technical intelligence of real value were sent on to the nearby Special Interrogation Unit for specialist interrogation. Realizing the significance of postwar reconstruction, Scientific Intelligence in London instructed interrogators at Friedland to pay particular attention to ex-PoWs who had been engaged in construction work.⁸ Others were flushed from the stream of returnees because letters they had written from the USSR had indicated that they might have information of scientific or technical interest.⁹ A counterpart operation was carried out in Austria between 1947 and 1950 under the codename Heimkehrer (Homecomer).¹⁰ The inspiration for British ex-PoW interrogation was the work of an American unit in Austria, the ‘Military Intelligence Service Austria’ (MISA), which interrogated ‘Displaced Persons’ (DPs) and ex-PoWs entering Austria from the East and making their way to the Balkans.¹¹ The DPs had been taken to the USSR during the war; most were Jews—clearly Holocaust survivors—trying to reach the Mediterranean ports. The intelligence gathered from them was generally low grade, but valuable since it confirmed information already obtained.¹² MISA’s work also inspired the United States Air Force’s huge ex-PoW interviewing programme, codenamed Operation ‘Wringer’. The USAFE Air Intelligence Directorate was keen to interrogate ex-PoWs returning to Germany because many of those interrogated by MISA had been put to work in, or near, cities listed as its priority targets. Very many had built or rebuilt factories in the Soviet Union, including war-related factories, and some had even worked in them. ‘Wringer’ began later than the British operation. Interrogation began in Wiesbaden in June 1949. Its purpose was far more ambitious than that of the British operation and it was bigger. The USAFE’s aim was to acquire precise target intelligence which would allow the Strategic Air Command, if war came, to carry out an effective atomic strike on the Soviet Union. The ex-PoWs’ return to West Germany coincided with Lieutenant-General Curtis LeMay’s appointment (in October 1948) as commanding general of the SAC. LeMay set himself the task of making his command capable of carrying out an effective first strike on the USSR. From December 1948 this attack was accepted by the USAF’s high command to be its principal mission and the SAC’s budgetary and programming requirements were given top priority. The aim of the strike would be to destroy the USSR’s war-making capability in all its aspects: atomic, conventional, and military-industrial. The chief intelligence resource available to assist in planning this knockout blow was the body of German ex-PoWs flooding into the US Zone of Germany. When ‘Wringer’ began, ignorance of the Soviet Union was profound. The Americans lacked even basic information on the Soviet Union’s cities, transport ⁸ ⁹ ¹⁰ ¹¹ ¹²

Chairman JS/JTIC to Director STIB, 6/7/1948, DEFE 41/123. Evans to Knapp, 12/7/1949, DEFE 41/4. Capt. Hallett, Int. Org. BTA, MI10 Conference 1952, DEFE 41/126. JIC(G) minutes, 4/11/1947, DEFE 41/63. JIC(G) minutes, 10/9/1947, DEFE 41/63.

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networks, and the location of its airfields and factories.¹³ The only information the USAF (like the RAF) had on targets in the USSR was supplied by pre-war and even Tsarist-era maps and out-of-date photographs taken on Luftwaffe reconnaissance missions in the years 1941–4. The teams of interviewers stationed in the main cities of the US Zone, officially called ‘USAF Historical Research’ teams, were originally instructed to acquire information on fifty Soviet cities (this number soon grew to 403). The Americans maintained no central interrogation camp through which the incoming tide of men was directed. Screening officers in the reception camps of their Zone recorded the names and details of prospective sources, who were then invited for interview by the city-based teams. In the period 1949–53 they provided, in the words of one historian, ‘the bulk of air force basic intelligence on the USSR’.¹⁴ They identified and located numerous targets for an atomic strike; they provided descriptions of the layout of cities and military and industrial installations; and they gave accounts of the state of these targets’ defences against air attack.¹⁵ The Americans also received the information obtained from the ex-PoWs questioned by the British. Astutely, the Americans used the Germans of the Gehlen Organization to carry out their own interrogation, presumably in the belief that the ex-PoWs would open up before former comrades-in-arms. This operation was codenamed ‘Hermes’. The Germans also claimed to represent the ‘Historical Research Institute’.¹⁶ Britain did not have a nuclear strike force capable of attacking the USSR until late in 1956, when the Vulcan series of V-bombers came into service.¹⁷ Nevertheless, the ex-PoWs evidently provided intelligence directly relevant to Britain’s emerging post-war defence strategy. The RAF was very active in tracking down ex-PoWs who could provide information on the USSR. Moreover, USAFE interrogation teams were, by the early 1950s, stationed in the British Zone, where the RAF had already built up a card index relating to 50,000 ex-PoWs.¹⁸ Using this card index, the RAF carried out an active programme of re-interrogation. The intelligence gathered likewise helped the RAF in planning its air offensive on the USSR. In 1949 the JIC insisted that, if an atomic attack on the Soviet Union had to be made, the best targets would be its hundred largest cities, containing ‘the centres of political, economic, and administrative control’. Thus the machinery of government would be destroyed.¹⁹ The British interrogation operation began at some point after September 1947. Certainly by the beginning of 1948 systematic questioning had begun at ¹³ Rositzke, Secret Operations, 19. ¹⁴ Rosenberg, ‘US Nuclear War Planning 1945–1960’, in Ball and Richelson, Nuclear Targeting, 39–40. ¹⁵ Erdmann, ‘The Wringer’, 159, 165–6, 174–8, 187 nn. 8–9. ¹⁶ H. Höhne and H. Zolling, Network: The Truth about General Gehlen and his Spy Ring (London, 1972), 77. ¹⁷ Freedman, ‘British Nuclear Targeting’, in Ball and Richelson, Nuclear Targeting, 113. ¹⁸ Erdmann, ‘The Wringer’, 181. ¹⁹ Para. 10, JIC(48)116, ‘The Use of Atomic Bombs in a War against the Soviet Union’, 4/8/1949, CAB 158/5.

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Friedland Camp.²⁰ The great majority of the ex-PoWs had been imprisoned in the USSR, but some were sent to Friedland from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Albania. Large-scale interrogation seems to have lasted until May 1950, when the Soviets announced through the TASS news agency that the repatriation of prisoners-of-war had ceased. Quite a number continued to cross into the British Zone, having been repatriated to homes in the Soviet Zone and decided not to remain there. They were also interrogated at Friedland. The Soviets claimed in their announcement that they had returned 1,939,163 PoWs and had none left to return. This led to furious protests from the West German government, which sent a commission to the UN that same year to ask for help in finding out what had become of 1,156,663 members of the ‘former German armed forces missing in the Eastern Theater of war’. Among this number were 118,507 PoWs known by name to be in Soviet hands.²¹ PoWs did return later to Germany. In 1954 ones who had worked with the deported atomic scientists were allowed to go back after years in ‘cooling-off ’ camps.²² In 1955 Adenauer managed to procure the release of more when he visited Moscow. In the course of this operation, between 230,000 and 287,000 ex-prisoners-of-war were ‘screened’ (i.e., given an initial interrogation) at Friedland in the years 1948–51. Since efforts were made to acquire intelligence from those who managed to avoid being screened there, the true number of ex-PoWs who passed through British hands will have been higher. The figure of approximately a quarter of a million is broadly in line with the number actually questioned by the Americans. Between 1949 and 1955, ‘Wringer’ units interviewed 300,000– 400,000 ex-prisoners-of-war and wrote over a million intelligence reports. The number of ex-PoWs who passed through Friedland is difficult to establish, in part because of the uncertainty over when exactly the operation started. At the meetings of the committee which supervised it, the Co-ordinating Committee of JIC (Germany), figures for the number of those who had arrived at the camp in the previous month or since the previous meeting were not always given. The minutes of this Committee record that 70,003 ex-PoWs passed through the camp in seven months of 1948.²³ However, a mistake was made in counting; the true figure for these seven months was actually higher—approximately 72,000. That yields an average of 10,286 ex-PoWs per month. If (which may not be the case) the five remaining months for which no figure is given saw an average number of ex-PoWs pass through Friedland, 123,430 of them arrived at the camp in 1948. In 1949 the Soviets returned some 147,000 men to the British Zone. After 1949 the number of those returning waned substantially, 17,000 being transported to the BOZ in 1950. Only 421 seem to have entered the British Zone and been interrogated in the first four months of 1951.²⁴ The total minimum number ²⁰ ²¹ ²³ ²⁴

JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 29/9/1947, DEFE 41/68. Erdmann, ‘The Wringer’, 167–8. ²² Lowenhaupt, Studies in Intelligence (2000), 67. JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes for 1948, DEFE 41/68. Major Birch, G(Int)BAOR, MI10 Conference 1951, DEFE 41/125.

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of ex-PoWs to pass through Friedland between the beginning of 1948 and the early months of 1951 was therefore 236,421; the maximum figure (or thereabouts) is 287,851. This figure does not include those many ex-PoWs who had returned to the British Zone before interrogations began at Friedland; nor does it include those who were not returned to the BOZ by the Soviets but entered it from the US or French Zones. These men, together with ex-PoWs who only received a short interrogation at Friedland because they were then considered unimportant and ex-PoWs who missed interrogation owing to sickness, were known as ‘the backlog’.²⁵ Efforts were made to acquire information from them. In late 1949, it was estimated that there was a backlog of 200,000 uninterrogated ex-PoWs; by late 1950 this number had been reduced to 100,000.²⁶ These efforts will have increased the number questioned by British intelligence far beyond 230,000–287,000.

THE INTELLIGENCE YIELD Much more remains to be discovered about the operation’s intelligence yield. Information is scarce. Nevertheless, it is clear that the ex-PoWs were an early and valuable source of intelligence on the industry, military installations, growing military-industrial complex, and topography of the USSR. They also stated where deported German scientific personnel were at work. The quality of the intelligence they provided was consistently very high. Very significantly for the Cold War intelligence struggle, they identified key installations in the Soviet militaryindustrial complex, some of which remain important to Russia’s defence capability today. Although particular individuals who provided intelligence of outstanding importance can be identified, it is clear that a great number of the men had acquired information of value, since the quantity of valuable intelligence increased as the intake of returnees into the camp increased.²⁷ A ‘Special Interrogation Unit’ (SIU) was set up at Bad Driburg, not far from Friedland, to which those (comparatively few) ex-PoWs with important scientific and technical information to impart were taken for specialist interrogation. Some of the ‘Matchbox’ evacuees worked as interrogators there.²⁸ In April 1949 the number of ex-PoWs taken from Friedland to the SIU was 307 (which was a high figure).²⁹ The figure for May was 343 and that for June 273.³⁰ Valuable scientific and technical intelligence was gathered from them, in part because, even in connection ²⁵ JS/JTIC(49)87, ‘Returning PoWs’, 3/10/1949, DEFE 41/151. ²⁶ ACAS(I)-Production Directorate meeting minutes, 2/11/1950, DEFE 41/91. ²⁷ JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 20/9/1949, DEFE 41/69. ²⁸ JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 8/4/1949, DEFE 41/69; JS/JTIC(49)60, ‘Operation “Matchbox” ’, 2/7/1949, DEFE 41/150. ²⁹ JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 10/5/1949, DEFE 41/69. ³⁰ JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 7/6/1949 and 30/6/1949, DEFE 41/69.

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with quite complicated scientific matters, specialist interrogation allowed the information provided by these inexpert sources to be turned into firm conclusions. Indeed, the ex-PoW intelligence affected by it was generally confirmed by later intelligence gathered from more expert sources, the scientific workers deported in 1945–8.³¹ The Americans likewise obtained valuable scientific and technical intelligence from Operation ‘Wringer’, which yielded information on such varied subjects as missile development, aircraft and jet-engine development, the military use of television, and synthetic fuel plants. In the Americans’ case, too, only small percentages of the total number of reports contained information on technologies of interest. For instance, only 8 per cent concerned weaponry, only 5 per cent aircraft developments, and only 5 per cent propulsion units.³² Much remains to be learned about the depth of the penetration of the USSR effected by this operation, and the variety and secrecy of the activities concerned. In the early days the information of value taken from the ex-PoWs was largely economic intelligence and scientific and technical intelligence.³³ But the information gathered came to cover a wide field. Some of those interrogated at the SIU provided intelligence on research and development underway in the USSR.³⁴ The intelligence branch of the Rhine army consistently maintained that military intelligence of considerable value was obtained. This intelligence related to weapons, military equipment, and the Soviet Order of Battle.³⁵ All the Services were represented at the SIU and the Admiralty rated highly the information obtained from the prisoners-of-war. In autumn 1949 it was considered that, as far as technical intelligence of naval developments in the USSR was concerned, there were places about which nothing more could be learned, unless the sources were very highly skilled technicians who had been engaged in actual development work, or who had been at those places very recently. Examples of such places were the shipyards on the Black Sea and the torpedo factory at Makhachkala on the Caspian Sea.³⁶ The Department of Atomic Energy sent experts to Friedland Camp to instruct the interrogators there on how to acquire valuable information on this crucial subject.³⁷ As stated above, the RAF set such store by the intelligence gathered that it carried out a programme of re-interrogation.³⁸ Only examples of important Soviet war-related factories and other installations can be given, the location and significance of which were revealed to British intelligence by returnees. It is likely that these examples indicate reliably the character of the installations revealed and how the men had acquired their knowledge. They ³¹ STIB Director’s notes, MI10 Conference 1951, DEFE 41/125. ³² Erdmann, ‘The Wringer’, 178–9. ³³ JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 27/4/1948, DEFE 41/68. ³⁴ JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 4/3/1949, DEFE 41/69. ³⁵ JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 19/4/1949, DEFE 41/69. ³⁶ JS/JTIC(49)82, ‘Returning PoWs’, 24/9/1949, DEFE 41/151; JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 25/1/1949, DEFE 41/69. ³⁷ JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 5/10/1948, DEFE 41/68. ³⁸ JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 30/8/1949, DEFE 41/69.

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had been used to reconstruct or repair important factories, airfields, and research institutes. In some cases, they had even worked in the installations concerned. They excelled at identifying airfields. The JIC, in a report of 1949, set out what was known of the Soviet Union’s airfields and war industries. It was aware of no fewer than 224 airfields lying in the vicinity of 25 Soviet cities, 30 in the Moscow region alone.³⁹ Such intelligence was to become very significant. Long-range bomber and other airfields were overflown by U-2 spyplanes in the latter half of the 1950s and the photographs taken put an end to the fear that the USSR might have more such bombers (the ‘bomber gap’). To cite only a few identifiable examples, ex-PoWs located airfields near Monino, not far from Moscow; near Gorlovka, on the railway line from Khar’kov to Stalino; at Konstantinovka, some 80 kilometres east of Stalino; near Karachev, some 50 kilometres south-south-east of Bryansk; at Marinsk; and some 30 kilometres east of Saratov.⁴⁰ They probably revealed the location of many more airfields. Evidence for this is the fact that in October 1950, when its Operation ‘Wringer’ was in full swing and ex-PoWs were its main source of intelligence, the USAF pressed for photographic reconnaissance of the Soviet Union by balloon. Its reason for doing so was that it wanted photographs to confirm reports of airfields in the USSR (and of other targets, such as atomic plants, new industrial installations, and new railyards). This pressure led to the ‘Genetrix’ programme: balloons equipped with high-altitude cameras were released in Europe and sent drifting over the USSR to Japan.⁴¹ Rochus von Poncet identified not an airfield but a factory making four-engined bombers at Kazan’.⁴² By 1949 the JIC had received information, some of it from ex-PoWs, on 34 Soviet aircraft and 14 aero-engine factories (the other sources were German intelligence documents, Luftwaffe photographic intelligence, and Soviet publications).⁴³ An indication that many of the men identified aircraft factories is that STIB’s file list refers to many files held on such factories in the USSR. Almost all the files concerned are dated ‘August 1949’; 1949 was, of course, one of the two peak years of ex-PoW interrogation.⁴⁴ Moreover, there is evidence that pilots of U-2 spyplanes in the latter part of the 1950s were given very precise information on aircraft factories in the USSR which they were instructed to photograph. Much of the briefing information must have come from German ex-PoWs who had either been employed in the factories themselves or had carried out construction work nearby. Ex-PoW interrogations established that a number of plants were manufacturing heavy water for the Soviet atomic project. These were its pilot plant at ³⁹ Appendix H, JIC(48)116, CAB 158/5. ⁴⁰ Interrogation reports on Georg Kattau (29/4/1950), Franz Graetz (8/7/1950), Wilhelm Sieburg, Walter Holzhauer, Theo Thelosen, and Jakob Deselaers (12/9/1949), DEFE 41/117. ⁴¹ Richelson, American Espionage, 129. ⁴² Interrogation Report, 12/9/1949, DEFE 41/117. ⁴³ Appendix E, JIC(48)116, CAB 158/5. ⁴⁴ ‘C’ series list of STIB files, DEFE 41/30.

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Chirchik in Tajikistan, and plants at Dneprodzerzhinsk in the Ukraine, Kirovakhan in Armenia, Gorlovka, Berezniki, and Aleksin. Plants which also came under suspicion were one at Yerevan, also in Armenia, and the Ural Chemical Engineering Factory, some 16 kilometres south-east of Sverdlovsk.⁴⁵ In most of these cases, what caused scientific intelligence analysts to suspect that the plants were involved in heavy-water manufacture was either the nature of the plant’s equipment or of its products. Hundreds of German prisoners-of-war had worked on the construction of the electrochemical works at Kirovakhan. The most valuable of a number of identifiable sources on it was Werner Fiegert, a qualified engineer. The electrolysis apparatuses he described and drew were very similar to electrolysers used for the production of heavy water by electrolysis.⁴⁶ Attachés were sent to the locations concerned and brought back photographs which confirmed the deduction made from the ex-PoWs’ information. Ex-PoW sources also said that at ‘Kefirstadt’ there was a gaseous diffusion plant enriching U-235, but they did not know where ‘Kefirstadt’ was. They did, however, identify German scientists who had visited it and they, in 1955, revealed where it lay. Other atomic scientists provided information confirming that there was a heavy-water plant at Chirchik.⁴⁷ The ex-PoWs identified war-gas departments at a number of chemical plants, such as the chemical works at Dzerzhinsk, near Gorki,⁴⁸ and a plant, heavily guarded by MVD troops, at Yerevan in Armenia.⁴⁹ A number of ex-PoWs talked of a war-gas factory, Zavod (‘Factory’) 91, at Beketovka, just south of Stalingrad, which some said was manufacturing nerve gases.⁵⁰ This seemed to be reliable information, because others maintained that the dismantled nerve-gas manufacturing plant at Dyhernfurth had been brought to Beketovka and that bombs and shells were filled with the gases at the works and explosives manufactured there.⁵¹ One source was able to provide a detailed description of the new plant.⁵² Some ex-PoWs named a German scientist who was working at Beketovka. This name made the plant a highly prioritized intelligence target in the USSR, for the man in question was Dr Bernd von Bock, the only nerve-gas manufacturing expert to fall into Soviet hands after the war. As the former head of production at the Dyhernfurth factory, he was a specialist in the manufacture of tabun. He also knew the formula for sarin. The link between Beketovka and Soviet development of chemical weapons seemed to be firmly established by the fact, established by ⁴⁵ Lowenhaupt, Studies in Intelligence (2000), 67–9; STIB Liaison Letter No. 8, April 1950, DEFE 41/24; Holloway, Stalin, 189. ⁴⁶ Interrogation Report, 15/10/1949, DEFE 41/24. ⁴⁷ STIB Interrogation Reports Nos. 292 (Alois Gemassmer) and 304 (Walter Schmidt), DEFE 21/41. ⁴⁸ STO/2/DE/48, DEFE 41/145; JSJT/STO(49)31, DEFE 41/146. See also STIB’s ‘A’ and ‘C’ series of files, DEFE 41/30. ⁴⁹ STO/11/NO/48 and STO/25/NO/48, DEFE 41/145. ⁵⁰ STO/16/NO/48, DEFE 41/145; JSJT/STO(49)11, DEFE 41/146. ⁵¹ JSJT/STO(49)29, DEFE 41/146. ⁵² STIB Technical Meeting minutes, 8/3/1951, DEFE 41/10.

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German wartime intelligence reports, that before the war Beketovka had been an important factory for the manufacture of poison gases. The ex-PoWs’ information that von Bock was at Beketovka and that the Dyhernfurth manufacturing equipment had been transported there was the crucial intelligence which convinced the Joint Committees that the Soviets would soon be capable of manufacturing at least one of the nerve gases. Until then, though aware that shells filled with tabun had fallen into Soviet hands, they had not been sure whether the Soviets had the know-how to manufacture any of the nerve gases themselves. Von Bock was a one-man tabun manufacturing plant and his knowledge would inevitably become available to Soviet chemists. This line of reasoning underestimated Soviet skill—again. The Joint Committees concluded in 1949 that the quantity production of at least one of the nerve gases, probably tabun, was intended at Beketovka. Comparison with the timescale of the Germans’ move from laboratory production to quantity production led to the conclusion that the Soviets could not be in full production of any of the nerve gases until 1951 or 1952.⁵³ A later report that sarin manufacturing equipment had actually been installed in a factory at Beketovka prompted analysts to conclude in 1950 that the Russians were trying to manufacture sarin there.⁵⁴ Ex-PoW sources gave indications of where in the Soviet Union uranium was being found. Confirming information provided by a Jewish refugee in 1947, they gave the location of uranium concentration plants in the Fergana Valley operated by ‘Combine No. 6’.⁵⁵ A Wehrmacht medical officer, Hans Deinzer, forced to serve as Camp Medical Officer in Camp 533, Sverdlovsk, treated not only the prisoners but their guards as well. From August 1948 onwards, he was told by all of the MVD officers in the camp that they feared that they would be sent to the Kamchatka peninsula, where deposits of uranium ore had recently been found.⁵⁶ Wilhelm Weber, questioned in 1952, had helped to mine an open-cast uranium mine about 20 kilometres west of Aldan in north-eastern Siberia. Mining for uranium had begun there in December 1948. The mine covered a large area and Weber talked of veins of almost pure uranium beneath the topsoil. The mine was clearly a productive one, since it kept two ore-washing stations busy from May 1949. The penal labourers made to work it worked in groups of five, and each group was expected to mine five sacks of ore a day. The authorities clearly had high hopes for the mine, for Weber observed a surveying team at work there. Uranium from it was indeed used in the Soviet atomic project.⁵⁷

⁵³ JS/JTIC(49)63, ‘Russian Chemical Warfare: Nerve Gases’, 4/8/1949, DEFE 41/150. ⁵⁴ DSI/JTIC(50)30, ‘Russian Manufacture of Nerve Gases at Beketovka’, 30/12/1950, DEFE 10/498. ⁵⁵ Peebles, Shadow Flights, 173–4. ⁵⁶ JSJT/STO(49)43, DEFE 41/146. ⁵⁷ STIB Interview Report No. 86 (Wilhelm Weber), DEFE 41/98 (the co-ordinates of the mine were N 58⬚ 36⬘ E 125⬚ 22⬘); Gubarev, Arsamas-16, 11.

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CHELIABINSK-40, NII. 88, AND KHIMKI The men revealed the existence and location of key installations in the Soviet military-industrial complex. Three examples are given here: one the Soviet Union’s first plutonium production reactor; the other two important complexes for the development and experimental production of guided missiles and their engines. Peter Blumenkamp, an NCO in the Wehrmacht, was interned between May 1943 until January 1945 in a camp at Kyshtym, which lay behind the Urals, north-west of Cheliabinsk. He was put to work in the town loading vegetables onto trucks. In 1944 he travelled several times on trucks laden with vegetables along the rough road leading to the nearby town of Kazli. The road ran through a site which was being cleared for building work. The site was out of the ordinary in that not only were barracks being built in one corner but a new branch railway line was being laid from the main line at Kyshtym to the cleared area. The whole site was approximately 30 kilometres square. In January 1945 he was moved to another camp, but returned to Kyshtym in May 1947 to work in a machine workshop in the town. His second stay there lasted only five months, but he discovered from prisoners-of-war who had been there during his absence that, in March 1946, the area he had seen being cleared had been closed and the road to Kazli which had run through it had been diverted round the site. Neither German prisoners-of-war nor Russians without express authority were now allowed to approach the site, which was guarded by a strong MVD force. Blumenkamp kept his eyes open. He observed that three or four goods trains, generally guarded by soldiers, were now travelling daily to the site and returned empty of their cargo eight hours later. He could not tell what most of the wagons contained, since they tended to be closed, but he noticed that those that were open carried construction materials: sand, cement, and steel girders. A building of some importance was obviously being constructed. He asked a Russian who was working with him in the workshop what was being built on the road to Kazli, and received the remarkable reply that an atomic plant was being put up, most of the factories of which lay underground. His colleague added that only troops and the political prisoners building the plant were allowed onto the site. The prisoners were not allowed to leave it. That is the story which Blumenkamp told his interrogators when he was questioned at Friedland on 16 October 1948, a year after he had left Kyshtym.⁵⁸ The comment was added to the report made on the interrogation: ‘Informant made a very good impression, and his information is considered reliable.’ He was not actually the first German to provide intelligence of this atomic reactor, but he is the first who can be identified. First word of the reactor reached the British at ⁵⁸ STO/18/NO/48, DEFE 41/145. See P. Maddrell, ‘La Pénétration de la Zone soviétique de l’Allemagne et de l’Union soviétique’, in J. Delmas and J. Kessler (eds.), Renseignement et propagande pendant la Guerre Froide (1947–1953) (Brussels, 1999), 153–72.

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Friedland in August 1948.⁵⁹ These Germans had exceeded all their expectations of the intelligence benefit of interrogating ex-PoWs: they had revealed the whereabouts of Cheliabinsk-40, the first plutonium production reactor constructed in the Soviet Union, and its counterpart to Hanford Engineering Works in the USA. Only five months before British military planners had conceded that they did not know where Soviet atomic plants were located.⁶⁰ Unfortunately, the British discounted these reports of swift Soviet atomic progress because they were low grade. Consequently, the USSR’s early atomic test took them by surprise.⁶¹ Blumenkamp sketched a crude map of the secret site, on which he showed it as being near Kyshtym and showed Kyshtym as being not far from Cheliabinsk, lying north-north-west of this industrial city and south-south-east of Sverdlovsk. The reactor was, indeed, built about 15 kilometres east of Kyshtym, and about 80 kilometres north-west of Cheliabinsk. The site was chosen by General Avraami Pavlovich Zaveniagin of the First Chief Directorate, late in 1945. In that location, two nearby lakes would supply the great quantities of water needed to cool the reactor. Moreover, this was a highly industrialized region of the USSR, just behind the Urals, which had not been fought over during the war. Consequently, it had the best electricity supply network in a country reduced to ruins. It was also well supplied with serviceable railways and roads, along which raw materials could be sent to the plant, and nearby were such industrial centres as Cheliabinsk, Sverdlovsk, and Magnitogorsk, which could provide many of the materials needed for construction. Finally, lying deep in Russia, the site would be difficult for foreign air forces to attack, and foreign spies or listening devices to reach. The wonder is that a German destined to return to his country was allowed anywhere near it. The acceptance of such a security risk by a government obsessed with security can only reflect its desperate need for manpower. Not merely does Blumenkamp’s location of the reactor tally with its actual location, his account of its construction dovetails perfectly with that of David Holloway in his book Stalin and the Bomb. Holloway writes that, ‘In the early months of 1946 roads were laid and the site was prepared for construction; digging of the foundations began in the summer.’ Blumenkamp was told by his fellow prisoners-of-war that the site had been closed off in March 1946. Holloway writes that Cheliabinsk-40 was built by prisoners, with as many as 70,000 working on the project at one time; Blumenkamp heard the same from his Russian colleague in the workshop in Kyshtym in 1947. The construction of the reactor itself began in early March 1948 and was complete by the end of May. The reactor was, indeed, built underground, in a concrete shaft with walls 3 metres thick. Tanks of water surrounded these mighty walls, acting as a sheath round the reactor. The reactor, known as ‘Annushka’, went critical in June and was put to its intended use ⁵⁹ JIC(G) Co-ordinating Committee minutes, 24/8/1948, DEFE 41/68. ⁶⁰ JP(48)7, ‘Mounting of an Air Counter Offensive in 1957—Use of Naval Carriers’, 11/3/1948, DEFE 6/5. ⁶¹ JS/JTIC minutes, 28/9/1949, DEFE 10/493.

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of plutonium production in July.⁶² In August, British intelligence at Friedland received news of its existence and location. Cheliabinsk-40 began to produce plutonium early in 1949. The plutonium core of the Soviet Union’s first atomic bomb, tested on 29 August 1949, was manufactured at the complex. New production reactors were built on the site in the early 1950s: in September 1950 a second uranium-graphite system was completed; two similar reactors followed in April 1951 and September 1952; in January 1952 a smaller reactor for isotope production became operational, and at about the same time a heavy water reactor was built. Now known as Ozersk, the complex is still in operation, although it ceased producing plutonium for nuclear weapons in 1990.⁶³ The ‘Wringer’ programme yielded similar information. An ex-PoW revealed the existence and precise location of an atomic plant near Tomsk; his information was supported by reports obtained from Volksdeutsche who had made their way to West Germany. Indeed, in 1956 the CIA even obtained a fur hat contaminated with uranium-235 from a Volksdeutscher who had lived in Tomsk. The information was good: Tomsk-7, some 15 kilometres north-west of Tomsk, was a huge atomic complex with five plutonium production reactors and a uranium enrichment plant.⁶⁴ American policy-makers were quick to use this information. In April 1950 the authors of NSC-68 made a forecast ‘based on incomplete coverage of Soviet activities’ and using figures representing ‘the production capabilities of known or deducible Soviet plants’ that, by 1954, the USSR would have a stockpile of 200 atomic bombs.⁶⁵ Later in the 1950s the complex of plutonium production reactors at Krasnoyarsk, Krasnoyarsk-26, were identified by an ex-PoW who had been a construction worker at the site.⁶⁶ So ex-PoWs were important sources on military industrialization in the postwar USSR, as the map in the Appendix shows. Entitled ‘Positions of Main Russian Industrial and Development Areas in relation to Allied Air Bases’, it shows the regions of industrial reconstruction of which the JIC had knowledge in 1949. The industrial targets concentrated there were to be destroyed in any American atomic strike on the Soviet Union. One of the regions concerned was the Urals region, encompassing such cities as Sverdlovsk and Cheliabinsk. ExPoWs constituted one of the principal sources of the information contained in the map.⁶⁷ This is natural, owing to the concentration of PoW camps in the area shortly before. In 1948 75 camps holding Germans had lain in, or in the immediate vicinity of, Sverdlovsk alone. At least 42 camps had in the same period been located in or near Cheliabinsk.⁶⁸ The CIA in this period sent agents deep into the USSR to find out more about particular installations of interest. Atomic plants had top priority, alongside early ⁶² ⁶⁵ ⁶⁷ ⁶⁸

Holloway, Stalin, 184–9. ⁶³ Cochran et al., Russian Bomb, 49, 74. ⁶⁴ Ibid., 137. Quoted in May, American Cold War Strategy, 39. ⁶⁶ Peebles, Shadow Flights, 171–7. Map appended to JIC(48)116, CAB 158/5. B205/v. 684, Verzeichnis der Kriegsgefangenenlager in Rußland, Dezember 1948, BA-MA.

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warning targets.⁶⁹ MI6 did the same. In 1954 one of its Latvian agents was instructed to go to the region to the east of the Urals and take a sample of water from a river there, on which a reactor was (wrongly) believed to stand.⁷⁰ It was essential to know the size, efficiency, and output of Soviet plants, and what type of fissionable material they were manufacturing. The rate of production of fissionable material and the consequent size of the USSR’s atomic stockpile could then be estimated. A mere look at an atomic plant from the outside would give the observer some of this information. It would reveal whether the plant’s purpose was uranium enrichment or plutonium manufacture for the two types of plant look very different. A look at a uranium-235 production plant would indicate the method of uranium enrichment in use.⁷¹ Scientific intelligence specialists provided expert advice for deep penetration operations.⁷² In the late 1940s Germany supplied all the sources of information on guided missile development in the USSR which were available to British and US intelligence. One was the defector Tokaev. The others were: ex-PoWs; intercepted letters from deportees working at missile development centres which entered the Western Zone or West Berlin; and informants in development institutes in the Soviet Zone who reported on the dismantling of their institutes and the destinations in the USSR to which the equipment was shipped. These sources revealed the location of a number of research and development centres, in such places as Noginsk (near Moscow), Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, and Ostashkov.⁷³ Harry Rositzke recalls that the ex-PoWs ‘provided the first hard information on Soviet guided missile production and testing’.⁷⁴ However, he does not recount what intelligence was acquired from them. They were, at this time, the main source of information on work on guided missiles in the USSR. Most significantly, they revealed to their interrogators the location and function of two key installations in the Soviet missile development programme. These were NII. 88, the USSR’s principal rocket research institute, where Sergei Korolev developed his designs; and GDL-OKB, the rocket-engine design bureau at Khimki of Valentin Glushko,⁷⁵ in which the liquid-propellant motors which powered most Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles were designed.⁷⁶ The British and Americans rightly concluded from the ex-PoWs’ information that the function of the NII. 88 complex was research, development, and experimental production, rather than mass production, and that the nearby Khimki complex supplied it with propulsion units. German PoWs were used from around ⁶⁹ Rositzke, Secret Operations, 28; Rosenberg, ‘US Nuclear War Planning’, 40. ⁷⁰ Bower, Red Web, 170. ⁷¹ Commander Welsh, D.At.En., MI10 Conference 1952, DEFE 41/126. ⁷² JS/JTIC minutes, 31/8/1949, DEFE 41/73. ⁷³ Appendix N, Soviet Missile Programme Study, DEFE 41/160. ⁷⁴ Rositzke, Secret Operations, 19. ⁷⁵ Albrecht et al., Spezialisten, 97. ‘GDL-OKB’ stands for ‘Gas Dynamics Laboratory— Experimental Design Bureau’. ⁷⁶ D. Holloway, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (New Haven, Conn., 1983), 151.

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January 1947 to January 1948 to convert Zavod 88, in Podlipki (some 23 kilometres north-east of Moscow) into a factory for guided-missile production. In January 1948 all of them were removed from there. Intelligence they provided established that, during 1947, the factory had been re-equipped with machinery for V-2 assembly and the production of V-2 components. Most of this machinery came from Germany, and probably from the dismantled Mittelwerk in Nordhausen and Zentralwerk in Bleicherode. Zavod 88 was clearly manufacturing V-2s so that the suitability of this missile as a weapon could be tested. They rightly guessed that the factory was controlled by the Ministry of Armaments. Therefore, it was presumably meant to manufacture not only V-2s but all those missiles which fell within the responsibility of the Soviet army (i.e., surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, but not air-launched missiles). This intelligence fitted well with information obtained from a source in East Berlin, which indicated that an adjoining institute (NII. 88 itself ) was engaged in a rocket research and development programme far broader than experimentation with surface-to-surface missiles such as the V-2. When the SMAG’s Technisches Büro 11, situated in Berlin, was dissolved in 1948, its equipment was sent to the USSR. This equipment consisted of parts and test instruments for the Wasserfall and Schmetterling anti-aircraft missiles. A source reported the address he had seen on some of the packing cases: it was, ‘Moscow, Podlipki Station, Yaroslav Railway, NII. 88’. A secret source had informed Air Intelligence that, in June 1947, the institute was headed up by an officer called ‘Kurilov, former supervising officer at Nordhausen’. As the British realized might well be the case, this was an identification of Korolev, who, in 1945–6, had been the chief Soviet scientist at the Rabe and Nordhausen institutes.⁷⁷ The ex-PoWs also identified a research, development, and experimental production complex at Khimki (about 20 kilometres north of Moscow), consisting of three factories and a research institute. They provided a certain amount of information about it, which allowed its role to be accurately guessed at. Machinery from Niedersachswerfen, near Nordhausen, had been installed in the factories. Early in 1948 the PoWs were withdrawn from the principal factory, and shortly afterwards proper production norms were introduced there. There was firm evidence that the complex was to manufacture V-2-type combustion units, which were probably to be sent to nearby Zavod 88 for installation in the missiles assembled there. It was concluded that one of the main functions of the Khimki research group was to develop and test propulsion units of all sorts: guided-missile power plants, turbo-jets, assisted take-off units, and boost units. It was also believed to be researching into rocket fuel. This seems to have been an accurate assessment of the work of GDL-OKB, which had, in 1946, turned from the development of rocket boosters for aircraft to that of powerful liquid-propellant engines for long-range ⁷⁷ Appendices K and L, Soviet Missile Programme Study, DEFE 41/160; Guided Weapons Working Party List, 11/9/1953, DEFE 41/124.

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missiles.⁷⁸ The activities of the Podlipki and Khimki complexes together represented an extensive experimental and development programme which indicated that the suitability of putting the V-2 into service with the Soviet armed forces was being thoroughly investigated.⁷⁹ Both complexes were overflown and photographed by U-2 spyplanes in the mid-1950s. In identifying numerous targets, not just for a possible bombing offensive but also for later aerial and satellite reconnaissance operations, the ex-PoWs quite literally got the Cold War intelligence struggle off the ground. ⁷⁸ Holloway, ‘Military Technology’, 457. ⁷⁹ DSI/JTIC(50)19, ‘USSR—Production of Guided Missiles’, 19/10/1950, DEFE 41/152. Podlipki was also known as Kaliningrad.

5 Mass Espionage: Western Spying in Germany 1945–61 IDENTIFYING, RECRUITING, AND COMMUNICATING WITH SPIES BEFORE 13 AUGUST 1961 Traditional espionage using human spies reached its peak in Germany in the years 1945–61. At no other time in peacetime have the Great Powers put so much effort into obtaining intelligence from people. There are many reasons for this: the weakness of other sources, both overt and covert; the number of countries involved and the competition between their intelligence agencies; the competition even between the American agencies; the Americans’ huge resources. However, the principal reason lay in the extraordinary opportunities which divided Germany, and above all divided Berlin, offered for spying, not only on the DDR and the other satellites but also on the most important target, the USSR. Of course, these opportunities could best be exploited by Germans, which explains why the Western secret services relied heavily on German partner organizations. The first and most important of these was the Gehlen Organization; in 1956, it became West Germany’s official foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). However, there were many others. The Western services’ espionage also depended very heavily on German principal agents running strings of sub-agents. Most fundamentally, it fed on resistance to the Communist domination of East Germany and the flight to which this gave rise. This chapter largely concerns the operations of the BND and CIA; some mention is also made of MI6. Secret services have three tasks: to identify, recruit, and communicate with spies. They can only perform these tasks if they have access to suitable people. West Berlin was, until 1961, the Western secret services’ main base of operations against the DDR and the whole Communist Bloc because it gave them this access: it was a safe haven, free of Communist control, where they could operate, and which East Germans, Soviets, and other Eastern Europeans could reach. It was easier to reach than any other piece of Western-held territory. West Berlin denied the MfS the control over the East German people’s movements which was essential to give the DDR proper security. For the KGB it posed an unprecedented

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challenge. Much of the Western secret services’ work simply consisted of identifying East Germans and Soviets who would be worth recruiting and drawing them to West Berlin. There anti-Communism would make many of the East Germans, at least, easy to recruit. Consequently, a BND officer wrote of West Berlin in a West German magazine in 1968, ‘The history of spying knows no better base’.¹ Their other principal asset was the refugee stream, which, after 1952, ran mainly through West Berlin. Together, these two assets made spies easy to identify and recruit. Good spy candidates were chiefly identified and introduced to a secret service by refugees. The recruitment took place in West Berlin. The refugee brought the candidate there by writing him a letter. West Berlin also made communication with spies a simple matter. The significance of these two assets can be seen in the following statistic. Of the BND’s military spies arrested between 13 August 1961 and August 1965, 91 per cent had been recruited in West Berlin (the remaining 9 per cent in the DDR). No fewer than 96 per cent had been recruited following the interrogation of relatives or friends of theirs who had fled to the West; these people, in interrogation, had nominated them as promising spies. In 70 per cent of cases, anti-Communism had been their reason for spying; desire for material benefit had been the main reason in the remaining 30 per cent, though ambivalence towards the DDR had also played a role.² Julius Mader gives a similar figure, alleging in 1961 that 80 per cent of the ‘spies and subversives’ arrested in the DDR had been recruited in West Berlin.³ Dependence on West Berlin and the refugee stream for conducting espionage made the Berlin Wall a heavy blow, since it largely eliminated both as intelligence assets. East Germans could, as a rule, no longer visit West Berlin and fleeing to the West was very difficult and dangerous. After August 1961 the Western services could still use their other staple methods of the 1950s: exploiting ties of family, friendship, and acquaintance with people behind the Iron Curtain; exploiting business trips to the DDR; exploiting the transit routes between West Germany and West Berlin; targeting East Germans allowed to visit the world outside the Communist Bloc or posted outside it. The Wall therefore narrowed the range of opportunities for identifying, recruiting, and running spies open to the Western services and strengthened the hand of the MfS.

Intelligence Policy The Western services had two overriding aims in conducting their espionage in East Germany. The first was to provide warning of any attack on Western Europe by the Soviet army; this aim predominated until the mid-1950s. The second was ¹ Capital 8/1968, 67. ² H. Lapp, Diplomarbeit, ‘Die Erfahrungswerte des MfS BV Potsdam und weitere Aufgaben zur Sicherung spionagegefährdeter militärischer Objekte und zur Feststellung militärischer Spione des BND im Bezirk Potsdam’, Oktober 1965, MfS-JHS-MFZ-524, 11. Though these spies were arrested after 13 August 1961, it can be assumed that the great majority were recruited before that. The reason for this is that flight was extremely difficult after 13 August 1961. ³ J. Mader, Gangster in Aktion (Berlin, 1961), 118.

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to use the DDR’s connections with the Soviet Union to penetrate the latter. It was there that the really important political decisions were taken and the most significant scientific research and development conducted. These efforts, exploiting the Soviets’ drive to construct an empire in Eastern Europe, ran in parallel with efforts to infiltrate agents into the USSR directly by boat and plane, and to obtain intelligence on it by means of agents in Communist parties worldwide. It was a very difficult matter to obtain intelligence on the USSR from an agent in the DDR and only seldom was it achieved. The DDR itself was spied on in order to weaken it. It was a more important target for the Gehlen Organization than for the other Western services. Although established in part to obtain intelligence from agent networks which Gehlen claimed were still active in the USSR, its failure to achieve this meant that the Org was soon used principally to penetrate the Eastern Zone. It was only in 1953 that it stepped up operations against the USSR.⁴ Of course, the other Western services did spy on the DDR, too. In the scientific and technical field, intelligence was collected on East German research and development and on weaponry. Scientific workers were spied on to decide who should be induced to defect. Economic intelligence was gathered to determine whether the embargo was working and whether the Party’s economic plans were achieving success. In the political field, intelligence was gathered of the Party’s intentions and its relations with the Soviet Communist Party. Intelligence was also collected of the popular mood, to determine whether the DDR was on the point of an uprising.⁵ Western espionage and subversion were conducted on a large scale. Admittedly, the CIA and MI6 seem to have run quite modest numbers of agents at any one time. Slightly more than a hundred were reporting to the CIA in 1961.⁶ But there were many Western services. Since Germany was the front line in the Cold War, the US army’s intelligence services, the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) and Counter-intelligence Corps (CIC), were very active there. Indeed, the CIC, unusually, engaged in offensive espionage.⁷ The MfS’s study of the operations of the American services established that their policy was ‘recruitment on a mass scale’. By contrast, MI6 tried to recruit high-quality, long-term agents, above all in government agencies, the SED, and its mass organizations.⁸ In addition to the espionage of official intelligence agencies, resistance organizations spied in East Germany. Spying was a natural form of resistance because repression and secrecy in the Eastern Zone made it necessary to find out what was happening there. Charisius and Mader claim that, if one includes their partner ⁴ Höhne and Zolling, Network, 75–6, 82, 134; E. H. Cookridge, Gehlen: Spy of the Century (London, 1971), 134–5, 142–7. ⁵ Schlußbericht, 5/3/1958, MfS-AU 253/59 (Band 7), 5. ⁶ CIA Berlin Base to Washington DC, 14/9/1961, in Steury, Front Lines, 605. ⁷ I. Sayer and D. Botting, America’s Secret Army: The Untold Story of the Counter-Intelligence Corps (London, 1990), 319–23. ⁸ Neue Arbeitsmethoden westlicher Geheimdienste, MfS-HA IX 4350, 341–60.

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organizations, in the late 1950s there were more than 80 American, West German, British, and French intelligence units in West Berlin.⁹ The same figure was also used by MfS officers and by courts.¹⁰ The secret services of other Western countries were also present there. There were differences in emphasis between the various Western services, but spying on scientific research and development, on industrial production, and on the Soviet and East German armed forces was a high priority for all of them.¹¹ According to CIA officers like Richard Bissell and Harry Rositzke, large-scale espionage did yield a great amount of intelligence on political, economic, scientific, and military matters in the Bloc, and above all in the DDR.¹² A CIA officer who worked in Berlin in the 1950s agrees, claiming that there was ‘spectacular intelligence production out of Berlin’.¹³ This very extensive espionage and subversion marked the DDR’s early history, encouraging consistent repression of opposition on the ground of ‘spying’ and ‘sabotage’ and the constant expansion of the MfS’s means of social surveillance and control, above all its army of informers. It also led to a furious propaganda barrage: in spy trials, press conferences, newspapers, films, and books such as Mader’s, East Germans were told what the West was up to and that the MfS was watching.¹⁴ This propaganda did indeed make many reluctant to have anything to do with the Western services.

West Berlin Because of its open border with the East, West Berlin made the recruitment and running of spies an easy task. Any East German or Soviet based in the DDR could reach West Berlin. He simply made his way to East Berlin and then crossed over into the Western sectors. Enough streets were open to allow free passage between the two halves of the city; on only a few of the biggest streets were there checkpoints.¹⁵ There were no checkpoints at all on the Underground. Spies armed with forged West German identity cards could even make their way through the checkpoints.¹⁶ The refugee stream running chiefly through West Berlin made mass recruitment possible by enabling huge numbers of spy candidates to be identified. Recruitment took place in West Berlin, to which East Germans had easy access. Once recruited, spies met their controllers in West Berlin as well. Meetings were held in places in West Germany, too, but ease of access to West Berlin made it the main place for them. Lots of spies were also sent into the East via West Berlin. The ⁹ Charisius and Mader, Nicht Länger Geheim, 168. ¹⁰ Lapp, Diplomarbeit, 10; Oberstes Gericht der DDR, Strafsache gegen Brehmer und andere, MfSAU 314/61 (Band 1a), 205. ¹¹ Beater to all chiefs of district administrations, 6/3/1958, MfS-BdL/Dok. Nr. 003864; Lehrübersicht Reg. Nr. 5, 15/8/1960, MfS-HA IX 9013, 7. ¹² Marchetti and Marks, CIA, 384. ¹³ Hugh Montgomery, CIA conference, Berlin, 10–12 September 1999. ¹⁴ Dulles, Craft of Intelligence, 208. ¹⁵ Blake, No Other Choice, 166. ¹⁶ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11249.

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British were sending spies recruited from Nazi Germany’s U-boat fleet into the Eastern Zone via West Berlin from 1947 at the latest (and probably well before). Their main job was to report on the Soviet army’s Order of Battle.¹⁷ Thus West Berlin and the refugee stream together caused the DDR a grave security crisis which it only reduced to manageable proportions with the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Scientific and military spies were recruited in the same ways as other kinds of spy. Most commonly, a spy candidate was identified by someone in contact with a Western service, most often a refugee, and then invited by him to West Berlin, usually by sending a letter. For example, in 1956 the MfS arrested a courier who on behalf of MI6 took letters inviting East Germans who could provide information on Wismut to come to West Berlin.¹⁸ Alternatively, West Berliners introduced East German relatives or friends to a recruiter when they visited the Western Sectors. Or an approach was made to an East German when he for some other reason visited West Berlin—to go shopping, for instance.¹⁹ Though most recruitments were made in West Berlin, the introduction was sometimes made in West Germany.²⁰ Refugees would often recommend former colleagues as spy candidates; these people still worked at the factory or research institute where the refugee had worked and the secret service approached the candidate in order to penetrate it. It was common in all the satellites for agents to recruit close relatives and acquaintances (for example, colleagues at work), thus creating cells.²¹ After an agent was arrested, it was also common for the controlling service to try to recruit further spies among those he knew.²² West Berlin also made communication easy, safe, and full. The spy went himself to West Berlin to pass on his intelligence to his controller. This was perfect from the point of view of both. The meeting often lasted several hours. The controller used it to check the spy’s honesty, political commitment, and balance of mind. He reinforced the spy’s dedication by talking about the evils of Communism; as a rule, this took up the largest part of the meeting. He often gave the spy anti-Communist books (Pasternak’s, for instance) and pamphlets and Western publications. He trained the spy thoroughly in espionage skills and gave him money and further instructions. The spy was naturally told to join the Party or at least portray himself as loyal to the regime. They would dine together in a ¹⁷ Blake, No Other Choice, 100–2. ¹⁸ Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1956, MfS-HA IX, MF-11152. ¹⁹ Kurze Einschätzung der im Jahre 1961 erzielten Untersuchungsergebnisse in der Bearbeitung von Spionageverbrechen, 9/1/1962, Mf S-HA IX 4350, 226; Neue Arbeitsmethoden westlicher Geheimdienste, MfS-HA IX 4350, 343–53. See also case after case in the Tätigkeits- und Auswertungsberichte of HA IX for the years 1955–65. ²⁰ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11189; Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11190. ²¹ Tätigkeitsbericht für März 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11186; Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11199; Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11200; Höhne and Zolling, Network, 137–8. ²² Lehrübersicht Reg. Nr. 5, 15/8/1960, MfS-HA IX 9013, 145–6; MfS-AU 314/61 (Band 3), 19, 26, 29, 47.

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restaurant and go to the cinema or theatre. The spy could report everything he had to say—far more fully than he could in a few lines of secret writing. If he were handing over documents, the controller could have a look at them there and then and determine their value. He could base the further instructions he gave the spy on the information he received. It was quicker than using a ‘dead letter box’ or a letter. Above all, it was a very safe means of communication. The spy dispensed with a courier, who might be an informant of the MfS or KGB. He did not use a radio, whose transmissions the MfS might detect. He did not write his information in secret writing in a letter sent to a cover address in the West; the MfS might identify the address as one used by a secret service, reveal the secret writing, and track down the writer. So the only risks the spy took were those of crossing the border and meeting his controller in secrecy. The BND anticipated that the day might come when West Berlin could no longer serve as a bridge between East and West and prepared its spies for it. At their meetings, controllers taught their spies how to communicate by radio, send information secretly by post, and lay, fill, and empty ‘dead letter boxes’. The boxes were duly laid. However, until the Berlin Wall was built, personal meetings between agents and controllers were the BND’s and CIA’s principal means of maintaining the connection.²³ The basic point should be made that their spies in this period were generally East Germans. Secret writing in a letter and the ‘dead letter box’ serviced by a courier were the main methods of communicating with spies located further behind the Iron Curtain. The spies infiltrated into the USSR and tasked to provide early warning of a Soviet attack had to be equipped with radio sets: it was the only method of communication fast enough. Nevertheless, they were also trained in secret writing techniques and provided with secret writing equipment. They were often told to apply for a job at a particular factory.²⁴ For the BND, the post was generally a secondary means of communication until the Wall went up. Military spies constituted an exception to the rule: they had to report every week by letter on military developments, though they had meetings with their controllers as well. The military spies living in East Berlin, or on the very margins of the city had instructions to post their letters in West Berlin. The second Berlin crisis, from 1958, caused the BND to change its procedures. From 1960 the MfS noticed that letters were increasingly used to convey intelligence to cover addresses in the West. The ‘dead letter box’ was also a secondary means of communication until after August 1961. Although the BND, ²³ Oberleutnant Arnold, Diplomarbeit, ‘Die Mittel, Methoden und Möglichkeiten zur Aufklärung der feindlichen Zentralen des BND und deren Mitarbeiter unter den veränderten Bedingungen aufgrund der Schutz- und Sicherungsmaßnahmen der DDR seit dem 13. 8. 1961’, Januar 1963, MfS-JHS-MFZ-18, 4; Hauptmann Heinert, Diplomarbeit, ‘Die Analyse des nachrichtendienstlichen Verbindungssystems des Bundesnachrichtendienstes und seiner Entwicklungstendenzen’, 15/10/1965, MfS-JHS-MFZ-201, 7–9, Anlage 4; Dispatch, Chief of Base Berlin, ‘Berlin since 13 August’, 6/11/1961, in Steury, Front Lines, 630. ²⁴ Rositzke, Secret Operations, 21–2, 47; Coffin, Once to Every Man, 102–6.

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for example, told its agents to lay plenty, little use was made of them. They were meant as a precaution, if agents were no longer able to make their way to West Berlin to hand over intelligence. Agents were supplied with spying equipment at meetings with their controllers in West Berlin. Like the post, the radio, and the courier, ‘dead letter boxes’ became much more important as a result of the Wall’s construction.²⁵ The Western services saw that East Germans might be denied access to West Berlin and that it might no longer be usable as a secure location for communication. The periodic crises over Berlin led to greater use of alternative methods. For example, the crisis of May 1952, when some 200 streets connecting the two parts of Berlin were blocked, led to more communication by letter (often a love letter) and via ‘dead letter boxes’ filled and emptied by couriers.²⁶

Recruitment of Agents in West Berlin The work of Western controllers chiefly consisted of using people in West Berlin either to bring targets over the sectoral boundary or to make contact with promising people who had come there unprompted. Refugees made up the largest group in each such network of recruiters. Principal agents used women as bait to lure Soviet military men and scientists to West Berlin. Their East German female sub-agents were told to get to know Soviet men, sleep with them, and persuade them to visit the Western Sectors.²⁷ East Germans and Soviets did not have to venture far into West Berlin to be open to Western influence and many operations concentrated on the sectoral boundary. The spies recruited there were both high and low grade. West Berlin’s accessibility was exploited to recruit spies or make defection offers in a multitude of ways. If a promising spy candidate or defection candidate were identified by a refugee, then he would generally be invited to a meeting there. Promising spies among the refugees themselves were spotted at the Marienfelde camp, recruited, and sent back into the Zone. Intelligence officers also targeted relatives who came from East Germany to visit some of the refugees in camps or hostels. East Germans who came to do their shopping in West Berlin were targeted, too. The CIA advertised in West Berlin newspapers jobs for which technical qualifications were required. East German applicants working in targeted institutions were invited for interview and offered help in defecting to the West if they spied for a while.²⁸ The Americans, in their efforts to create large agent networks in the DDR, made much use of letters to make contact with spy candidates. For ²⁵ Hauptmann Höferer, Diplomarbeit, ‘Die Analyse der Arbeit mit TBK im Rahmen des Verbindungssystems des BND zu seinen Agenten in der DDR und einige sich aus dieser Analyse ergebende politisch-operative Aufgaben zum Eindringen in das Verbindungssystem’, 1/10/1966, MfS-JHS-MFZ-286, 1; Heinert, Diplomarbeit, 13. ²⁶ Mielke to Gutsche, 25/7/1952, MfS-BdL/Dok. Nr. 003685. ²⁷ Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, 230. ²⁸ Rositzke, Secret Operations, 42.

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instance, in the mid-1950s an MID unit in West Berlin, calling itself ‘Élan Export-Import’, wrote to East Germans asking them to come to West Berlin to find out what the company had to offer. Some of those who did so and who lived near military bases were invited to become spies.²⁹ East Berliners often went to films in the cinemas which lay just on the Western side of the boundary or drank in pubs there. Recruiters prowled these places and offered money to them if they brought back information—for example, documents in Russian from a Soviet army rubbish tip. They used to wait outside ‘boundary cinemas’ and offer teenagers and children from East Berlin a few marks if they brought back something written in Russian. Some even used to tear pages out of their Russian textbooks.³⁰ The Western services targeted young people for recruitment. In 1951 Erich Mielke noted a growing tendency on the part of the Western services to recruit agents at places of higher education. Of particular concern was the Free University of Berlin, in the American Sector. Students had to be vetted before they could register there; the MfS believed that several of the vetting commission’s members were in the pay of Western secret services and that one was a representative of the resistance organization, the Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit (‘Fighting Group against Inhumanity’, or KgU). This commission also investigated the teaching staff before they were appointed. The Western agencies were particularly interested in making contact with students at West Berlin or West German universities who actually lived in the East or had relatives who lived there. Mielke therefore ordered his counter-espionage units to find out which East Germans were studying in West Berlin.³¹ George Blake has described a standard method by which the British aimed to recruit Soviet spies. A sub-agent, often a woman, would lure a target over the sectoral boundary and into a shop located very close to it. There he would be offered luxury goods at bargain prices. This visit would lead to more and the head agent who ran the shop would build up a relationship with the target and an understanding of him. If it seemed as if he might respond to an attempt to recruit him, a British intelligence officer would step in and make the approach.³² The depiction of Western recruitment methods to be found in MfS counter-espionage documents accords perfectly with Blake’s brief and superficial account. An example is the Vereinigung für Kulturelle Hilfe (Association for Cultural Assistance), a front organization and spyring run by the KgU on behalf of the CIC. The Ministry received information about its activities from a number of informants and discovered that it was in contact with the same department of the CIC as the KgU. ²⁹ Tätigkeitsbericht für August 1956, MfS-HA IX, MF-11156. ³⁰ Mader, Gangster, 115–16; Mader, Graue Hand, 157–8; Höhne and Zolling, Network, 114–15; interview with Helmut Wagner. ³¹ Dienstanweisung Nr. 10/51, 31/5/1951, MfS-BdL/Dok. Nr. 002014. ³² Blake, No Other Choice, 169–70.

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The Kulturelle Hilfe’s headquarters were at Kurfürstendamm 106, in West Berlin. From there, three separate organizations were run: three bookshopscum-reading-rooms, each called Bücherstube Ost (Bookshop East); the Freiheitlicher Erzieher, which claimed to be an advisory service for teachers; and the Ärztliche Beratungsstelle Ost, which claimed to be an advisory service for doctors. The KgU’s Resistance Department (Widerstandsabteilung), responsible for secret work against the DDR, was also based in the Kurfürstendamm office. The Kulturelle Hilfe’s personnel were directed and funded by American intelligence officers; their task was to establish in the DDR an extensive network of spies (and, the MfS inevitably added, saboteurs, though it really meant propagandists). The main task of this network was to spy on the DDR economy and particularly on technological developments in it, as well as on the armed forces. The organization also put out a great deal of propaganda; the two activities were intimately connected. This connection was a feature of Cold War espionage. The Bücherstuben Ost were also located in West Berlin. One was in the Kurfürstendamm headquarters; the second elsewhere in Charlottenburg; and the third in Eichhornstraße (Tiergarten). These locations are important. The Kurfürstendamm was the greatest street in West Berlin and its shop window; it was therefore a considerable lure for Easterners. Eichhornstraße was a street lying just on the Western side of the boundary with the Soviet Sector. So it was very easy for East Germans to reach. Each Bücherstube was both a bookshop and a reading room, and was filled with books, pamphlets, and other publications proclaiming the values of the West. These were written in Frankfurt am Main by Germans directed by American writers and journalists employed by the CIC. Part of the work of the Bücherstuben lay in distributing this propaganda material, both within West Berlin and to inhabitants of East Berlin and East Germany. The Kulturelle Hilfe tried to draw teachers, doctors, creative artists, and others to the Western sectors. Its main targets were teachers and doctors, both of whom at this time worked in institutions undergoing brutal Communization and severely lacking essential articles like textbooks and medicines. The organization’s main weapons were the letter, the idea of freedom, and the books and medicines the teachers and doctors lacked. When its representatives wrote to teachers in East Berlin or the DDR, they called themselves the Freiheitliche Erzieher (the Free Teachers). When they wrote to doctors, they called themselves the Ärztliche Beratungsstelle Ost (Doctors’ Advisory Office East). There was also a VoPoBeratungsstelle (People’s Police Advisory Office), which again shows that the East German police were an important target. Under the banner of the Freiheitliche Erzieher, the KgU agents wrote to East German teachers, university students, and schoolchildren, offering them advice and help and asking them to come over to their offices in the Kurfürstendamm. They also offered to give them books which were hard to come by in the DDR and which could be collected from the offices in West Berlin. The Ärztliche Beratungsstelle Ost used the same methods with doctors, offering them medicines.

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Writers, artists, musicians, and the like were invited to exhibitions, discussion evenings, and artistic events; on the invitations it was recommended that they drop by Kurfürstendamm 106, where they could pick up ‘very valuable literature’.³³ When the selected targets turned up at Kurfürstendamm 106 they were given an interrogation under the cover of advice. The visitor was asked about himself, where he came from, what he did for a living, and so on. Then the books or medicines were handed over—the visitor had to sign a receipt for each one—and was presented with publications extolling democracy and freedom at the same time. The organization’s representative asked whether the visitor knew anyone else who read these sorts of publications; he also inquired about their character; he asked in detail about the visitor’s friends and colleagues. In short, he wanted to know all about schools and universities, hospitals and clinics in the DDR and those who worked in them. This information was used to make further recruitments. One teacher who was recruited went back to his school in East Germany and told some of his colleagues that they could obtain textbooks they needed, free of charge, at the Bücherstube Ost in Eichhornstraße. He himself returned to the Bücherstube and handed over a list of the teachers he had told about it and its service. Three of those teachers in due course presented themselves at the Bücherstube. The people there already knew much about them; in particular, they knew their failings of character. This knowledge aided the recruitment of all three. Two of them were fond of pornographic books and photographs and were accordingly promised these. The third liked money and was recruited by offering to pay him for information. Doctors promised much as agents. One recruited by the Kulturelle Hilfe was instructed to go back home and tell patients with important jobs in nationalized factories that they were seriously ill—so ill, in fact, that the medicines necessary to treat them could only be obtained in West Berlin. He recommended that they go there—they were not too ill for that—and collect the drugs, free of charge, from the premises of the Ärztliche Beratungsstelle Ost, either on the Kurfürstendamm or in Eichhornstraße. One of his patients, a head of department at a VEB, when he turned up at Kurfürstendamm 106 realized that he was falling into a trap; he refused to answer questions and returned to the DDR. He informed the MfS, which arrested the doctor. Similar methods were used at industrial exhibitions and trade fairs. In 1952 East Germans received invitations to present themselves at an office at an industrial exhibition in West Berlin; this office was called the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Ost–West-Hilfe (Working Group for East–West Assistance). A wealth of consumer goods was on display at this exhibition; there were many posters there lauding the ‘Free Economy’ and ‘Free Enterprise’. When visitors from the East turned up, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft referred a number of them to the Vereinigung für Kulturelle Hilfe at Kurfürstendamm 106. ³³ Dienstanweisung Nr. 5/53 zur Sachakte ‘Koppel’, 15/1/1953, MfS-BdL, Dok. Nr. 002040.

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A favourite recruitment ploy was to broadcast on the radio—often RIAS (Radio in the American Sector), to which anti-Communist East Germans naturally listened—that a particular person was to be avoided because he was an MfS informer. The person named would, of course, often race over to the RIAS offices in West Berlin and denounce the report as false. One such person was told, in reply, that the information had come from the Kulturelle Hilfe. So he rushed over to Kurfürstendamm 106, where he was asked to prove that he was not an MfS informer. The Kulturelle Hilfe representatives eventually accepted that he was not, but added that he had probably been falsely accused by someone who was himself a Stasi spy. He was asked to spy and report on the person concerned. So furious was he at what had (allegedly) happened that he did what he was asked and did it well. Since he had now proved his willingness to act as a spy and his worth, he was asked to continue providing information, which he agreed to do. Moreover, arrested spies told the MfS in interrogation that they had been RIAS sources and had been referred by RIAS to American and West German secret-service offices for recruitment. This allegation was naturally made public in court proceedings.³⁴ Many East Germans travelled to West Germany itself in the 1950s and the Western services could contact them and put offers to them there. DDR officials visiting West Germany or West Berlin were targeted for recruitment; spies in government agencies and industrial enterprises had instructions to report impending visits by such people—indeed, by any DDR citizen.³⁵ These people were called Reisekader (travelling officials). Representatives posted abroad were called Auslandskader (officials abroad). West Germans and West Berliners who had access to the DDR and the rest of the Bloc were naturally exploited. One ruse was to recruit agents who used the inner-German transport routes. Julius Mader maintained that lorry drivers who drove along the access routes between West Germany and West Berlin were recruited to take photographs, lay ‘dead letter boxes’, and carry out other tasks.³⁶

Inter-German Connections Old connections of family or friendship which crossed the German divide were thoroughly exploited: a Wehrmacht veteran in the West would introduce an ex-comrade in East Germany, or a scientist would make an approach to an old colleague from Nazi days. Reunions were used for this purpose.³⁷ Scientific espionage lent itself to this way of recruiting and running spies: scientific workers, and particularly scientists, form a distinct pool of people who study and work together. Huge numbers of them had worked in the Nazi military-industrial complex, and many had worked for ³⁴ Oberstes Gericht der DDR, 1. Strafsenat, Strafsache gegen Held und andere, MfS-AU 52/56 (Band 4a), 319; Schlußbericht, 17/12/1955, MfS-AU 52/56 (Band 4a), 245; Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11199; Tätigkeitsbericht für August 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11203. ³⁵ Heinert, Diplomarbeit, Anlage 2. ³⁶ Mader, Gangster, 117–18. ³⁷ Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 34–5; Höhne and Zolling, Network, 89–90.

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quite a small number of leading companies, research institutes, and universities. So a mass of close connections tied scientific workers in the Eastern Zone to former colleagues in West Germany. Their time in the USSR had also turned the scientific deportees of 1945–8 into an interconnected network of people and, when they fled West, their connections back to the DDR could be exploited. Many organizations were set up to preserve the ties formed in Nazi days. They therefore recruited their members from both Germanies and their membership lists were of interest to spying agencies. If their members had a scientific or military background, then they were perfect recruiting grounds. For example, in 1953 a bookkeeper at a bank in West Berlin became director of the Bund Ehemaliger Fallschirmjäger (Association of Former Parachutists). To persuade former parachutists living in the DDR to become members, he organized meetings in West Berlin. He was himself soon recruited by the Org and gave it names of promising people in East Germany.³⁸ International conferences were particularly important both to scientific espionage and to inducing defection. East German delegations and representatives attended conferences, trade fairs, and exhibitions in the West; the Western services sent officers and agents to make contact with the East Germans, question them, and, in some cases, try to recruit them or induce their defection. Some scientific spies met their controllers at such gatherings. One BND scientific intelligence officer attended all the conferences on atomic physics and aeronautics to which the Bloc States sent big delegations, and sought to make contact with the Eastern delegates. The director of the External Relations Department of the Technische Hochschule in Braunschweig was recruited as an agent by an American service in 1959. One of his tasks was to find out the political opinions of the teaching staff so that they could be recruited and used to make approaches to Eastern Bloc delegates at international conferences. He was also to report on the political opinions of the students at the Hochschule, and provide the personal details of any from Bloc States or countries in the Arab world.³⁹ An example of a spy recruited at a conference is ‘Kant’, who was recruited by the BND in 1958 at a physics conference in West Germany. ‘Kant’, an engineer, worked at the key electronics factory, the Werk für Bauelemente der Nachrichtentechnik in Berlin. He was introduced to the BND by a former colleague. He provided information on research, development, and production in the electronics field.⁴⁰

German and Anti-Soviet Resistance Organizations Many of the East Germans who spied for the Western secret services did so as a form of resistance to Communism.⁴¹ To draw on the information-gathering ³⁸ Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1956, MfS-HA IX, MF-11150. ³⁹ Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11247. ⁴⁰ Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11248. ⁴¹ See K. W. Fricke, ‘Spionage als antikommunistischer Widerstand’, Deutschland Archiv, 4/2002, 565–78.

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power of resistance, the Western services helped to bring a resistance movement into being. By the 1950s West Germany abounded in resistance organizations, both German and Soviet, which were chiefly composed of refugees from the Soviet orbit. Repression throughout the Bloc created innumerable victims, whose associations were the natural partners of the Western secret services. They were used to subvert the Bloc as well as gather intelligence. By 1948 it was American policy to use such organizations in anti-Soviet policy. NSC-10/2 authorized the use of ‘economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage . . . and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas, and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world’.⁴² The Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) initiated huge covert operations to undermine the SED regime, chiefly from West Berlin. Many of its operations were directed against the East German economy. Others were propaganda operations designed to undermine the loyalty of the armed forces in East Germany. OPC operated semi-independently of the CIA until 1952. Collaboration with resistance groups reflects the CIA’s wider practice at that time and since—in trying to overthrow Castro, it forged similar alliances with Cuban exiles and even made contact with the Mafia.⁴³ The decision to make use of resistance to Communism, while pragmatic, meant collaboration with people with horrific Nazi pasts. For example, it led to use of fanatical antiCommunists of many nationalities—Germans, Russians, Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, and more—who had participated in mass killings during the Nazis’ occupation of the western USSR. Refugees from the Ukraine and the Baltic States, including war criminals, and former Nazi liaison officers with wartime auxiliary forces had just the connections needed to gather intelligence and engage in subversion behind the Iron Curtain; they were therefore exploited.⁴⁴ Inspired by the memory of the Second World War, when much intelligence had been obtained from resistance movements, the secret services also exploited resistance organizations for intelligence. They made varying use of them. Five uses were possible. Firstly (the closest relationship), the intelligence service could use a ‘secret section’ within the organization as a secret service in its own right. It would run local agents in enemy-held territory and pass on the results to the controllers. The Soviet intelligence services, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, made similar use of the underground branches of Communist parties in Western countries. Secondly, and less intimately, the organizations, or people within them, could pass on to Western secret services suitable spy candidates from among their members in enemy-held territory, or from among people from the East with whom they happened to make ⁴² NSC-10/2, ‘Office of Special Projects’, 18/6/1948, in Etzold and Gaddis, Containment, 127. ⁴³ Andrew, President’s Eyes Only, 251–5. ⁴⁴ See C. Simpson, Blowback (London, 1988) and R. Breitman, N. Goda, T. Naftali, and R. Wolfe, US Intelligence and the Nazis (Cambridge, 2005).

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contact. So they would act as ‘tippers’, rather than secret services. In either case, they were recruiting grounds. The Soviets made precisely this use of leading officials in Communist parties worldwide.⁴⁵ MfS counter-espionage files contain evidence that a whole range of organizations in West Germany and West Berlin acted as tippers. The MfS penetrated resistance organizations in East Germany and obtained much information about their collaboration with Western intelligence. The organizations named are RIAS (the American radio station in West Berlin),⁴⁶ the Ostbüro of the CDU,⁴⁷ an extreme right-wing group including SS and SA veterans called the Burschenbund Convent,⁴⁸ and associations of Germans expelled from Eastern Europe (Landsmannschaften).⁴⁹ The MfS’s conclusion about RIAS is supported by evidence available in the United States. In 1953 an American military intelligence officer pointed out to the Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles, that Senator Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on RIAS were harmful to American interests since ‘US intelligence agencies depend upon RIAS for recruitment of covert sources and agents in the Soviet Zone’. Moreover, RIAS’s own informants supplied information of all kinds which was circulated to the American intelligence agencies operating in Berlin.⁵⁰ There may well have been other collaborator organizations; in particular, the Ostbüro of the Deutsche Partei, an extreme right-wing party, may have been one.⁵¹ Western intelligence officers also moved in resistance circles and talentspotted good spy candidates active in anti-Communist work. Allen Dulles publicly referred to this use of resistance organizations, commenting that before spying for the CIA an ideological agent might ‘prefer to join some kind of underground movement’ or participate in exile politics directed at overthrowing a regime.⁵² Thirdly, the organizations could make available to Western services the information gathered from their members in the East. Fourthly, they could be used to spread propaganda in enemy-held territory or engage in covert action there. Lastly, they could be held in reserve and used to conduct partisan warfare behind enemy lines and provide intelligence if war came. They were used in all these ways. They were so obviously useful to the Western secret services that they were involved with a number of them simultaneously. The MfS and KGB already regarded such organizations as subversive; their collaboration with Western intelligence only increased the Communists’ determination to smash them to bits. ⁴⁵ Important studies of Soviet intelligence’s exploitation of Communist parties worldwide have appeared in recent years. See J. Haynes, H. Klehr, and F. Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism (New Haven, Conn., 1995); J. Haynes and H. Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, Conn., 1999); and Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive. ⁴⁶ Tätigkeitsbericht für Dezember 1955, MfS-HA IX, MF-11149; Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11254; Tätigkeitsbericht für Dezember 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11255. ⁴⁷ Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11232. ⁴⁸ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1965, MfS-HA IX, MF-11265. ⁴⁹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1955, MfS-HA IX, MF-11147; Tätigkeitsbericht für September 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11228. ⁵⁰ Partridge to Dulles, 3/8/1953, Folder ‘Rh-Ri-Misc’, Jackson Papers, Box 89, DDEL. ⁵¹ Tätigkeitsbericht für August 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11227. ⁵² Dulles, Craft of Intelligence, 181.

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The first move to have come to light was made by the US army, which, in 1946, founded the Gehlen Organization to gather intelligence for it. The CIA assumed responsibility for the Org in 1949. Both services saw that East Germany could most easily be penetrated by a spying organization made up of Germans. Gehlen insisted that he keep the identity of his sources secret; so he was an independent operator. But the CIA’s liaison staff received copies of all intelligence reports and assessments, and its officers supervised the work of each department.⁵³ The Org quickly became the most important secret service operating against the DDR. In September 1954, when his Großaktionen were doing serious damage to Western agent networks, Ernst Wollweber, East Germany’s state security chief, explained to the SED Central Committee why the Org needed special treatment. In his words: Now what are the reasons for the blows to the Gehlen Organization? The Gehlen Organization has some unusual characteristics. Firstly, in contrast to all the other organizations the Gehlen Organization has its agents in all the other hostile agencies with the exception of the American secret service, everywhere! The others do not have that. We can uncover whichever organization we want, so long as it is not the American secret service we ultimately find Gehlen. Whether it is the Constitution Protection Agency, KgU, Free Jurists, Eastern Bureaux, SPD, or DGB or whatever, Gehlen is to be found in all of them. That is also very clear. By means of Gehlen the Americans have united all the other organizations and so through him obtained a source with which to exploit what everyone else has. In addition, the Gehlen Organization is the best organized because it has the best agents. In contrast to the others, it is led by experienced Fascist intelligence officers, not only Germans. It operates not only in the German Democratic Republic but also in the People’s Democracies, and recruitment in the German Democratic Republic for this organization, since it is a German organization, is easier.⁵⁴

In sum, the Org was the core of the German resistance movement which the United States summoned into being to shake the Soviets’ control of East Germany and to supply intelligence on the Bloc. Until 1956 it had no official status; it was just a German organization which worked hand-in-glove with the Americans. Then it was taken over by the West German government as the Bundesnachrichtendienst. Another organization closely connected with Western intelligence was the KgU. It was founded in West Berlin in 1948, soon after the blockade began. Its aim was to rally opinion against political repression in the Soviet Zone and to discover the fate of those who had disappeared into the Soviet concentration camps there. Its first wave of members had themselves recently been released from camps. They were young—many were under 30—and fanatical. They were no amateurs when it came to intelligence work. The head of its Resistance Department until 1951, Heinrich von zur Mühlen, had served in the Abwehr during the war. The ⁵³ M. E. Reese, General Reinhard Gehlen: The CIA Connection (Fairfax, Va., 1990), 104–11. See K. Ruffner (ed.), Forging an Intelligence Partnership: CIA and the Origins of the BND, 1945–49 (Washington, DC, 1999). ⁵⁴ DY 30/IV 2/1/133, 36–7, SAPMO-BA.

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Americans were determined that the KgU should be an effective partner and, at their insistence, its leadership was dominated by people who had served in the Criminal Police. Soon after its foundation it was clear that the KgU was obtaining much information on the Zone from refugees, particularly people released from Soviet camps. The KgU, probably on the initiative of refugee members, then set about the task of creating an underground organization in East Germany. This it saw as a revolutionary movement in waiting. The CIC’s chief in West Berlin, Severin Wallach, saw its usefulness. The KgU came to play a large role in the American secret services’ espionage and subversion against the DDR. Wallach procured from the CIC funding for it. This paid the rent for its headquarters and various branches; considerable funds were also put at its disposal. In 1949 OPC made funding available, paying approximately half its costs. The two services provided most of its funding. OPC saw the organization as a covert action vehicle which would act as a counterweight to East Germany’s Communist youth movement, the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ). Under the OPC’s influence, the KgU’s subversive activities in East Germany became more extreme. Many were directed against the East German economy; examples are the forging of ration cards and directives to factories and trade organizations. The Americans saw it as a partisan movement in enemy-held territory and tried to use it to undermine the Communists’ control. In return, the KgU spied for the CIC. The MfS’s investigation into the Vereinigung für Kulturelle Hilfe shows that the organization built up and ran spy networks on the Americans’ behalf. The CIC received a carbon copy of each agent report. The KgU copied to CIC the card index of its search unit since the Americans were also interested in the fate of political prisoners. It also reported to the MIS, which had a unit in West Berlin. At the latter’s request the KgU directed much of its intelligence-gathering against the Soviet armed forces in East Germany. Though troubled by its excesses, Gehlen recruited many spies from among the KgU’s members and provided funding in return.⁵⁵ He clearly had ‘talent-spotters’ in the organization. The CIC even recruited intelligence officers from the KgU’s membership; Harry Wichmann, who ran a KgU unit which interviewed refugees, later joined the CIC. The KgU carried out interrogations of refugees; its reports on the DDR resulting from these were copied to the BfV and other interested parties. Seeing its importance to American antiSoviet strategy, the MfS fought it hard. KgU members were condemned to death by DDR courts, whereas members of other resistance groups got off with prison sentences. In 1959 the KgU dissolved itself; this represented a German Bay of Pigs. Its files were divided between Gehlen and the CIA.⁵⁶ Former agents of the KgU were working for the BND in the early 1960s.⁵⁷ ⁵⁵ e.g. Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1957, MfS-HA IX, MF-11162. ⁵⁶ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 106–8; Stöver, Befreiung, 274–81; Eichner and Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, 152–3; Cookridge, Gehlen, 349–50; Höhne and Zolling, Network, 201–2. ⁵⁷ Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11220.

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It was natural to use resistance organizations made up of refugees from the USSR itself to spy on the Soviet armed forces; one was TsOPE, the Central Association of Post-war Emigrants. Its West Berlin unit targeted the Soviet army and tried to recruit a huge number of agents. In December 1956 the MfS arrested one of its operatives. He admitted to having recruited 165 East German agents, most of them prostitutes, in the three and a half years prior to his arrest. Their job had been the usual one: to seduce Soviet officials of all kinds, especially soldiers, and persuade them to visit West Berlin, where an approach could be made to them, either to induce them to defect or to recruit them as spies. Contact was made with the prostitutes by balloon. As so many resistance organizations did, TsOPE released balloons bearing propaganda leaflets from West Berlin, which the wind carried into the DDR. In addition to bearing propaganda messages, the leaflets invited the finder to visit TsOPE in West Berlin.⁵⁸ Landsmannschaften were used for the same purpose. In 1951 the MIS recruited a Sudetendeutscher living in the DDR at a festival in West Berlin for Germans from the Sudetenland. He, as principal agent, ran a ring of sub-agents against military targets; all were fellow expellees from the Sudetenland. He also passed on to his controllers the addresses of other Sudetendeutsche in the DDR, so that they could be recruited.⁵⁹ It is stated in several MfS reports that RIAS passed on informants to the American and West German secret services. Indeed, as the case of Arnold Kieser shows, the BND either recruited intelligence officers from RIAS or placed them there to make contact with promising sources. Kieser was expelled from the SED in 1950 for criticism of Party officials and started to write satirical poems about them. One of these he sent to the West Berlin publication Tarantel. Thus he became known to the editors of the Social Democrat newspaper Telegraf, who invited him to come to West Berlin to collect payment for his poem. They passed him on to RIAS and he agreed to act as its informant, using the codename ‘Kanold’. He was promised that, if he ever came West, he would be recognized as a political refugee and a good job would be found for him. From 1952 until 1955 he passed information on the factory’s transmitters to his contact at RIAS. The contact informed him that this information would be passed on to an American secret service, as well as being used in RIAS’s broadcasts to the DDR. The contact’s job was not only to transfer information on to an American secret service; he also introduced sources to it. In 1955 the contact announced that he was joining the Federal Republic’s intelligence service and would be moving to Bonn; he wanted to continue to receive information from Kieser. Kieser agreed to keep supplying it; his new codename was ‘Sender’ (Transmitter).⁶⁰ Another resistance organization which co-operated closely with Western secret services was the Vereinigung der Politischen Ostflüchtlinge (VPO; Association of Political Refugees from the East). It was established in 1949 by Christian ⁵⁸ Tätigkeitsbericht für Dezember 1956, MfS-HA IX, MF-11160. ⁵⁹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1955, MfS-HA IX, MF-11147. ⁶⁰ Schlußbericht, 9/10/1957, MfS-AU 962/58 (Band 1), 281–3, 305–6.

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Democrats who had fled from the DDR. According to the MfS, it was founded ‘on the instructions of the American secret service’. The MfS believed it to be connected with the West German and French secret services as well as the American. It saw the VPO as an auxiliary organization to them. Based in West Berlin, not only did it engage in subversion against the DDR it also spied on it, other Bloc States, and the USSR. It was involved in smuggling people and equipment on behalf of the Western services over the DDR’s borders with Czechoslovakia and Poland. It was closely connected with the Russian resistance group the NTS, which also spied and distributed leaflets well beyond East Germany.⁶¹ According to Erich Mielke’s information, the Vereinigung der Opfer des Stalinismus (VOS; Association of Victims of Stalinism), founded in February 1950, was established at the initiative of British intelligence officers. However, Mielke regarded it as controlled and funded by the CIC, rather than MI6. The VOS was very similar to the KgU: virulently anti-Communist, it was an organization of former political prisoners which sought to give assistance to such people and their relatives and ultimately secure the release of all political prisoners in captivity. These people were obviously refugees: they had been released from camps in the DDR and Soviet Union. Like other such groups, it gathered information on the DDR from a secret network there and tried to turn East German public opinion against the regime. This network it built up, like the secret services, using refugees’ connections back to relatives and friends. The VOS sent its branches in East Germany anti-Communist literature for reading and for spreading further; most it received from the Kulturelle Hilfe.⁶² It may have acted as a tipper. One of its chairmen in the 1960s, Erhard Göhl, had been a spy for the CIC in the 1950s and had been imprisoned for this. According to the MfS’s information, as chairman of the VOS he was also an informer for the BfV.⁶³ The Untersuchungsausschuß freiheitlicher Juristen (UfJ; the Investigative Committee of Free Jurists), founded in West Berlin in 1949 by refugee lawyers, was funded by the OPC. It offered legal advice to East Germans whose rights had been violated by the SED regime or Soviet authorities. Its grand design was to gather evidence of injustices so that the perpetrators could be put on trial when the regime collapsed. The Nuremberg trials represented the model for this. Many East Germans turned to it for legal advice. Moreover, it quickly succeeded in establishing among East German lawyers an extensive network of secret informants. It also questioned refugees. The information gathered, including much on the DDR economy, was made available to the CIA. The UfJ briefly had a secret section, which was intended to serve as a stay behind network, but it was uncovered by the MfS and its members arrested. As far as the MfS could establish, its assistance to the Americans went no further than this. The Soviets hated the UfJ. They were behind the kidnapping by an MfS gang on a West Berlin street in 1952 ⁶¹ Stöver, Befreiung, 269–70. ⁶² Dienstanweisung Nr. 3/53 zur Sachakte ‘Pest’, 14/1/1953, MfS-BdL/Dok. Nr. 002087. ⁶³ Eichner and Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, 172–3.

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of the head of its Economic Department, Dr Walter Linse. By interrogating him, they established that its informants had notified the UfJ of more than 400 agreements to buy embargoed goods from West German companies. The Americans had thereupon prevented the trade and arrested those involved. Linse was executed in Moscow in December 1953. Many of the UfJ’s informants, like those of the SPD-Ostbüro and KgU, ended up in Soviet or East German prisons or camps. Its collaboration with the CIA ended in 1958. In 1960 it was taken over by the Ministry for All-German Questions.⁶⁴ The political parties of West Germany created ‘Eastern Bureaux’ (Ostbüros) to give support to their members in the Eastern Zone whose activities were forced underground by the establishment there of a Communist dictatorship. The Ostbüros’ tasks were to keep anti-Communist politics alive in the East, to maintain contact with members there, to smuggle party literature to them and bring information back, to help them escape if it became necessary, and to give assistance to refugees arriving in the West. Since they were targets of MfS and KGB operations, they had to function conspiratorially, like secret services. Since they had interests in common with the official intelligence services of the Western Powers, they all maintained connections with them and gave them assistance in one way or another. Like resistance groups such as the VOS, they were also present in the main refugee camps—those in Berlin-Marienfelde, Gießen, and Uelzen—and both questioned refugees and recruited some for secret work in the East. RIAS served as their broadcaster to the East, as well as that of resistance groups like the KgU. The Ostbüro of the Social Democratic Party (SPD-Ostbüro), created in 1946, was established in response to the forced unification of the SPD and KPD in East Germany, and the consequent repression of SPD members who tried to keep Social Democracy alive there. Erich Mielke informed his counter-intelligence units in 1953 that the Ostbüro had been successful in recruiting members among middleclass people: teachers, doctors, creative artists, business people, independent craftsmen, and, particularly in rural areas, mill-owners, workshop-owners, and pub landlords. Such people as craftsmen, business people, and farmers were drawn to it because they feared that their property would be confiscated. The Ostbüro’s strength in the Eastern Zone meant that the MfS fought it with particular ferocity. What troubled East Germany’s leaders most was that the Ostbüro sought to acquire influence over the SED using former SPD members who had joined it. The Western secret services also targeted such people for recruitment. They took the idea to its logical conclusion, trying to recruit none other than the prime minister himself, Otto Grotewohl, who had, until 1946, been chairman of the SPD in the Soviet Zone. They failed, but Karl Laurenz, a Social Democrat and Gehlen agent, succeeded in seducing and recruiting his secretary, Elli Barczatis. Both died under the guillotine.⁶⁵ One of Gehlen’s first high-level penetrations of ⁶⁴ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 115–26; Stöver, Befreiung, 281–3; Eichner and Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, 153–4; cf. Cookridge, Gehlen, 174–80. ⁶⁵ Wolf, Man Without a Face, 213.

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the East German government was also a Social Democrat: Walter Gramsch. Gramsch, an SPD member in 1946, opposed the unification of the two workingclass parties but was still admitted to the SED. He rose in the DDR’s transport administration until he was in charge of shipping and ports. In consequence, he had oversight of the DDR’s imports by sea and knew what goods were being delivered to it by Western companies in defiance of the embargo, often using forged export licence documents and transhipment ports. This knowledge he shared with the Org, which used it to stop the flow of goods.⁶⁶ The SPD-Ostbüro’s relations with the various Western secret services were of varying closeness. They remain obscure. The CIA briefly tried to use it as an intelligence-gathering vehicle, but quickly decided to fund only its propaganda and covert action.⁶⁷ The US service with the closest connection with it seems to have been the CIC. It had a close connection with British intelligence. It was the British who provided it with offices when it was founded in Hannover. Their interest in the Ostbüro was stimulated by memories of the Nazi period, when the SPD in exile had received intelligence from within Nazi Germany. The SPD has conceded that intelligence reports on the situation in East Germany were handed over to the British and Americans. It has also conceded having acted as a tipper for the British.⁶⁸ It was an intelligence agency in its own right. Its network of informers in the Zone gathered political and economic information; they observed Soviet army and air bases, barracks, and exercise grounds; they took note of vehicle numbers, the strength of troop units, and their weaponry; they made sketches of Soviet installations. They searched Soviet army dumps for letters written by the soldiers; some, when arrested, were found to have scraps of such letters in their socks. They approached people working in laundries which washed the uniforms of Soviet troops and asked them to search the clothes for anything that might prove useful; these people should also count the uniforms, to find out how many Soviet troops were stationed there. They observed policemen and state security officers and were instructed to report any arrest made by either service. They often sent their reports by post to cover addresses in the West; of course, they used a pseudonym. The Telegraf assessed the intelligence and handed it over to the Americans. Some of the information was published, either in the Telegraf or in Berliner Korrespondenz; the latter also obtained information from its own network of East German informants. Some of the clandestine activities of Social Democrats in the Zone were carried out not on the Party’s behalf but on behalf of the American and British secret services. Although the MfS saw the SPD-Ostbüro as being most closely aligned with US intelligence, it identified leading figures at the Telegraf as agents of the British secret service. One leading member of the newspaper’s editorial board in the early 1950s was believed by Erich Mielke to be a ‘principal agent of the British ⁶⁶ Höhne and Zolling, Network, 102–8. ⁶⁸ Stöver, Befreiung, 258–9.

⁶⁷ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 112–13.

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secret service and leading member of the Ostbüro’; he was also a member of the executive committee of the Berlin branch of the SPD.⁶⁹The same view was held of his deputy, also a Party member. This suggests that the British were trying to form agent networks in the DDR made up of former members of the SPD. These would exist independently of the Ostbüro’s own secret network. Mielke referred in his Service Instruction to the son of an SPD-Ostbüro representative who had been arrested. The son was also an Ostbüro member and managed to flee to West Berlin. He was sent back into the DDR as a courier, where he carried out tasks for both the Ostbüro and the Western services. On one of his journeys he had been arrested by the MfS. Under interrogation he stated that on these missions he had instructions to find out the names of people who worked for the Soviet army or lived near its bases and the names of women and girls who had relationships with Soviet troops. These people were either to be recruited for Western secret services or brought to a particular individual in a camp in Moabit. MI6 clearly used the SPD-Ostbüro as a recruiting ground for spies. In 1956 the MfS arrested an MI6 courier. Between 1950 and 1954 he had been an SPDOstbüro resistance fighter and had gathered information for it on the Soviet army. He gave this up to start work for MI6 in 1955.⁷⁰ The Christian Democratic Party had its own Ostbüro, founded by Christian Democrats who had fled from East Germany. These refugees founded their own political association, the ‘CDU in exile’, which became a branch of the Western Party. They dominated the Party’s Ostbüro. Its head, Werner Jöhren, was also a founder and first chairman of the VPO. The CDU-Ostbüro handed over intelligence reports to the Western services and chiefly to the Gehlen Organization and BfV. The collaboration of Christian Democrats with the secret services was clearly closer than that. One of the principal agents arrested in ‘Wasps’ Nest’, the MfS’s strike at a CIA scientific intelligence network in September 1955, was a member of the executive committee of the ‘CDU in exile’. By means of information obtained from him, the MfS managed to uncover agent networks of the Org, BfV, British, and American secret services.⁷¹ The Western services, and chiefly Gehlen, also had connections with the FDP-Ostbüro. The Internationaler Bund der Freien Gewerkschaften (International Union of Free Trades Unions) was also secretly active in the DDR, maintaining contact with free trades unionists, distributing propaganda, and collecting information on the state-controlled union movement, the FDGB. It had an office in West Berlin; its head, Erich Schilling, was considered by the MfS to be connected with the British and American secret services.⁷² The OPC and CIC prepared for war by creating ‘stay behind’ organizations tasked to conduct partisan warfare behind enemy lines. These forces would blow ⁶⁹ Dienstanweisung Nr. 20/53, 29/6/1953, MfS-BdL, Dok. MF 529/1859. The names of both men have been blacked out of this report in accordance with the StUG. ⁷⁰ Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1956, MfS-HA IX, MF-11150. ⁷¹ Feindtätigkeit des kalten Krieges vom amerikanischen Geheimdienst gegen die DDR und die Volksdemokratien, 17/11/1955, MfS-AOP 238/56 (Band II), 41. ⁷² Stöver, Befreiung, 263–9.

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up bridges and railway lines to hamper the Soviet army’s advance, provide intelligence, and create and keep open escape routes for the German population and, in particular, public figures. If Western Europe were overrun, it could not be expected that many would fight on behind enemy lines. Most would give up the fight; only the fanatically anti-Communist could be relied upon to continue it. This led to collaboration with unrepentant Nazis. One group in which a ‘stay behind’ organization was created was the Bund Deutscher Jugend (Association of German Youth). Indeed, the movement itself was founded at OPC’s suggestion in June 1950. OPC was alarmed at the ability of the East German Communist youth organization, the FDJ, to mobilize huge numbers of young people for political demonstrations and therefore procured the establishment of a West German youth organization to act against it. This it funded lavishly. It also made excellent publicity material available to help the BDJ recruit members and counter the FDJ’s activities. Soon after its creation, the Korean War now underway, the Americans approached the BDJ and asked it to establish a ‘stay behind’ organization. This it did. Called its ‘Technical Service’ and led by Erhard Peters, the ‘stay behind’ network was a secret section which drew heavily on veterans of the Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht. The Americans were looking for soldiers with front experience. Using connections with SS members in East Germany, the BDJ tried to establish its secret network there. The ‘Technical Service’ was also used to gather intelligence on West Germans who were Communist Party members and sympathizers. It was feared that, if war broke out, these people would collaborate with the advancing Soviets. Peters’s men were given the task of interning them to ensure that they could not do so.⁷³ The Soviet regime also had enemies, political and nationalist, in West Germany. Resistance organizations made up of refugees from the USSR abounded there. They too chiefly operated from West Berlin. They were used against Soviet targets in Eastern Europe and against the Soviet Union itself. As Baltic groups had begun to do a few years earlier, some—above all the NTS and OUN—recruited agents on behalf of the Western services. These men were then trained and infiltrated back into their home countries, tasked with establishing anti-Communist cells and reporting on Soviet military movements, militaryindustrial installations, and weapons. These operations began in the late 1940s. Consistently unsuccessful, they were largely over by the mid-1950s.⁷⁴ Of course, Stalin had tried to get many of these people back by insisting in the Yalta Agreement that ‘all Soviet citizens’ liberated by the Western Allies be returned to him. This led to more than 2 million people being repatriated. But so horrific was some of the resistance to repatriation—people committed suicide rather than go, ⁷³ Stöver, Befreiung, 266–7, 270–4; D. von Glahn, Patriot und Partisan für Freiheit und Einheit (Tübingen, 1994), 34–5, 41–2; B. Hersh, The Old Boys (New York, 1992), 360–1; Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 470 n. 9. See also J. Mecklenburg (ed.), Gladio: Die Geheime Terrororganisation der NATO (Berlin, 1997). ⁷⁴ Bower, Red Web, 58–60, 71–2, 122, 165; Prados, Presidents’ Secret Wars, 56–60; Coffin, Once to Every Man, 92–112; Aldrich, Hidden Hand, 170–1.

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or begged their guards to shoot them—and so quickly did Yalta become a dead letter that the United States ended the repatriation of most Soviet citizens early in 1946 and Britain followed suit in June. Repatriation came to a complete end in 1947. Significantly, the émigrés who had left Russia after the Civil War were not liable to it since they had never become Soviet citizens. Moreover, many of the more recent émigrés managed to escape repatriation.⁷⁵ The Narodno-Trudovoi Soyuz (NTS, or People’s Labour Union), a small movement of Russian exiles founded in 1930 and scattered throughout Europe, was a political foe. It was a nationalist grouping with a manifesto which fused monarchism and socialism and claimed to be a Russian government in exile. In its early days it had been very sympathetic to the left-wing brand of German National Socialism offered by the Strasser brothers. Naturally, its members had welcomed the Nazis’ seizure of power in 1933, which they sought to emulate in Russia, and had actively collaborated with the Nazis during the war, disseminating propaganda among Soviet prisoners-of-war and recruiting members. After the war, the NTS continued to operate both openly and secretly. It openly engaged in propaganda against the Soviet Communist Party, in print and over the radio. It had its own radio station. It also sought to maintain an underground movement in the USSR and carried out intelligence and clandestine propaganda operations both there and against the Soviet forces in Eastern Europe and especially East Germany. A ‘closed sector’ was responsible for this subversive work; it functioned as secretively as a state intelligence service. According to the MfS, its chief, Georgi Okolovich, had during the war been the Gestapo chief in Smolensk, Minsk, and Bebruisk. It used Germans to make contact with Soviets (particularly military personnel) in the Eastern Zone. It was successful in gathering intelligence from them and in prompting defections from the Soviet armed forces. This underground organization was funded by and reported to MI6 and the CIA. The members of the ‘closed sector’ worked for both services as principal agents, running spyrings against Soviet targets throughout the Bloc: the Soviet armed forces in East Germany, Soviet officials based in or travelling to the satellites, and targets in the Soviet Union itself. The CIA also recruited agents from among its members. Some of them were air-dropped into the USSR. MI6’s connection with NTS was brief, lasting only from 1950 until 1955. MI6 ended the relationship because it concluded that the KGB had so deeply penetrated NTS’s operations in the USSR that it controlled them. As in the inter-war period, another operation using an émigré organization against the Soviet police state had failed. But the Americans maintained the connection.⁷⁶ West German money was provided by the Ministry for All-German Questions and perhaps the BND. The NTS’s intelligence was passed to the Ministry for All-German Questions; Ewert von Dellingshausen, ⁷⁵ A. Bullock, Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, 1945–1951 (Oxford, 1983), 271; N. Tolstoy, Victims of Yalta (London, 1977), 249–65, 352–72. ⁷⁶ Stöver, Befreiung, 318–31; Eichner and Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, 169; Blake, No Other Choice, 23; Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 108–12.

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a senior official there, considered in 1951 that the NTS obtained ‘excellent intelligence’ on the DDR.⁷⁷ The CIA, frustrated by the need to reach decisions regarding NTS jointly with MI6, in 1951 briefly used another Soviet émigré organization, SBONR, as an intelligence vehicle. Members of the organization’s ‘secret section’ moved from Munich to West Berlin and there sought to gather intelligence at the agency’s direction. However, the results were disappointing and the CIA made no further use of SBONR for intelligence purposes; it became merely a propaganda instrument. Nevertheless, it did recruit agents from SBONR’s ‘secret section’ and had tippers in it for this purpose. One who, fatefully, was tipped and recruited was the double agent Aleksandr Kopatzky.⁷⁸ As a Russian empire maintained by force, the Soviet Union also had nationalist enemies. One of the oldest groups was the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), founded in Paris in the 1920s. Like the NTS, the OUN was both an openly active resistance organization in Western Europe and an underground movement in the Ukraine. Like their German counterparts, both the OUN and NTS dispatched couriers into the Soviet Union to maintain contact with their sympathizers there. Like the NTS, the OUN and its leader Stepan Bandera had, in the 1930s, carried out clandestine work for MI6. But it was Hitler who seemed to offer Bandera what he sought—the liberation of the Ukraine from Soviet domination—and he threw in his lot with the Nazis. He formed Ukrainian militia and police units which fought the Soviet forces during the Nazis’ invasion of the USSR and took part in mass killings. Bandera escaped capture by the Russians and surfaced after the war in West Germany, where he once again made contact with MI6. The OUN’s significance was greater after 1945 since large numbers of Ukrainians were held in DP camps. From these DPs the new generation of spies sent into the Ukraine were drawn. Because of his participation in anti-Soviet activities, Bandera was murdered by a KGB assassin in Munich in 1959. The chief of the NTS branch in West Berlin, Aleksandr Trushnovich, was kidnapped by the KGB in 1954 and so appallingly beaten that he died in its hands. The KGB made an attempt on Okolovich’s life in the same year.⁷⁹

THE ‘GROßAKTIONEN’ (‘BIG OPERATIONS’) In the years 1953–5 the Stasi, directed by the KGB, carried out arrests in large numbers of Western spies and anti-Communist resistance fighters. Since these two categories of people overlapped, it was natural for the Stasi to arrest them together. Three large programmes of arrests, codenamed ‘Feuerwerk’ (‘Firework’), ⁷⁷ Stöver, Befreiung, 329. ⁷⁸ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 110–12; Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, 195–6. ⁷⁹ Prados, Presidents’ Secret Wars, 40–3, 52–60; Cookridge, Gehlen, 253–60, 338–40; Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 109.

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‘Pfeil ’ (‘Arrow’), and ‘Blitz’ (‘Lightning’) took place; they were backed up by smaller ones. ‘Feuerwerk’ was the first. It was carried out, in 48 hours, at the end of October 1953. It was chiefly aimed at spy networks of the Org, but, as with the other ‘Großaktionen’, orders were given to take into custody all those ‘enemies’ against whom there was clear evidence. Such ‘enemies’ could even be Jehovah’s Witnesses. According to the Stasi’s figures, more than 100 arrests were made in the course of ‘Feuerwerk’. In the first part of 1954 came two smaller operations, ‘Anton’ and ‘Rakete’ (‘Rocket’). They were followed in August by the biggest Großaktion of all and one directed against spies, ‘Pfeil ’. KGB ‘advisers’ within East German state security presided over the planning of the operation. Indeed, the lists of those to be arrested were drawn up by East German officials and their Soviet ‘advisers’ together. Among those arrested were people on whom only the KGB had previously been working and who therefore had no Stasi file. The SED leadership had a hand in the planning of the operation and was keen to ensure that the maximum propaganda benefit be drawn from it. Ernst Wollweber wanted to damage the Gehlen Organization and its public reputation so badly that it could not become the foreign intelligence service of the Federal Republic. He wanted to shake the Americans’ faith in it. His deputy, Erich Mielke, thought it possible that the entire organization might collapse. Wollweber also wanted to learn more about the ways in which the Org was trying to penetrate the USSR. ‘Pfeil’ ’s, main targets were agent networks of the Org and of the US secret services. No fewer than 547 spies were arrested (277 belonging to the Org, 176 to the US secret services, and 94 to the French). The arrests showed the Western services’ successes in penetrating the industry of the DDR and in recruiting high-level sources. Important administrators were among those taken into custody. More industrial workers (78), company employees (70), and state employees (55) were arrested than people of any other social category. Eleven scientists were arrested, as were engineers and soldiers of the embryonic East German army, the Kasernierte Volkspolizei (KVP). More of the arrestees belonged to the SED (48) than to any other party (this reflects the Western secret services’ policy of urging agents to join the Party so as to improve their chances of rising to important positions). Many were tasked with spying on the Soviet and East German armed forces. To prepare for war, agents had been recruited and equipped with radios with which to broadcast intelligence, but would not go into action until war broke out (they were known as Schweigefunker). The chemical and fine mechanical industries were also important targets.⁸⁰ As after ‘Feuerwerk’, once the operation was over senior Stasi officers held meetings at important factories and rammed home before the entire workforce the significance of their success and the menace of Western spying on East German factories. Such propaganda events reflected its alarm at the factories’ ⁸⁰ DY 30/IV 2/1/132, 144–58, SAPMO-BA.

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vulnerability to espionage. Of course, after the uprising of 17 June 1953 it was keen to show the Western secret services as being at the bottom of all dissatisfaction in the DDR, and therefore wanted to arrest a lot of spies. Some KGB officers criticized the Stasi for arresting agents who were not even spying yet, but were being held in reserve in case the Berlin sectoral boundary were closed or war broke out.⁸¹ The last of the Großaktionen, ‘Blitz’, began in early December 1954 and only ended in the spring of 1955. The arrests took place in two stages. The first was directed against resistance groups. Those which chiefly suffered were the KgU, the UfJ, and the Ostbüros of the SPD, CDU, and FDP; the operation also struck at the VOS and NTS. Early in 1955 the second stage of the operation (‘Frühling’) began. The operation was now broader in scope: it was aimed at both spies and members of resistance organizations. People connected with RIAS were arrested (this part of the operation, appropriately, had the codename ‘Enten’—‘Canards’). ‘Frühling’ struck in particular at MI6 spy networks and the treason of Blake and Philby guided the Stasi’s hand. Five of MI6’s networks were rounded up, more than any other service. This blow was, indeed, the very last part of ‘Blitz’. On 31 March 1955 the Security Commission of the SED Politburo approved the programme of arrests of British agents, which was thereupon carried out very swiftly. ‘Blitz’ was over. In a public statement on 12 April the Council of Ministers announced the arrest of ‘521 agents of Western secret services’ (Neues Deutschland called them, more accurately, ‘521 spies and subversives’). There followed an onslaught in the DDR press on the Western secret services. The propaganda campaign continued in show trials of some of those arrested in the Großaktionen which were held that summer.⁸² On 14 April Erich Mielke reported on ‘Blitz’ to the SED Central Committee. He said that most of the agents arrested had been controlled from West Berlin and had met their controllers there. But the Western services feared war and had supplied their agents with alternative means of communication, should West Berlin be overrun by the Warsaw Pact. More arrests had taken place in Berlin than anywhere else (159). Ten arrests had been made in the Wismut organization. The SED had to note, to its chagrin, that more of those arrested came from the industrial working class (272) than from the lower-middle (183) or middle (66) classes. One hundred and three were employees of state agencies; many were factory or railway workers; many more had clerical jobs in factories. RIAS came across spy candidates—often people dissatisfied with conditions in the DDR—as it searched for informants on events in East Germany; it passed them on to the Western secret ⁸¹ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 289. ⁸² K. W. Fricke and R. Engelmann, ‘Konzentrierte Schläge’: Staatssicherheitsaktionen und politische Prozesse in der DDR 1953–1956 (Berlin, 1998), 42–60. According to Battleground Berlin (294–5), records held at the archive of the former KGB give different figures for Pfeil and Blitz: 359 and 640, respectively. They remain huge operations. Since the MfS carried them out, its figures are to be preferred.

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services (particularly those of the USA). The Ostbüros of the West German political parties did the same for the American and British secret services. The Org was making particular efforts to recruit agents in the ‘bourgeois parties’, the LDPD, NDPD, and CDU; officials of these parties were receptive to such approaches because they doubted whether the DDR would survive. Almost all the agents arrested in the ‘bourgeois parties’ were passing intelligence, directly or indirectly, to the Org. From top to bottom, Mielke said, these parties contained Gehlen’s agents. The defection the following year of the DDR’s deputy prime minister, Hermann Kastner, underlined his point. Kastner had been chairman of the LDPD and a Gehlen source. Gehlen told him to defect because the severity of the Großaktionen made him fear that others of his agents would be uncovered.⁸³ ‘Blitz’ had confirmed that spying on Soviet and East German armed forces was widespread. Espionage from West Berlin was also directed against the other satellites and the USSR. Mielke commented on covert action as well as espionage. The arrests showed that the transport system was a particular target of infiltration efforts, and would be sabotaged in time of crisis. Moreover, considerable efforts were being made to undermine the loyalty of members of the Kasernierte Volkspolizei. For example, women were being paid to persuade KVP officers to visit West Berlin, where they could be exposed to anti-Communist influence; Mielke reported the arrest of a number of such women. Mielke reported on the losses caused to the organizations working against the DDR.⁸⁴ Of the 521 people arrested, he said, 188 had been agents of the ‘American secret service’, 105 agents of the ‘British secret service’, and about 100 agents of West German services. As far as resistance organizations were concerned, 56 had been KgU agents, 32 UfJ agents, 27 agents of the FDP-Ostbüro, and 17 agents of the SPD-Ostbüro. Mielke uses the word ‘agent’ rather than ‘spy’, and his figures for secret service losses include, in addition to spies, resistance fighters and people who simply had suspicious Western contacts.⁸⁵ The MfS’s successes did not end with ‘Blitz’. Its internal records show that in the autumn of 1955 it struck at a CIA scientific intelligence ring which it had managed to penetrate; the operation was called ‘Wespennest’ (‘Wasps’ Nest’). By December it had arrested 42 people and planned to arrest 25 more. This operation is examined in Chapter 7. There is further evidence that much damage was done to Western spy rings in East Germany at precisely this time. The KGB later claimed in an internal report, only recently made public, that, thanks to information received from its spies in MI6 and the Org, it achieved the ‘elimination of the adversary’s agent network in the DDR in 1953–55’.⁸⁶ These spies were George Blake (MI6), Kim Philby (MI6), and Heinz Felfe (Gehlen Organization). ‘Feuerwerk’ was also assisted by the treason of Hans Joachim Geyer, the deputy head of a West Berlin unit of the ⁸³ ⁸⁴ ⁸⁵ ⁸⁶

Höhne and Zolling, Network, 108–12; Stöver, Befreiung, 257. DY 30/IV 2/1/143, 16–25, SAPMO-BA. On this point, see Fricke and Engelmann, ‘Konzentrierte Schläge’, 55–6. Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, 520–1.

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Org who was ‘turned’ by the MfS and passed much information to it for most of 1953, including the identities of his unit’s agents in the East.⁸⁷ Aleksandr Kopatzky, a CIA principal agent in West Berlin, was in fact working for the KGB and betrayed more than 100 CIA officers and East German agents. Some of these are known to have been arrested, while others became KGB informers.⁸⁸ The CIA confirms the loss in these years by all Western secret services of agent networks in the DDR.⁸⁹ However, the claim that the networks were completely eliminated was a considerable exaggeration. The MfS’s investigation department, HA IX, questioned arrested spies and reported on their cases. Many of the case summaries in its reports for the years 1956–65 refer to spies who were recruited either during or before the period 1953–5. Ernst Wollweber, when he addressed the SED Central Committee in September 1954 about the Großaktionen, rightly called the very idea of eliminating the networks an ‘illusion’. Nevertheless, many spies were lost. In fact, Blake succeeded in destroying British agent networks in the DDR not once but twice. According to an MfS report from 1976, information betrayed by him allowed approximately 100 spies in East Germany to be identified in the years 1958–61. Six of the most important are referred to in the report. Their names have been blacked out, but their jobs have not. The report establishes that MI6 had penetrated the DDR government apparatus and army. One was a shorthand secretary in the service of the Council of Ministers; another was an army colonel; another worked for the State Planning Commission; another was a highranking official (Oberreferent) at the Ministry for Mechanical Engineering; another was a department chief at the Ministry of Foreign Trade; the last worked for the Special Construction Staff in Potsdam.⁹⁰ It is unlikely that Blake betrayed scientific spies since, though he served in West Berlin from 1955 to 1959, he worked for the station’s political intelligence section, which was wholly separate from Technical Section. Anyway, the HA IX’s reports mention only a very few MI6 scientific spies in the years 1958–61.⁹¹ Blake himself, in his autobiography, claims that he revealed to the KGB the identities of some 400 spies behind the Iron Curtain.⁹² The Großaktionen were not only important security operations, they were also propaganda. They were meant to convince East Germans of the menace of Western spying and subversion. They did not sweep up unusually large numbers of spies. The MfS continued to arrest hundreds of spies a year until the Berlin Wall was built. The HA IX’s reports show that in the last three months of 1955 the ⁸⁷ Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 51–4; Stöver, Befreiung, 256–7. ⁸⁸ Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, 230. ⁸⁹ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 423. ⁹⁰ ZAIG report, 3/12/1976, MfS, ZAIG/Nr. 15753. ⁹¹ See Tätigkeitsberichte, MfS-HA IX, MF-11173–11219. ⁹² Blake, No Other Choice, 165–9, 207–8. See also, O. Kalugin, Spymaster (London, 1994), 141, and Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB (Sceptre, 1991), 755–6 n. 117.

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Ministry arrested 251 spies.⁹³ In 1956, it arrested 679⁹⁴ and the following year 582.⁹⁵ The reports do not state how many were arrested for spying in subsequent years, but Khrushchev’s Berlin ultimatum of 1958 led to greater activity on the part of the American services and the BND and consequently to the arrest of more of their spies.⁹⁶ Despite losing many of its sources, the CIA claims that in the whole period 1947–61 it achieved great success in Germany. Thanks to the number of their spies and the depth of their penetration of East Germany’s ministries, factories, political parties, and armed forces, so did the other Western services. The claims of success on both sides are reconcilable. Firstly, spies were easy to recruit; so losses could easily be replaced. Clear evidence of this is that in the mid-1950s the MfS did much damage to MI6’s networks, but MI6 retained enough and was sufficiently successful in recruiting new ones that in the years 1958–61 the MfS could, thanks again to Blake, arrest about 100 more. Secondly, the American services were the dominant force in Western espionage and none of the three great double agents worked for them. Of course, as the Kopatzky case shows, the CIA was penetrated. However, the Western secret services’ position was strong in Germany. It was so because the open border in Berlin enabled them fully to exploit flight from the SED regime and resistance to it. ⁹³ Tätigkeitsberichte, MfS-HA IX, MF-11147–11149. ⁹⁴ Tätigkeitsberichte, MfS-HA IX, MF-11150–11160. ⁹⁵ Tätigkeitsberichte, MfS-HA IX, MF-11161–11172. ⁹⁶ Einschätzung der Spionage- und Wühltätigkeit der imperialistischen Geheimdienste gegen die Deutsche Demokratische Republik, 21/11/1961, MfS-HA IX 4350, 260.

6 The Scientific and Military Spy Networks TARGETS AND METHODS IN THE FIELD OF SCIENTIFIC ESPIONAGE A key element of containment was possessing enough military force to deter Soviet aggression. Spying on Soviet and satellite weaponry and war-related scientific research served the policies of containment and deterrence. The British Chiefs of Staff ’s ‘Global Strategy Paper’ of 1952 can be used as a guideline. Like all top-level statements of defence policy from this period, American as well as British, it insisted that, to deter the Soviets and Chinese effectively in view of their superiority in numbers, the West had to have better weaponry. In its words, ‘The Free World can maintain superior strength, and thus prevent the outbreak of war, only by matching science against man-power.’ The essential element in effective deterrence was the capability to launch an airborne atomic strike. To ensure that it could be made, NATO countries had to maintain a scientific and technological lead in many fields, not only atomic science but also ‘the right types of aircraft, all the necessary radio, radar, and other scientific aids to accuracy, radio, and radar counter-measures’. The paper called for ‘constant endeavour to keep a jump ahead in scientific development, particularly in equipment for offensive and defensive radio warfare’.¹ The Chiefs of Staff thought war unlikely in view of the United States’s awesome atomic striking power.² While agreeing with this, the British government maintained that intelligence on Soviet intentions and capabilities was essential in deciding how great the danger of war was, and ruled that ‘everything possible should be done to ensure that our intelligence on Russia is of the highest quality’.³ In this chapter, it will be shown that intelligence was obtained on all the main scientific fields. Scientific spying in East Germany had two sets of targets. The first and most important were Soviet ones: Soviet-sponsored scientific R&D projects, particularly war-related ones; institutions connected with Soviet science and factories producing for the Soviet military; and the scientific and military-industrial installations of ¹ Paras. 38–41, COS(52)361, ‘Defence Policy and Global Strategy’, 15/7/1952, DEFE 5/40. ² Ibid., paras. 19–21. ³ Ibid., note by secretary.

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the USSR itself. The second were East German scientific projects and institutions; they were spied on chiefly for the purpose of damaging or ending them, and reducing the DDR’s scientific potential. Inducing defection was the principal means of doing this. The leading people were, above all, targeted. This is proven by American policy documents, British intelligence files, and records of MfS investigations and East German court trials. The more important the field of science concerned, the more it was targeted with a view to inducing defection. Nuclear science was obviously a key target; so was electronics.⁴ Experts working in these fields were either pressed to defect or to take up less important work. Whether a targeted person was to be recruited as a spy or induced to defect was a decision for the service concerned, not the spy who was reporting on him. West Berlin played a crucial role in induced defection operations. It was very often by means of people in West Berlin that the Western services made contact with the defection candidate. The defection would take place via West Berlin. So free traffic from East Germany to West Berlin made possible defection operations on a significant scale, just as they made possible large-scale espionage. Efforts at inducing defection extended to well-qualified people in general, but they focused on scientific workers. Consequently, much intelligence-gathering related to people; its purpose was to determine how valuable they were to East German science. Like refugees, agents identified targets for induced defection as well as for recruitment as spies, and supplied personal information which would make the job easier. This extended beyond Germans: spies in factories were told to report on Soviet officials attached to them.⁵ This information the MfS called Charakteristiken. With breathtaking hypocrisy, it called these operations a crime against ‘the personal freedom’ of DDR citizens.⁶ The huge size of the MfS’s army of informers (Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter) has been much criticized.⁷ However, the Western secret services in the years before the Berlin Wall was built also obtained a mass of personal information about ordinary East Germans from an immense number of informants. Indeed, the West’s detailed knowledge of East Germans belonging to targeted categories encouraged the MfS and KGB to extend their informationgathering about them. Research and development were carried out in research institutes directed by the German Academy of Sciences (Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften) in East Berlin and in factories, particularly the big nationalized ones (VEB). The HA IX’s monthly reports for the years 1955–65 show that this R&D complex was deeply penetrated. Many of the spies occupied important positions. The easy penetrability ⁴ M. Sommer, Diplomarbeit, ‘Die Qualifizierung der analytischen Tätigkeit bei der Bearbeitung von Zentralen Operativvorgängen zur Bekämpfung der feindlichen Tätigkeit imperialistischer Geheimdienste—dargestellt am Beispiel der Bearbeitung eines ZOV auf der Linie BND’, 15/7/1965, MfS-JHS-MFZ-198, 8–9. ⁵ Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11235. ⁶ Schlußbericht, 17/12/1955, MfS-AU 52/56 (Band 4a), 249. ⁷ For the size of this army, see J. Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern (Stuttgart, 2001), 108–14.

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of factories and research laboratories in East Germany contrasted sharply with those of the USSR and spying yielded far more reliable intelligence. There is no evidence of a single spy being recruited in a Soviet research institute or laboratory in this period. There is no evidence of spies being recruited in Soviet atomic facilities until the late 1960s. Most of the latter, of course, were located in secret cities, whose inhabitants were largely denied contact with the outside world. All correspondence with people living outside the atomic cities was censored and phone calls to them were forbidden. These extreme measures were taken specifically to frustrate foreign spying. Consequently, intelligence assessments of Soviet science rested chiefly on study of heavily censored published sources, above all scientific literature. On the basis of these, analysts tried to reach conclusions about what Soviet scientists were capable of achieving. This was a speculative undertaking; their assessments did not rest on firm intelligence.⁸ Censorship of scientific publications was so severe that little was learned about the USSR’s nuclear research and development from them. The best source on this was radiological analysis of fallout taken from the earth’s atmosphere, but it shed light on the current state of development not on what the future would bring.⁹ Military spying in the DDR was also far more successful than in the USSR. East German spies were tasked to report on the weaponry of their and the Soviet armed forces. This tasking was more common than any other; the spies covered the DDR’s entire territory and provided prompt warning of the arrival of new weapons. INTELLIGENCE ON SOVIET SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT The Soviet Union’s policy of exploiting German resources presented the Western secret services with opportunities of penetrating its security in East Germany. In 1946 the SMAG created Sowjetische Aktiengesellschaften (Soviet stock companies) to exploit the East German economy. Being wholly owned by Soviet economic bodies, they ensured the delivery of reparations in kind to the USSR. When the DDR was founded in October 1949, they became Sowjetisch–Deutsche Aktiengesellschaften (Soviet–German stock companies). From then on, although the Soviets continued to send the production of East German factories to the USSR as reparations, the East Germans were allowed to retain part of it. Almost all of these companies had been handed over to the DDR government by the mid-1950s, but a few of great strategic importance remained under Soviet control (chief among them the Wismut AG). Indeed, even in 1959 the MfS was still arresting spies who reported on war-related research in Soviet-controlled enterprises.¹⁰ ⁸ Dr R. Truscoe, DSI, MI10 Conference 1952, DEFE 41/126. ⁹ O. Bukharin, ‘US Atomic Energy Intelligence against the Soviet Target, 1945–1970’, Intelligence and National Security, 19/4 (2004), 663–75. ¹⁰ Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11185.

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Moreover, East German laboratories performed research and development tasks allocated to them by ministries in Moscow.¹¹ Indirectly, much of the DDR’s industry was exploited, since its production was geared to Soviet needs.¹² The stock companies in the Eastern Zone were administered by the Directorate for Soviet Property in Germany (USIG). In the years immediately after the war, USIG was directed in Moscow by Malenkov, Beria, and Voznesensky. Beria, who had responsibility for the atomic project, used USIG to strip East Germany and other parts of Central Europe of much of the laboratory equipment, industrial machinery, and factories with which the new atomic cities of the USSR were stocked.¹³ Its biggest responsibility was the management of Wismut. USIG’s connections with the USSR naturally made it the ‘key scientific-technical target’ of the CIA’s Berlin Operations Base.¹⁴ Soviet representatives were based at USIG; it also received visitors from the USSR. The Western services tried both to recruit such people as agents or induce them to defect. NTS, which tried to make contact with Soviet officials, played an important role in these operations. USIG’s network of companies supplying the Soviet atomic project was indeed penetrated. Starting in late 1946, the Americans obtained intelligence from sources in the Elektrochemisches Kombinat Bitterfeld which established that it was producing very pure calcium metal. The specifications for its purity which the German managers of the plant had been given by their Soviet chiefs were so demanding that the calcium metal was evidently meant for the manufacture of plutonium. This crucial intelligence made clear that the Soviets were aiming at the production of a plutonium bomb. For uranium metal is not needed to enrich uranium (by separation of its isotopes) and so produce a critical mass of the fissionable isotope, uranium-235 (U-235). But it is necessary to produce plutonium in an atomic pile. The Combined Anglo-American Intelligence Unit concluded that, ‘The size of the calcium effort was sufficient to support a uranium metal production programme of a size which would be necessary only for a plutonium project.’ Indeed, the specifications for the calcium metal were so demanding that they indicated—correctly—that the Soviets were intending to build a graphitemoderated, natural-uranium reactor, since a reactor moderated by heavy water could be made with calcium and uranium of much lower purity.¹⁵ Both the USSR’s first experimental reactor, which went critical in 1946, and its first production reactor, ‘Cheliabinsk-40’, which was operational from 1948, were uraniumgraphite systems.¹⁶ Indeed, the intelligence from Bitterfeld was even more important than that. It indicated that the Soviet atomic project was well advanced and that it might achieve success much earlier than had been thought. The Combined Unit ¹¹ DSI Memorandum No. 15, DEFE 41/153. ¹² Naimark, Russians in Germany, 189–90. ¹³ Zubok and Pleshakov, Kremlin’s Cold War, 147. ¹⁴ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 109. ¹⁵ US Intelligence report, 12/8/1948, DEFE 21/48; M. Goodman, ‘British Intelligence Estimates of the Soviet Nuclear Weapons Programme’, 87–8. ¹⁶ Holloway, Stalin, 181–3, 186–7.

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concluded from it that ‘plutonium would be used and . . . it is just possible that they may succeed in producing an atomic bomb by July 1950’.¹⁷ Information on the quantity of the calcium metal being made at Bitterfeld enabled analysts to calculate how much uranium metal might be being manufactured in the USSR. The Joint Scientific and Technical Intelligence Committees agreed that the earliest possible date for the construction of a plutonium bomb was mid-1950. However, they thought that the probable date was mid-1953. The CIA had made exactly the same forecast to President Truman the year before. Sharing information within the Combined Unit helped the two governments to reach the same conclusions.¹⁸ Spies in other USIG supply companies provided the CIA in 1951 with information which established that very fine nickel wire mesh was being manufactured at the Tewa factory in Neustadt for shipment to the USSR for use in its atomic programme, and that essential supplies were also being bought in West Germany. It was clear from the very demanding technical specifications for the mesh that it was being used in a gaseous diffusion apparatus; the intelligence therefore established that the Soviets were enriching uranium by this method. Samples of the mesh were obtained. The CIA immediately persuaded skilled workers at the factory to defect and stopped supplies coming from the West.¹⁹ Wismut was also penetrated. The CIA recruited spies who provided information on the mines’ yield of uranium. So did the British. A source codenamed ‘Courier’ supplied photographs of documents in Russian on uranium mining in the Annaberg area, including output figures and estimates of the amount of exploitable ore.²⁰ The Soviets sought to improve the security of their uraniummining operations by replacing German personnel with Soviet workers, at least in the packing plants.²¹ Security measures eventually made it ‘virtually impossible’ to recruit agents in the Wismut organization.²² But the mines themselves were still worked by German miners and spies were recruited among them. The MfS records contain an example. A uranium miner made his way to West Berlin in May 1960 and offered a sample of ore to an American intelligence office. It bought the ore and recruited him as a spy. He reported on the quantity and quality of the uranium mined in his region.²³ An MfS counter-intelligence officer recalls that medical personnel in the Erzgebirge were recruited.²⁴ Agents attached Geiger counters to railway lines running to the USSR so that the radioactivity of uranium transports could be measured.²⁵ A spy in the Central Geological Institute ¹⁷ CAAIU, ‘Estimate of Russian Atomic Weapons Programme and Timetable, November 1948’, 28/1/1949, DEFE 21/45; CAAIU, ‘Status of Russian Atomic Energy Project’, 30/7/1947, DEFE 21/45. ¹⁸ Annexe to JS/JTIC(49)55, DEFE 41/150; Andrew, President’s Eyes Only, 177. ¹⁹ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 14; Lowenhaupt, Studies in Intelligence (2000), 58–60. ²⁰ JSJT/STO(49)65; JSJT/STO(49)73, DEFE 41/146. ²¹ STIB Technical Meeting minutes, 25/1/1951, DEFE 41/10. ²² Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 15. ²³ Tätigkeitsbericht für August 1961, MfS-HA IX, MF-11215. ²⁴ Interview with Helmut Wagner. ²⁵ MfS-AU 314/61 (Band 3), 25; Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1961, MfS-HA IX, MF-11208.

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(Zentrales Geologisches Institut) provided information on the number and location of uranium-ore shafts in East Germany.²⁶ An American intelligence report on the Leunawerk refers to both German and Soviet informants.²⁷ Other spies reported on the testing of biological warfare agents on the island of Rügen, in the Baltic.²⁸

EXPLOITING CONNECTIONS WITH THE USSR A standard method was to encourage suitably qualified spies to apply for jobs in targeted ministries, the East German army, or the SED. One young East German recruited by the BND in 1960 was told to apply for a position as a radio operator in a communications unit. The BND obviously had detailed knowledge of the organization of the NVA, for he was informed of three bases about which it was keen to learn more. When he joined the army, he was told to pass on all the information he could about new weapons and equipment.²⁹ Owing to Soviet exploitation of East German expertise, this method could be applied to the Soviet Union itself. Of course, Germans in the USSR stood little chance of being trusted, and any German agent who did indeed find employment in a Soviet factory is unlikely to have provided much valuable information. The US government’s Doolittle Report of September 1954 complained that, ‘The usable information we are obtaining [on the USSR] is still far short of our needs’.³⁰ Nevertheless, the British attempted this means of penetration and it is likely that the Americans did too. In September 1951 the MGB pounced on a group of East Germans, most of them aeronautical engineers, who had links with MI6. Some were returnees who had only been sent back to the DDR the year before. The arrests took place in Dessau, Rosslau, and Wolfen. At least three of the men had been approached by MI6 agents and asked to apply for a job in Russia and act as spies there. At least one, Dr Horst Muttray, is reported to have agreed, though he was arrested before he could go.³¹ East German scientists, technicians, and industrial officials travelled to the Soviet Union. They went, for example, to conferences organized by Comecon, the Bloc’s agency for economic co-operation. They were targeted for recruitment (Gehlen’s operation was codenamed ‘Pfiffikus’)³². Consequently, in 1958 the Minister for State Security, Erich Mielke, reported to the SED’s First Secretary,

²⁶ Tätigkeitsbericht für August 1965, MfS-HA IX, MF-11263. ²⁷ JSJT/STO(49)59, DEFE 41/146. ²⁸ Rositzke, Secret Operations, 43. ²⁹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11193; Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11205; Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 88. ³⁰ Report of the Special Study Group on the Covert Activities of the Central Intelligence Agency, 30/9/1954, Folder ‘Doolittle Report’, Reference Collection of Miscellaneous Declassified Documents, Box 2, DDEL. ³¹ Darlison to Director STIB, 14/12/1951, DEFE 41/12; Production Directorate to STIB, 3/12/1951, DEFE 41/12; Darlison to Director STIB, 20/10/1951, DEFE 41/12. ³² Höhne and Zolling, Network, 145; Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 28.

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Walter Ulbricht, that among the KGB liaison officers attached to the Ministry was one responsible for the West’s industrial and scientific espionage. He was responsible for vetting DDR representatives who visited the USSR; he was also involved in counter-espionage against Western spying on the factories supplying the Soviet forces in East Germany.³³ There are some examples of these people in the MfS’s records. One, a woman, was an interpreter who spied for an American service under the codename ‘Offenbach’. She was recruited when a colleague of hers, also an interpreter, fled West and sent her a letter asking her to meet him in West Berlin. At the meeting he introduced her to an American intelligence officer. She was recruited as a spy in August 1955 and thereafter met her controller regularly in West Berlin. It was her job which made her of interest to him: she worked in the Ministry for Foodstuffs for the department which met government needs. The department also received requests for foodstuffs, in Russian, from units of the Soviet armed forces. These she had to translate. She was therefore able to give her controller the names of Soviet officers and copies of their requests. In time, her controller asked her to apply for a job with the DDR’s representative office at the Comecon organization in Moscow. Her application was successful. The Americans arranged with her that she would communicate her information by letter. Her controller gave her secret writing equipment, taught her how to encode and decode messages, and informed her of cover addresses in Holland, West Germany, and West Berlin. She was told to lay ‘dead letter boxes’ in Moscow; these would be emptied by CIA officers working there under diplomatic cover. So that she could smuggle documents out of the building in which she worked, she was given a handbag and a briefcase, each with a secret compartment. She took up her new job in Moscow in August 1957. As she had done in East Berlin, she provided the Americans with copies of the minutes of Comecon meetings, documents on the state of affairs in the Council, and documents on the Soviet Union’s fulfilment of its economic plan for 1957. She also provided information on Comecon’s Commission for the Defence Industry and on the structure of Comecon itself. She named people working for the organization and supplied personal information on them. She provided such military intelligence as she could. The KGB arrested her in July 1959 and handed her over to the MfS the following month.³⁴ Another such spy was a dentist and SED member who worked in the clinic attached to the Central Committee in East Berlin. He was also a member of the Politburo’s medical commission. He spied for them from 1952 until his arrest in 1959. He provided information on political decisions of which he had heard and on the members of the Central Committee; he also reported on the meetings of the medical commission and provided corresponding documents. He travelled around the Bloc and carried out intelligence tasks for the Americans in the USSR ³³ Mielke to Ulbricht, 13/10/1958, DY 30/3675, SAPMO-BA. ³⁴ Tätigkeitsbericht für August 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11191.

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and Hungary.³⁵ In 1959 a biology teacher took water samples from the river running close to an atomic plant near Moscow. Back in the DDR, his task had been to obtain information on the production of pharmaceuticals there and in the USSR and on the development of antidotes to chemical and biological weapons. An American spy, he had been recruited via an extreme right-wing group, the Burschenbund Convent, to which SS and SA veterans and American intelligence officers belonged. Based in West Berlin, the organization had a secret membership in East Germany.³⁶ In 1957 the BND recruited an engineer who worked at an airfield in Cottbus. His main job was to report on goings-on at the airfield and on Soviet army bases, but on one occasion he was allowed to travel to the USSR and gathered military information while he was there.³⁷ East German students also went to Russia to study. In June 1959 the MfS arrested a woman of about 30 who had been spying for the Americans for the previous eight years. During her time as a medical student in Moscow she had obtained samples of water and earth so that they could be tested for radioactivity. She also provided the names of, and personal information about, Soviet and German students at the university. Her husband acted as her courier.³⁸ In his book Harry Rositzke describes a very similar case—clearly the same one—recounting that the agent was tasked to observe scientific targets and that she managed to smuggle out of Moscow samples of earth taken from an atomic installation there.³⁹ An economics student at Humboldt University in East Berlin recruited by an American service was asked to provide the names of students who were studying in the Soviet Union. He had the job of sorting the post received at the hostel where he lived; he therefore gave his controllers all the letters received there from the USSR and the other satellites.⁴⁰ An East German studying mathematics at Leningrad State University was recruited while on holiday in the DDR. Since he planned to continue his studies in West Germany, he paid a visit to the refugee camp in Marienfelde. There he provided information about himself which prompted an American secret service to contact him and recruit him. Back in Leningrad, he gathered information about the students and teaching staff which he communicated in secret writing in letters posted to a cover address in East Berlin. The person who lived at this address received letters from spies in the USSR and East Germany; these he took to the Americans in West Berlin.⁴¹ Of course, this kind of recruitment would have been impossible had the DDR’s border with the West been closed. The famous Berlin Tunnel also enabled intelligence on Soviet military matters to be obtained. In Operation ‘Gold’ between 1955 and 1956 the British and ³⁵ ³⁶ ³⁷ ³⁸ ³⁹ ⁴⁰ ⁴¹

Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11189. Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1965, MfS-HA IX, MF-11265. Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11196. Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11189. Rositzke, Secret Operations, 54–5. Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1957, MfS-HA IX, MF-11165. Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1957, MfS-HA IX, MF-11166.

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Americans tapped high-security cables running through the Soviet Sector of Berlin close to the border with the American Sector. Among those tapped were military communication cables running between three of the most important military targets of all: the headquarters in Wünsdorf, south of Berlin, of the Soviet army’s Western Army Group; the military and intelligence complex at Karlshorst, which was the largest Soviet base in Eastern Europe; and the Defence Ministry in Moscow. Amongst the intelligence obtained was information on the deployment of new bombers, including nuclear-capable ones, and radar-equipped interceptors in East Germany; increases in the size of both the bomber and fighter forces in Poland; a reduction in the size of the Soviet armed forces; plans to step up the collaboration of Warsaw Pact forces; the decision to establish an East German army; the reorganization of the Soviet Ministry of Defence; the existence and location of about a hundred Soviet air bases in the USSR, East Germany, and Poland, as well as those of some important aircraft factories; the location of many atomic installations in the Soviet Union; and news of ‘unrest’ among Soviet nuclear scientists inspired by Khrushchev’s destalinization campaign. The tunnel yielded better intelligence than had been obtained in a long time: a CIA report called it ‘a unique source of current intelligence on the Soviet Orbit of a kind and quality which had not been available since 1948’.⁴² SPYING ON DDR SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY Spying on war-related research and development overlapped with broader industrial spying, for much science and technology with civilian applications was also relevant to war. The DDR’s factories and R&D institutions active across the whole field of advanced technology were deeply penetrated. The leading factories were riddled with spies. Almost every HA IX monthly report for the period between October 1955 and December 1965 states that people working in nationalized factories represented the largest social category of people arrested in that month. No specific figures are given tying crime to particular social category, but since spying was often the crime for which most people were arrested, many of the engineers, technicians, administrators, and workers at VEB must have been arrested for spying. Among these people were many who provided information on R&D. Leading scientists were certainly targeted but were either rarely recruited or rarely caught. People described as Wissenschaftler (meaning academics, and including scientists) are regularly listed in the HA IX’s reports, but the number each time is small and it is not clear from the reports whether they were arrested for spying or another crime.⁴³ Some, certainly, were spies. ⁴² ‘Recapitulation of the Intelligence Derived’, in Steury, Front Lines, 401–5; Wolf, Man Without a Face, 89–91. ⁴³ See the HA IX’s Tätigkeitsberichte for the period between October 1955 and December 1965, MfS-HA IX, MF-11147–MF-11267.

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Located in East Berlin, the ministries which directed industry and science were easy targets for the Western units based on the other side of the sectoral boundary. They were also deeply penetrated. By 1948 statistical information obtained from them represented ‘the bread-and-butter output’ of the CIA’s Berlin station.⁴⁴ The Western services had more success against them at this stage of the Cold War than the East German intelligence service had against Western governments.⁴⁵ Penetrating information on military capability was obtained. For instance, a spy in the government statistical agency, the Zentralverwaltung für Statistik, from 1960 to 1965 provided detailed breakdowns of the supply to and consumption of goods by the Soviet and East German armed forces and the Wismut uraniummining complex. Among the goods concerned were transistors, electronic control devices, jet engine fuel, and rare metals such as germanium and titanium. In each case, he stated how much was produced domestically and how much imported. Arrested in 1965, he had been an American spy since 1952.⁴⁶ What is remarkable about the cases in the HA IX’s reports is how many spies there were, how well placed they were, and how much information they supplied. The cases referred to in this chapter come from the latter 1950s and early 1960s, which are famous for being the years in which highly successful technical collection systems were developed which supplied the US government with its best intelligence, both Imint and Sigint, on the USSR. The HA IX’s reports show that, at this time, in East Germany, old-fashioned spying was being used to obtain valuable intelligence. This Humint was valuable owing to its quantity and quality. The reports confirm a fundamental truth of the intelligence profession, which is that, if the information is good and authentic, it does not matter where it comes from. Spies in economic ministries, factories, and harbours played a key role in the West’s economic warfare policy. They reported on the DDR’s exports to, and imports from, both the Communist Bloc and the rest of the world.⁴⁷ They were told to report which raw materials were hard to come by.⁴⁸ They helped to enforce the embargo and to determine whether a vigorous Communist economy was being established in the DDR and could survive. Intelligence of shortages was used to aggravate them and so hold back the DDR’s economic and scientific development.⁴⁹ Economic spying therefore focused on key industrial sectors such as the chemical industry, mechanical engineering, and energy. These sectors were also crucial to East Germany’s scientific potential and to its war-making capability. All the Western services targeted the main institutions of economic management and were very successful in penetrating them. The embargo also required that the ⁴⁴ Chief of Station, Karlsruhe, to Chief, Foreign Branch, 8/4/1948, in Steury, Front Lines, 27. ⁴⁵ M. Wolf, Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg (Munich, 1997), 86. ⁴⁶ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1965, MfS-HA IX, MF-11261. ⁴⁷ Oberstes Gericht der DDR, Strafsache gegen Brehmer und andere, 26/8/1959, MfS-AU 314/61 (Band 1), 16–22; MfS-AU 314/61 Beiakte, 3–4; MfS-AU 314/61 (Band 3), 26, 29, 47; Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11194. ⁴⁸ Schlußbericht, 5/3/1958, MfS-AU 253/59 (Band 7), 30. ⁴⁹ Mielke, 23rd Plenum SED-ZK, 14/4/1955, DY 30, IV 2/1/143, 16–25.

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foreign trade network be penetrated; this was also done. Trade relations with the other Communist states and above all with the USSR were of particular interest. So among the targeted institutions were the State Planning Commission (the principal agency of economic management), the Ministry for Foreign Trade, and the DDR’s representative office at Comecon. One MI6 spy, a senior official in the Foreign Trade Ministry, managed to photocopy approximately 3,000 documents for his controller. A single American spy betrayed the DDR’s planned energy programme and provided more than 1,000 detailed design documents relating to more than 100 power stations which were to be exported to Poland and China. MI6 also obtained excellent information on the energy programme: one of its spies, from 1955 to 1959, was an engineer in a high position in the State Planning Commission, and supplied information on the progress of the energy programme, on imports from West Germany, and on economic co-operation with other Bloc States. He was probably betrayed by George Blake.⁵⁰ A number of MI6 spies over a period of years handed over a wealth of information on non-ferrous metals which the DDR needed to import, as well as on shortages of raw materials affecting important branches of industry such as mechanical engineering. They provided information on 50 per cent of East Germany’s entire production of chemicals and 20 per cent of its exports. The MfS obtained evidence that this resulted in further measures to disrupt the DDR economy. It acquired proof positive that West German exports of embargoed goods were stopped when they were betrayed by spies. This, in turn, affected the DDR’s ability to meet its export commitments and caused industrial personnel to blame the economic bureaucracy for letting them down.⁵¹ Another high-level MI6 spy, the deputy director of a statistics department in the Ministry of Foreign Trade, provided much information, including original documents, on the DDR’s trade with both the Bloc and Western countries.⁵² A spy for the French was a senior official in the Ministry for the Chemical Industry and provided a wealth of reports on the volume and character of chemical production, the volume and price of exported chemicals, and difficulties in production for export.⁵³ A spy for US Military Intelligence, tried in May 1958, had worked for two different institutions in East Germany’s industrial bureaucracy. At both he reported on production and supply of raw materials; this information had implications for the DDR’s economic well-being and war-making capability, and enabled the US to take action to damage both. When working for the Main Administration for Foundries, the spy handed over test results concerning the manufacture of titanium for the atomic industry; the DDR was dependent on supplies from ⁵⁰ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11193. ⁵¹ Einschätzung der Spionage- und Wühltätigkeit der imperialistischen Geheimdienste gegen die Deutsche Demokratische Republik, 21/11/1961, MfS-HA IX 4350, 264–9; Übersicht, 7/4/1961, MfSHA IX 4350, 286–8; Information, MfS-HA IX 4350, 312–13. ⁵² Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11194. ⁵³ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11190.

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Norway, which could be stopped. In 1957 he was transferred to the Main Administration for Inorganic Chemistry. He handed over production reports which explained why planned production targets were not being met. The reports revealed difficulties encountered in production which the Americans could try to aggravate. The goods and raw materials which the Main Administration was importing for its factories in 1957 he also betrayed. This greatly alarmed it, since most of the raw materials were obtained from the West and by not issuing export licences Western countries could prevent the projects from being achieved, so rendering considerable investment worthless.⁵⁴

Electronics War-related research and development were specifically targeted. Spies, like refugees, were used to identify scientific workers employed in factories and research institutes engaged in military R&D or weapons manufacture, particularly for the Soviet forces. Electronics provides a good example. It was a key field of science, crucial to war-making, in which the West was superior and needed to remain so. It underwent breakneck development during this period. The DDR represented an important part of the entire Bloc’s capability in electronics; reducing its potential would help to maintain Western superiority. An intelligence report of 1952 records the British view that, ‘The electronics potential of the DDR exceeds that of all the [other] satellites combined’.⁵⁵ East Germany’s main telecommunications factories were easy to penetrate and the Western services had numerous sources in them. These spies supplied much intelligence on the work of their research laboratories. This directly served military strategy. MI6 tried to use refugee connections to penetrate the Sachsenwerk, near Dresden, which manufactured decimetre wavelength radio sets for the Soviet army. NATO’s interest in the Soviet army’s radio sets was lively, for intelligence of the wavelengths on which they operated would allow Soviet communications, in a war, to be jammed in one area of combat (most importantly, at the front) and intercepted in the rear where the army’s command and control headquarters were located.⁵⁶ The Werk für Fernmeldewesen (previously the Oberspreewerk), in East Berlin, carried out development and production on behalf of the USSR. The British gathered much information on it from spies, contacts, and refugees. In the late 1940s Peter Eich, the head of its research laboratory, was an STIB source. Other informants were Werner Preuss, an engineer, and Olga Reimann, an interpreter. A decade later, the MfS was still arresting Western spies at the ⁵⁴ Schlußbericht, 5/3/1958, MfS-AU 253/59 (Band 7), 5–6, 24–34. ⁵⁵ DSI Memorandum No. 15, DEFE 41/153. ⁵⁶ Major Stoney, Signals 3, MI10 Conference 1952, DEFE 41/126; Berlin/1202, 8/3/1956, DEFE 41/136.

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factory. An engineer arrested in September 1957 had been an American spy for two years. He supplied information on the usual topics: the factory’s products, shortages, technical directives in force, plans for the future, and changes in personnel.⁵⁷ The British achieved ‘very good coverage’ of the research and development work carried on there. This intelligence, by revealing the uses the Soviets were making of the factory, allowed deductions to be made about the state of Soviet electronics. The British called this ‘the use of the German window to Russia’.⁵⁸ In 1949 a survey of Soviet exploitation of the factory argued that, to manufacture the electronic equipment they would need in a modern war, the Soviets needed greater manufacturing capacity and more sophisticated production and testing methods. The British had received reports that the valves being manufactured in the USSR were ‘not as consistent in performance as modern VHF techniques require’.⁵⁹ A report of 1950 attempted the same kind of guesswork, concluding that ‘in view of the continued demand upon OSW [Oberspreewerk] for centimetric equipment, it is thought that the Russians are still meeting considerable difficulties in production of adequate numbers of centimetric valves’.⁶⁰ The Funkwerk Köpenick, also in East Berlin, was riddled with spies.⁶¹ Until his arrest in July 1957, one was Arnold Kieser, the head of the Transmitter Design Department and a leading engineer. The factory was the only one outside the USSR which designed and manufactured a full range of transmitters. It exported much of its output to other Bloc countries. Kieser was familiar with all the factory’s work on transmitters. For five years he supplied the Americans (indirectly) and then the BND (directly) with information on proposed developments and on the design, frequencies, and quality of the transmitters manufactured, together with information about difficulties encountered in manufacture and details of all exports. This included intelligence on transmitters manufactured for the East German army, air force, and diplomatic service. To facilitate the recruitment of other spies, he provided personal information on every member of the factory’s directorate, stating Party membership and professional qualification. The factory commission appointed to assess the damage done by his espionage pointed out that several scientific workers engaged in transmitter development had been induced to defect. The information Kieser had provided about commercial sales, for example to Middle Eastern countries, would allow Western companies to offer quicker delivery and a lower price. The commission was alarmed that inquiries made by foreign purchasers had not resulted in orders. It was also disturbed that ⁵⁷ Tätigkeitsbericht für September 1957, MfS-HA IX, MF-11169. ⁵⁸ Director STIB to Chief, Intelligence Division, 19/9/1949, DEFE 41/123. ⁵⁹ NID-LC Report No. 1, 17/8/1949, DEFE 41/151. ⁶⁰ DSI/JTIC(50)28, ‘Russian Electronics’, 20/12/1950, DEFE 10/498. ⁶¹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1958, MfS-HA IX, MF-11173; Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11199; Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11260.

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Kieser had handed over information on an office responsible for obtaining materials for research and development projects. The office obtained many goods from abroad and the commission feared that these imports might be stopped.⁶² Kieser had been replaced even before he was arrested. From early 1957 another engineer at the factory reported to the BND on the communications devices under development there. The MfS managed to arrest him only in 1964.⁶³ Research is an activity more vulnerable to the human spy than to technical collection systems. So successful espionage in the DDR should have led to a big haul of scientific intelligence. The HA IX’s reports show that spies were indeed recruited in electronics research facilities. For example, in 1960 the MfS arrested a department chief at the Institut für Regelungstechnik (Institute for Control Technology). He had been recruited in 1951 by an American service. Codenamed ‘Buchholz’, at monthly meetings with his controller he had provided much information about new developments in radio and telecommunications technology. He had also handed over examples of new devices, and particularly of semiconductors, transistors, and other electronic components. He had also reported on international conferences he had attended and named many leading figures working at centres of telecommunications development in East Berlin.⁶⁴ The BND had been supplied with information on the same matters between 1960 and 1963 by another engineer at the same institute.⁶⁵ Another spy who reported on radio developments was a returnee from the Soviet Union codenamed ‘Reppe’. Recruited by the BND in 1952, he was arrested only in October 1963. He worked in the Rundfunk- und Fernsehtechnisches Zentrum Berlin (Berlin Radio and Television Technical Centre) and provided a wealth of documentation on technical developments in these fields.⁶⁶ A technician at the Wissenschaftlich-Technisches Büro für Gerätebau spied for the Americans. The centre’s R&D tasks included war-related ones. She was an American spy only for a few months in 1956. She met her controller every week in pubs in West Berlin and handed over documents for photocopying. Among these were the enterprise’s annual reports, revealing the stage R&D work on all projects had reached.⁶⁷ An engineer spying for MI6 at the Institut für Gerätebau (Institute for Instrument Construction) was arrested in 1961. He had handed over documents on research and development projects at the institute, particularly relating to electronic devices.⁶⁸ ⁶² Schlußbericht, 9/10/1957, MfS-AU 962/58 (Band 1), 278–333; Sachverständigen-Gutachten, 22/10/1957, MfS-AU 962/58 (Band 7), 2–27; Mader, Graue Hand, 111. ⁶³ Tätigkeitsbericht für März 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11246. ⁶⁴ Tätigkeitsbericht für März 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11198. ⁶⁵ Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11242. ⁶⁶ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11241. ⁶⁷ Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1957, MfS-HA IX, MF-11161. ⁶⁸ Kurze Einschätzung der im Jahre 1961 erzielten Untersuchungsergebnisse in der Bearbeitung von Spionageverbrechen, 9/1/1962, MfS-HA IX 4350, 232; Tätigkeitsbericht für März 1961, MfS-HA IX, MF-11210.

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Computers In the late 1950s East German economic planners were also trying to establish a computer industry. The computer was of such significance for the economic and war-making potential of the Bloc that the CIA inevitably sought high-quality sources on East German development efforts. It found one in Franz Brehmer, a physicist, whom it recruited in March 1957. He was a lecturer at the Institut für Physik (Institute for Physics) of the Hochschule für Elektrotechnik (High School for Electrical Engineering) in Ilmenau. His recruitment began when he received a letter from a friend who had shortly before fled to West Berlin. This friend, also a physicist, asked him to visit. When he did, the friend introduced him to the CIA. Brehmer wanted to live in the West and the CIA promised that, when he defected, he would not have to go through a refugee camp. He was also paid for his spying. He met his controller in West Berlin and Frankfurt am Main. The CIA obtained from him information on East German physicists, particularly computer scientists, and on their research projects and results. Their R&D tasks were the most important matter. Much of his information related to the scientists and engineers at the Hochschule and its institutes; he named all the leading ones and supplied information about them. He also reported on the conferences he attended, the papers given, and the people who gave them. With the exception of his own field—luminescence—his knowledge of the research being undertaken at his institute was broad but not deep. But it was good enough to cause harm. He knew of all the R&D underway there. The institute held no secret information, but played a significant role in East German science. Its main fields of activity were computer science and electronics. Brehmer reported on a number of computer models under development. He had discussed them with those of his colleagues who were working on them. What most concerned the commission of scientists appointed to assess the damage his spying had done was that he had sent the CIA a report on the EAR-1, an early analogue computer intended for mass production and export. They had already noted with concern that export of these computers to West Germany had been frustrated by the unexpected appearance on the market in 1958 of a similar device, Telefunken’s RA 463. The Ilmenau scientists completed their rival device in 1959. Brehmer’s report informed the CIA of the state of development of the EAR-1 at the end of 1958. He explained fully how it was constructed and functioned, stating its capabilities. The commission concluded that the CIA was in consequence ‘very well informed about the state of development and the prospects for further development of analogue machines’ in the DDR.⁶⁹ Manufacture of the EAR-1 had already begun by the time the commission reported in July 1959. The commission expected that the CIA would use Brehmer’s information to sabotage both further development and mass ⁶⁹ Gutachten, 3/7/1959, MfS-AU 600/59 (Band 1a), 277–8.

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production. Its likeliest responses would be to persuade scientists and engineers involved either to move to other work or to defect.⁷⁰ There were two other physics institutes at the Hochschule, the Institut für Angewandte Physik (Institute for Applied Physics), which was largely concerned with atomic physics, and the Institut für Hochfrequenztechnik (Institute for High Frequency Technology). Brehmer named their staff and was able to obtain information on their R&D tasks. He also handed over scientific journals, including the Hochschule’s own journal, in which its staff published their research results. His controller asked to be informed in advance whether and when any of the Hochschule’s staff was planning to visit the West. The controller was particularly interested in three professors working at the Hochschule, and told Brehmer to supply information on their research and to notify him of any visits to the West. One was Brehmer’s boss, the director of the Institute for Physics. Another was a professor at the Institut für Angewandte Physik and a returnee: he had returned from work on atomic projects in the USSR in 1957. He was probably Professor Döpel, who was its director.⁷¹ Leading figures were being targeted for inducement to defect, as policy required.

Aeronautics The aircraft industry was targeted and successfully penetrated. It was founded in 1954 and drew heavily on returnees. It made not military aircraft but civilian jet airliners. Like the atomic industry, it was intended to play an important role in the DDR’s industrial development by both creating demand for, and manufacturing, advanced technology. For example, control devices developed for aeronautical purposes would assist the mechanization of industry. The DDR also hoped for export trade. Its aircraft industry co-operated with those of the other Bloc States and particularly with that of the Soviet Union. Naturally, it was a particular target of the Western services’ spying and induced defection operations. In spying on it, they hoped to obtain information on the technology available to the Bloc air forces. Particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s the American secret services and the BND made strong efforts to weaken the industry by defection, targeting above all experts in the fields of jet engines, control devices, and airframes. The BND achieved a top-level penetration when it recruited Manfred Gerlach, a leading aeronautical engineer, as a spy in 1956. Arrested in 1959, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1960. Gerlach was a returnee who was sent back to East Germany in July 1954. His specialism was the manufacture of jet engines. He was ⁷⁰ Vernehmungsprotokoll, 27/4/1959; Vernehmungsprotokoll, 25/5/1959; Vernehmungsprotokoll, 29/5/1959; Bericht, 17/4/1959; Gutachten, 3/7/1959, MfS-AU 600/59 (Band 1a), 152–8, 180–7, 195–7, 259, 273–80. ⁷¹ Vernehmungsprotokoll, 18/4/1959, MfS-AU 600/59 (Band 1a), 121–2; Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11189; Oberstes Gericht der DDR, Strafsache gegen Brehmer und andere, 26/8/1959, MfS-AU 314/61 (Band 1); Bericht, 19/9/1958, MfS-AU 600/59 (Band 1a), 9–11; Vernehmungsprotokoll, MfS-AU 600/59 (Band 1a), 112–13.

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appointed technical director—chief of all research and development matters—of a leading research and development enterprise, the Entwicklungsbau enterprise in Pirna. It made not only aircraft engines but also turbines for the East German navy. The BND wanted from him information on aeronautical research and development, on future planning for the aircraft industry, and on aeronautical co-operation with other Bloc States, above all the Soviet Union. Any documents obtained from the USSR or concerning Soviet aeronautics were of particular interest. For instance, it wanted documents on the Il-28, the plane which had been chosen to test one of Gerlach’s engines. This plane was still in service with the air forces of the Bloc. Gerlach was also told to supply information on people, especially Soviet aeronautical engineers who were sent to the DDR to advise its aircraft industry or with delegations. Gerlach was an excellent source. He passed on information about research and development and co-operation in R&D with the Soviet Union. Although this chiefly concerned aeronautical matters, his connections with people working throughout East German industry enabled him to pass on intelligence about their R&D as well. As the factory’s technical director he had access to all its documents on research and development and planning in the field of jet engines. He took home the most important ones and photographed them. He showed particular interest in research results yielded by collaborative DDR–Soviet projects. He even managed to steal documents while on a business trip to Soviet jet engine factories; these he smuggled home and passed on. He was also a member of the Scientific-Technical Council of the aircraft industry, where R&D planning and the development of the entire industry were discussed. He attended conferences and meetings on DDR aeronautics, made copious notes of what was said, and reported orally to his controller on these. Thus he provided much information on the planes being manufactured, their technical equipment, and the industry’s sources of raw materials. High-grade steel came from the USSR; Gerlach obtained analyses of its composition from the Institute of Raw Materials. This information enabled the BND to assess the quality of the steel available to Soviet defence industries. He was even able to supply photographs of Soviet reports on aeronautics which had been given to the DDR to assist the development of its aircraft industry. Professor Günther Bock returned to East Germany in the same transport as Gerlach and the two men were close. Both had once worked for Junkers. Before 1945 Bock, as director of the DVL, had been a leading figure in German aeronautics. He had, in fact, been one of the experts who, in 1937, investigated the causes of the Hindenburg disaster on behalf of the Nazi government.⁷² He defected as soon as he returned to Germany. In West Germany, he quickly became principal ⁷² Kürschners Deutscher Gelehrten-Kalendar 1966 (Berlin, 1966); R. Shaw, ‘The Blue Ring of Death and Destruction’, http://www.balloonlife.com/publications/balloon_life/9801/0112/ hindenburg0112.pdf [accessed on 25/3/2004].

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of the Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt. While he was away, one of Gehlen’s leading scientific intelligence officers, Franz Kirch, had made contact with his wife, Helga, who had remained in Berlin. He sought from her information on her husband and wanted her to introduce him to aircraft workers who had returned to East Germany. She was also in touch with US Military Intelligence, which planned to evacuate Bock on his return.⁷³ Günther Bock’s MfS file shows that both he and his wife became agent controllers for the BND.⁷⁴ Gehlen anchored his service in Germany’s scientific community; the other Western services did the same. The MfS suspected Günther Bock of being involved in inducing defection as well as spying. One of its informants, codenamed ‘Reinhardt’, who had worked with Gerlach in the USSR and now had an important job in the aircraft industry, reported that Gerlach had told him that, if he ever wanted to go West, Bock was the man to talk to.⁷⁵ It was Helga who recruited Gerlach. She also acted as his controller. To protect him, she was the only BND representative with whom he had contact. She gave him his instructions and trained him. At their meetings, he gave her the photographic films he took and answered her questions (she brought lists of technical questions with her). Their relationship looked like an ordinary, long-standing friendship. This was the BND’s usual practice with spies in leading positions. He was allowed to take holidays in West Germany and Switzerland, and used these to meet her. He also attended as many conferences in Western European countries as he could. He arranged to meet Helga as he drove through the Federal Republic on his way to them. They met in several West German cities and West Berlin. He hid the films in the hubcaps of his car or under the horn. He also had his wife sew little pockets between the legholes of his underpants and beneath the lining of his suits so that he could hide films there. The BND thought highly of Gerlach and paid him a lot of money for his spying. At the time of his arrest, his account at a bank in Cologne contained some DM 20,000. Money was also made available to him at a watchmaker’s shop in West Berlin which was located right on the sectoral border. Not only did he collect money there but letters from Helga as well. He concealed his visits to the watchmaker’s by claiming that he was visiting a relative, who lived in a house just on the other side of the border, in East Berlin. Through the back door of this house he could step directly into West Berlin. Combining holidays, trips to conferences, and visits to this relative, the MfS calculated that the technical director of one of its principal aeronautical R&D facilities had managed to spend two to three months of each year between 1956 and 1959 in the West. Gerlach was by no means the only spy to report to the BND on jet engines. One, working in a factory in Berlin, was arrested in 1963. He had provided similar information, including information on engines intended for military aircraft, ⁷³ Memorandum No. 3766, 29/3/1951; undated report (marked 14A), ‘Franz Kirch’, DEFE 41/11. ⁷⁴ MfS-HA VIII/RF/1764/10; Mader, Graue Hand, 118; Cookridge, Gehlen, 178–9. ⁷⁵ Lehrübersicht Reg. Nr. 5, 15/8/1960, MfS-HA IX 9013, 32–63.

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between 1955 and 1961.⁷⁶ The Americans were also targeting the aircraft industry at this time. Early in 1959 an American service recruited the Director of Personnel and Security at another important aircraft factory, the VEB Flugzeugwerk Dresden. This man, a former MfS officer, had the task of obtaining information on research work in the factory and on people employed in its research centre.⁷⁷

Chemicals, Explosives, and Radar In September 1955 the MfS destroyed a CIA agent network which arranged the defection of valuable scientific workers, and carried out scientific, industrial, and military espionage. The network was the most active CIA spy ring operating against the DDR of which the MfS was aware. It was directed by a CIA S&TI unit which particularly targeted scientific research institutes, big enterprises of all kinds, and the East German transport system. Its spies, like its defection candidates, were often skilled scientific workers. However, they came from all social groups. They agreed to spy in return for a promise that, in time, they would be resettled in the West and provided with a good living (so they were defectors-in-place). The intelligence they gathered served the needs of NATO forces. Some were used to obtain information on the chemical agents being manufactured in the DDR’s chemical factories and on research results in general. Much effort was also devoted to learning more about radar and radio communications technology. The network’s principal task was to induce the defection of scientific personnel; this aspect of its work will be examined in the next chapter. The spies were distributed throughout East Germany and worked in several industrial sectors. The MfS’s strike was codenamed ‘Wespennest’ (‘Wasp’s Nest’). Thirty-seven people were arrested in the first wave of arrests. The number had risen to 42 by December and 25 further arrests were planned. Nine of those arrested worked for government bodies, generally connected with the chemical, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering industries; 4 in chemical factories; 4 in radio and electrical engineering factories; 3 worked in the steel and heavy engineering sector; the rest were less important. The network was run by a CIA controller with the help of a principal agent. The controller built up his network in the usual way: based in West Berlin, he made use of a large number of recruiters there, many of them refugees. Many had fled from factories the CIA was targeting. They used their connections with East Germans to invite them to West Berlin where they could be recruited for espionage or persuaded to defect. The targeted people might be former colleagues at work, or relatives. Sometimes they were acquaintances from further back—ex-comrades from their time in the Wehrmacht, for example. The network also expanded as agents recommended people they knew for recruitment, often colleagues at work or relatives. ⁷⁶ Tätigkeitsbericht für September 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11240; Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11247. ⁷⁷ Tätigkeitsbericht für September 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11204.

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The spies provided intelligence on the factories and government bodies for which they worked. It was common for them to be tasked to spy on the Soviet forces in their neighbourhood as well. It was therefore common to recruit people with a background in the Wehrmacht. The most important spy was a highly successful one called Max Held, an engineer and draughtsman who worked at an engineering bureau in East Berlin. Previously he had worked at factories in Dresden and Eisenach and at another development bureau in Berlin. His sister had fled West some years earlier and mentioned him to the controller. He was invited to come to West Berlin and there recruited in March 1951. He collected scientific, industrial, and military intelligence. In about a hundred meetings with his controller in West Berlin, he provided much intelligence on research and development work, research results, new products, and export contracts. Much of this he supplied orally, though he handed over many documents and technical drawings as well. These he stole from his own places of work and factories which he visited on business. He handed over minutes of meetings of the works directorate, records relating to newly developed products, documents concerning the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, and documents on future plans. He had much to do with explosives. Among other disclosures, he revealed the chemical composition and means of production of a new explosive. He passed on information about explosives factories in East Germany and their production methods. He handed over the plans for chemical installations to be built at explosives factories in both East Germany and Poland. He provided information on aircraft factories as well. Indeed, he named every explosives and aircraft factory in East Germany and revealed its codename, the nature of its products, and plans for expansion. He reported too on the Soviet forces in the Dessau area and on the aircraft and exercises of the Soviet air force. Another of those arrested, a Wehrmacht veteran, worked in one of the explosives factories on which Held supplied intelligence, that at Schönebeck, and reported on it, its products, and its export contracts. Owing to his military background, he was also tasked to supply military and technical intelligence. This was of direct relevance to NATO forces. He was once instructed to obtain a Soviet army gas mask with a special filter. He was to do this by the usual method of persuading a Soviet officer to desert and bring the gas mask to West Berlin. One refugee who had worked at the Funkwerk Köpenick recommended a colleague there for recruitment. This man, an electrical engineer, was invited to West Berlin and said that he would rather defect and take up a job in the West. A deal was made with him: he would spy on his factory for a short time and provide all the information he could; then he would come West. Once he was in West Berlin the CIA would support his application for recognition as a political refugee; he could also emigrate to the United States if he wanted to. From the SED’s perspective, this deal surely also constituted Abwerbung. The CIA sought from the spy, and got, information which shed light on the USSR’s level of scientific advancement. He reported on the factory’s sales of radar sets to other Bloc States, among them the

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USSR. The CIA was also interested in the generators which it supplied to the Soviet Union, their frequencies and capabilities, as well as the volume of production.⁷⁸

Carl Zeiss and Optical Technology The Carl Zeiss works in Jena was one of the most important enterprises in the DDR. Though its core activity was the manufacture of optical technology, it was involved in much other high-tech development. There were Western spies in the enterprise throughout the Cold War. In this period, intelligence was obtained on its military R&D. In 1952 an American service recruited a Kontrollmeister there. A division of the works manufactured wire mesh for export. The Americans suspected that this might be being used to make atomic weapons. In 1958 the spy’s controller asked him to take photographs of the mesh and particularly of the delivery slip stating the recipient’s name and address. He also asked the spy to smuggle documents out of the laboratories. However, the spy claimed to have refused to perform these tasks and to have broken off contact with the American service.⁷⁹ The Americans also recruited the director of the Carl Zeiss office in Rostock in 1952. Codenamed ‘Maretzki’, he was told to provide information on Carl Zeiss’s exports to Communist states, especially the Soviet Union and China. In particular, the Americans were interested in information on a training device, called ‘A-1’, which helped pilots to learn how to fire their weapons. ‘Maretzki’ introduced them to another Zeiss employee who dealt with the enterprise’s laboratories and so could obtain information on all its latest devices. This latter agent was able to provide the Americans with a copy of the instructions for the ‘A-1’. ‘Maretzki’ was also tasked to supply information on the research being undertaken by the universities and research institutes in the Rostock area.⁸⁰ A few years earlier, in the late 1940s, STIB had obtained information on optical technology from a source in the embryonic government of the Soviet Zone, the Deutsche Wirtschaftskommission (German Economic Commission). Its informant, codenamed ‘Lullaby’, was Dr Hermann Lüscher, head of the Fine Mechanics and Optics Section of the Commission’s Scientific and Technical Department.⁸¹

Medical Personnel The spies discussed above worked in targeted institutions. However, many people confide in medical practitioners who treat them; doctors and dentists were therefore ⁷⁸ Sachstandsbericht, 26/9/1955, MfS-AU 52/56 (Band 1a), 266–311; Sachstandsbericht, 29/9/1955, ibid., 312–17; Plan zur Zerschlagung der Technical Intelligence Service Detachment der CIA, 10/12/1955, MfS-AOP 238/56 (Band II), 1–3; Feindtätigkeit des kalten Krieges vom amerikanischen Geheimdienst gegen die DDR und die Volksdemokratien, 17/11/1955, MfS-AOP 238/56 (Band II), 38–40; Anklage, MfS-AU 52/56 HA-GA (Band 2), 84–8. ⁷⁹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11200. ⁸⁰ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11201. ⁸¹ STIB card index, DEFE 43/1.

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recruited because they might obtain scientific information. In March 1960 the MfS managed to arrest two West Berliners who acted as agent controllers for the West German security service, the Bf V. One of the agents was a doctor working at hospitals in East Berlin. One of the hospitals was the Charité, close to the government district and the headquarters of the German Academy of Sciences. His instructions were to obtain information from Party and government officials receiving treatment at the hospital and get to know atomic scientists.⁸² After a year’s wooing, an American service managed to recruit a very busy dentist who took care of the teeth of many important officials. It obtained from him personal information relating to about a thousand of his patients, including members of the SED Central Committee, police and army officers, judges, and state prosecutors. He also provided information on those who were travelling abroad on official business. Whenever possible, he tried to obtain political information from his patients and passed it on. An ingenious man, he fitted a tiny camera into a dental tool and photographed his patients with it.⁸³ Another doctor working for the Americans, a surgeon, was told to apply for a job in the main hospital of the Kasernierte Volkspolizei. There he would treat air-force personnel; his task was to obtain information from them on jet-engine research. He was also to find out the names of engineers working at the jet-engine research institute in Pirna.⁸⁴

MILITARY ESPIONAGE Military espionage was very extensive. The Demarcation Line was the front line in the Cold War, and the NATO armies stationed there needed to know the size and disposition of the Warsaw Pact forces ranged against them, how well they were armed, and whether any attack was imminent. Moscow needed to equip its forces in Germany with the most advanced weaponry to ensure that they were prepared for any conflict. To stay at a high level of combat effectiveness, these forces had to go on regular exercises and manœuvres. Once they left their bases, they could be observed by a hostile population. They were most vulnerable to spying when they were on the march or when they were being loaded onto trains at railway stations. Spying naturally concentrated on these activities, though military bases were also targeted. As a rule, spies were allocated particular stations and bases in their area to observe. Together, just like a wartime resistance organization, their spying covered the whole of the DDR. Even by 1946 the CIA was ‘able to pinpoint a target almost anywhere in the Russian Zone, and dispatch an agent to cover it almost at a moment’s notice’.⁸⁵ They tended to spy on targets as they passed them, claiming business or personal reasons for their journey. Sometimes they pretended that ⁸² ⁸³ ⁸⁴ ⁸⁵

Tätigkeitsbericht für März 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11198. Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11200. Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1955, MfS-HA IX, MF-11147. Chief of Station, Karlsruhe, to Chief, Foreign Branch, 8/4/1948, in Steury, Front Lines, 21.

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their car or motorbike had broken down so that they could make a careful observation of their target. Travelling spies sent into the DDR took routes through it which were of particular interest to Military Intelligence. The Soviet forces were consistently the more important targets. The Soviet army was headquartered at Wünsdorf, south of Berlin. Military espionage was meant to find out everything possible about these forces, and, in particular, about their strength, reinforcement, movements, and weaponry. Spies were effective; the CIA considered the Order-of-Battle intelligence they provided ‘excellent’. It generally knew of Soviet troop movements within three days.⁸⁶ The Americans thought that there was a ‘fair’ chance that their East German spies would give warning of a Soviet attack—a better chance than anywhere else in the world save Korea.⁸⁷ Spies were better sources on weaponry than any other. Some were able to gain access to workshops and examine weapons and equipment closely; others managed to lay their hands on manuals or take photographs of what they saw.⁸⁸ To assist further spying, the spies provided information on military personnel as well as on the armed forces themselves. The bases were the airfields, headquarters, barracks, exercise grounds, and reserved areas of the Soviet and East German armed forces. Spies were told to report on the layout of the base, any new construction work there, the strength of the force located there, and the weapons, vehicles, and other equipment it had. Spies were to get to know Soviet officers and bring them to West Berlin. They were to provide the names of, and personal information about, as many people at the base as they could, civilian workers included. At airfields, they had to report on what flying took place, on aircraft types, and on their number. At stations, the spies kept a particular watch on the rooms in which the troops waited to board the train. They had to count the number of troops, tanks, and vehicles, note down the vehicle registration numbers if they could, assess the make and quality of the troops’ weapons and the standard of their training, and find out where they were going. New types of weapon had always to be precisely described and sketched. The bigger the weapon, the more important it was. Sometimes they were found in possession of radar detection devices which could determine the transmission frequency of rocket control installations.⁸⁹ The first networks of agents were made up of former soldiers and sailors of the Wehrmacht. Throughout the period 1945–61 the Western services were keen to recruit such men, since they were good judges of weaponry and training, very familiar with the organization of the Soviet army, and passionately antiCommunist. Indeed, many saw spying as a continuation of their wartime fight. ⁸⁶ Staff Conference, 21/11/1951, in Warner, CIA, 447. ⁸⁷ ‘Intelligence on the Soviet Bloc’, 31/3/1953, in G. Haines and R. Leggett (eds.), CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947–1991 (Washington, DC, 2001), 40. ⁸⁸ Major Birch, MI10 Conference 1951, DEFE 41/125. ⁸⁹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1961, MfS-HA IX, MF-11212; Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11220.

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They were infiltrated into East Germany via West Berlin.⁹⁰ Line-crossers (Grenzgänger) were also sought after, since they could be briefed for their journeys into the Eastern Zone. Of the BND agents arrested in the Potsdam area in the early 1960s, 30 per cent had once served in the Wehrmacht and 21 per cent had, before 1961, been line-crossers. It also made sense to recruit people—foresters, for example—whose work enabled them to move around (45 per cent of the BND military spies arrested in Potsdam in the early 1960s fell into this category). Particularly sought after were those whose work gave them access to targeted installations (railway workers, building workers, craftsmen, service workers such as dustmen, and so on); 43 per cent were either pensioners (half of them invalids) or housewives; obviously, they had no job which got in the way of their spying.⁹¹ Invalids were sought after as spies because they would not be called up in time of war. East German railwaymen were well placed to report on the deployment and movement of Soviet forces. Goings-on in the principal railway centres, like Frankfurt an der Oder, were well monitored, as were the railway junctions and stations at which special trains were prepared and the railway offices which organized the transports. At such places, spies had access to documents relating to the special trains and their cargo. The troop transports were photographed as they passed through key junctions, and notes were made on the units on the move, their weaponry, tanks, and equipment. In his preparation for a possible war (called planning for an emergency, or ‘E-Fall’) Gehlen asked his sources about weak points in the Eastern European railway system, which would hinder any Soviet deployment of forces there.⁹² The MfS arrested large numbers of railway workers for passing such information to the West and, as late as 1956, its counterespionage units were rebuked for not doing enough to defeat these operations.⁹³ At a station on the Polish border the area manager had recorded every military train which had passed through in his logbook, which any railway worker in the station could inspect; a Gehlen spy who worked at the station was thus able to give his controllers all this information (he was arrested in 1955). Insufficient care had been taken to register incoming and outgoing telexes and one telex operator, working at an important station (Berlin Ostbahnhof ), had passed a lot of telexes to his controllers over a long period. Since East German railwaymen, sailors, and canal-workers travelled throughout the Bloc, spies were recruited among them with the aim of obtaining intelligence on the USSR and other satellites. For example, one guard on the Deutsche Reichsbahn, Johann Baumgart, travelled between Frankfurt an der Oder and Brest-Litovsk. A Gehlen spy, he reported on the line itself, on the airfields, barracks, factories, and bridges along it, and on Soviet and ⁹⁰ Blake, No Other Choice, 101–2; Cookridge, Gehlen, 151–3, 160, 170–1. ⁹¹ Lapp, Diplomarbeit, 6–18, 31; Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 15–17; Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1956, MfS-HA IX, MF-11158; Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1956, MfS-HA IX, MF-11153; Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1955, MfS-HA IX, MF-11147. ⁹² J. Koehler, Stasi (Boulder, Colo., 1999), 273–9; T. Bower, The Perfect English Spy (London, 1995), 178. ⁹³ Last to Bezirksverwaltungen chiefs, 9/3/1956, MfS-BdL/Dok. Nr. 003470.

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Polish transports of troops and goods.⁹⁴ The Org recruited sources on ships which moved along the Central European waterways.⁹⁵ The Western services had great faith that their spies would report anything of military significance which happened in the Eastern Zone. As far as the British were concerned, a representative of the Rhine army commented in 1951 that, ‘The agent coverage is very good and increasing. On the whole they report the same old stuff week after week, but there is no doubt that if anything new did appear in the Zone they would notice it.’⁹⁶ So as soon as a weapon was deployed in the Zone it could not be kept secret. This confidence seems to have been well founded. The agent networks of the BND, MI6, British Services Security Organization (BSSO), MIS, and French intelligence informed all of them of the deployment of a Soviet missile force near Fürstenberg and Vogelsang in the first few months of 1959. One BND spy even provided forewarning of this. Among the BND’s spies in the region were civilians working for the local Soviet forces, and foresters and agricultural labourers who could roam the countryside looking for hidden installations. Indeed, the missile forces were concealed in woods. The missiles deployed were R5M medium-range missiles, armed with nuclear warheads; Khrushchev intended them to back up his threat to resolve the Berlin issue unilaterally and diminish the inferiority of his nuclear strike force to the SAC. Since the Soviets were foolish enough to use lorries bearing the word ‘ATOM’ to transport building materials to the bases during the first phase of construction, it is likely that the Western services guessed that the missiles might well be nuclear-tipped. The scare was short lived: they were withdrawn to Kaliningrad later in 1959.⁹⁷ Germans with civilian jobs at Soviet military bases were recruited.⁹⁸ Though by 1953 almost all Germans working at Soviet bases had been dismissed from their jobs, Soviet forces still needed services which Germans provided. They could not cut themselves off completely. Spies were always easier to recruit in the satellites, where the Soviets were seen as occupiers. They were run in the workshops where Soviet army vehicles were repaired.⁹⁹ Their dealings with the Soviets meant that these agents could provide the names of officers and personal information about them which might facilitate their recruitment or induced defection. The military and intelligence complex at Karlshorst was penetrated. The CIA targeted in particular German civilian employees working within the compound. In August 1957 the MfS arrested a German electrician who worked for one of the Soviet offices there. The CIA had told him to find out where ⁹⁴ Fricke and Engelmann, ‘Konzentrierte Schläge’, 144; Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1955, MfS-HA IX, MF-11148; Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11197. ⁹⁵ Höhne and Zolling, Network, 136–7. ⁹⁶ Major Birch, MI10 Conference 1951, DEFE 41/125. ⁹⁷ Uhl, Stalins V-2, 236–41. See also M. Uhl and V. Ivkin, ‘Operation Atom’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin 12/13(2001), 299–306. ⁹⁸ Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11244. ⁹⁹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11184; Tätigkeitsbericht für März 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11186.

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telephone cables ran, place bugs in offices, and provide information on people. It was seeking, through him, to make contact with Soviet officials.¹⁰⁰ In 1959 an American service, probably the CIA, recruited a roofer who lived in East Berlin. He did jobs in the Karlshorst compound and provided information on the people and offices there. He also provided the registration numbers of vehicles from West Berlin and West Germany which were parked there.¹⁰¹ In 1959 the Americans also managed to recruit a postal worker in the post office for the Karlshorst district. In his four years as a spy he supplied the addresses of some 7,000 East Germans who lived in the district. He also reported on goings-on in the Soviet complex there, betraying above all the addresses of East Germans who lived within it. When his son was called up, the spy obtained information from him on the NVA and its weaponry (it was common for agents to obtain intelligence from relatives).¹⁰² Spies rummaged through rubbish tips of Soviet units for documents in Russian.¹⁰³ Much spying was directed against Soviet weaponry and other equipment, such as radar and radio.¹⁰⁴ Agents who had dealings with the Soviet forces were used to gather or confirm very specific pieces of information. A British intelligence report of 1949 shows that spies were then able to wander round airfields looking for particular targets (in this case, a radar installation). They were able to observe the particular characteristics of radar sets in use. They also reported camp gossip.¹⁰⁵ Such intelligence enabled the British to form a picture of the activities of the whole Soviet air force in East Germany. For instance, in early 1953 they concluded that over the previous twelve months it had greatly strengthened its radar defences, bringing into service three new radar systems. The Soviet army in East Germany and Poland had grown in strength from 300,000 to 405,000 troops. There had been corresponding increases in most of the major items of military equipment. The Kasernierte Volkspolizei had grown in strength from 50,000 to 90,000 troops. A Soviet naval build-up had also begun.¹⁰⁶ Military spies were equipped with cameras with telephoto lenses.¹⁰⁷ They took photographs of tanks and other weapons which they saw passing through their areas, of aircraft stationed at nearby airfields, and radar systems for air defence. They noted down vehicle registration numbers and photographed troops on manœuvre.¹⁰⁸ They supplemented these photographs with reports. Typically, they sent some by secret writing in letters sent to cover addresses and delivered ¹⁰⁰ Tätigkeitsbericht für August 1957, MfS-HA IX, MF-11168. ¹⁰¹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11250. ¹⁰² Tätigkeitsbericht für September 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11240. ¹⁰³ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1956, MfS-HA IX, MF-11158. ¹⁰⁴ Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1956, MfS-HA IX, MF-11152; Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1957, MfS-HA IX, MF-11171. ¹⁰⁵ Air Intelligence Report, 27/10/1949, DEFE 41/117. ¹⁰⁶ JSIG(G)/P(53)5, ‘Increase in Soviet Readiness for War’, 20/4/1953, DEFE 41/80. ¹⁰⁷ Neue Arbeitsmethoden westlicher Geheimdienste, HA IX/1, MfS-HA IX 4350, 357. ¹⁰⁸ Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11199; Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11205; Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11229.

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others orally at meetings in West Berlin.¹⁰⁹ These meetings also allowed spies to be trained to recognize types of Soviet aircraft, weapons, and vehicles.¹¹⁰ Some were given electronic devices with which to record the transmissions of air-defence radar sets in the area; the tapes they took to their controllers in West Berlin.¹¹¹ Spies reported on bridges in the Eastern Zone and how great a load they could carry.¹¹² Some military spies travelled into the DDR to observe and photograph particular manœuvres or bases and then returned to West Berlin.¹¹³ A student at the Technical University in West Berlin used to take trips by train and motorbike, photographing and sketching weapons, vehicles, radar sets, and other military equipment as he went.¹¹⁴ A British spy in Dresden went on trips round the military bases of the region, staging a breakdown now and then so that he could photograph troop transports and weaponry from between the spokes of his motorbike. He used a camera with a telephoto lens.¹¹⁵ Such agents were trained to recognize the various types of Soviet weapons, vehicles, and uniforms before they made their journey.¹¹⁶ Spies were told to find jobs as civilian workers in military bases; they were also recruited in the East German and Soviet armed forces. The MfS’s HA I, responsible for surveillance of the army, reported in July 1958 that in the first six months of that year it had arrested 189 people (40 civilians and 149 soldiers, most of them NCOs and rank-and-file personnel). Of these 189, 9 had been American spies, 4 British, and 3 West German.¹¹⁷ In 1960 the Americans recruited a spy who worked in the telephone exchange service, where she had responsibility for telephone connections which were not publicly listed, such as those of the East German and Soviet armies. Her controller supplied her with a tape recorder which was automatically activated to record telephone conversations. She met her controller in West Berlin every week and handed over one or two tapes each time. Many East German soldiers did not maintain good telephone security, with the result that the MfS concluded that the spy had been able to betray valuable information.¹¹⁸ Agents were also recruited in naval dockyards to report on the ships that docked there.¹¹⁹ ¹⁰⁹ Tätigkeitsbericht für August 1957, MfS-HA IX, MF-11168; Tätigkeitsbericht für September 1958, MfS-HA IX, MF-11180; Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11200; Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11201; Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11202; Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11205. ¹¹⁰ Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11206; Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1961, MfS-HA IX, MF-11214; Tätigkeitsbericht für Dezember 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11231. ¹¹¹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1958, MfS-HA IX, MF-11181; Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11187. ¹¹² Strafsache gegen Brehmer und andere, 26/8/1959, MfS-AU 314/61 (Band 1), 16. ¹¹³ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11193. ¹¹⁴ Tätigkeitsbericht für September 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11204. ¹¹⁵ Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11206. ¹¹⁶ Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11194; Tätigkeitsbericht für Dezember 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11195. ¹¹⁷ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1958, MfS-HA IX, MF-11178; Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11242. ¹¹⁸ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11226. ¹¹⁹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Dezember 1958, MfS-HA IX, MF-11183.

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Targets varied in priority over time: in 1955–6, for example, HA IX, the investigation service, reported that American networks were giving particular attention to the Soviet air force in the DDR.¹²⁰ As the 1950s wore on, spies were tasked to report whether missile bases had been established.¹²¹ They were asked to go to particular places and check whether reports of missile bases were true, taking photographs where possible.¹²² Particular events brought particular taskings. After the conclusion of the Austrian State Treaty in 1955, East German spies were used to police it. One was told to look out for particular vehicle markings, to establish whether Soviet forces had indeed been withdrawn to the USSR or whether they had merely been moved to East Germany.¹²³ Spies performed tasks directly related to war-making. One, the director of the Carl Zeiss office in Rostock, was instructed to search out places near the town which would be suitable as airfields in time of war. They were to be no more than 20 kilometres from Rostock, so that troops landed by air could quickly reach the town.¹²⁴ The spies in East Germany proved their worth during the Berlin Crisis of 1948–9. The CIA consistently reported that there was no reliable evidence that the Soviets intended to resort to force. It had faith in its networks, which reported a lack of indications of war. Even though Soviet forces were reinforced during the crisis, intelligence analysts were confident enough, in May 1949, to advise that there was, ‘no factual evidence of Soviet preparation for aggressive military action during 1949’.¹²⁵ The CIA had agents in the office of the East German police which liaised with the Soviets; it received no indications that the Soviets intended to move their tanks and armoured units on to the streets. The girlfriend of a Soviet officer in Dresden travelled from there to West Berlin with information that Soviet forces were not ready for war. Sources within the SED reported early in 1949 that the Soviets recognized that the blockade had failed and would have to be lifted. So the military spies in East Germany fulfilled their mission of showing how great the military force present there was, how sophisticated its weaponry was, and how quickly it could be mobilized. They also performed their early warning mission, consistently reporting that it was not about to attack. The scientific spies deeply penetrated the DDR’s research and development complex, which they laid bare. Owing to Soviet exploitation of East Germany, they were even able to shed some light on R&D in the USSR, and the quality of its science and engineering. This S&TI helped NATO maintain the superiority of its weaponry over that of the Warsaw Pact. ¹²⁰ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1955, MfS-HA IX, MF-11147; Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1955, MfS-HA IX, MF-11148; Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1956, MfS-HA IX, MF-11152. ¹²¹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11185; Tätigkeitsbericht für Dezember 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11195; Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11201. ¹²² Tätigkeitsbericht für März 1961, MfS-HA IX, MF-11210. ¹²³ Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1957, MfS-HA IX, MF-11171. ¹²⁴ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11201. ¹²⁵ ORE 46–49, ‘The Possibility of Direct Soviet Military Action during 1949’, 3/5/1949, in Steury, Front Lines, 163; Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 51–62.

7 The Inducement of Defection THE SPEZIALISTENAKTIONEN AND THE PREVENTION OF DEFECTION Until the mid-1950s, the principal targets of induced defection operations were the scientists, engineers, and technicians deported to the Soviet Union in the years 1945–8 who were returned to their homeland between 1949 and 1958 in a series of transports which the SED officials who met them called the Spezialistenaktionen (Specialists Operations). The British targeted them in order to obtain intelligence on Soviet war-related research and development. The Americans were very keen to acquire intelligence too. However, since many of the returnees took up important positions in East German science and industry, and American policy was by now to induce the defection of key people, it is likely that the Americans brought them West to weaken DDR science and industry as well. Certainly, by 1952 the Americans were bringing many returnees West; the British were then trying to ‘restrain them from a wholesale exploitation on mass production lines’.¹ Until September 1950 they returned only in dribs and drabs. On 19 September 1950 the first great rail transport arrived at Frankfurt an der Oder.² Those regarded as politically reliable tended to be sent back earlier than others; most were also required to sign an undertaking that they would reveal nothing of their work in the USSR.³ Most were sent back to East Germany (this reflected the Soviets’ usual repatriation policy, which was to send Germans back to the places they came from). However, some were allowed a choice, chose West Germany, and were sent back there. This was true even of the most important groups of deportee. Some of the atomic returnees of 1955 were sent to the Federal Republic and Austria. So also were 28 members of the last group to be sent back home, the guided missile team known as the Hoch-Möller group. It had worked principally on remote-control and flight-stabilization problems connected with the development of a surface-to-air missile based on the Wasserfall. Its work resulted in an improved version of the Wasserfall, the R-113, which went into service in 1955.⁴ ¹ Evans to Turney, 10/11/1952, DEFE 41/16. ² Bericht, 21/9/1950, DY 30/IV 2/13/389, SAPMO-BA. ³ Uhl, Stalins V-2, 205–7; cf. STIB Interview Report No. 235 (Bernd von Bock), Annexe, 87, DEFE 41/105. ⁴ Uhl, Stalins V-2, 207–8.

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The men who insisted on being returned to West Germany and Austria were forced to spend a particularly long time in quarantine in Sukhumi forgetting what they knew about the R-113 project. They reached the West in February 1958. Thereafter, the only German scientific workers remaining in the Soviet Union were those who had either taken Soviet citizenship or had chosen to continue to work there.⁵ Of course, the Soviets knew that the West would obtain information on R&D from these people. Returnees to West Germany in November 1953 were told by a Soviet official that the British and Americans would ‘squeeze them like a lemon’ for information.⁶ They had to be allowed to go home because otherwise popular hostility to the USSR in East Germany would increase still further. Once there, it would be easy for them to defect to the West. So the policy adopted was to bribe the returnees to remain in the DDR; this was a job for the East German government. It prized the returnees’ skills and was keen to keep them; one report notes that, ‘The proper employment of these specialists [is] of great significance for the achievement of the goals of the Five Year Plan’.⁷ It sought, with good jobs, various benefits, and energetic propaganda, to keep them in the DDR. These were collectively called Betreuungsmaßnahmen by the responsible agency, the Abteilung Bevölkerungspolitik (Department for Population Policy) of the Interior Ministry.⁸ Just as it tried to buy the returnees’ loyalty, the Americans and British sought to entice them West. All were provided with work on their return to East Germany, most in key factories, such as the Werk für Fernmeldewesen, Farbenfabrik Wolfen, Leunawerk, and Elektrochemisches Kombinat Bitterfeld, or leading research institutes of the German Academy of Sciences, such as those in Miersdorf and Adlershof.⁹ Many became leaders of DDR science and industry and were therefore ideal targets for induced defection. For example, the directors of aeronautical research, development, and production were recruited from among the returnees. By decision of the SED Central Committee, particularly high salaries were paid to the leading atomic scientists who returned in 1955. At the top end of the scale, a salary of DM 12,000 a year was awarded to Nikolaus Riehl and one of DM 8,000 to Heinz Barwich. The highest salary of all (DM 15,000) was awarded to Max Volmer.¹⁰ Riehl and fifteen others who returned in the first half of the year were given jobs at the German Academy of Sciences. Homes were made available by the Party organizations of the districts in which the returnees settled.¹¹ If their home or furniture required repair, loans were made to them for this purpose, and sometimes they were even given money. They were given the ration allocation of a heavy worker, which ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁹ ¹⁰ ¹¹

Albrecht et al., Spezialisten, 121–2. Vernehmungsprotokoll des Beschuldigten Werner Pose, 14/11/1958, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 2), 57. Bericht, 28/6/52, DF4/40483, BAB. ⁸ See Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 299–314. Bericht, 8/10/51; Büttner to SED-Landesvorstand, 6/1/1951, DY 30/IV 2/13/389, SAPMO-BA. Protokoll 30/55, SED-ZK, 13/7/1955, DY 30/J IV/2/3/479, SAPMO-BA. Köppen to SED-Landesleitungen, 28/6/1951, DY 30/IV 2/13/389, SAPMO-BA.

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provided them with extra food, and an entitlement to extra coal. Their absence from Germany was disregarded in determining their entitlement to welfare benefits.¹² They were told to turn with all their worries and needs to the local office of the Abteilung Bevölkerungspolitik. STIB had, by 1952, acquired evidence not merely of exceptionally high salaries being offered but of unusually good living and working conditions being promised, including their own rather than communal accommodation and special treatment at work.¹³ The skills of many returnees suited them only to war-related R&D. This may have been one reason why, in these years, the DDR government launched its own military research and development projects, supplementing those taking place under Soviet control. In 1952 the SED officially proclaimed a policy of rearmament. STIB obtained intelligence of military projects in 1952 and thought that the Soviets might have consented to them so as to give employment to the returnees and so deny them to the West.¹⁴ The provision made for the most important of the returning scientists was lavish. Brunolf Baade, who returned to the DDR in November 1953 to become the overlord of its nascent aircraft industry, demanded a splendid home by one of the lakes south of Berlin as part of the price of his collaboration with the SED. A handwritten note, presumably written by Baade himself, set out his requirements for the house. For a citizen of the DDR, the accommodation he demanded represented sheer luxury. The house was to be for eight people (Baade had five children), with a minimum of eight rooms and a maximum of ten. It absolutely had to be at the water’s edge and was to be a new house, from about 1930. Large windows, light large rooms, fine bathroom and kitchen, provision with water, gas, and electricity, terrace giving on to the lake, garage (if possible for two cars), the garage to be centrally heated if possible, as large a garden as possible (5–10,000 square metres), also desired: lots of fruit trees, large lawn, landingstage, or boathouse if at all possible.¹⁵

The DDR authorities did favours for Baade’s family during his time in Russia. He was very well taken care of there too.¹⁶ Manfred, Baron von Ardenne, was allowed to establish a private research institute in Dresden, which became the largest private employer in the DDR.¹⁷ Walter Ulbricht himself visited the institute on the day after von Ardenne’s arrival there. This visit gave the institute financial security, for Ulbricht agreed that a certain number of research tasks would be allocated every year to it by the state, thus allowing it quickly to expand its work. ¹² Matern to Sozialversicherungsanstalten, 1/7/1948, DO1/MdI/34,0/HA Innere Angel./7045, BAB. ¹³ Evans to Young, 20/5/1952, DEFE 41/92; Communications Intercept, 22/4/52, DEFE 41/92. ¹⁴ D. Hoffmann and K. Macrakis, Naturwissenschaft und Technik in der DDR (Berlin, 1997), 194, 199–200; Evans to JSIG(G), 24/3/1953, DEFE 41/80. ¹⁵ ‘Wohnhaus Baade’, DO1/MdI/34,0/HA Innere Angel./8270, BAB. ¹⁶ Kaßner to Ministerium für Transportmittel, 8/4/53, DO1/MdI/34,0/HA Innere Angel./8270, BAB; STIB Interview Report No. 158 (Horst Bähr), DEFE 21/42. ¹⁷ Obituary, The Times, 3/6/1997.

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The SED leadership hoped to keep the institute’s scientific staff from defecting by guaranteeing them gainful employment. Ulbricht knew that von Ardenne himself had no commitment to Socialism. Investigation of his background had established that he had paid financial contributions to the Nazi Party, had had connections with Himmler, Göring, and Goebbels, and had maintained a bank account in West Germany throughout his time in the USSR (into which the Americans had made payments in respect of his patents and property of his which they had rented). When the war ended, he had intended to work for the Americans and had offered his services to the Soviets only because they were quicker into Berlin. In short, he was nothing but an opportunist. But it was felt that he would be very susceptible to bribery and flattery because he was seen as being very greedy and horribly vain. Honours were piled on him. In 1958 he was given the DDR’s highest award for science, the National Prize First Class.¹⁸ The Soviets had a high opinion of von Ardenne’s scientific ability. But he did not belong to the élite group of eighteen atomic scientists whom they most wished to remain in the DDR after their return to Germany. A list held in the archive of Ulbricht’s office names them as: Schimor (misspelled: actually Schimohr) Barwich Mühlenfort (misspelled: actually Mühlenpfordt) Schmidt Wirts (misspelled: actually Wirths) Kirst Toppin Katsch (misspelled: actually Catsch) Zühlke

Schilling Born Ziel (misspelled: actually Ziehl) Lange Riehl Thieme Siewert Zimmer Schibilla (misspelled: actually Przybilla)

Misspellings complicate the task of establishing to whom these surnames refer. The list may record a telephone conversation. They were leading members of the atomic research teams which worked at Elektrostal’, near Moscow, and Sukhumi, on the Black Sea. The list is dominated by the Riehl Group, which worked at Elektrostal’. Of the 18, at least 8 had been members: Riehl himself, Wirths, Thieme, Kirst, Catsch, Born, Zimmer, and Przybilla. ‘Toppin’ probably refers to Tobien, also of the Riehl Group; ‘Schmidt’ may refer to Schmitz, the Riehl Group’s young technician, but there was an electrical engineer called Fritz Schmidt among the atomic returnees.¹⁹ Barwich, Mühlenpfordt, and Zühlke worked at the Hertz institute in Sukhumi. Schimohr, Ziehl, and Siewert worked at the von Ardenne institute in Sukhumi; Ingrid Schilling probably did as well, since she had been deported in 1945 from von Ardenne’s institute in Berlin. ¹⁸ M. von Ardenne, Sechzig Jahre für Forschung und Fortschritt (Berlin, 1988), 271, 295. ¹⁹ Liste der deutschen Spezialisten, Arbeiter und ihrer Familien, DY 30/3732, SAPMO-BA.

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The reason given for trying to keep these people in the DDR was that they had done important research in the Soviet Union. However, that is not true of all those listed. Some of them, such as Zimmer and Catsch, did not regard themselves as having done important work at all, and it is likely that they were put on the list because they had visited or learned of places of intelligence interest. The list contains the names of atomic scientists because it was made in anticipation of the return of the atomic research groups. The Hoch-Möller group, which returned even later, may also have been important. However, the fact that the atomic scientists were sent back so late shows that they were regarded as valuable sources for the West. The most important and intelligence-rich were sent back last.²⁰ Some on this A-list were allowed to go West quite legally. Examples are Karl Zimmer and Karl-Franz Zühlke. Heinz Fröhlich and Wilhelm Menke, also atomic scientists, were also legal migrants.²¹ But others fled to the West on their return to East Germany. Among them were such Riehl Group members as Günther Wirths and Alexander Catsch, as well as Alfred Schimohr, Willi Lange, and Ingrid Schilling.²² Many other atomic scientists defected. The West’s biggest catch was the star of the A-list, the man seen by the SED and the Soviets as ‘the most significant person among the remaining scientists’, a hero of Socialist Labour and winner of a Stalin Prize First Class (worth 200,000 roubles), Dr Nikolaus Riehl. Even before his return to the DDR, there was evidence that he planned to defect from it. Bribery and flattery were the means by which the SED hoped to keep him in East Germany; it foresaw that efforts would be made to lure him West. The report notes that: It is known that the Americans and West Germany, for scientific and political reasons, are very interested in him and will try, using all possible means, to induce him to leave the DDR.

The Soviets made no bones about Riehl’s potential intelligence value to the West: In the opinion of our friends [i.e., the Soviets], it is unquestionably necessary to keep him in the DDR. He is well-informed about a number of developments in the USSR.²³

But Riehl was more resistant to bribery and flattery than Manfred von Ardenne. He returned to East Germany in April 1955 and defected at the beginning of June. He defected to the British, crossing over into West Berlin from the Soviet ²⁰ Ciesla, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B49–50/93, 28–9. ²¹ Namentliche Aufstellungen, Transporte: März/April 1955, DO1/MdI/34,0/HA Innere Angel./ 50339; lists of specialists’ bank accounts, 1/8/1955 and 11/10/1955, DO1/MdI/34,0/ HA Innere Angel./7045, BAB. ²² Tasche to Staatssekretariat für Innere Angelegenheiten, 20/6/1955, DO1/MdI/34,0/ HA Innere Angel./50339; list of specialists who had fled, 14/11/55, DO1/MdI/34,0/HA Innere Angel./7045, BAB. ²³ Über die zurückkehrenden SU-Spezialisten, 31/12/1954, DY 30/3732, SAPMO-BA; see P. Maddrell, ‘Western Intelligence Gathering and the Division of German Science’, Cold War International History Project Bulletin 12/13 (2001), 352–9.

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Sector.²⁴ He had a successful career in West Germany, later becoming director of the Nuclear Research Centre in Karlsruhe.²⁵ The SED’s Betreuungsmaßnahmen succeeded similar Soviet measures. Most of the deportees were well treated in the USSR. In general, the Germans’ housing and food were good and they received reasonable rates of pay. Technicians and skilled workers tended to receive 1,500–2,500 roubles a month. Scientists and engineers received more, ranging along a scale from approximately 3,000 to 8,000 roubles. Some outstanding figures received even more than that. During his two years as scientific director of the Sungul Radiological Laboratory, Nikolaus Riehl is alleged to have been paid 25,000 roubles a month.²⁶ Their Russian colleagues were paid considerably less.²⁷ Indeed, German electronics specialists at research institutes at Gorki, Fryazino, and Leningrad were paid between three and four times the salary of their Soviet counterparts so that they could maintain a Western standard of living. Stalin prizes increased further the income of a small élite. Some highly valued people, like Günther Bock, were given considerable freedom of movement. Bock had the use of a car and the main restriction on his freedom was that he was not allowed to move about alone; he had always to be accompanied by a minder.²⁸ Some of the Germans were so flattered by their treatment that there were instances of reluctance to return to Germany; many of those who did return identified themselves with the Communist Bloc.²⁹ The Germans were allowed to convert a specific percentage of their income into East German currency at a favourable exchange rate (how large the percentage was depended on their field of work).³⁰ However, life was harder for some. The rocket research group under Helmut Gröttrup had to endure primitive living conditions on the island of Gorodomlia in Lake Seliger (about halfway between Moscow and Leningrad), to which it was taken in 1948. Moreover, though many Germans’ cage was a comfortable one, it was still a cage. Some passionately resented the tight restrictions on their movements and the constant surveillance they had to endure. THE STRATEGY OF INDUCING DEFECTION

Inducing Defection as a Means of Obtaining Intelligence The British, American, and West German intelligence services all induced the defection of scientific returnees; the British codenamed their operation ‘Dragon Return’. This was the last in a series of steps. The first was to find out where the ²⁴ Evans to Young, 2/6/1955, DEFE 41/142; N. Riehl and F. Seitz, Stalin’s Captive: Nikolaus Riehl and the Soviet Race for the Bomb (Washington, DC, 1996), 149–50. ²⁵ Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 313. ²⁶ STIB Interview Report No. 224 (Wilhelm Menke), DEFE 21/43. ²⁷ Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 220–37; Albrecht et al., Spezialisten, 151–2. ²⁸ MfS-HA VIII/RF/1765/9. ²⁹ STIB Director’s notes, MI10 Conference 1951, DEFE 41/125. ³⁰ Ministerium der Finanzen, Devisenverwaltung, to Förderungsausschuß, 23/11/1951, DO1/ MdI/34,0/HA Innere Angel./7045, BAB.

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Germans were in the USSR, what projects they were working on, and when they were going to return; this was called Operation ‘Dragon’. All means were used to do this; the information was generally taken from intercepted letters. All letters sent to the USSR from the British Zone, and all arriving from there, were intercepted.³¹ For security reasons, it was not until 1951 that regular correspondence with relatives and friends was permitted to all German scientific workers in the Soviet Union.³² Many were allowed to write earlier, but even then security determined when they were given that opportunity; for example, the Germans who worked for Lavrenti Beria’s son, Sergo, at a secret construction bureau in Moscow on a remote-control device for a target-seeking missile were not allowed to write to their families until 1 April 1949, when they had completed the main part of their work. Nevertheless, there was sufficient correspondence even in the late 1940s for a great deal of intelligence to be gathered. Important scientists like Manfred von Ardenne were, by 1946, permitted to write letters home. Their letters to relatives and friends in Berlin were delivered by courier from an office in Berlin-Grünau of the MVD’s Ninth Directorate (responsible for the surveillance of all the Germans working on atomic problems in the USSR). To reply, they sent their letters to the same office, addressing them to ‘Post Box 1037(P), Main Post Office, Moscow’. It was by this address that STIB knew this, the group of German scientists it was more interested in questioning than any other. Letters the scientists both received and sent were much censored, but useful information could still be obtained from them.³³ Since the letters were delivered by special courier, they could not be intercepted. But at least one of von Ardenne’s correspondents was clearly sympathetic to the West and showed his letters to an American intelligence officer, the energetic Franz Josef Biermann.³⁴ The knowledge of where the atomic scientists were was exploited. Since some wives living in West Germany were allowed to travel to Sukhumi to join their husbands, the secret services gave them invisible ink and told them to include intelligence secretly in their correspondence. This ruse was quickly betrayed to the MVD. The Germans at Sukhumi were anyway unwilling to spy: Heinz Barwich claimed in his autobiography that none did so.³⁵ However, the KGB did worry that some of the deportees might be spies. Walter Ulbricht was informed in December 1954 that eleven of the returning atomic scientists, Barwich among them, were considered security risks. The KGB was suspicious of them because, ‘These people are connected with secret services, were formerly in the service of the Gestapo, displayed a hostile attitude at their place of work, and have interesting connections with people in the capitalist world’.³⁶ Though Barwich later became a spy, he was still loyal to the DDR at this time. ³¹ ³² ³³ ³⁴ ³⁵ ³⁶

Evans to Secretary, JIC (Germany), 13/1/1950, DEFE 41/79. A. Parry, Russia’s Rockets and Missiles (London, 1960), 123. Lowenhaupt, Studies in Intelligence (2000), 56. FIAT Forward Periodic Intelligence Report No. 1, 2/8/1946, FO 1031/59. H. Barwich and E. Barwich, Das Rote Atom (Munich, 1967), 49. Über die zurückkehrenden SU-Spezialisten, 31/12/1954, DY 30/3732, SAPMO-BA.

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By late 1949 about 1,600 Germans had been located, scattered among approximately 100 centres of war-related research and development, and their backgrounds had been investigated to see whether, on their return to Germany, they would respond to a request to provide intelligence.³⁷ By mid-1951, slightly fewer than 2,000 scientific workers had been identified and located, working at about 125 installations on a wide range of technologies.³⁸ Counting their families as well, some 7,000 Germans had been located. By that time the flow of correspondence from the USSR had become great enough for there to be about 20,000 people in West Germany with whom these 7,000 deportees were in touch. Examination of intercepted letters, reports on PoW interrogations, and early ‘Dragon Return’ reports established in 1950 that the ‘1037(P)’ address referred chiefly to three locations: the institute under Gustav Hertz at Sukhumi (in the suburb of Agudzeri), the institute under von Ardenne at Sukhumi (in the suburb of Sinop), and a factory at Elektrostal’, near Moscow. This letter-opening operation yielded information about a considerable number of military-industrial installations and made a significant contribution to the Order of Battle of Soviet science.³⁹ Moreover, from the specialisms of the Germans working at a particular installation its work could be guessed at. The specialist knowledge of those working at Elektrostal’ indicated that its function was the manufacture of uranium metal. That of those employed at the Hertz and von Ardenne institutes indicated that they were engaged in isotope separation.⁴⁰ Intercepted letters initiated operations to contact targeted ‘Dragons’ and acquire information from them, for they gave early warning that batches of deportees were shortly to return home. Indeed, it was the big increase in the summer of 1948 in the number of letters which mentioned the possibility of being sent home which caused Operation ‘Dragon Return’ to be launched. Overt approaches were to be made to scientific workers whose return was permanent and who had no further connection with the Soviet authorities. ‘Semi-overt’ or covert approaches were to be made to those who were only returning on leave or who, though back for good, retained a connection with the Soviets.⁴¹ Responsibility for covert approaches lay with MI6. However, many deportees erred on the side of optimism in forecasting the date of their return home, thus unwittingly unleashing intelligence operations in West Berlin. Letters home also gave STIB indications whether the writers intended, on their return, to come West.⁴² STIB’s network of business contacts also supplied information on the deportees. Since many of the deportees had worked for great German companies such as Siemens, Telefunken, Askania, and Junkers, commercial contacts represented ³⁷ ‘STIB: Review of Future Commitments’, 1/11/1949, DEFE 41/83. ³⁸ Operation ‘Dragon Return’ Results List, Vol. 5, DEFE 21/39. ³⁹ Director STIB to Chief, 6/8/1948, DEFE 41/82. ⁴⁰ Operation ‘Lister’ Results Lists, DEFE 41/134. ⁴¹ ‘Lister Return’ Instruction No. 1, 11/4/1949, DEFE 41/134; Evans to Chairman JS/JTIC, 26/8/1948, DEFE 41/133. Operation ‘Lister Return’ was later called ‘Dragon Return’. ⁴² Bossard to Evans, 4/4/1956, DEFE 41/137.

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a valuable grapevine which passed on news of them. Contacts were also cultivated with deportees’ relatives and friends, who showed STIB officers letters received from them and passed on news.⁴³ Not all of the deportees had taken their immediate family with them to the USSR, and more distant relatives and friends of many were within the reach of British intelligence. Many such people were willing to act as ‘leads’ to the deportees because they were keen to see their deported child, relative, or friend safely in the West. Relatives of some deportees crossed over to West Berlin from the Eastern Sector to give STIB news of their loved ones.⁴⁴ Scientists in East Germany received letters from deportees and passed on news to STIB.⁴⁵ Early waves of returnees provided information on colleagues who remained in the USSR. This network of family and professional contacts enabled a discreet approach to be made to the target when he returned to Germany.⁴⁶ When intercepted letters home brought STIB news that the German aircraft technicians at Podberez’ye, in the Moscow region, had been told in August 1950 that their return would take place in a series of transports beginning on 15 September 1950 and lasting until 1 June 1952, it put a well-chosen contact to work. The returnees from the aircraftmanufacturing centres of Kuibyshev and Podberez’ye had, prior to their deportation, worked either for Junkers in Dessau or for BMW in Staßfurt. So the British agent who made contact with the seven chosen targets in the first wave of returnees was ‘a former high official of Junkers now in the British Zone’, who visited ‘the associates or families of these men, using his Junkers’ connection to obtain news of them and to arrange a meeting to be notified if they should visit the West, or possibly to arrange meetings in Berlin’.⁴⁷ The British did not make approaches to the targeted people in letters, since it was presumed that all letters to and from the returnees would, at least for a time, be intercepted. The Org arranged with relatives in West Berlin and West Germany to be given notice of any visit which a returned scientific worker was planning to make to them. Its officers would then speak to the returnee when he made the visit, asking him to talk about his experiences in the Soviet Union and proposing to resettle suitable people in the West.⁴⁸ Contacts in West German companies, universities, and the federal government were crucial to persuading returnees to defect. They had good jobs and homes in the DDR. They would not take the risk of coming West unless they were sure that there was a job there for them. For the better known of them—scientists of note like Nikolaus Riehl, Werner Buschbeck, and Karl Steimel—finding a job would be easy. But for others it was more difficult, since their professional experience was chiefly in war-related fields of science. Contacts in business and academic life were ⁴³ ⁴⁴ ⁴⁵ ⁴⁶ ⁴⁷ ⁴⁸

Evans to Young, 19/8/1950, DEFE 41/135. STIB/252/X/0850, 17/8/1955, DEFE 41/136. Graham to DSI/JTIC Secretariat, 27/7/1950, DEFE 41/132. STIB/252/X/0005, 22/7/1955, DEFE 41/136. Director STIB to Principal Intelligence Officer (Berlin), 27/9/1950, DEFE 41/91. Bericht, 11/11/1958, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 1), 94.

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needed to find jobs for them. ‘Matchbox’ had given STIB a large network of appropriate contacts and much experience of using them to place evacuees in work. Connections with the companies for which the returnees had worked before 1945 were particularly valuable in finding work for them. They were often keen to rejoin them since they had established pension rights there. This was a particularly weighty consideration for the older ones. The commercial contacts of most use were in West Berlin, since the deportees had been taken from East Berlin and East Germany and many had connections with people and companies based in West Berlin. From 1947 the British scientific intelligence team in West Berlin was the STIB section of the Berlin Intelligence Staff, led by John Horner. Intercepted letters and intelligence acquired from earlier returnees built up his catalogue of scientists, engineers, and technicians in the USSR; he then turned to the company for which they had previously worked to see if it would re-employ the men in question. If it agreed to do so, there was a good chance of drawing the target West, and the British would acquire intelligence from him, almost as a commission on the deal. Among the companies at which he built up contacts and which took some of the goods he had to offer were Telefunken, Askania,⁴⁹ and the Siemens group. In February 1952, for instance, shortly before the departure for Germany of a transport of electronics specialists, Telefunken gave Horner the names of former employees it definitely wished to re-employ.⁵⁰ Indeed, it agreed to make contact with the returnees and put the offer to them. One of those it was interested in was Karl Steimel; it contacted him as soon as he returned in April 1952. US Military Intelligence tried to persuade Steimel to take up a job in the USA, rather than with Telefunken, asserting that he was ‘a “Paperclip” case’. However, he accepted a job with Telefunken.⁵¹ By the mid1950s the Germans left in the USSR tended to be highly qualified people. In May 1955 Telefunken informed STIB Berlin that it wished to speak to all of its former employees when they returned to Germany, and would offer jobs to most. In the case of Werner Buschbeck, the company would ‘pay any price’ to prevail on him to rejoin it.⁵² Buschbeck did rejoin it in 1958 on his return to Germany.⁵³ So the most important inducement was a job. Some of them carried large salaries. The MfS became familiar with these generous financial packages for important people, which it called the Kaufvertrag (purchase agreement). When Heinz Barwich defected in 1964, with the CIA’s help, the MfS, on the basis of its experience, considered it unlikely that he had settled for earnings of much less than DM 500,000 over the rest of his career (he was 53 at the time).⁵⁴ Some defectors were given a ‘Matchbox’-style consultancy (i.e., a research grant, rather than a job). Sums of ⁴⁹ ⁵⁰ ⁵¹ ⁵² ⁵³ ⁵⁴

STIB/252/X/1441, 19/7/1955, DEFE 41/136. Horner to Evans, 4/2/1952, DEFE 41/2. Horner to Evans, 25/8/1952, DEFE 41/13. STIB/252/X/1419, 17/5/1955, DEFE 41/136. Weiher, Männer der Funktechnik, 44–5. Zur Republikflucht von Professor Dr Barwich, 30/9/1964, MfS-AOP 10660/67 (Band 2), 83.

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money were paid to some—Helmut Gröttrup and Friedrich Keune, for example—to support them for a time and to compensate them for property they had been forced to leave behind.⁵⁵ Indeed, large sums were paid to important targets. STIB and REG agreed to offer Günther Wirths DM 24,000, each contributing half, as an inducement.⁵⁶ The inducements offered by the Americans were consistently more lavish than those of the British, though the Americans did not always keep their promises.⁵⁷ Like some ‘Matchbox’ evacuees, many ‘Dragon Returnees’ were reluctant to leave their furniture behind and STIB tried to smuggle it to West Berlin. Josef Michel, who ran a furniture removal business in the British Sector, used permits acquired by bribery to arrange the illegal removal of their furniture from the Soviet Sector. (Riehl’s autobiography, incidentally, relates that he ‘made behind-the-scenes arrangements to have the furniture shipped to West Germany’.)⁵⁸ When arrested and interrogated by the MfS, late in 1955, Michel admitted that he had also collected 70,000 Ostmarks from East Berlin on Wirths’s behalf.⁵⁹ From 1953 there was a West German body, the von Dellingshausen Committee, which helped the British to find work for the returnees. It was set up as a result of British lobbying. It would only take up the cases of people for whom the British could not find jobs or whom they wanted to place in government bodies. A leading member was a former ‘Dragon Returnee’ who had passed through STIB’s hands, Theo Maas. Its chairman was Ewert von Dellingshausen, of the Ministry for All-German Questions.⁶⁰ Some of the returnees found employment in the US under Project ‘Paperclip’.⁶¹ In June 1951 the JIC (London) sub-committee on defectors reviewed the ‘Dragon Return’ programme and the inducements offered. Many returnees demanded a job in West Germany as the price of their defection. A powerful inducement to others was the offer of a job abroad. Australia had accepted many German scientific defectors who had passed through British hands, as well as other kinds of defector and refugee. Most ‘Matchbox’ and ‘Dragon Return’ defectors had found employment in West Germany, generally with a private company. That summer, in the early days of ‘Dragon Return’, the figures concerning the disposal of both ‘Matchbox’ and ‘Dragon Return’ defectors were as shown in the table below. The majority of scientific workers who had defected in the course of ‘Dragon Return’ had done so because they had been promised either a specific job or that work would be found for them. The ability at least to promise the targeted men that suitable employment would be found for them was therefore crucial. The most successful ‘Dragon Return’ cases had been those in which suitable and permanent employment had been organized before bringing the target over to the West.⁶² ⁵⁵ Evans to Young, 25/3/1954, DEFE 21/27; Deputy Director to Evans, 7/4/1952, DEFE 41/38. ⁵⁶ Record of conversations marked ‘P/200’, 30/4/55, DEFE 41/142. ⁵⁷ Evans to STIB Berlin, 13/10/1952, DEFE 41/15. ⁵⁸ Riehl and Seitz, Stalin’s Captive, 150. ⁵⁹ STIB/252/X/1536, 13/10/1955, DEFE 41/142; STIB Berlin to Director, 7/1/1954, DEFE 41/38. ⁶⁰ Director STIB to Commander, 3/6/1953, DEFE 41/92. ⁶¹ Hunt, Secret Agenda, 188. ⁶² JIC(London) sub-committee on defectors minutes extract, 12/6/1951; Kirkman to O’Neill, 5/7/1951, DEFE 41/70.

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‘Matchbox’

‘Dragon Return’ Total

Cases handled

Cases resettled

Cases outstanding

479

437

42 (difficult to settle for reasons of age, over-specialization, health, etc.) 5

55 534

50 487 (412 in Germany and 75 overseas, most to Australia)

47

Reason for defection Previously negotiated specific employment (e.g., with his old company) General guarantee of employment or financial betterment and resettlement Family reasons Escape from legal process Ideological reasons

12

Total

27

4 5 2 4

All these preparations culminated in Operation ‘Dragon Return’, which was the evacuation and questioning of the targets. As with ‘Matchbox’, if the returnees agreed to defect, standard procedure was for them to come to Berlin and make their way to the British Sector. They were then flown to West Germany. Most were interviewed in West Germany. Some chose to stay in East Germany but provided information. British policy was to make ‘no attempt to stimulate any more than the minimum essential flow’ of returnees from East Germany to the West.⁶³ As few as possible were to be induced to defect, so as not to cause the Soviets to stop allowing them to return to Germany. They hoped that future transports would bring more important informants within their reach. Though themselves still careful in mid-1951, by late 1952 the Americans were trying to induce the defection of large numbers. Only a minority of the ‘Dragon Returnees’ defected. By the summer of 1953 STIB knew of the return of 1,823 of them. Of these, 209 (11.5 per cent) had come over to West Germany or West Berlin. How many had been induced to defect is unclear, but contact had obviously been made with a considerable number before their defection. The British–American intelligence alliance was in contact with, or had prepared an approach to, a further 75 in East Germany (4.1 per cent).⁶⁴ This percentage of 11.5 per cent is consistent with that indicated ⁶³ Evans to Wilkinson, 21/7/1951, DEFE 41/70. ⁶⁴ ‘Dragon Return’ Progress Report, 24/8/1953, DEFE 41/90.

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by the card index kept by the Abteilung Bevölkerungspolitik to help it with its Betreuungsmaßnahmen. Approximately 11 per cent of the returnees are stated on their cards to have gone West. However, the true figure may well be higher— Burghard Ciesla suggests 20 or 25 per cent at least—because the index does not include cards on all the returnees and not all the cards were kept up to date.⁶⁵ The number of those questioned was larger because some of those who remained in the DDR were interviewed. By April 1953 approximately 16 per cent of those who had returned up to that point had been questioned, the great majority by the Americans.⁶⁶ Since returnees were given important jobs in key factories and research institutes in the DDR, MI6’s Technical Section (its scientific intelligence team) and Analysis Directorate (Intelligence Division’s secret intelligence unit) pressed for some not to be evacuated but recruited as agents and left in place in these targets. For instance, late in 1954, in the course of the return (in instalments) of the ‘1037(P)’ group of atomic scientists, STIB and REG ordered a ‘slowdown’ in operations, during which no offers to evacuate returnees were made. The reason was that the returnees were expected to take up jobs in the DDR’s atomic industry, which was an intelligence target. The ‘slowdown’ was needed to decide which returnees should be evacuated at once—D.At.En. insisted that this happen in the case of a ‘few high-priority targets’—and which should be approached with a view to recruitment as agents.⁶⁷ An atomic returnee who fell into the latter category was a laboratory technician called Albrecht Böhne. A 1955 communication from STIB Berlin to STIB Bonn, referring to MI6’s Technical Section, states that, ‘John of the other Section has informed us that he is attempting to recruit Albrecht Böhne, who returned from Suchumi with the last transport. He asked us to take no action on Böhne, in view of this, and we agreed to this.’⁶⁸ Its interest in the returnees was not limited to atomic scientists. In May 1952 two aircraft workers repatriated from Podberez’ye and a former Siemens employee repatriated from Leningrad were described as ‘current Tech. Sec. “Dragon Return” cases’.⁶⁹ As a rule, for the British the recruitment of agents in important positions took priority over the inducement of defection. Analysis Directorate demanded in 1952 that, before any attempt was made to entice them to defect, repatriated scientific workers who either had been given, or probably would be given, a job at ⁶⁵ Ciesla, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B49-50/93, 25, 29. The index, known as the Spezialistenkartei, of the Abteilung Bevölkerungspolitik contains cards on only 2,401 returnees. In particular, there are no cards on certain important scientists, for whom, in view of their eminence, provision was presumably made by other state institutions. The index was begun only in 1950. Details missing from approximately 12 per cent of the cards indicate that they were not kept up to date. From 1956 the registration made of the returnees was patchy. ⁶⁶ DSI/JTIC minutes, 28/4/1953, DEFE 41/76. ⁶⁷ Channing to Evans, 24/11/1954, DEFE 41/92. ⁶⁸ STIB/252/X/1200, 20/9/1955, DEFE 41/136. ⁶⁹ Memorandum for file, 22/5/1952, DEFE 41/92.

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one of a small number of key targets should be invited to become agents. The suggested targets were: the Askania works in Berlin-Teltow; any part of the State Planning Commission; the Leunawerk; the Elektrochemisches Kombinat Bitterfeld; the Sachsenwerk-Radeberg; any reasonably responsible position in either the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (presumably to facilitate the interception of post and telecommunications in the DDR) or the Ministry of Forests and Agriculture; and possibly the Geological Commission (presumably to report on East Germany’s mineral resources). Analysis proposed that any returnee who was given a job at one of these targets should be interviewed first by an MI6 officer. Only if he concluded that the returnee could not be recruited as a long-term agent, or if the attempted recruitment failed, would the returnee be handed over to STIB to become a defection case. In fact, the proposal reflected how returnees were being handled at that time. However, STIB did not accept the shortlist of targeted factories, believing that each case should be examined on its merits.⁷⁰ Returnees were selected for targeting with great care. Intercepts or other intelligence established which returnees should be targeted first. When one of them came over to the West, information was acquired from him on the other Germans who had worked at the plant or institute concerned. On the basis of this intelligence, further returnees were targeted for enticement West, on the ground either that they would provide the best intelligence or that they would help STIB put together a picture of the whole work of the installation.⁷¹ Who those enticed West were is not clear. Certainly, offers were made to the principal atomic scientists and many of those who had worked for them to resettle them in the West. A CIA scientific intelligence analyst has revealed that many accepted these offers, though such leading figures as Max Volmer, Max Steenbeck, Gustav Hertz, Heinz Pose, and Manfred von Ardenne did not. A Western secret service tried to persuade an intermediary to put a resettlement offer to Heinz Barwich; according to Barwich, she refused.⁷² Günther Wirths was almost certainly lured West and Nikolaus Riehl probably was. The chemist Bernd von Bock was an enticement case.⁷³ Many returnees did not wait for a resettlement offer, but fled to West Germany unprompted. They were sifted from the refugee streams passing through West German reception camps, and especially that in BerlinMarienfelde. The CIA’s attempt to lure Heinz Pose West was made in 1958. Since it was made so late, when Pose’s intelligence value can have been small, and since he was offered a job in the United States itself, it was probably an attempt to harm the Bloc’s atomic science. It will therefore be examined in the next section. ⁷⁰ Analysis to STIB, 9/9/1952; STIB to Analysis, 4/10/1952, DEFE 41/92. ⁷¹ Director STIB to Principal Intelligence Officer (Berlin), 27/9/1950, DEFE 41/91. ⁷² Sachstandsbericht, 12/12/1964, MfS-AOP 10660/67 (Band 2), 172. ⁷³ Lowenhaupt, Studies in Intelligence (2000), 67–8; Evans to Young, 27/7/1955, DEFE 41/142; STIB Interview Report No. 235, DEFE 41/105; Capt. Hogwood, MI10B, MI10 Conference 1952, DEFE 41/126.

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The struggle between East and West over the returnees turned them into Cold War tennis balls, flying between the two sides. An example is Dr Paul Herold, one of the directors of the Leunawerk. He twice went West and twice East. In each case, he once went voluntarily and was once taken by force. In June 1945 he was evacuated by the Americans from Leuna, to deny him to the Soviets. On his release from American control in West Germany, he returned to Leuna, presumably because the Americans would not give him a proper job. In October 1946 the Soviets deported him to the USSR, where he spent several unhappy years. On his return to the DDR he was reappointed a director at the Leunawerk so that he would stay in the East. But he fled to West Germany in 1958.⁷⁴ As a leading chemist, his defection may have been induced. By that time, of the 55 scientific returnees who had taken up jobs at the chemical plants in Bitterfeld, 26 had defected.

Inducing Defection as a Means of Diminishing Scientific Potential In addition to ‘Dragon Return’ operations to obtain intelligence on Soviet R&D, East German scientific workers were induced to defect throughout the 1950s to weaken the DDR’s scientific and economic potential and benefit the West. The secret services which by this time most actively induced defection were those of the United States and West Germany. The Americans became more aggressive at the start of the decade and then more aggressive again in the mid-1950s. West Germany joined the secret assault because it served Adenauer’s ‘policy of strength’ (Politik der Stärke). West German companies also recruited East Germans on their own account, which increased the loss caused to the DDR. The West German Economic Miracle created a need for skilled labour. The West German government’s official policy was that the refugees should not leave the DDR unless they had to. In January 1956 a government spokesman denied that the West Germans were ‘systematically inducing the defection of workers from the Soviet Zone’.⁷⁵ However, MfS records show that it still sought to use induced defection to undermine the Communist state. These operations aggravated the DDR’s crisis and helped the SED to blame the flight of refugees on the West. Although its allegations were greatly exaggerated, there was still a kernel of truth to them. After the Berlin sectoral border was closed, the DDR Foreign Ministry issued a public declaration justifying it as a response to the West’s Abwerbung. Allegations made in this ‘Memorandum’ tally with the information taken from British records referred to in this chapter. The Foreign Ministry alleged that the Western secret services engaged in large-scale operations intended to draw East Germans to the ⁷⁴ Bericht über die Republikabgänge aus der chemischen Industrie, 23/4/59, DY 30/IV 2/9.04/669, SAPMO-BA; EPES, FIAT List No. 3, 21/9/1945, FO 1031/67; JSJT/STO(49)59, DEFE 41/146. ⁷⁵ ‘Bonn: keine Abwerbung,’ Telegraf, 31/1/1956.

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West and bring the DDR economy to its knees. These were conducted chiefly from West Berlin. The American secret services played the leading role in them. People persuaded to leave East Germany were flown from West Berlin to West Germany using air transit rights given to the Western Powers solely for the maintenance of their troops in the city. Companies and business and professional associations based in West Germany and West Berlin also lured many from the DDR. AEG was named as one of the companies chiefly involved; the responsible official at the company was said to be ‘Dr Steimel’. Telefunken was also said to be heavily involved, as were Krupp and the successor companies of I. G. Farben. Among the associations named was STIB’s friend, the Verein Deutscher Eisenhüttenleute (Union of German Ironfounders), and the Verband TechnischWissenschaftlicher Vereine (Association of Technical and Scientific Unions). The Ministry for All-German Questions was accused of being the directing agency on the West German side for drawing people from the DDR.⁷⁶ Of course, there were also falsehoods in this memorandum and, anyway, the SED’s concepts of Menschenhandel and Abwerbung included activities of a free society, wholly unconnected with secret-service operations, which just happened to draw people from the DDR. Abwerbung, in practice, meant making a job offer to an East German. This might be done to damage the DDR and obtain intelligence, or simply for commercial reasons. Menschenhandel referred to those features of West German policy which, in the SED’s view, had the effect of drawing people from the DDR. Nevertheless, the ‘Memorandum’ contained truths as well as falsehoods. The MfS received information to precisely this effect from its sources and took action against Western Abwerbung. Above all, it organized a propaganda barrage against the Western services which was designed to dissuade East German scientists, engineers, and technicians from collaborating with them. The press played a key role in this campaign. So did Julius Mader. The Ministry’s internal records allow the policy of inducing defection to be described in outline. The MfS obtained its information from its informers among East German scientists and engineers, and from people who reported Western approaches to them. The MfS regarded induced defection as one of the principal methods employed by the Western Powers to weaken the DDR. All the main Western secret services are identified in MfS documents as organizers of induced defection. Their targets were highly qualified and experienced scientists, engineers, technicians, and skilled workers. They had close connections with many West German companies which allowed them to offer a target a job anywhere in the Federal Republic. The same names appear time and again: I. G. Farben’s successor companies, Krupp, Telefunken, Siemens, aircraft companies, and others. Steimel is again identified as the director at AEG responsible for Abwerbung. Much of this will, of course, have ⁷⁶ Ministerium für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten der DDR, Memorandum über den von Westdeutschland und Westberlin aus betriebenen Menschenhandel mit Bürgern der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik (Berlin, 1961), 12–22.

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been ordinary recruitment for commercial purposes, but some of it clearly served the purposes of the secret services as well. Degussa is said to have close relations with ‘the American secret service’ and to use industrial exhibitions and conferences to persuade East Germans to defect.⁷⁷ Scientific research institutes were also among the institutions which were used to offer jobs to East Germans. The MfS succeeded in penetrating the Institut Batelle, in Frankfurt am Main, which carried out research on behalf of the United States. Despite its research activity, the MfS concluded that its real job was to provide work for scientific workers who had been induced to defect. In short, it was an American version of the ‘Matchbox’ consultancy system.⁷⁸ Among the East German industries targeted by the BND in the 1950s were atomic science, and aircraft and ship construction. Systematic efforts to induce defection were conducted against all the countries of the Bloc, including the USSR. The records show that the same methods were used to make contact with defection candidates as were used to make contact with spy candidates. Only the aim behind the contact-making differed. The BND and CIA used exactly the same methods. To warn East Germans how the Western services operated and to depict their methods as criminal, these methods were described by carefully selected witnesses who gave evidence at the trials of Western agents. Conferences in West Germany were ideal both for recruiting spies and for inducing defection. At them, the Western intelligence officer or agent would try to begin the relationship as one between fellow-scientists. One tactic was for an officer to present himself as an engineer willing to act as agent for scientists keen to sell patents or research results to industry.⁷⁹ Targeted people were offered large sums of money if they came West.⁸⁰ Some were offered between DM 15,000 and 18,000 in cash; in addition, they would be paid DM 800 a month for a period of time and receive free hotel accommodation. The Americans were even willing to enter into an earnings guarantee ensuring that the target received a particular salary from the company which employed him; if he was paid less, for a certain time they would make up the difference. Substantial compensation for the furniture he had to leave behind was offered; he and his family members were advised to defect with only essential items (if they were spotted laden down with possessions, the Volkspolizei would realize that they were defecting and arrest them). Recognition as political refugees and medical care were also offered. Sometimes they were even asked to put in writing what jobs they wanted, how much they demanded in salary, where they wanted to settle, and what furniture they would need in the West.⁸¹

⁷⁷ MfS-ZAIG 10366; Schlußbericht, 17/12/1958, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 1), 292–301. ⁷⁸ Feindtätigkeit des kalten Krieges vom amerikanischen Geheimdienst gegen die DDR und die Volksdemokratien, 17/11/1955, MfS-AOP 238/56 (Band II), 40. ⁷⁹ Bericht, 11/11/1958, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 1), 94–5. ⁸⁰ Schlußbericht, 17/12/1958, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 1), 294. ⁸¹ Entwurf, 27/1/1959, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 1), 203–6.

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Among the representatives sent to scientific conferences were refugees from East Germany who, being well-acquainted with targeted participants from the DDR, were well-suited to putting them in touch with the services concerned. In the late 1950s the MfS was alarmed at American efforts to induce the defection of people working in the aircraft-manufacturing industry. Therefore, it arranged for prominent figures from that industry to give evidence at the trial of Werner Pose (see below), even though he had tried to entice the defection of an atomic scientist. Aircraft workers, as well as people working in the atomic industry, were invited to attend the trial. One witness, an engineer and chief designer at a nationalized factory, the Maschinen-und-Apparate-Bau Schkeuditz, was chosen in part because he was a member of no party and was regarded by aircraft workers as politically neutral and impartial. He was also an engineer with a high professional reputation. In the light of these factors, the MfS believed that his evidence would have a significant impact on aircraft workers. His evidence was that, in 1958, he had gone to a conference on aeronautics in Stuttgart. There a former colleague of his who had fled to the West had put an offer to him on behalf of the Americans. An American agent had also given him a telephone number in West Berlin which he could call. Furthermore, a courier had visited him at his home early in 1959 and asked him to come to West Berlin. Refugees were also used to contact targeted East Germans and introduce them to a secret service. Another witness at the Pose trial, who was also both a highly regarded engineer and a member of no party, had received letters from a refugee he knew inviting him to West Berlin. There he had been introduced to American intelligence officers, who had offered him a job in the West. The inner-German post was also exploited. An atomic returnee who worked at the Amt für Kernforschung und Kerntechnik (Office for Nuclear Research and Technology) also gave evidence. In 1958 he had received a letter from relatives in West Germany in which he was informed that an American had paid them a visit. The American had asked them to tell him that he would be offered a good job in West Germany if he attended a meeting in West Berlin.⁸² The scientific returnees from the USSR were natural targets: they not only had intelligence value but were also highly experienced scientific workers. Many occupied key positions in science and industry. However, efforts at inducing defection extended beyond them to well-qualified people of all backgrounds working throughout East German industry and science. This was particularly so from the mid-1950s, when the Spezialistenaktionen were almost over and West German rearmament was proceeding apace.⁸³ In November 1958 the MfS was alerted to the fact that the DDR aircraft industry would be targeted early the following year. ⁸² Durchführung des Prozesses Pose, Werner, und Auftreten von Zeugen aus den Kreisen der Intelligenz, 4/2/1959, MfS-AP 13631/64 (Band a), 21–3; Bericht, 3/4/1959, MfS-AP 13631/64 (Band a), 38; Zur Information, 3/4/1959, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 1), 278. ⁸³ Oberstes Gericht der DDR, 1. Strafsenat, Strafsache gegen Held und andere, MfS-AU 52/56 (Band 4a), 309–10, 315.

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The Americans were planning to lure many aircraft workers West, using the connections back to the DDR of refugees who had worked in its industry. The West German government, which was energetically expanding its air force, was also planning to recruit some of the labour needed for its aircraft-manufacturing industry by drawing workers from the DDR. The aircraft industry was a wellchosen target because it was a weak one. According to one report, a well-known aeronautical engineer who collaborated with US intelligence had remarked that the defection of fifteen or twenty top people would bring it to its knees.⁸⁴ Other natural targets were the major industrial enterprises because they concentrated scientific expertise and carried out much important research and development. The MfS noted in 1964 that a large proportion of the engineers who had fled from the Funkwerk Köpenick, where some of the DDR’s most advanced communications devices were developed, had found jobs with Telefunken in West Germany and West Berlin. Its correct conclusion was that Telefunken was recruiting in the DDR, inducing the defection of people who could be of use to it. However, the Ministry saw some of the induced defection as the work not of Telefunken itself but of the BND. Its conclusion was that the BND ‘is concentrating on the most important enterprises in the leading sectors of the DDR economy and in this is cooperating directly with the corresponding companies in West Germany’.⁸⁵ The inducement of defection extended beyond the DDR. On 13 August 1961, the very day that the Berlin sectoral border was closed, Neues Deutschland reported, on its front page, an important trial before the DDR Supreme Court. Though four people were on trial, in practice the policy of inducing defection was being tried and the accused was the United States government. The trial was pure propaganda and formed part of the SED’s justification for closing the border. Nevertheless, accurate information was made public for this purpose. Witnesses appeared before the court and explained how the American secret service carried out its government’s policy. The witnesses were CIA agents whom the MfS had recruited as informers. One such witness was Günther Maske. He told the court that he had been a courier and had delivered letters on behalf of the CIA to targeted categories of people—scientists, engineers, technicians, doctors, and skilled workers, particularly ones working in key industries. In these letters they were asked to come to West Berlin; the letter often came from a refugee and used information about the targeted people which he had provided. In West Berlin an American intelligence officer would try either to recruit them as spies or persuade them to defect. Many of these letters were delivered to people working at targeted research institutes and factories in East Germany such as the Technische Hochschule in Dresden, Carl Zeiss, Jena, the Werk für Fernmeldewesen, and the Institute for Nuclear Physics in Miersdorf. But Maske delivered letters to targets in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary as well. ⁸⁴ Walter to Abteilung VI, 22/11/1958, MfS-BdL/Dok. Nr. 003886. ⁸⁵ Tätigkeitsbericht für März 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11246.

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Maske was a truthful witness. It was shown in Chapter 6 that the Western secret services did indeed try to recruit spies in the institutions he named, and by the means he described. Moreover, in reporting to the MfS as its informer, Maske had said exactly what he told the court. Indeed, he had also named the USSR, Bulgaria, and Albania as countries to which letters were sent. In a statement for the MfS he named as targets the same scientific and industrial institutions as are mentioned in Neues Deutschland’s report of the trial. Like Held before him, Maske identified the categories of people chiefly targeted in induced defection operations as scientific returnees and scientific workers more generally. Professions without enough members, like medicine, were also targeted because the loss of more people would aggravate the shortages. Maske had also served the Americans as a spy, providing information on scientists and engineers, just like other American spies such as Held and Gisela Zurth (see below). His connection with the CIA had ended in March 1960; the fact that the MfS was using his information now shows that the trial was intended as propaganda. Another CIA courier and double agent, Gerhard Heusler, had informed the MfS that early in 1960 a huge number of letters were being despatched in which the writers, who often presented themselves as working for East German government agencies, warned the recipients that they should flee West. A reason commonly given was that they were about to be arrested. The types of people targeted were scientists, skilled workers, government officials, and army officers. Many of the names and addresses were obtained from refugee interrogations. These letters were either delivered to the postbox of the addressee or simply put into the East German post. This information was also used in the trial. The prosecutor showed the court a bundle of such letters which Heusler had handed over to the MfS. Another witness, Hans-Georg Schlickeiser, testified at the trial that he had created escape routes on the DDR’s borders with Poland and Czechoslovakia, enabling defectors to make their way to West Berlin and agents to go to these Bloc States from the Western Sectors. He had also established ‘dead letter boxes’ for delivering forged identity papers and money. He had himself guided many of the defectors from the Polish border to West Berlin. As its informer, he had told the MfS the same, adding that he had also found hideaways in East Germany where defectors and agents could hide if border controls were stepped up. Agents were sent to Poland and Czechoslovakia to persuade scientists, engineers, and skilled workers to defect. In 1957, people in leading positions in the agricultural sectors of the Bloc States were being targeted. Another witness, Erwin Friedrichs, was an engineer and returnee. A former colleague at Junkers had got in touch with him and offered him DM 30,000 compensation if he would defect and take up a job for an aircraft-manufacturing company in West Germany.⁸⁶ This man targeted scientific returnees in particular and told Friedrichs that he was on the ⁸⁶ ‘DDR-Patrioten enthüllen Methoden der Menschenhändler’, Neues Deutschland, 13/8/1961; MfS-HA IX 4434, 21–43, 51–7.

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Americans’ ‘induced defection list’. The STIB archive shows that an Erwin Friedrichs had, indeed, been among the missile engineers who arrived back in East Germany from Sukhumi in October 1956.⁸⁷

Spying and the Inducement of Defection In the mid-1950s, as the MfS saw it, the American secret services were becoming more aggressive, trying to recruit even more spies and induce even more defections. In both cases, they were targeting above all skilled people working in science and industry. They were putting even more effort into inducing defection than recruiting spies. With ‘Wespennest’ in September 1955 the MfS struck a powerful blow against these operations. The arrests, the Held–Rudert trial which followed, and the propaganda campaign which accompanied them were meant to frustrate the CIA’s scientific spying and subversion by enabling skilled people to recognize suspicious conduct and scare them away from becoming involved in it. The main job of the CIA agent network rounded up in ‘Wespennest’ was inducing the defection of scientists, engineers, and technicians. For this purpose it had considerable funds at its disposal. The agents’ precise tasking varied according to the opportunities open to them, but it was directed towards inducing defection. They were instructed to exploit every opportunity—their job, their family, friends, and acquaintances—to obtain information on skilled people. This information concerned first of all their skills, qualifications, and importance at their place of work. This would establish who were worthwhile targets. Information was also required on their politics, loyalty to the DDR, character, and family life. The spies drew others into conversation to find this out. They tried to determine how the target would react to the suggestion that he defect. The secret service wanted, if possible, to exert influence on the target. This affected the spies’ tasking. They were told to try to elicit business secrets from him; this might indicate a lack of loyalty to the DDR, and might enable him to be blackmailed into defecting if he could not be persuaded. Spies were told to obtain information on financial difficulties, illness, and religious devotion. All of these could be exploited. If the target had been criticized at work, news of this was to be passed on (particularly if he had resented it). The secret service could then exploit his grievance. Names and addresses of relatives of people of interest were obtained so that influence could be exerted through them. The spies also reported any connections of family or friendship the target had with West Berlin, West Germany, or anywhere else in the West, and any plans to visit these people. If the target had worked for a German company before 1945, the spy reported whether he was still in touch with it. Any embarrassing or compromising information was of much interest because it would enable pressure to be put on the target. Whether to make a defection offer was always a matter for the controller back in West Berlin. One ⁸⁷ OLB/B/374, 17/10/1956, DEFE 41/138.

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issue which he had to consider was whether it would be better to recruit the target as a spy. Standard means of exploiting such information on targeted people were developed. The MfS was told by targets it questioned that West German relatives of theirs had been asked to visit them and persuade them to leave the DDR. Excuses were found to invite skilled people to West Berlin or West Germany, where American intelligence officers made contact with them. If they answered questions about their work, the Americans would suggest to them that it would be in their interest not to return to East Germany. Scientists and engineers who attended conferences in West Germany received approaches to defect. Letters were sent to some scientific workers in East Germany, threatening them with prosecution after the DDR’s collapse if they did not defect. In addition to providing much intelligence on R&D, the CIA spy Max Held also had instructions to suggest scientific workers who could either be recruited as spies or persuaded to defect. He was to arrange for them to meet his controller. He named at least 82 scientists, engineers, and technicians, most working either in the explosives or aircraft industries. Some were scientific workers who either had worked or were still working in the USSR. Those Held named were leaders of East German science and industry: directors of research institutes and nationalized enterprises, or of departments or divisions of these.⁸⁸ Some taught at universities. One of the scientists was a National Prizewinner. This focus on leading figures reflected American defection policy. In every case, Held also provided personal information about them. Two had defected by the time of his arrest, both via West Berlin. One was an aeronautical engineer and returnee from the USSR. What most alarmed the MfS was that Held had named 30 engineers and skilled workers employed in the aircraft industry. It could be expected that these people would receive letters inviting them to West Berlin or directly calling on them to defect. The Ministry decided that one of its leading officers had to visit the aircraft factory in Pirna to address the workforce there, denounce the CIA, and expose its methods. Held was so dangerous a spy that he was sentenced to death, though this was later commuted to a term of imprisonment. Werner Rudert, tried with Held in a much-publicized show trial, named 10 skilled people working in the Funkwerk Erfurt as candidates for defection; 6 of these had defected by the time of his arrest.⁸⁹ There is further evidence that the Americans were trying to diminish the DDR’s capability in explosives at the time of ‘Wespennest’. The CIC made an ⁸⁸ Anklage, MfS-AU 52/56 HA-GA (Band 2), 86. ⁸⁹ Sachstandsbericht, 26/9/1955, MfS-AU 52/56 (Band 1a), 266–70; Sachstandsbericht, 29/ 9/1955, ibid., 314–17; Maßnahmeplan, 24/11/1955, ibid., 318–19; Schlußbericht, 17/12/1955, MfS-AU 52/56 (Band 4a), 232–51; Beschluß, 5/8/1964, MfS-AU 52/56 HA-GA (Band 1), 76; Beschluß, 12/8/1964, ibid., 78; Plan zur Zerschlagung der Technical Intelligence Service Detachment der CIA, 10/12/1955, MfS-AOP 238/56 (Band II), 1–16; Feindtätigkeit des kalten Krieges vom amerikanischen Geheimdienst gegen die DDR und die Volksdemokratien, 17/11/1955, MfS-AOP 238/56 (Band II), 38–40; Anklage, MfS-AU 52/56 HA-GA (Band 2), 66–93.

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approach to an engineer called Keune. His specialism was explosives technology, but this was known to very few people. He was an SED member and regarded as politically reliable. In 1955 he was sent to a big exhibition on chemical technology in Frankfurt am Main as a member of the East German delegation. There he was approached in his lodgings by CIC officers who offered him a job in the West paying a salary of DM 3,000–4,000, as well as accommodation and other benefits. The CIC officers were very well informed about him: not only did they know of his specialism but also of a trip he was shortly to take to Czechoslovakia. Keune refused to defect.⁹⁰ The court which convicted Held and Rudert characterized the American policy of enticing defection correctly—in a way entirely consistent with NSC-86/1, which provided that ‘key personnel’ among satellite nationals should be prompted to defect (see Chapter 1, pp. 49–50). It did not blame the Western secret services for all the flight from East Germany that was taking place. Instead, it proclaimed that, ‘. . . the warmongers have succeeded in prompting a number of outstanding scientists and skilled workers to leave the German Democratic Republic’.⁹¹ It noted that, from the time of his recruitment in 1951 (the year NSC-86/1 received presidential approval), Max Held was told to provide information on ‘outstanding scientists’, first chiefly those either working in or returning from the Soviet Union. Later this restriction was dropped and he was instructed to report on leading scientists and engineers generally.⁹² Werner Rudert had been told to provide information on ‘experts in high frequency and electrical engineering in leading positions’.⁹³ The court convicted Held and Rudert of having induced ‘a large number’ of scientific workers to defect, but the figures cited by the court itself do not bear this out.⁹⁴ The MfS concluded that 2 of those named by Held had defected; the court decided to treat this as 3. Both Ministry and court thought that Rudert had been involved in the defection of 6 people. For its part, in its internal documents the MfS likewise characterized the policy accurately. When it closed its inquiry into the CIA’s attempt to induce the defection of Professor Heinz Pose, a nuclear physicist, it concluded that these operations were directed at a narrow category of people. The case, it decided, represented further proof that the secret services of the United States of America, England, and West Germany engage in intensive activity to subvert and undermine the DDR and other member states of the Warsaw Pact with the aim of holding back and disrupting the construction of Socialism in these countries. The main method of their subversive activity currently consists of the systematic induced defection of experienced scientists, technicians, and skilled workers of outstanding merit and in obtaining important research results of the Socialist states.⁹⁵ ⁹⁰ Aktennotiz, 7/6/1955, DY 30/3675, SAPMO-BA. ⁹¹ Oberstes Gericht der DDR, 1. Strafsenat, Strafsache gegen Held und andere, MfS-AU 52/56 (Band 4a), 310–11. ⁹² Ibid., 315. ⁹³ Ibid., 318. ⁹⁴ Ibid., 322. ⁹⁵ Schlußbericht, 17/12/1958, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 1), 293.

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Heinz Pose’s case shows that all the Western services targeted the leading atomic scientists as defection candidates and as sources. He led the German group at the research institute at Obninsk. Most unusually, he did not return to Germany with the rest of the ‘1037(P) Moscow’ cases. Instead, when the Soviet Bloc’s Joint Institute for Nuclear Research was founded in 1956, Pose was transferred to it to lead a research group. He was quickly appointed the DDR’s representative there. He had clearly aligned himself with the East. The Soviets intended the Joint Institute, located at Dubna, not far north of Moscow, to be a leading world centre of nuclear research and the Bloc’s counterpart to the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN), which Western European countries had founded in 1952. Scientists from the whole of the Bloc worked there. Neither it nor its work was secret: it was dedicated to research into the peaceful uses of atomic energy and open to foreign visitors. Nevertheless, it was obviously of interest to Western secret services. From 1957, together with his job in Dubna, Pose also had a chair at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden and regularly travelled to East Germany to give lectures. He finally settled in the DDR in 1959. For two years, therefore, he was working in the USSR among atomic scientists gathered together from all of the Bloc States and yet visited East Germany where he was accessible to Western intelligence. The CIA decided to exploit this opportunity.⁹⁶ Pose’s younger brother, Werner, had been a PoW in Soviet hands. Heinz had arranged for his transfer from a PoW camp to the institute at Obninsk, where Werner worked as a laboratory technician. He returned to Germany in November 1953; since his family lived in West Germany, the Soviets sent him back there. He passed through Friedland Camp, where the British saw his usefulness. Werner was thoroughly interrogated about the institute, its laboratories and work, and the Soviet and German scientists working there.⁹⁷ The British copied his interrogation report to the Americans and the Org, who were thus made aware of him. The British tried to bring Pose under their influence by offering him money. They paid him DM 300 a month for six months to get him on his feet again, claiming that the money came from a special fund for late homecomers. STIB officers kept in touch with him until 1958 and continually asked him about the whereabouts of his brother. Werner showed them Heinz’s letters. After mid-1958 the British did not contact him further. Werner went into the import–export business. The British were not alone in cultivating him. The Org was quick to make contact. Early in 1954 one of its officers presented himself at Werner’s home, revealed that he represented a German intelligence agency which worked closely with British and American intelligence, mentioned that he had learned that Werner had given the British an intelligence report about Obninskoye, and asked him for a similar report. Werner refused to give one there and then. Instead, he ⁹⁶ Beurteilung des Prof. Dr Heinz Pose, 22/12/1958, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 2), 121; Erklärung, 22/12/1958, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 2), 122; http://www.catalogus-professorum-halensis.de/ poseheinz.html [accessed on 14/1/2004]. ⁹⁷ STIB Interview Report No. 156 (Werner Pose), DEFE 21/42.

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asked the British for permission to accede to the Org’s request. The British gave permission. Pose agreed to be questioned again and was taken to Bad Tölz in Bavaria, where he was interviewed over three days. The Org’s scientific intelligence officers asked to stay in touch with him. Both they and the British showed interest in a chemist Werner had known in Obninsk who had not yet returned to Germany. They asked Werner to arrange a meeting with him when he returned. In 1955 Werner duly introduced him to both the Org and STIB. This was the beginning of his downfall, for the MfS had recruited this man as an informer. The Org arranged for the chemist to be offered a job in West Germany; it planned to use him to entice others to defect. The MfS played a cunning hand and allowed him to go West. It now knew that Werner was involved in inducing defection; once it learned of the Org’s interest in Heinz, it prepared to arrest Werner. However, it was the CIA which tried to persuade Heinz to defect. He fell within the category targeted under NSC-86/1 and Operation ‘Engross’: leading people who would increase American power. It is significant that he was to settle in the United States. In 1956 CIA officers contacted Werner at his home in Düsseldorf and from then on made regular visits. Werner was now in financial difficulties because a business which he part-owned had gone bust. The Americans knew of this. The German atomic groups had by now returned to Germany and Heinz Pose was very unusual in remaining in Russia. The Americans asked Werner how long his brother would stay there and whether he would be interested in working in the West. They also asked whether they could read his letters. In the light of Werner’s financial difficulties, they offered him a loan of DM 4,000, which he accepted. In October 1957 Werner was able to give the Americans accurate information about his brother’s plans: he would stay in Dubna for another two years and then return to Dresden to take up his duties there full-time. Meanwhile, he would travel quite often to Dresden to give lectures. From there he could travel to Berlin, where Werner could meet him. So the Americans could use Werner to make an offer to Heinz. Werner, therefore, had to be free to travel. His financial difficulties had caused him to accept a job at another company; to free him from this, the Americans agreed to pay him DM 400 a month for a year. Their attempt to draw Heinz West began when Heinz wrote to Werner saying that he would be in East Berlin in March 1958. Werner promptly wrote back, suggesting that they meet there. When they met, he put questions about politics to his brother and asked him what his plans for the future were. Heinz’s answers made it clear that he was loyal to the DDR. Werner could nevertheless report to his controller that Heinz planned to attend a conference in Geneva organized by CERN later that year. His controller’s reply was that Werner must meet Heinz in Geneva during the conference and offer him a job in the United States. The offer was that not only would Heinz be given an excellent academic job but he could also, if he wanted, take American citizenship. His five children would be awarded scholarships to pay for their education. Heinz was to be told that a representative of the White House had

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come to Geneva to conclude a binding agreement. To stimulate Werner’s powers of persuasion, he was told that, if his brother agreed, he would not have to repay his loan of DM 4,000. Indeed, he was told that the Americans would lend him more money. In Geneva that July Werner put the Americans’ offer to Heinz. Heinz refused it and added that it was not the first time that week that he had heard about a representative of the White House who was in Geneva and could arrange an excellent job for him in the West. A Swiss professor who worked at CERN and had spent many years in the United States had told him the same. Werner told his controller of the failure of his mission. The controller insisted that he try again. Heinz again had business in East Berlin in October; Werner arranged to meet him there. His controller gave him specific questions on nuclear development in the Soviet Union which he was to put to Heinz. These questions were important ones arising from the Geneva conference. For example, Werner was to ask whether the Soviets were intending to power planes, ships, or submarines with atomic engines; whether an atomic power station to which Soviet scientists at the conference had alluded was yet in operation; and, if so, where it was. Werner arranged to stay at a hotel in West Berlin and Heinz crossed over to the Western Sectors to see him. Werner put the Americans’ questions to him. Heinz refused to answer and told his younger brother not to meddle in such matters. Werner saw that it was pointless to repeat the Americans’ offer. They went over to East Berlin to Heinz’s hotel. The MfS had decided that, to protect Heinz, the time had come to arrest Werner. He was arrested at Friedrichstraße station as the two were making their way back to West Berlin for a drink. In April 1959 he was tried on charges of inducement to defect and espionage, and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment.⁹⁸ The MfS arranged for scientific returnees from the USSR to give evidence at the trial that the Western secret services did try to induce the defection of important scientists and engineers and, indeed, that they themselves had received offers. They were chosen because they enjoyed a good reputation among their peers; their evidence would therefore discourage East German scientific workers from having dealings with the Western secret services. Among them was the Austrian atomic scientist Josef Schintlmeister, who, like Heinz Pose, was a professor at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden. He also had a leading position at the nearby Central Institute for Nuclear Research. He told the court (as he had earlier told the MfS) that, on his return to Vienna in 1955, he had been invited to the British embassy. There an STIB officer had asked him for information about his time in Russia. He refused to give any. Soon afterwards he took up his job in Dresden. There he received letters sent from West Berlin in which he was asked to come ⁹⁸ Urteil in der Strafsache gegen Werner Pose, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 3), 35–48; Bericht, 22/12/1958, MfS-AP 13631/64 (Band b), 240–1; Bericht, 3/11/1958, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 1), 10–11; Vernehmungsprotokoll, 19/1/1959, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 1), 125; Kontrollbericht, 4/12/1958, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 1), 186; Niederschrift, 1/12/1958, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 1), 243–53.

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there and make contact with British intelligence. The letters were so expressed as to imply that he was already in contact with MI6 and thus discourage him from showing them to the MfS. When Schintlmeister visited Austria, British officials contacted him and offered him a choice: either he could defect or he could become a source in the Bloc. If he chose the latter, they would prefer him to seek employment in the Soviet Union. The STIB archive confirms that he was indeed one of MI6’s targets.⁹⁹ Another witness was an engineer who had worked for an atomic group in the USSR. On his return to East Germany, he was appointed to a leading position in an aircraft factory in Dresden. A furniture remover based in West Berlin then got in touch with him and introduced him to American intelligence officers. They offered to secure him a job in West Germany. He was promised a monthly salary of DM 1,200. He learned that the furniture remover had contacted other returnees on the Americans’ behalf; he had probably also arranged for their furniture to be taken West. The Americans also suggested that he visit West Berlin or West Germany for a few days so that he could be interviewed about his time in the USSR. He refused. The offer of a job was repeated in 1957 and he was driven to the Telefunken company in West Berlin to discuss the matter. When he again refused to defect, it was put to him that he might spy for the Americans on his factory and the aircraft industry. This proposal he rejected and reported to the MfS. The MfS then ran him as an agent tasked with providing information on US intelligence. Since this operation did not seem to be yielding results, it was willing for him to appear as a witness at the trial. The MfS also decided that its Agitation Department should make use of the Pose case in its propaganda. Very reasonably, the Department instructed that the case be presented as one of exploitation of family connections across the German divide to conduct espionage and induce defection. A brief mention of it duly appeared in Julius Mader’s assault on the CIA, Gangster in Aktion. Mader presented it precisely as he had been told to.¹⁰⁰ Officials in personnel departments were obviously promising sources of information on people who played key roles in scientific institutions. One who was recruited was Gisela Zurth, a secretary in the Personnel Department (Kaderabteilung) of the research institute of the Academy of Sciences in Adlershof. The institute was an important one, carrying out research and development for both the East German armed forces and industry. It was, in fact, made up of several institutes, each devoted to a particular field of science. From March 1956 until January 1958 she spied for the US’s Military Intelligence Service; she also passed information to a West German service which the MfS thought likely to be ⁹⁹ ‘Auf Jagd nach Wissenschaftlern’, Neues Deutschland, 5/4/1959; Berlin/1130, 27/1/1956, DEFE 41/144. ¹⁰⁰ Durchführung des Prozesses Pose, Werner, und Auftreten von Zeugen aus den Kreisen der Intelligenz, 4/2/1959, MfS-AP 13631/64 (Band a), 19–21; Vernehmungsprotokoll, 29/1/1959, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 1), 170–4; Agitationsplan, 13/3/1959, MfS-AU 327/59 (Band 1), 289; Mader, Gangster, 164–5.

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the West Berlin Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz. She supplied the Americans with just the kind of information they needed: names, addresses, jobs, whether they were members of the SED, and other personal information about all those who worked at the institute (scientists, technicians, and support staff ). In all, she supplied the addresses of 700–800 people. She also described the personalities of the leading scientists. Indeed, she gave the Americans the original curricula vitae of the 25–30 people in whom they were most interested and questionnaires recording their personal details. She made notes of the files she saw and took these over to her controllers in West Berlin in her handbag. The Americans clearly used this information to make approaches of one kind or another. Frau Zurth herself posted some 50 letters to targeted people, bringing them over from West Berlin and putting them in postboxes in the East. To enable contact to be made with others, she specified which people visited relatives in West Germany or went to conferences there. The personnel department had a register of holidays. It showed which workers at the institute were planning to take their holidays in West Germany. In these cases, Frau Zurth supplied the people’s names and when and where they were going to take their holiday. She met her American controller very frequently—about every fortnight. In 1957 she met him 24 times. She gave her West German controller personal information on some 400–50 people at the institute.¹⁰¹ The BND used the same methods as the CIA. Its policy, in the 1960s as in the 1950s, was to target not only scientists, engineers, technicians, and skilled workers but also doctors and well-qualified people generally. Outside the scientific-industrial field, it targeted teachers, sportsmen, people working in the transport system, and people with agricultural expertise. One of its agents, Hans Adamo, was tried before the Supreme Court in July and August 1961. He had been spotted as a promising spy in 1952 when he was an engineering student, and recruited in 1953. In all, he provided information on more than 100 engineers, scientists, doctors, and other skilled people. Ten of these people were induced to defect. Contact with them was made either by courier or by post. As usual, they were flown to West Germany from West Berlin. The BND sought to use some of the personal information to recruit spies. Like the CIA, it instructed that, in particular, information on returnees and scientific workers who travelled to other parts of the Bloc was to be passed on. Often, the spy prepared the target for the approach by speaking ill of Communist rule and mentioning the higher pay and better life offered by the West.¹⁰² MfS officers believed that the West sought to harm the DDR’s economy by other means as well. The early 1960s saw the birth of the microelectronics industry, ¹⁰¹ Auswertungsplan, 13/4/1958, MfS-AU 253/59, (Band 2), 278–81; Schlußbericht, 15/8/1958, MfS-AOP 454/58 (Band 1), 127–30; Schlußbericht, 5/3/1958, MfS-AU 253/59 (Band 7), 35–46. ¹⁰² W. Schwanitz, Diplomarbeit, ‘Die Gefährlichkeit der Spionage des Bundesnachrichtendienstes gegen die sozialistische Volkswirtschaft in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik’, 15/7/1964, MfS-JHS-MFZ-406, 26–7; DP1, VA, 1977, BAB; DDR-Ministerium für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten, Memorandum, 11.

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which was crucial for its economic development. A key microelectronic factory was the Werk für Bauelemente der Nachrichtentechnik in Berlin-Teltow. Its technical director, a scientific returnee from the USSR, was a BND spy and defectorin-place. The BND had promised him a leading position in a West German company when he was exfiltrated. According to Josef Schwarz, later head of the MfS’s district office in Erfurt, he had instructions to recommend the wrong development strategies. His attempt to defect failed. In a dissertation he wrote at the MfS’s Juristische Hochschule in 1964, Wolfgang Schwanitz, later the last Minister for State Security, made a similar claim about a spy in the planning office of a factory. Schwarz also maintained that Western companies deliberately supplied the DDR with products of poor quality.¹⁰³ Schwanitz, in his dissertation, wrote that Western companies engineered shortages of goods and then demanded high prices for goods of poor quality. Goods to be imported from the West were either not delivered or were much delayed, or delivery was too partial for the goods to be of use (for example, the supplier failed to deliver important technical documents).¹⁰⁴ If these allegations are true, these were economic warfare measures, meant to hamper the DDR’s economic and technological development. Inducing defection was scientific warfare. ¹⁰³ Schwarz, Bis Zum Bitteren Ende, 73–4. ¹⁰⁴ Schwanitz, Diplomarbeit, 20–3. See also Major W. Böhme, Diplomarbeit, ‘Neue Erkenntnisse über die Ausnutzung der kommerziellen Beziehungen zwischen der DDR und Westdeutschland für die “legale” Spionage des BND und die auf dieser Grundlage organisierte Sabotage und Diversion’, Oktober 1965, MfS-JHS-MFZ-240, 25–8.

8 Operation ‘Dragon Return’ THE INTELLIGENCE YIELD The returnees from the USSR played a significant role in Western intelligence collection, just as they did in American subversion policy. They were valued sources because little other intelligence was being obtained on weapons research, development, and production in the USSR in the 1950s. Interest in the Soviets’ atomic and thermonuclear capability, guided missiles, and long-range air power was intense. Lack of sufficient information on the first two caused the speed of Soviet progress to be underestimated. Lack of enough information on the latter two gave rise in the United States to overestimation—claims of future inferiority to the USSR in delivery systems which were known as the bomber and missile ‘gaps’. These were refuted by imagery intelligence, gathered by U-2 and satellite, in 1956–7 and 1960–1, respectively. At the root of the two debates were arguments about the USSR’s capacity to produce long-range bombers and ICBMs. Fear of Soviet intentions led to worst-case forecasts. Intelligence was needed to establish how many were, in fact, being deployed. Until the advent of overhead reconnaissance, no source was able to do this.¹ A considerable amount of intelligence was gathered from the returnees, covering many fields of research and development: atomic energy; guided missiles and related technology; aircraft and aero-engines; electronics; torpedoes and mines; artificial fibres; radio technology; optical glass; armaments design; and fuels. The operation also produced whispers of other weapons, such as a ‘television bomb’.² However, little up-to-date intelligence on research and development was obtained. Though some was, it was too speculative to be fully reliable. This accorded with expectations of the operation; these were small from the start because intercepted letters had revealed that the Germans were kept segregated from Soviet projects.³ The returnees’ information was of five types. Firstly, much information of little or no consequence was acquired because the Germans in question were employed on work of no scientific difficulty or defence significance. Secondly, much information ¹ L. Freedman, US Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat (London, 1977), 66–8, 74–80. ² STIB Technical Meeting minutes, 8/3/1951, DEFE 41/10. ³ JIC minutes extract, 16/12/1949, DEFE 41/132.

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was gathered on war-related projects which might have been very significant had it been received earlier, but, being out of date, was of ‘historical value’. Of course, this was of some value: it allowed analysts to assess the quality of Soviet science and to guess at the rate of Soviet progress. However, the assessment related to the past and the guesswork was not reliable. (In this respect, it was very different from intelligence gathered of Soviet development projects in their Zone of Germany, which was acquired contemporaneously with them and so must have given an idea of the general level of Soviet military technology. Although it would not be known whether the Soviets actually intended to put the apparatus or weapon designed into service, they would not waste resources by commissioning the development of an apparatus or weapon they already had or considered of no use.) Thirdly, some ‘Dragon Return’ intelligence was gathered which, though old, stood a good chance of not yet being out of date. The deportees’ time in quarantine had not been long enough. This was natural, since some of the Germans had worked on research and development, which take a long time to come to fruition. So their information was of value because it indicated designs, scientific processes, lines of research, and production methods which the Soviets either had, or might have, adopted, and which they might either still be using or, during the quarantine period, have developed to completion. This intelligence had to be handled with care because the Germans generally did not know whether the Soviets had decided to make use of their designs and processes. Even if they did know that they had been adopted, they did not know whether they were still in use. So, though up to date, this was too speculative to be hard information: it constituted a set of possibilities as to what might be happening in the USSR. Some pieces of intelligence, particularly when added to others, may well have become probabilities. Intelligence of Soviet interest in a separable missile warhead is an example. Further intelligence was needed to provide support for these possibilities; naturally, one consequence of ‘Dragon Return’ was that further intelligence operations were undertaken. Fourthly, the returnees provided much information on people, factories, and research institutes of the Soviet military-industrial complex, some of them important installations. Lastly, they commented insightfully on the way scientific development was managed in Soviet Union. The really valuable intelligence acquired was, therefore, that in the last three categories. Examples will be given, drawn from four fields: atomic science, guided missiles, aircraft, and electronics. THE EXPLOITATION OF GERMAN SCIENTIFIC WORKERS IN THE USSR The value of the information obtained was diminished by three factors: the tendency of the Soviet system to bad organization; the limited role given to the Germans even when they were seen as having a role to play; and the security measures taken to prevent them from acquiring intelligence of value to the West.

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Bad organization meant that little productive use was made of many. The predominant view among the returnees was that their time in the USSR had been wasted.⁴ Others were seen as being of use, but were only given a limited role in Soviet development. Their job was to help the Soviets develop their own firstgeneration weapons. These were versions of the German weapons of 1945. Once this was done, the Soviets planned to continue the development work unaided and deny the Germans any significant insight into their progress. This was their policy with regard to all the German missile groups.⁵ Many groups were reduced to a training function. The Soviets frequently made little or no use of the Germans or the work they produced. If they were given work, it tended to be occasional and of little significance. For instance, Bernd von Bock was, on the face of it, something of a catch for them: the only nerve-gas production expert to fall into their hands.⁶ Yet he was seldom consulted on problems of nerve-gas production. He was given mundane chemical tasks to keep him busy. Though he was in the USSR for six years, the only work of significance he did there was in the first ten days. It consisted of writing up reports of nerve-gas production at Dyhernfurth. Six German engineers and scientists who returned from electronics institutes in the USSR late in 1950 felt that very poor use had been made of their skills, since they had been made to work on subjects on which they were not experts. For the first few months of their stay, they had been given no work to do (a common refrain). They noticed an unwillingness on the part of those in charge of the institutes to give them work, perhaps because it was felt that Soviet scientific personnel were perfectly capable of doing the research and development concerned. The Germans were not wanted; although some ministries had pressed for their deportation, others had not.⁷ One of the electronicists, Otto Biersack, was at one point told to write voluminous reports on condenser manufacture. He deliberately put ridiculous numerical values into the reports and, since they were never questioned, he assumed that the reports were never read. He and his fellow-Germans deliberately diminished the benefit the Soviets derived from them by refusing to work hard, working at what they estimated to be only 30 per cent efficiency.⁸ The reports written by the Menke biological group at the institute in Sinop were put in a safe and never examined.⁹ The Herold heavy-water group did not, in the end, work on heavy water at all. Far from being engaged in research and development work, they were retained in an advisory capacity. They were principally required to write papers and rewrite German scientific publications, adding their explanations of the articles in them and commenting on the points made. They believed ⁴ STIB Interview Report No. 221 (Karl Zimmer), DEFE 21/43. ⁵ Uhl, Osteuropa (2001), 858–60. ⁶ Blount to STIB, 29/9/1950, DEFE 41/132. ⁷ Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 81; TCS to D.At.En., 2/8/1951, DEFE 21/50. ⁸ DSI/JTIC(51)6, ‘General Background Information obtained from German Scientists and Engineers returned from Russia’, 27/4/1951, DEFE 41/153. ⁹ STIB Interview Report No. 204 (Günther Fuchs and Viktor Winkler), DEFE 21/43.

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that their work appeared in a spate of Soviet scientific publications, presented as the work of Soviet scientists.¹⁰ It may well be that, once they had complete data on the German processes of manufacturing heavy water, as well as the dismantled plants themselves, the Soviets felt that they did not need Germans working on research and development in this field. Their own plant at Chirchik was, by 1947, producing large quantities of heavy water.¹¹ Stringent security measures were taken in respect of most of the Germans. All had to endure a quarantine (or ‘cooling off ’) period before being allowed to return to Germany. During this period (which could last for a year or two, and in some cases lasted even longer) they were not allowed to do any work of significance.¹² Consequently, when they arrived in the West their information would usually be out of date. Just as importantly, their Soviet bosses went to great lengths to keep them away from secret work. The perspective the Germans were allowed to gain on the research or development project on which they were working was very severely restricted. Most were not told how the work they were doing was going to be used.¹³ They saw part of the picture—the report on German techniques they were writing, for example, or that part of a weapon which they were designing and constructing—but were not allowed to see the whole. Essentially, they were consultants advising a Soviet development team on particular points. Consequently, in questioning, it was almost always discovered that the returnees did not know whether the work they had done had been turned into a weapon in service, an apparatus in use, or an operational scientific process. Indeed, when a German worked at an important installation, he was generally not permitted to work in (or, often, even enter) its key parts. The aerodynamicist Günther Bock worked for seven years at TsAGI (the Central Aero-Hydrodynamics Institute, the USSR’s principal centre for aeronautical research), without acquiring any intelligence of significance on its research projects. For the most part, he himself suggested the topics of the papers he wrote, very few suggestions being made by the Soviets from which their interests could be inferred.¹⁴ Bernd von Bock was not allowed to set foot in Department 22 of the plant at Beketovka, where nerve-gas production was taking place. He inferred that sarin was the gas in which the Soviets were chiefly interested, there being no clear indications of their plans. Indeed, he made this inference in part simply because sarin was a superior gas to tabun. He also believed that the plant was making sarin because of the greater interest in the gas shown by his interviewers. He could not state with certainty what gases were being produced at Beketovka, nor could he name any other factories manufacturing nerve gases, nor could he state what Soviet intentions were with regard to the development of chemical weapons.¹⁵ It was not realized how immense the USSR’s ¹⁰ Interrogation Report, 29/11/1949, DEFE 41/24. ¹¹ Holloway, Stalin, 189. ¹² Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 291. ¹³ e.g. DSI Report 88, April 1956, ‘Abstract of Acoustic Research at NII. 400, Leningrad, USSR, during 1946–54’, DEFE 44/12. ¹⁴ Evans to Turney, 17/8/1954, DEFE 21/14. ¹⁵ STIB Interview Report No. 235, DEFE 41/105.

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chemical weapons programme was until Oleg Penkovsky began to pass information to MI6 and the CIA early in 1961.¹⁶ For security reasons, the Germans were not, as a rule, given the results of Soviet research and development. Consequently, their knowledge quickly became dated and the contribution they could make to Soviet progress was much diminished. Moreover, very few were allowed to attend trials of the weapons or devices they assisted in developing. By way of exception, Helmut Gröttrup and others did take part in the first set of V-2 test firings at Kapustin Yar in the autumn of 1947. The Germans’ isolation was often physical as well as intellectual. Another Soviet security measure—a highly effective one—was to place the deportees at an institute cut off from any parallel Soviet research or development. The most isolated of all were the rocket engineers who worked, initially under Gröttrup, on the island of Gorodomlia in Lake Seliger. Unfair competition also diminished the contribution the Germans could make. As they knew, Soviet groups engaged in work which paralleled their own. The Soviets often considered the Germans unwelcome competition, gave them little support, and ensured that they were denied facilities and raw materials.¹⁷ Stringent security measures meant that the deportees learned little of the work even of other Germans: security at the atomic research institutes at Sukhumi was so strict that the research groups constituted ‘watertight cells’.¹⁸ Sukhumi was the DDR in miniature: full of Germans, all under close secret police surveillance, none of whom wanted to be there.

ATOMIC SCIENCE

The ‘1037(P) Moscow’ Returnees The atomic returnees were the most valuable collection of informants; among them, the best sources were former members of the Riehl Group. This was the group of fourteen scientific workers led by Dr Nikolaus Riehl, which, from the autumn of 1945, worked at Factory No. 12 at Elektrostal’, near Moscow. Their task was to design a process for the production in bulk of pure uranium metal for use as fuel in an atomic reactor. Their value as sources resulted from three features of their work. Firstly, they were charged with an urgent task, on which the progress of the Soviet atomic project depended. Without pure uranium metal the atomic pile planned at Kyshtym could not operate and so could not produce plutonium. Without plutonium, a plutonium bomb could not be made. Secondly, the process developed by the group for the manufacture of uranium metal was (unusually for German designs) adopted by the Soviets. There was a competing process, which actually yielded uranium metal superior in quality to the Riehl ¹⁶ Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 390. ¹⁷ Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 182–3, 188–95. ¹⁸ STIB Interview Report No. 149 (Wilhelm Dames), DEFE 21/42.

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Group’s method. This process had been designed by Zinaida Yerzhova of the Institute of Rare and Fine Metals and was tested at Factory No. 12 at the same time as the group’s process. However, the Soviets soon gave preference to the latter because it had the crucial advantage that it would yield uranium metal in bulk quickly.¹⁹ The driving idea behind the Soviet atomic project was that the United States’s monopoly had to be ended quickly, or else the USSR would be in mortal danger.²⁰ Thirdly, the group was held on a looser rein than the other German atomic groups because Factory No. 12 was a key installation in the Soviet atomic complex and was, therefore, subordinate to the First Chief Directorate of the Council of Ministers, and not to the MVD. Being close to Moscow, the group’s members formed close links with some of the leading managers and scientists of the First Chief Directorate. As a result, they acquired more of a perspective on Soviet research and development than did any other German research team. In particular, they became familiar with an unusually large number of people and places. The group provided very valuable Order-of-Battle intelligence on Soviet atomic science, which was, indeed, the most valuable intelligence acquired in the course of Operation ‘Dragon Return’. They and other atomic returnees identified scientists, engineers, and installations involved in atomic research and development, the mining of uranium and thorium, the processing and enrichment of uranium, plutonium production, and weapons design. The two most valuable informants were Riehl himself and his colleague Günther Wirths, to whom he had delegated much of the detailed scientific work. Whereas Wirths, the practical problem-solver, excelled in his knowledge of scientific processes, Riehl, the astute politician, excelled in his knowledge of the people and places who had driven the Soviet atomic project forward. He had been born in St Petersburg and spoke Russian fluently. His interviewer commented that he had that quality of ‘valuable inquisitiveness, so that his range of contacts and experiences . . . is exceptional’.²¹ Of course, much information had already been gathered about atomic installations: Combine No. 6, the uranium metal factory at Novosibirsk and perhaps that at Glazov as well, Cheliabinsk-40, Tomsk-7, and Krasnoyarsk-26 had all been identified by earlier sources. The USSR’s uranium deposits were already well known from inter-war geological surveys; their military significance had not then been known and the Russians had published this information.²² The atomic returnees’ importance, therefore, generally lay in the fact that they provided more information about them. Towards the end of 1945, the manufacture of uranium metal according to the group’s method began. The main problem was that the process developed by the Auer and Degussa companies produced metal which was not sufficiently pure. ¹⁹ Albrecht et al., Spezialisten, 57 n. 22, 58. ²⁰ Andrew and Gordievsky, KGB, 309–10. ²¹ STIB Interview Report No. 234 (Nikolaus Riehl), DEFE 41/104. ²² CAAIU, ‘Estimate of Russian Atomic Weapons Programme and Timetable, November 1948’, 28/1/1949, DEFE 21/45.

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Early in 1946 a Russian edition of the Smyth Report on the Manhattan Project revealed that the Americans had used an ether extraction method to remove impurities from uranium oxide. With the help of Wirths and Thieme, Riehl developed such a method for use on an industrial scale. He and Wirths made another amendment to reduce the uranium more quickly after purification, changing to a fluoride reduction process. After a further change—the use of sublimated calcium—the group’s process satisfied the purification requirements. Wirths and Riehl described it in full to their interviewers after their defection in 1955. A small uranium refining plant operating according to this process was in full production by February 1946. Its success led to a much bigger uranium purification plant, with a much larger production capacity, being constructed in 1947. It was in operation by the end of that year. At the end of 1946, when it was clear that the production of pure uranium metal in bulk according to the Riehl Group’s process was running smoothly at Elektrostal’, it was showered with prizes. Riehl received the highest Soviet award, becoming a Hero of Socialist Labour. He also received a cash reward, winning a Stalin Prize First Class, worth 200,000 roubles. The Order of the Red Banner of Soviet Labour was awarded to Wirths, Thieme, and three Soviet scientists who had worked with them. They shared 100,000 roubles. A. P. Zaveniagin, the Germans’ boss and one of the principal managers of the atomic project, began to talk of other tasks for the group. Its success meant that over the next few years the FCD sought its advice on a wide range of problems. Consequently, it—and Wirths in particular²³—was able to reveal a great number of chemical processes in use at various atomic installations. This information was, of course, out of date. The group’s members did not know whether the processes were still in use. In some cases, they either knew for a fact that they had been superseded (an example being the ether extraction method used at Elektrostal’) or they did not know whether they had been taken up. Nevertheless, this information must have been of value in assessing the quality of Soviet atomic science, the speed of its progress, and the lines along which it was running. Riehl and Wirths gave their interviewers a good idea of Factory No. 12’s capacity for uranium metal production. Naturally, this information was also out of date by the time it reached the West, but it gave the British figures to work with in estimating how many atomic bombs the USSR could have. By the time Riehl left the factory, in 1950, output of uranium metal per month was of the order of 30 tons (Wirths estimated that it was 20 tons).²⁴ In interrogation, Riehl doubted that the plant had been enlarged or that production was any greater than it had been when he left, but he felt that production had been increased by building similar factories elsewhere. As evidence, he referred to the extensive programme at Elektrostal’ of training engineers for transfer to other plants. Riehl discussed one such plant, the Plant of Chemical Concentrates at Novosibirsk. It had been ²³ Annexure IV to STIB Interview Report No. 232 (Günther Wirths), DEFE 41/104. ²⁴ STIB Interview Report No. 232, DEFE 41/104.

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known by 1947 that Combine No. 6 supplied it with concentrated uranium; ‘Icarus’ had also mentioned it. The Riehl Group provided further information. Riehl himself thought the plant’s production capacity was greater than that of Elektrostal’; he based this inference on the fact that the best engineers and technicians from Elektrostal’ were sent there. U-2 overflight showed that it was indeed big.²⁵ Another was the plant at Glazov in the Udmurt SSR, which was a copy of Elektrostal’, being mostly concerned with the production of pure uranium metal from raw concentrates, but having a small section which carried out the recovery of uranium from the fission products obtained from a reactor. Riehl thought its capacity for the production of uranium metal was roughly the same as that of Elektrostal’. Wirths also provided information on this plant. In addition to the recovery of uranium, the plant was meant to extract plutonium (like ‘Installation B’ at Cheliabinsk-40, and according to the same process) and separate fission products. The plutonium plant Krasnoyarsk-26, which stands some 50 kilometres northeast of the city of the same name, had already been identified by the time Riehl was questioned.²⁶ He provided a further indication that the site was worth overflying. In the summer of 1945, Zaveniagin had given him a choice of factories for his plant. He had turned down a platinum factory near Krasnoyarsk. He was asked whether he thought that an atomic plant might have been built there. His reply was that it was a suitable site but he thought that the idea of building an atomic installation there had been rejected.²⁷ The platinum factory near Krasnoyarsk may have formed part of the plutonium production complex, or of the nearby uranium enrichment plant, Krasnoyarsk-45. Karl Zimmer and Herbert Schmitz, also Riehl Group members, brought intelligence of the Sungul Radiological Laboratory and, confirming the ex-PoWs’ information, of the plutonium production reactor near Kyshtym, which lay some 40 kilometres to the south.²⁸ They were sent to Sungul from Elektrostal’ at the start of 1948. Word of the reactor soon reached their ears; they came to know it by its Russian nicknames of ‘Techi’ (the reactor lay by the Techa River, and the village of Staraya Techa was subsumed into the complex), ‘Shkala’, and ‘Miass’. From high ground above the laboratory at Sungul, Schmitz had even caught sight of it. Without ever having been there, Riehl was able to shine a light on Techi’s workings. The reactor was graphite-moderated and water-cooled. The graphite he had seen in the USSR was of excellent quality and he thought it likely that graphite of the same quality had been used to moderate the pile. The uranium slugs manufactured at Elektrostal’ had been sent to this pile; thus his description of the purification process used at Elektrostal’ took British intelligence into the very heart of the reactor. From what he had heard, Riehl estimated that the reactor had been designed to operate on 100 tons of uranium, but Antropov, Deputy ²⁵ Peebles, Shadow Flights, 173–81. ²⁶ Cochran et al., Russian Bomb, 149. ²⁷ Para. 52, STIB Interview Report No. 261 (Riehl), DEFE 41/106. ²⁸ Holloway, Stalin, 322.

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Minister at the First Chief Directorate in Moscow, had indicated to him in conversation that it had begun to work effectively on 30 tons. Since the Soviet project managers showed such interest in regeneration, he assumed that they did not leave irradiated uranium in the pile for long. He assumed that there were a number of regeneration plants in the USSR. The fission products used at Sungul for research into the effects of radioactivity on living creatures came from the pile at Techi. The purpose of the reactor (‘Installation A’, or ‘Annushka’) at Cheliabinsk-40 was the manufacture of plutonium. However, once the plutonium had been made, it still had to be separated from the irradiated uranium in the reactor. This was the function of the radio-chemical plant at Techi known as ‘Installation B’, which began to produce plutonium early in 1949. It operated using the precipitation process of separation which had been used successfully in the Manhattan Project and the success of which had been made known to Soviet atomic scientists by the Smyth Report. David Holloway, in his history of the Soviet atomic and thermonuclear projects, states that the process ‘was based on slightly soluble sodium uranyl acetate precipitation from nitric acid solutions of irradiated uranium’.²⁹ Riehl, in his interview report of 1955, gave a precise description of the process, a fact which is remarkable since he was recalling a lecture eight years before on a topic with which he was not himself directly concerned. The lecture had been given, in the office of Vasili Emel’ianov, the head of the FCD’s scientifictechnical directorate, by A. P. Ratner of the Radium Institute in Leningrad (who had, together with B. A. Nikitin, devised the separation method). Riehl believed—rightly—that the process had been put into operation, partly because he had heard from Volmer that the latter’s competing separation method had not been accepted by the Soviets, and partly because he had actually seen factory plans for Ratner and Nikitin’s process. Riehl did indeed mention that he thought a plant using this separation method had been constructed at Cheliabinsk-40. The group also revealed how and where plutonium was being turned into explosive for nuclear weapons. When the problem of producing pure uranium metal had been solved at the end of 1946, Zaveniagin had given Riehl the task of designing a building for the conversion of plutonium oxide into pure plutonium metal. He was eventually shown a plan for ‘a U-shaped, double-storey building, in one wing of which was to be the plutonium plant and in the other a U-235 purification plant. He believed it was to be situated in a large area, in the neighbourhood of other big buildings and therefore linked it with Techi.’³⁰ This was indeed ‘Installation V’ at Cheliabinsk-40 (‘V’ is the third letter of the Cyrillic alphabet), where the plutonium from the separation plant was purified and converted into metal for use in bombs. Wirths and Thieme had given advice on the design. Wirths proved forthcoming on the subject in interrogation, but said that he had been told that fundamental changes had been made to his plan for the plant. ²⁹ Ibid., Stalin, 188–9.

³⁰ Paras. 31–2, STIB Interview Report No. 234, DEFE 41/104.

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The above information amounted to a guided tour of Techi as it was at the end of the 1940s. Karl Zimmer even knew Techi’s Soviet codename, ‘Cheliabinsk-40’, which he passed on.³¹ Even though Riehl had never been there, he had seen the site from Sungul. He rightly said that it was enormous and that further reactors had probably been built there. Three further graphite-moderated and watercooled reactors were built there in the early 1950s, together with a heavy-water reactor and a reactor for isotope production. The CIA is said to have understood Soviet plutonium reactor technology well and to have reached good estimates of the reactors’ production capacities. The Riehl Group clearly contributed to this understanding.³² In August 1949 the first Soviet atomic test was successfully carried out and the need for German help diminished. From 1950 the pressure on the German atomic research groups to produce results was reduced. The speed of their work declined.³³ The Riehl Group was actually disbanded. Riehl wanted to go home, but instead Zaveniagin sent him to the Radiological Laboratory at Sungul, behind the Urals, of which he was director until 1952. Karl Zimmer worked with Riehl there and left it at about the same time. He provided another target for overflight, telling his interviewer: Towards the end of their stay at Sungul, it became rumoured that there was an intention of constructing a large plant for separating isotopes in the neighbourhood, probably working on the ion exchange principle. . . . The clearing of ground for this plant had started when Informant left.³⁴

Zimmer was right that a very important nuclear facility was built there, though it was not an isotope separation plant. Instead, in 1955 the Sungul Radiological Laboratory became one of the USSR’s two most important nuclear weapons design laboratories and was known thenceforth as Cheliabinsk-70 (in 1958 it moved to a site 10 kilometres further north). One-third of the scientific personnel of the principal laboratory, Arzamas-16, were transferred there in 1955 to start it up. Cheliabinsk-70 has been overflown and photographed; indeed, a study of the Russian nuclear industry refers to satellite images of the site.³⁵ Zimmer and Ernst Busse also confirmed that an atomic reactor was to be found at Obninsk, 100 kilometres south of Moscow. This was indeed the USSR’s first civil atomic power plant, which began to produce electricity in 1954 and initiated the country’s atomic power programme. British and American analysts had in 1953 already guessed from attaché photographs that a reactor was to be found here. ‘Pravda’ had announced on 1 July 1954 that a civil reactor had been commissioned, but had not given its location.³⁶ ³¹ Para. 83, STIB Interview Report No. 221, DEFE 21/43. ³² Bukharin, INS (2004), 673. ³³ Albrecht et al., Spezialisten, 75. ³⁴ Para. 89, STIB Interview Report No. 221, DEFE 21/43. ³⁵ Cochran et al., Russian Bomb, 42–3. ³⁶ Lowenhaupt, Studies in Intelligence (2000), 64–5; STIB Interview Report No. 220 (Ernst Busse), DEFE 41/116; Holloway, Stalin, 346–8.

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Herbert Schmitz told his interviewers of rumours that the construction of new atomic ‘installations had started at the beginning of 1948 in the region of Lake Baikal and these were supposed to be much larger than Techy’.³⁷ These rumours were exaggerated, but a uranium enrichment plant was built near Lake Baikal. The Electrolyzing Chemical Combine was constructed at Angarsk, on the River Angara 30 kilometres north-west of Irkutsk, which stands on Lake Baikal. The plant began operations in 1954, using the gaseous diffusion method of enrichment. The British received intelligence of an atomic installation in the Lake Baikal area from another source. By the early 1950s STIB was aware of an atomic facility there, for on a list from 1952 of atomic targets in the USSR appears the entry, ‘Cheremkovo—Lake Baikal Area’.³⁸ The ‘1037P’ interrogations also established that there was a heavy-water plant at Norilsk in northern Siberia.³⁹ Other ‘1037(P)’ returnees located another key installation in the USSR’s nuclear complex: its first plant for the enrichment of uranium by gaseous diffusion, called the Urals Electrochemical Plant and codenamed Sverdlovsk-44. It is still in operation. This plant, located near Verkh-Neyvinsk, some 50 kilometres north-west of Sverdlovsk, commenced production of highly enriched uranium early in 1949 using a barrier developed by a team led by Isaak Kikoin. The former name of VerkhNeyvinsk had been Kefirstadt.⁴⁰ The uranium initially produced there was only 40 per cent enriched, and the degree of enrichment had to be 90 per cent or more if it were to be suitable as atomic explosive. To help solve the problem, six of the leading German experts on gaseous diffusion, including Gustav Hertz, Peter-Adolf Thiessen, and Heinz Barwich, were flown from Sukhumi to Sverdlovsk and then driven to a place they heard called ‘Kefirstadt’.⁴¹ Ex-PoW ‘1037(P)’ sources questioned in 1954 first brought word of this visit. The returnees of 1955 revealed that ‘Kefirstadt’ was Verkh-Neyvinsk (where it was already known that an atomic installation of some sort was located).⁴² In fact, the Germans were unable to find out why the diffusion cascade at Sverdlovsk-44 was not producing sufficiently enriched uranium. It was Kikoin’s Soviet group which established that uranium was being lost inside the compressors and corrected the process, which was functioning properly by the end of 1950. In the following year, the plant began to produce uranium with more than 90 per cent of the light isotope; this enriched U-235 was the fissionable material used in the USSR’s third atomic test. The information that a gaseous diffusion plant existed at Kefirstadt confirmed that it was the favoured method of producing U-235. It was indeed the principal Soviet method of uranium enrichment until the 1970s, when it was superseded by gas centrifugation. None of the Sukhumi Germans’ designs for isotope separation devices was adopted by the Soviets. The Germans played a minor role in the Soviets’ gaseous ³⁷ ³⁸ ³⁹ ⁴¹ ⁴²

Para. 120, STIB Interview Report No. 211, DEFE 21/43. File No. 5011/13, STIB file list, DEFE 41/29. Lowenhaupt, Studies in Intelligence (2000), 68. ⁴⁰ Cochran et al., Russian Bomb, 38. Albrecht et al., Spezialisten, 74. Lowenhaupt, Studies in Intelligence (2000), 69; Albrecht et al., Spezialisten, 66 n. 48.

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diffusion effort. The first barrier and plant were Soviet in design (though strongly influenced by intelligence received on gaseous diffusion research in the United States and Britain).⁴³ At the end of 1950 or beginning of 1951 the authorities cancelled all projects connected with barrier calculations at Agudzeri. This must have been connected with the fact that, by the end of 1950, the problems with loss of uranium inside the compressors at Sverdlovsk-44 had been entirely resolved and the plant was at last producing sufficiently enriched uranium in quantity. In 1951 a further enrichment plant on the site commenced operation, increasing the output of enriched uranium sixfold.⁴⁴ The Soviets no longer needed the Germans’ diffusion barriers. Therefore, for the most part they could only speculate about the separation devices in service in the USSR. Werner Schütze seems to have been an exception. He did indeed visit Sverdlovsk-44 in 1948. Though not given access to the cascade, he obtained information about it from the other Germans and from Russians; this information was obtained from him in ‘Dragon Return’. However, no German had free access to the cascade, so Schütze could say little and, anyway, his knowledge was out of date.⁴⁵ Karl-Franz Zühlke, a returnee from the Hertz institute at Agudzeri, had heard about the Kefirstadt plant and talked about it. He underestimated its size, considering that there were about 3,000 compressors in the cascade. In fact, there were at least 6,000. He also recalled a figure for the ‘flow conductivity’ of the barriers in the cascade.⁴⁶ He gave information on the approximate dimensions of the barriers and had a rough idea of how they were arranged in stacks. He concluded that the cascade was ‘supposed to be similar to the one described for the Lab 2 pilot plant and consisted of flat plates rather than tubes. Source stated that the properties of this barrier were inferior at that time to those of the subsequent Thiessen tubes.’⁴⁷ Zühlke had tested both Soviet flat barriers and the German wire-mesh-backed and extruded tubular barriers. He provided some technical information on the Soviet barriers; he maintained that both German-designed tubular barriers were more efficient. STIB considered his information useful because it provided figures to work with in assessing the efficiency of diffusion processes using Soviet-made barriers and German barriers produced in trial batches at Sukhumi. Nevertheless, Zühlke’s information and that of others on the efficiency of the cascade at Sverdlovsk-44 was hearsay. Moreover, the Germans’ information on the Soviet barriers they had seen at Sukhumi and on the German-designed barriers was long out of date. The Soviets had had years in which to improve the performance of their diffusion barriers and in ways which ⁴³ Holloway, Stalin, 91–2, 103–5, 189–92, 221–2; cf. Lowenhaupt, Studies in Intelligence (2000), 67–8. ⁴⁴ Cochran et al., Russian Bomb, 183–5. ⁴⁵ Minute Sheet IR/227, 12/12/1955, DEFE 21/57; Barwich and Barwich, Rote Atom, 103–28; ‘Nuclear Scientist Defects to United States’, Hearing before the Sub-committee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act, US Senate, 15/12/1964, 89th Congress, 1st Session (Washington, DC, 1965), 9–10. ⁴⁶ OLB/B/56/63, 1/6/1956, DEFE 41/159. Specifically, Zühlke stated that ‘gamma’ was 2/1,000. ⁴⁷ STIB Interview Report No. 253 (Karl-Franz Zühlke), DEFE 41/106.

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could not be ascertained. Nevertheless, owing to lack of other intelligence American analysts were ten years later still estimating the efficiency of Soviet diffusion plants on the basis of the returnees’ information.⁴⁸ Nikolaus Riehl had come to know P. Ia. Antropov, one of Vannikov’s deputies at the FCD, quite well. Antropov was directing the FCD’s search for uranium and other rare ores. Riehl realized from his dealings with him that great efforts were being made to find these ores. His impression was that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of geologists were engaged in the search for uranium. He confirmed earlier information that a huge effort was being made to find more uranium deposits. This information was correct: not only had the Ministry of Geology arranged special expeditions of its own to prospect for uranium in various parts of the USSR, it had instructed all other geological organizations to keep an eye out for uranium when conducting their own projects. Riehl had learned that these various teams had had some success in their work. Antropov and others had mentioned an installation in Krivoi Rog in the Ukraine. Riehl had also heard of a region in the northern Caucasus, near the Derjal Gorge, which foreigners were not permitted to visit. He connected this with uranium-mining because before the war he had read about the existence of uranium in the Caucasus. Uranium deposits had indeed been found at Krivoi Rog in the inter-war period. The deposits in these regions were known. However, Antropov had ordered extensive searches for uranium in a number of areas where deposits were already known to exist and, as a result, substantial new deposits were found.⁴⁹ By the end of 1948 mining work had begun near Zheltye Vody in the Krivoi Rog region. It had also begun near Piatigorsk in the northern Caucasus, to which Riehl was probably making vague reference. Despite these discoveries, early Soviet post-war exploration efforts concentrated on Central Asia, where there were a number of known uranium deposits. Before the war, uranium had been found in the region at Taboshary, Uigar-Sai (Atbashi), Maili-Sai, and other places. The ore mined was concentrated at plants controlled by the First Chief Directorate’s Combine No. 6, based at Chkalovsk, in Tajikistan, at the western end of the Fergana Valley. A Jewish refugee who had delivered bread to the various plants had, in 1947, provided valuable information on the Combine. He had drawn maps showing the location of the various concentration plants.⁵⁰ Riehl knew a certain amount about the Combine and its processing methods. The ore was treated with acid to yield a fairly pure uranium salt, which was sent on to Factory No. 12 at Elektrostal’ for conversion into uranium metal according to Riehl’s process. It was known by 1947 that the Combine was also responsible for uranium-mining in the region.⁵¹ Riehl informed the British that ⁴⁸ Bukharin, INS (2004), 673. ⁴⁹ Holloway, Stalin, 34; cf. Cochran et al., Russian Bomb, 175–6. ⁵⁰ Peebles, Shadow Flights, 173–4. ⁵¹ CAAIU, ‘Intelligence Aspects of Russian Interest in Nuclear Energy, Addendum 1’, 26/2/1947, DEFE 21/45.

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the ores there varied in quality, some being rich in uranium. Wirths was more precise, commenting that the concentration of uranium was generally 32–40 per cent, and sometimes as high as 50 per cent. Moreover, Riehl stressed that the chemical process used by Combine No. 6 was effective in concentrating almost all of the ore mined, turning it into sodium or ammonium uranate. This intelligence of deposits of high grade uranium ores was very significant because it overturned a long-held belief that the USSR lacked high grade domestic deposits. The JIC maintained in 1947 that the Soviet Union suffered from a serious shortage of uranium. This shortage is likely to continue until she can evolve methods of extracting this material from her comparatively large supplies of low-grade ores, or alternatively until a supply of appreciable quantities of high grade ore is found within her own territory.⁵²

Five years later, D.At.En. still believed that large deposits of uranium had not been found in the USSR. Its chief, Eric Welsh, told military attachés in 1952 that, ‘while we do not know exactly how much uranium ore is being mined in Metropolitan Russia, we have reason to believe that a large proportion of their total requirement is obtained from the Satellites’.⁵³ Riehl, however, had heard Antropov say in April 1951, ‘We have searched diligently and we can now say that our [i.e, the USSR’s] resources are large enough.’ The uranium deposits in Estonia were already known. Riehl and Wirths were able to comment on policy towards them. They had been discovered in oil-bearing shales. In 1951 Zaveniagin and Antropov asked the two Germans to devise a process to extract the uranium. Wirths remembered that the proportion of uranium in the shales was tiny: one-tenth of 1 per cent or even less. But the shale deposits were enormous, with the result that there were very large deposits of uranium. The task of extracting it was considered so important that Riehl was flown to Moscow from Sungul and Wirths from Obninsk to advise on the problem. Zaveniagin and Antropov turned to them because the task was so difficult. It would also be very expensive. In actual fact, neither German was willing to work on the problem and so did not know what extraction process had been selected. But both Riehl and Wirths knew the First Chief Directorate’s attitude to these uranium reserves. Zaveniagin had said that their exploitation was not an urgent task, because deposits already being exploited would provide enough uranium for immediately foreseeable needs; the Estonian shales therefore represented ‘a valuable future source of uranium’. Antropov had told Riehl that ‘the problems of uranium supply in “our country” were solved, (excluding Estonia)’. Riehl considered that, ‘Russian planning was extremely good and far-sighted, and that they had wellthought-out long-range schemes for utilising all uranium which they could recover, and that deposits such as the Estonian shales were being carefully studied as a future investment, for when existing producers were completely worked out.’ ⁵² Para. 57, JIC(47)7/2, CAB 158/1. ⁵³ MI10 Conference 1952, DEFE 41/126.

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He reported that the Soviets were also searching high and low for thorium, which could act as a substitute for uranium. In 1946 the Second Chief Directorate of the Council of Ministers had been formed to administer the search for, and use of, this rare ore. In Riehl’s hearing, Antropov had told a commission of geologists: ‘We have no good source of thorium but there is some monozit [monazite] to be had from the Yenesei [Yenisei] in the form of a small deposit.’⁵⁴ Wirths provided further evidence of Soviet interest in extracting pure thorium salts from monazite, saying that at Elektrostal’ Thieme had been given the task of devising such a process. He had done so, but Soviet processes had been preferred to his own. Riehl and Wirths were indeed right that no stone of monazite was being left unturned in the search for thorium, though they were not aware of its full scale. Monazite was mined not only in Siberia (through which the Yenisei flows), but also in the Altai mountains, the Urals, the Kola peninsula, and the Caucasus.⁵⁵ Riehl and Wirths gave the British and Americans a good view of the people and institutions which had driven the Soviet atomic project forward, and of many of the lines along which their work had proceeded. They, together with their fellowreturnees and other sources mentioned in earlier chapters, laid bare much of the Soviet atomic complex as it stood in the mid-1950s. It is true that their knowledge of it was based, for the most part, on their work and connections in the years 1945–50, and that further installations of great significance had been built by the time they were questioned in the mid-1950s. At these places worked important scientists whom Riehl and Wirths did not mention. They knew nothing of thermonuclear research. However, the people and places they mentioned were still of importance. At the time they were questioned, uranium was, as they said, being mined in the Ukraine, Central Asia, and the Caucasus, as well as East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria. The nuclear fuel factories at Elektrostal’, Glazov, and Novosibirsk were still in operation. The principal plutonium production reactors in the mid-1950s were the four at Cheliabinsk-40. The Riehl Group seems to have provided no intelligence on the plutonium production reactors and other plants at Tomsk-7 (the first reactor came into service in November 1955), Krasnoyarsk-26 (the first reactor came into service in 1958), or the uranium enrichment plants Krasnoyarsk-45 and Angarsk. Nevertheless, information about two of these was certainly obtained from other sources and perhaps information about the remaining two as well. Other returnees supplied information about the gaseous diffusion plant at Kefirstadt. Indeed, almost all the plants revealed by German sources remained significant parts of the Soviet Union’s atomic complex throughout the Cold War. In the 1980s much of the uranium mined in Eastern Europe and the USSR was transported to the plants at Glazov and Novosibirsk, where the ore was purified and converted into metal. The metal ingots, sealed in aluminium, were sent to the ⁵⁴ Paras. 46–9, STIB Interview Report No. 234, DEFE 41/104. ⁵⁵ Holloway, Stalin, 176.

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plutonium production reactors at Cheliabinsk-40 (by then codenamed Cheliabinsk-65), Tomsk-7, and Krasnoyarsk-26 to act as uranium fuel. The irradiated fuel was reprocessed at the recovery plants at Tomsk-7 and Krasnoyarsk-26. The plutonium extracted was sent to other plants for installation in nuclear weapons. Recovered uranium was converted to uranium hexafluoride at Tomsk-7 and Angarsk, and then enriched to the necessary levels of enrichment at the centrifugation plants at Sverdlovsk-44, Tomsk-7, Krasnoyarsk-26, and Angarsk.⁵⁶ The returnees’ knowledge of scientific processes in use in Soviet plants some years before gave some idea of the plants’ efficiency, the quality of Soviet atomic science, and the rate of its progress. For example, since Wirths had visited a number of plants to advise on problems there, he was able to estimate their combined uranium metal production capacity in the late 1940s. Of course, this information was out of date and might have been incomplete. He could not be sure that he had seen all the manufacturing plants.⁵⁷ No German source seems to have been aware of Arzamas-16 or its hydrogen bomb project.⁵⁸ They seem not to have been allowed near it. But they did name other institutes engaged in nuclear research and described their work. The principal research centres they named were NII. 9 (Nauchno-issledovatelskii institut No. 9 ; Scientific Research Institute No. 9) and Laboratory No. 2 of the Academy of Sciences, where the first Soviet reactor (‘F-1’) was built and operated. These were the main research laboratories when the Riehl Group began work. Riehl knew that Kurchatov was the director of the latter laboratory and also knew Kurchatov’s importance. He accurately distinguished its work from that of NII. 9 by saying that, while Laboratory No. 2 was concerned with physics and related technology, NII. 9 conducted research on the metallurgy of plutonium and uranium and related areas of chemistry and radio-chemistry. NII. 9 had indeed been set up during the war to research into these matters.⁵⁹ When Riehl and Wirths first visited it, in the winter of 1945, it was under the control of the First Chief Directorate, and they felt the close presence of the MVD. Wirths showed his interviewers where it was on a map of Moscow: on the outskirts of the city, northwest from the city centre. Riehl provided a broad survey of the institute’s work and told the British that it played a central role in nuclear research. He described it as ‘really the main centre of Soviet atomic research’ and ‘three or four times the area of a nearby railway terminus’ in size.⁶⁰ Riehl and Wirths, the latter even more than the former, provided a good deal of information on Soviet scientists. They named the leaders of Soviet nuclear science, such as Khariton, Kikoin, Flerov, Cherniaev, Bochvar, Vinogradov, Blokhintsev, and Leipunsky, indicating that Kurchatov was generally considered to be the scientific head of the whole undertaking. Riehl had even attended two ⁵⁶ ⁵⁷ ⁵⁸ ⁵⁹

Cochran et al., Russian Bomb, 171–3. Para. 10, STIB Interview Report No. 232, DEFE 41/104. Sigint is said, in 1953, to have established its existence and location: see Bukharin, INS (2004), 665. Holloway, Stalin, 114. ⁶⁰ Para. 52, STIB Interview Report No. 261, DEFE 41/106.

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meetings of the FCD’s Scientific-Technical Council, which Kurchatov chaired. He stated the particular responsibilities within the atomic bomb project of some of them. He had met many of these people, seen them at the Scientific-Technical Council, and had gone to lectures at the FCD’s offices in Moscow at which he had heard them set out their plans for the future. This was not information of merely ‘historical value’. Of course, the leading Soviet nuclear scientists had long been known from their publications and international connections; however, whether they were involved in military projects and what role they played in them had been much harder to discover.⁶¹ Riehl, Wirths, and others provided information on less important figures as well and identified up-and-coming people. For instance, I. H. Golovanov, the director of Elektrostal’ from about 1951, and Spitsin were, Riehl said, now the ‘Soviet Riehls’. The most valuable atomic sources returned to East Germany between March and May 1955 and defected soon afterwards; they were interviewed that summer, just as information began to be obtained from the Berlin Tunnel. The tunnel was completed in February; the interception of communications began in May and continued until April 1956. The intercepted communications revealed the locations of atomic installations in the USSR as well as the names of several hundred people who worked in them. The CIA checked the similar information gathered from the ‘1037(P)’ defectors against the information yielded by the tunnel. According to the authors of Battleground Berlin, this was ‘the tunnel’s main contribution to scientific-technical information’.⁶² The two streams of information complemented as well as confirmed one another.⁶³

GUIDED MISSILES ‘Dragon Return’ barely broke the skin of Soviet missile development. Nevertheless, however small in quantity and limited in utility it might be, the returnees’ information on developments in the USSR was significant, because, until the mid-1950s, it formed the major part of the little information available. Even in 1953 British intelligence had no information that the programme was anything more than one of research and development.⁶⁴ The weakness of their sources meant that neither British nor US intelligence had any inkling of the scale of the resources being devoted to missile development in the USSR or, at this time, the speed with which progress was being made. The situation changed in 1955, when the radar at Samsun became operational. However, it monitored testing. Even in 1956 an American National Intelligence Estimate admitted that, ‘We have no evidence now that the USSR has any offensive guided missile ⁶¹ ⁶² ⁶³ ⁶⁴

CAAIU, ‘Intelligence Aspects of Russian Interest in Nuclear Energy’, 1/9/1946, DEFE 21/45. Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 219–31, 425. Lowenhaupt, Studies in Intelligence (2000), 69. Captain Protheroe, MI10C, MI10 Conference 1953, DEFE 41/126.

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available for operational use’.⁶⁵ By the late 1950s the regime had probably spent at least 60 billion roubles on missile development, a sum roughly equivalent to its entire revenue in direct and indirect taxation in the years 1946–9. More than 200 factories employing over 350,000 workers were manufacturing products for the missile programme. About 100,000 scientists and engineers were carrying out R&D work into new missile types.⁶⁶ Unfortunately, there was no counterpart in the guided missile field to the Riehl Group. The Germans were held at a distance from Soviet missile development. It is true that the Gröttrup Group briefly worked at the heart of Soviet rocket science, at NII. 88. But after the Soviet copy of the V-2 was successfully tested, in October 1947, the Soviets distanced all German missile workers from their research and development.⁶⁷ In 1948 the Gröttrup Group was exiled to Gorodomlia, where they took over a former NKVD camp and established a rocket research institute, Branch No. 2 of NII. 88. The group—often called the ‘Ostashkov’ Group because the nearest town bore that name—acted as consultants, retained to advise on particular problems which arose in Soviet rocket programmes. Their links with leading figures in Soviet rocket science, both in the years 1945–6 in Germany and, later, in the USSR, were close enough for the more important of them to be able to name such men as Korolev (chief designer at NII. 88) and Glushko (the GDL-OKB’s chief designer). Indeed, they greatly added to knowledge of who the leading Soviet missile engineers were. However, even Gröttrup, their leader until 1950, did not know precisely whom they were working for. In interrogation at the end of 1953, he maintained that Soviet missile research and development was directed by a committee, chaired by General Gaidukov, which was subordinate to the Supreme Soviet. The Scientific-Technical Council which administered the missile programme was, in fact, subordinate to the Council of Ministers and was chaired by Dmitri Ustinov.⁶⁸ The Ostashkov Germans returned to Germany between 1951 and 1953.⁶⁹ They were only able to suggest possibilities as to how Soviet missile development might be proceeding. Nevertheless, Allen Dulles called their information ‘useful’.⁷⁰ The best-informed of them was Gröttrup; a British intelligence analyst commented that he had provided ‘useful pointers regarding parallel Russian developments’.⁷¹ Only in December 1953 did Gröttrup state his belief that there was a parallel Soviet rocket development programme under Korolev. Others supported this and said that it was a big one.⁷² Korolev was, Gröttrup said, working on a missile called the K-1, and it was, in fact, as a result of such ‘Dragon Return’ intelligence that the British and Americans concluded in September 1954 that ⁶⁵ NIE 11–56, ‘Soviet Gross Capabilities for Attack on the US and Key Overseas Installations and Forces Through Mid-1959’, in D. Steury (ed.), Intentions and Capabilities: Estimates on Soviet Strategic Forces, 1950–1983 (Washington, DC, 1996), 23. ⁶⁶ Uhl, Osteuropa (2001), 863–6. ⁶⁷ Ibid., 849. ⁶⁸ Holloway, Soviet Union, 21–2; DSI/JTIC extract, 19/1/1954, DEFE 21/27. ⁶⁹ Albrecht et al., Spezialisten, 109. ⁷⁰ Dulles, Craft of Intelligence, 162. ⁷¹ Crocker to Young, 26/1/1954, DEFE 21/27. ⁷² Jones, Reflections, 25.

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there was indeed a native Soviet guided-missiles programme.⁷³ They were stumbling far behind events. Gröttrup described the K-1 as a lengthened V-2 with fuel tanks of a new design and said that he had heard that it had been flight tested in 1949; on this account, it could have been either the R-1 or the R-2. Given its name, it was probably the former, although Gröttrup thought that it had a range of 800–50 kilometres. During a conference at the Scientific-Technical Council in December 1948, Gröttrup had seen a chart of the K-1 on an office wall. He assumed that the design had been discussed at the conference. Gröttrup set before his interviewers very interesting possibilities as to Soviet long-range missile development. For instance, he and his team had designed a radically modified version of the V-2, which they called the R-10. The modifications greatly interested Korolev. The V-2’s body was redesigned and its components significantly rearranged. The power plant incorporated an important innovation: instead of a separate high-test peroxide system being used to drive the fuel pumps, the exhaust gas was channelled back to the pump turbines to drive them. Other innovations in which Korolev had shown interest were a separable warhead; an electrical determination of the point at which fuel cut-off took place (the warhead separated itself from the missile when fuel cut-off occurred); and the use of gasified oxygen for the servo controls. Gröttrup believed that some of these ideas might have been incorporated into the project he knew as the K-1 or later missiles. He recalled that Korolev thought that the separable warhead in particular was a ‘very good idea’.⁷⁴ It accorded with Korolev’s own thinking and the nose cone of the R-5, tested in the spring of 1953, was indeed separable from the rest of the missile. As with the nose cone of Gröttrup’s R-10, that of the R-5 separated itself from the rest of the missile at fuel cut-off. In both cases, the reason for separability was the same: it increased the range of the weapon. Changes in the design of the missile to reduce its weight would only be possible if the nose cone were separable, for in that case the body of the missile would only need to be designed to withstand the lower temperatures endured while the engine was powering it. The missile body would not need to be designed to withstand the greater temperatures encountered when the engine stopped and the weapon reached maximum speed. To this extent, therefore, the intelligence Gröttrup provided of his R-10 did indeed reveal to his interviewers how the R-5, tested nine months earlier, had been designed. He suggested to his interviewers that, in all the circumstances, it could be assumed that the Soviets had a missile of the R-10 type which was beyond the development stage, had been tested, and was therefore either ready for series production or in production.⁷⁵ Despite obvious differences—for instance, the R-10 design only provided for a range of 910 kilometres, whereas the R-5 actually had a range of 1,200 kilometres—this was a fairly accurate indication of the state ⁷³ Paras. 1–3, Study of Soviet Guided Weapons (1954), Part II, DEFE 44/3. ⁷⁴ Paras. 66 and 113, DSI/JTIC Report No. 13, DEFE 44/2. ⁷⁵ STIB Interview Report No. 138 (Helmut Gröttrup), DEFE 41/100; para. 325, DSI/JTIC Report No. 13, DEFE 44/2.

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of Soviet missile development at that time. Gröttrup also thought that the control and guidance of the R-10 design would eventually be adopted by Korolev. Ordway and Sharpe indeed claim that many features of the R-10 design, and above all its ‘beam-riding’ guidance system, were adopted for the Soviet-designed missiles made in the early 1950s.⁷⁶ A possible design development of considerable significance which Gröttrup discussed was the use of multi-stage rockets. From mid-1948 to the spring of 1949, the Ostashkov Group had worked on the design of a two-stage missile capable of carrying 1,000 kilograms a distance of 2,500 kilometres. The shift towards multi-stage rockets was significant, because giving a missile more than one stage was one way of enabling it to carry enough fuel to reach the speed necessary for crossing all Europe and then the Atlantic as well. The Germans were clearly working on a concept then being considered very carefully by Soviet missile designers. Unbeknown to them, only a few months before they received this commission M. K. Tikhonravov had put together for the Research Institute of the Academy of Artillery Sciences a proposal to assemble a ‘packet’ of rockets in a composite one. The ‘packet’ concept proved controversial at the time, but ceased to be so when it was successfully used by Korolev as the core of his design for the R-7. Gröttrup was unable to reveal the full significance of his work on a multi-stage design, for the project had seemed to go nowhere. The Soviets had not told the group what they thought of the idea and had told it to abandon work on the project before its design was complete.⁷⁷ So, all in all, to the British the innovations Gröttrup discussed could only constitute possible lines of development. And some of the possibilities he placed before his interviewers were false. For example, he thought that Soviet efforts at developing a long-range missile were tending to focus more on Eugen Sänger’s plan for a rocket-plane than on a ballistic missile. The Ostashkov Group’s R-14 design, its most ambitious, represented another possible influence on Soviet missile design. Gröttrup informed the British that his group had, in the spring of 1949, been commissioned to design a missile capable of carrying a load of 3,000 kilograms to 3,000 kilometres. (Unknown to him, Korolev was then working on a missile with the same characteristics, the R-3.) Having revealed this, Gröttrup at once gave his interviewers the wrong impression by stating that, although he had submitted his resulting long-range single-stage ballistic rocket design in December 1949, he thought that it would represent too great a technical advance to appeal to the Soviets. He had no knowledge of any parallel Soviet project.⁷⁸ Even before he spoke these words, Korolev had begun to design the R-7, the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile.⁷⁹ It was this rocket, first tested in August 1957, which carried Sputnik I into space the following October.⁸⁰ ⁷⁶ ⁷⁷ ⁷⁸ ⁸⁰

F. Ordway III and M. Sharpe, The Rocket Team (London, 1979), 330–1. Paras. 19–20, Study of Soviet Guided Weapons, DEFE 44/3. Para. 91, DSI/JTIC Report No. 13, DEFE 44/2. ⁷⁹ Holloway, Stalin, 246–50. Holloway, Soviet Union, 66.

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Moreover, a design team led by Mikhail Iangel’ began work on a missile called the R-14 at the beginning of the 1950s, soon after Gröttrup had submitted his design. Although in essence a Soviet design, the missile bore traces of the Germans’ influence.⁸¹ Christoph Mick also thinks it likely that the Germans’ proposal influenced Korolev’s design for the R-3A.⁸² In addition, Gröttrup indicated that the age of missile silos was not far off. His interviewer noted that Source has also reported the paper study of an underground Assembly factory combined with an operational underground firing point, the rocket being fired upwards through a vertical shaft. Gröttrup pointed out that road transport will subject any rocket to unnecessary stresses and that with a range of several 1,000 km, it was pointless to run the risk of damage for the sake of a few 100 km change in firing position. The Russians however insisted on road transport as an alternative.⁸³

The V-1 and V-2 apart, the British, by the early 1950s, had been able to acquire almost no intelligence of Soviet development of other forms of missile. Moreover, though they did paper studies of inertial and stellar guidance systems for longrange missiles, the Germans provided British intelligence with no ‘substantial direct information’ on Soviet development work in the field of missile control.⁸⁴ This was a very significant failure. Consequently, the British had no direct insight into the principal Soviet rocket projects, and could only speculate on what might be brewing in the USSR’s missile development institutes. The material for this speculation was provided by knowledge of German wartime work; the work of German deportees on missile control problems in the USSR in the years 1946–53; the opinions these deportees formed; published information on Western development work (which would, of course, be available in the Soviet Union); and such knowledge as existed of Soviet work in related fields like electronics and radio communications.⁸⁵ The same approach was taken in the field of atomic intelligence. Analysts sought information on Soviet atomic scientists because their prewar publications might reveal some of their scientific ideas. Information on people involved in the programme might also give an idea of its size.⁸⁶ Some useful information on rocket engines was obtained. Again, it barely broke the skin of Soviet rocket-engine development. In 1950 the defector and V-2 propulsion unit engineer Werner Baum, who had been a member of the German rocket-engine development team in the design bureau of Zavod 456 at Khimki, was questioned. He made it clear that this was an important development centre, designed for the ‘large-scale development of liquid fuel rocket motors for missiles ⁸¹ Albrecht et al., Spezialisten, 108. ⁸² Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 146–7. ⁸³ STIB Interview Report No. 138, DEFE 41/100. ⁸⁴ Paras. 72 and 97–101, Study of Soviet Guided Weapons, DEFE 44/3; paras. 193–5, DSI/JTIC Report No. 13, DEFE 44/2. However, a report was received of practical work on photo-cells ‘for astroguidance’ at NII. 885, Novaya. ⁸⁵ Captain Protheroe, MI10C, MI10 Conference 1953, DEFE 41/126. ⁸⁶ Commander Welsh, D.At.En., MI10 Conference 1952, DEFE 41/126.

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of the V-2 type’.⁸⁷ But he had had too little to do with the Soviet engineers in the design bureau to provide information on their quality or the full scope of their work. He updated the information provided by ex-PoWs about the complex. The factory in which he had worked, Zavod 456, was merely intended for experimental manufacture, turning the ideas of the design bureau into hardware. The power plants made were sent over to Zavod 88 at Podlipki for installation in V-2 frames. Baum painted a picture of a small-scale project which had the aim of improving the German missiles. Nevertheless, this was production, and not mere experimentation. It was clear from what Baum said that the Soviet V-2 project had reached the production stage, though there was no evidence it was being manufactured in considerable numbers.⁸⁸ (Indeed, even as late as September 1954, no intelligence whatsoever had been acquired that Soviet versions of the V-2, or indeed any other surface-to-surface missiles, were being manufactured in quantity.⁸⁹) In fact, the R-1 actually went into service in 1950. Baum enabled the British more or less to keep up with the first step in Soviet missile development. Moreover, by 1950 work had started on a propulsion unit of 100 tons of thrust; Baum learned from conversations with Soviet engineers that it was to power a large V-2-type missile (a large single-stage rocket with no wing surfaces). Therefore, the engine was meant for the Soviet version of the V-2. Baum, who knew it backwards, gave the British full and reliable technical details of it.⁹⁰ Such an engine, or one very like it, does indeed seem to have powered the first Soviet-designed missile to enter service with the Soviet armed forces, the R-1. This engine, the RD-100, designed by Valentin Glushko, was, indeed, an improved version of that which had powered the V-2.⁹¹ The German team had completed their design for this engine in the spring of 1948 and a Soviet team then took over the project.⁹² Obviously, such a development confirmed the view that the Soviets were looking to increase the range of the V-2, as did Baum’s revelation that the design bureau at Zavod 456 studied the problem of making a propulsion unit with 250 tons of thrust. So British intelligence kept up with the very first step of Soviet rocket engine development as well. Baum’s information was considered valuable by Scientific Intelligence in London.⁹³ He also identified Glushko as the ‘Managing Director’ of Zavod 456 and Korolev as the ‘Managing Director’ of Zavod 88. Like all other sources, the missile engineers were able to provide very valuable information about places. Baum told the British that the V-2-type missiles made at Podlipki were ‘test-launched at a range in the Stalingrad area’.⁹⁴ The British learned the precise location of the testing site in 1951 from a returnee. ⁸⁷ ⁸⁸ ⁸⁹ ⁹⁰ ⁹¹ ⁹² ⁹³ ⁹⁴

Baum interrogation report, 9/2/1951, DEFE 21/31. DSI/JTIC minutes, 7/11/1950 and 21/11/1950, DEFE 41/74. Paras. 35 and 217, Study of Soviet Guided Weapons, DEFE 44/3. STIB Interview Report No. 53 (Werner Baum), DEFE 41/96. Holloway, Stalin, 248. STIB Preliminary Interrogation Report No. 200 (Werner Baum), DEFE 41/135. DSI/JTIC minutes, 7/11/1950, DEFE 41/74. Baum interrogation report, 9/2/1951, DEFE 21/31.

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He returned to East Germany from Khimki in September 1950 and took up a job in Chemnitz. STIB made contact with him and interviewed him when he visited Berlin. He was a test engineer and was taken to Kapustin Yar in 1947 in the company of Gröttrup and other Germans. The test site was, he said, ‘near Stalingrad’; the firings were eastwards towards the salt lakes. He described the route to the site thus: The journey took about a week and they travelled via Moscow to Kuibyshev. From there they travelled south, joining a branch line from Saratov. This line would eventually go to Astrakan [sic]. The FMS train, however, joined the branch line to Stalingrad at Bastkunschak. They finally came to a stop at a place called Kapustinyar [of which he drew a map].⁹⁵

The former CIA photo-interpreter Dino Brugioni has confirmed that, ‘We found out about the missile tests at Kapustin Yar from the German scientific returnees’.⁹⁶ Another returnee, Heinz Jaffke, identified another missile-testing site. Late in 1946 he had been taken to Zagorsk, north-east of Moscow, to advise on the installation there of V-2-type rocket test stands for static tests. Jaffke concluded that the site would be suitable but did not know whether a development range was, in fact, constructed there.⁹⁷ The site outside Zagorsk indeed became the first Soviet static-test range for large rockets.⁹⁸

AIRCRAFT Intelligence of Soviet fighter-interceptors was eagerly sought and here the operation yielded a success. Siegfried Günter, Heinkel’s chief designer during the war, returned from Podberez’ye in 1954 with news of a ‘delta wing fighter’. This had been the principal task on which he had been employed in the USSR, keeping him busy from 1948 to 1951. It was a novel design for a rocket-driven, triangleshaped aircraft without a tailplane. Günter gave full details of the two versions of the design he had developed to his interviewers. One version had a high wing, the other a mid-wing and round fuselage. The Soviets told him that the Committee of Experts considered his design important; the design bureau in which Günter worked thereupon removed all indications that this was a German design from the technical drawings of the aircraft. Günter believed that this was so that the design could be presented as a Soviet one; work on the aircraft was, he maintained, continued by Soviet designers after he was taken off the project, and a very similar aircraft was put into production.⁹⁹

⁹⁵ ⁹⁶ ⁹⁷ ⁹⁸ ⁹⁹

STIB Interview Report No. 25, DEFE 41/89. Lashmar, Spy Flights, 76; cf. Richelson, American Espionage, 139; Prados, Soviet Estimate, 57. STIB Interview Report No. 233 (Heinz Jaffke), DEFE 21/43. Ordway and Sharpe, Rocket Team, 338. STIB Interview Report No. 182 (Siegfried Günter), DEFE 41/102.

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This claim is of much interest, since in 1955, the year following his interrogation, the MiG-21 (‘Fishbed’) was flight tested for the first time. As a MiG fighter, its design was attributed to the Soviet designer Mikoyan. Although different in important respects from either of Günter’s designs, it was a mid-delta-wing aircraft and so may well have owed something to his mid-wing design. The degree to which it drew on his design cannot yet be established, but it is clear that he was able to give advance warning of the appearance in the Soviet air force of a light, delta-wing interceptor. Because of its delta wing, the Russians nicknamed the MiG-21 ‘Balalaika’. Early versions of the fighter could only serve as day interceptors. Rather than the rocket engine Günter had planned, it had a single R-11 jet engine giving 12,000 pounds of thrust, which made it capable of a speed of Mach-2. The aeroplane went into service in 1959 and was exported in large numbers to other countries, in time becoming the most widely used fighter in the world.¹⁰⁰

ELECTRONICS AND RADIO COUNTER-MEASURES Radio counter-measures (RCM, or ‘jamming’) would assist both air defence and an airborne atomic attack. Eighteen experts in the field were deported in ‘Osoaviakhim’. Intelligence was taken from some of them on their return to Germany and a reasonable picture of their work was formed. It was clear that the Soviets were developing as a matter of the highest priority all kinds of devices with which to counter Western electronic superiority and jam electronic equipment. This suggested that they realized that their backwardness in electronics was too profound to be overcome quickly; instead, they would make systematic use of radio counter-measures and so hope to nullify the West’s technological advantage. Naturally, NATO was keen to find out how the Soviet jamming equipment being developed worked, especially the frequencies on which it operated. On the basis of such intelligence, special equipment could be designed which would enable the RCM devices to be identified, attacked, and destroyed. However, as usual, ‘Dragon Return’ questioning produced no information on Soviet jamming devices. The only information obtained on them was received from defectors from the Soviet army and experience of regular Soviet jamming of BBC and Voice of America broadcasts. Occasionally, Soviet units jammed American radar transmissions and radio communications around the world. These efforts were meant to give the stations involved practice for jamming in war. UN forces’ communications were also jammed during the Korean War.¹⁰¹ ‘Dragon Return’ confirmed earlier evidence of Soviet backwardness in electronics. For example, Karl Steimel identified three weaknesses: the Soviets were copiers, particularly of American and British electronic equipment; they were more ¹⁰⁰ K. Whiting, Soviet Air Power (Boulder, Colo., 1986) 42. ¹⁰¹ Major Jackson, MI10C, MI10 Conference 1953, DEFE 41/126.

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interested in quantity of production than quality; and they were backward in fundamental respects. They had difficulty manufacturing efficient valves in quantity. The standard of the electronic apparatus manufactured in the USSR was generally poor. This was a fact of considerable military significance, for if such apparatus was to be put to military use it needed to be manufactured to a very high standard. With regard to Soviet scientific and technical personnel, Steimel, echoing a refrain heard from returnees across various specialisms, commented that their grasp of theory was excellent, but they suffered from a severe lack of knowledge of experimental techniques. For this reason, Steimel considered that the Soviet Union would be unable to wage an ‘electronic war’ for another four or five years (he was interrogated in 1952).¹⁰² The Germans’ information clearly influenced the Directorate of Scientific Intelligence, which, in the early 1950s, doubted that Soviet electronicists were as able or as well-trained as their Western counterparts.¹⁰³ That said, they were obviously making great efforts to overcome their backwardness. German know-how had been exploited, students were being trained in electronics in greater numbers, systematic use was being made of Western technical publications, and much research and development was being undertaken in such fields as propagation of electronic signals, valve design and manufacture, and component manufacture. Moreover, there was, by the early 1950s, greater use of electronic devices manufactured in the DDR. With assistance from all the sources available to them, German, American, and British, Soviet electronic engineers had clearly managed to improve the standard of the electronic devices in service with their armed forces. They had developed valves, magnetrons, and klystrons for all wavelengths. They had manufactured good centimetric radar, which could either be used at airfields, or as target-detecting gun or missile control equipment, or could serve as a weapon of electronic warfare in itself, jamming the enemy’s radio communications. They had reached the stage at which they could do without German help and produce original designs. In short, they had made much progress, but their electronics equipment was not yet the equal of the West’s.¹⁰⁴ Important institutes involved in research and development in electronics were also identified.¹⁰⁵

SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENT Although the Soviets succeeded for the most part in concealing their military research and development projects from the Germans, they could not conceal ¹⁰² STIB Interview Report No. 64 (Karl Steimel), DEFE 41/97. ¹⁰³ DSI/JTIC minutes, 18/11/1952, DEFE 41/76. For an indication that the CIA also thought the ‘Dragon Return’ intelligence on electronics valuable, see ‘Intelligence on the Soviet Bloc’, 31/3/1953, in Haines and Leggett, CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 36. ¹⁰⁴ Major Frost, MI10C, MI10 Conference 1953, DEFE 41/126. ¹⁰⁵ DSI to Director STIB, 22/4/1953, DEFE 41/18.

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their system of scientific and economic management. The returnees shed light on the workings of the Soviet economy and showed some of the obstacles which the command system put in the way of technological innovation. Their information shaped intelligence analysts’ understanding of Soviet science and engineering. Even in the 1980s Jack Vorona, the head of the Science and Technology Department of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, gave the same account of Soviet radar development after the Second World War as returnees such as Karl Steimel and Fritz Klaiber.¹⁰⁶ The Germans stressed Soviet engineers’ addiction to copying Western designs. Six electronics specialists questioned early in 1951 are good examples. They made points later made by others. They had been put to work in four different institutes concerned with electronics research: NII. 160, Fryazino; NII. 34, Leningrad; and NII. 11 and the Lenin Institute, Gorki. All stressed that Soviet engineers tended slavishly to copy Western designs. There were two main reasons for this: centralization and the importance of keeping to completion dates. All the institutes were controlled by the Ministry of Telecommunications Equipment in Moscow, which specified what was to be researched into and laid down completion dates for the work. Once a particular piece of equipment had been designed, permission to alter it had to be obtained from the Ministry in Moscow. This would take months. To experiment with a design therefore involved a substantial time cost. This time cost was unacceptable, since the Ministry took a dim view of failure to meet the completion date it had set. Compliance with this date was essential to meeting its production target; this production target was essential to the State Plan; and the Plan was the basis of the Party’s propaganda. In consequence, Soviet engineers preferred to copy existing Western designs which were known to operate satisfactorily. Copying them involved no risk. Such caution served the designers well; one source gave the example of an American altimeter being copied down to the last detail, winning the designer concerned a Stalin Prize. Their caution was reinforced by their sense of technical backwardness and huge admiration for Western (particularly American) equipment and technical publications. However, the conservatism which the system of scientific management encouraged held Soviet electronics back, discouraging the experimentation necessary to progress. It also held back the skills of Soviet electronic engineers, who had no incentive to make the modifications which would broaden their experience. They also received a much narrower technical education than did engineers in the West. Sources who had worked in other fields said the same. Helmut Gröttrup spoke of ‘outstanding rigidity in the Russian development planning. A time by which the work must be completed is fixed beforehand and nobody dare deny his ability to adhere to this programme. All would therefore report that they were ready at ¹⁰⁶ J. Tuck, High-Tech Espionage: How the KGB Smuggles NATO’s Strategic Secrets to Moscow (London, 1986), 113; STIB Interview Report No. 218, DEFE 41/116.

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the planned time although this might mean that they would have to fire rockets some of whose components were not ready for test . . .’¹⁰⁷ Like the electronicists, he maintained that in the field of rocketry, ‘Production consists mainly of copying’.¹⁰⁸ British Scientific Intelligence had concluded by the end of 1951 that the overriding imperative of fulfilling planned targets would make it more difficult for the Soviets to ‘succeed in, or even attempt, radically new [weapons] projects’ since this would require allocating resources to a project which might fail.¹⁰⁹ The six electronicists observed that scientific and technical journals, especially from the United States and Britain, were readily available at their institutes. Two of them, who had worked at different institutes, thought that Soviet electronics was so dependent on American technical publications that, if the supply were cut off, research in electronics would quickly come to a standstill. The McGraw Hill magazine ‘Electronics’ was stated to be the publication most prized by the Soviet engineers at both institutes.¹¹⁰ There was general agreement among the returnees that Western technical literature saved the Soviets years in research and development time. It accelerated development programmes by obviating the need for much basic research work; this point was made by Germans who worked in such fields as missile control systems,¹¹¹ other aspects of electronics,¹¹² aircraft design,¹¹³ and chemistry.¹¹⁴ Siegfried Günter remarked that it saved TsAGI the trouble of having to do much, otherwise necessary, R&D, to which scarce scientific, engineering, and technical personnel would have to be devoted. He estimated that Western technical publications saved the Soviets some two years in development time.¹¹⁵ TsAGI, though it had very capable people in every department, simply did not have enough well-qualified personnel to undertake all the tasks it would have to undertake, were Western technical literature not available. In Günter’s opinion, part of the reason for the USSR’s scientific backwardness was the lack of capable engineers. The percentage of good engineers was very small there, smaller than in the West, and although there were probably enough engineers for the principal weapons development projects, there were insufficient for technical progress in civilian life. Günter naturally believed that the post-war expansion of scientific education and practical training for engineers would increase the potential of Soviet engineering, but in the years immediately after the war Western technical literature had greatly facilitated technical progress, particularly in the field of aircraft development. The returnees in December 1950 from Fryazino and other electronics institutes were entirely right to point their interviewers towards failings in the Soviet ¹⁰⁷ Para. 220, Study of Soviet Guided Weapons, DEFE 44/3. ¹⁰⁸ Para. 306, DSI/JTIC Report No. 13, DEFE 44/2. ¹⁰⁹ Section 1, para. 19, DSI/JTIC(51)14, ‘Russian Research and Development’, 20/12/1951, DEFE 10/498. ¹¹⁰ DSI/JTIC(51)6, DEFE 41/153. ¹¹¹ STIB Interview Report No. 198 (Fritz Klaiber), DEFE 41/116. ¹¹² STIB Interview Report No. 64, DEFE 41/97. ¹¹³ STIB Interview Report No. 182, DEFE 41/102. ¹¹⁴ REG Report No. 882, DEFE 41/19. ¹¹⁵ Hufton to Turney, 3/11/1954, DEFE 21/14.

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system of economic and scientific management as the causes of the country’s backwardness in electronics. Like these six Germans, Richard Judy, in his pioneering study of the progress of Soviet computer technology up to 1968, found the cause of the USSR’s profound backwardness to be lack of motivation to improve computer technology. One root cause of this lack of motivation he considered to be the lack of competition between Soviet enterprises. He argued that, ‘In the Soviet Union, it is in no one’s personal or organizational interest to aggressively seek improvements in hardware, develop software that makes computers more accessible to more users, or furnish systems help.’ Another root cause, as the Germans said, was the overriding imperative, taking priority over technological improvements, was that planned production targets be met. This tended to discourage innovation. Judy noted that, ‘Until 1965, the criterion by which enterprises in the Ministry of Radio Industry were judged was the gross value of output. The annual plan was stated in terms of this criterion, and bonuses were linked to the fulfilment of the plan as stated.’ Such an approach simply did not suit a fast-developing field like computer technology. To avoid failing to meet the planned output targets, the managers of Soviet enterprises ensured that modest targets were set and took no risks in pursuing them, preferring to stick to tried-and-tested designs rather than introduce new products. Finding solutions to the difficulties which inevitably arise in the development of new products would consume resources and so jeopardize fulfilment of the plan. Thus, in Judy’s words, ‘the system has encouraged the production of obsolete machines (e.g., Ural-1 and -2 [computers]) long past the point when greatly superior technologies were available.’ Judy was able to analyse the reasons for the obsolescence of Soviet goods and the frustration of technological progress by the bureaucratic rigidities of the Soviet system with greater sophistication than the returnees, but the point made is the same: in the Soviet Union there was little incentive to improve the technology available. This was the reason for the country’s backwardness; it was not that Soviet computer scientists were lacking in skill. Quite the contrary, they were obviously very competent people.¹¹⁶ Helmut Gröttrup also made this point. His opinion was that, ‘The link between science and industrial output—development— is lacking.’¹¹⁷ Systematic copying, combined with the inherent flaws in the Soviet system of economic management, locked the USSR into permanent backwardness. Advances in Soviet computer technology only took place when Western advances were taken up. In Judy’s words, ‘All significant technological innovations in computer technology have occurred in the West.’ Western advances were taken up and copied by Soviet engineers using two means with which the returnees made British intelligence very familiar: Western technical literature and Western computers.¹¹⁸ ¹¹⁶ R. Judy, ‘The Case of Computer Technology’, in S. Wasowski (ed.), East–West Trade and the Technology Gap: A Political and Economic Appraisal (New York, 1970), 66–70. ¹¹⁷ Para. 305, DSI/JTIC Report No. 13, DEFE 44/2. ¹¹⁸ Judy, ‘The Case of Computer Technology’, 63–5.

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A key technological factor also operated to hold back the computer industry. This was the backwardness of Soviet electronics. Very capable scientists had very mediocre equipment to work with. The weakness of Soviet electronics also held back the machine-tools and several other industries. Backwardness in electronics held back the development of machine tools by denying designers suitably advanced control systems. Indeed, Anthony Sutton has characterized Soviet economic management as so incapable of transforming scientific ideas into new products and processes that it achieved no fundamental industrial innovation between 1917 and 1965. The USSR only improved its technology by making use of Western innovations.¹¹⁹ This lack of innovativeness meant that, between the 1950s and the 1970s, in such key industries as computers, iron- and steel-making, machine tools, electric power, and chemicals, Western technology remained superior to that of the Soviet Union.¹²⁰ Structural weaknesses affected Soviet military as well as civilian technology. Despite the high priority given to defence projects, David Holloway has found a rather slower rate of innovation in military technology in the Soviet Union than in the USA. For example, the rate of improvement in the accuracy of Soviet missiles during the Cold War was not half the American rate. American guidance systems and multiple-warhead technology were consistently superior to those of the USSR. To a considerable extent, Soviet missiles’ inferior accuracy and multiple-warhead capability resulted from weaknesses in electronics and computer technology.¹²¹ Holloway’s conclusion is consistent with intelligence obtained from Oleg Penkovsky. Penkovsky told his controllers that backwardness in electronics was hampering missile development. In particular, it was holding back the development of guidance systems for intercontinental ballistic missiles.¹²² Behind the Soviet addiction to copying lay a desire to save research and development time and resources. It was simpler, safer, cheaper, and quicker to steal Western ideas. The West had already paid the research and development costs. The USSR paid no royalties on its copy. No risks accompanied the development project, which had already proven successful in the West. However, copying had the same disadvantage whenever it was undertaken. It set the Soviet projects in question firmly on a Western research and development track. Thus, it tended to preserve a certain Western technological lead. By the time the Soviets had completed their copy, Western research and development had moved beyond the technological stage it represented. So ‘Dragon Return’ intelligence did reveal ways in which the command economy held the USSR in technological backwardness. Moreover, its addiction to copying Western ideas and the root causes of this endured throughout its life. Its inability to ¹¹⁹ A. Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, iii. (1945–65) (Stanford, Calif., 1973), p. xxv. ¹²⁰ R. W. Davies, ‘The Technological Level of Soviet Industry: An Overview’, in R. Amann, J. Cooper, and R. W. Davies, The Technological Level of Soviet Industry (New Haven, Conn., 1977), 41–5, 66. ¹²¹ Holloway, ‘Military Technology’, 472, 477, 486. ¹²² Schecter and Deriabin, Spy Who Saved the World, 70–3.

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be as innovative, technologically or otherwise, as the open, market-driven systems of the West condemned it to lasting dependence on Western science and technology. In the early 1980s, more than 160 weapons used by Warsaw Pact forces depended on Western military technology. Up to 70 per cent of all new weapons put into service by the Warsaw Pact in that period, such as the intermediate-range SS-20 nuclear missile, incorporated crucial illegally acquired and copied Western technology. By the mid-1980s, acquisition of Western computer technology was the highest priority of Soviet intelligence.¹²³

ORDER-OF-BAT TLE INTELLIGENCE ON SOVIET SCIENCE As far as hard intelligence on the USSR is concerned, the principal benefit of ‘Dragon Return’ was a wealth of information on the people and installations of the Soviet military-industrial complex: factories, research institutes, testing sites, test airfields,¹²⁴ and the connections between them. This supplemented similar information obtained from other sources. Every ‘Dragon Return’ interview report ended with a section on personalities of intelligence interest at work in the USSR, above all scientists, engineers, and MVD project managers. The information was used in identifying scientists who would be worth recruiting as spies or persuading to defect if they were allowed to travel outside the USSR, and in preparing an approach to them. From the adoption, in 1948, of the policy of enticing the defection of Soviet scientists, MI6’s scientific intelligence staff was responsible for such operations.¹²⁵ Information about the interests and skills of particular people also allowed the work of institutes with which they were connected to be guessed at. Among those named were the leading figures in Soviet atomic and rocket science and many others besides. Long lists of missile ‘personalities’ were prepared on the basis of this information, supplemented by more obtained by MI6 and from scientific journals. Because there was so little intelligence to go on, this information influenced thinking about the Soviet missile project. The Americans’ National Intelligence Estimate in 1955 concluded that the programme had to be a big one in the light of the number of ‘personalities and activities’ connected with it.¹²⁶ Gröttrup finally made Korolev’s importance as a designer clear, describing him as ‘an outstanding specialist on ballistic rockets’ and ‘definitely a future highlevel leader in this field’.¹²⁷ What was most striking about the Ostashkov Group’s commission to design a missile with a payload of 3,000 kilograms and a range of 3,000 kilometres was that it came from Ustinov, the Armaments Minister whom ¹²³ Tuck, High-Tech Espionage, 108–9, 137–8. ¹²⁴ REG Report No. 768, DEFE 41/19. ¹²⁵ Lang-Brown to Neville, 6/9/1949, DEFE 40/26. ¹²⁶ Prados, Soviet Estimate, 60. This was NIE 11-3-55, ‘Soviet Capabilities and Probable Soviet Courses of Action Through 1960’, 17/5/1955. ¹²⁷ Appendix B, DSI/JTIC Report No. 13, DEFE 44/2.

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Gröttrup correctly described as ‘the real power behind the rocket effort’.¹²⁸ This was rightly interpreted as indicating that there was political pressure to build long-range missiles. This information was used in two later CIA operations in particular. One was ‘Aquatone’, the U-2 overflight programme. The pilots were given precise briefing information about some, at least, of their targets, as the next chapter will show. The other operation was ‘Redskin’, under which CIA officers briefed businessmen, scientists, sportsmen, and others travelling to the Soviet Union and interviewed them on their return. Knowing the itinerary of the traveller, the CIA often gave him very precise briefing information and asked him to bring back information on a particular target. The interviews yielded much useful information, even on such highly secret matters as ICBM factories and deployment sites, SAM installations, long-range bombers, biological warfare, and space exploration.¹²⁹ ¹²⁸ Para. 370, DSI/JTIC Report No. 13, DEFE 44/2. ¹²⁹ Rositzke, Secret Operations, 57–60.

9 The Western Secret Services and the Wall THE CLOSURE OF THE BORDER Both as the refugees’ way out of East Germany and as the Western secret services’ way in, West Berlin was a thorn in the side of the DDR and USSR. Khrushchev’s ultimatum of 27 November 1958, which began the Second Berlin Crisis, was an aggressive attempt to pull it out. But the Western governments did not yield to Khrushchev’s demands and he did not want to provoke them into military or economic retaliation. In the early hours of 13 August 1961 he and Ulbricht took action both to stop the flight of refugees and to frustrate the subversive work of the Western secret services. The sectoral border in Berlin was closed using barbed wire; the operation had the codename ‘Rose’. By 6 a.m. West Berlin was completely fenced in. The declaration of the Warsaw Pact states announcing the closure claimed that its purpose was to prevent ‘subversive activity’ against them. There was some truth to this. Reinforced by concrete blocks, watchtowers, and minefields, this fence turned into the Berlin Wall. Ulbricht was so afraid that Western agents in the SED and government might learn of ‘Rose’ that the preparations were made in great secrecy by a small staff of highly trusted people directed by Erich Honecker. The KGB supported closing the border.¹ The MfS had had plans ready for it even before Khrushchev issued his ultimatum. The first Minister of State Security, Wilhelm Zaisser, is said in the early 1950s to have been contemplating the construction of a wall. The Minister for State Security in 1961, Erich Mielke, took an active interest in the refugee problem. He was a member of the Politburo working group which early in the year considered ways of stopping the flight of refugees.² Ulbricht had been pressing for the sectoral border to be closed since 1952. Indeed, he had also wanted the DDR to take control of the access routes between West Berlin and West Germany. The refugees escaped to West Germany by air. It was reasonable to expect that, if the air routes were cut, they would no longer try to reach West Berlin because they would no longer be able to reach West Germany from there. But this might provoke the United States to war. Khrushchev selected the solution to the refugee and subversion crises which would least antagonize the ¹ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 371–2. ² A. Wagner, Walter Ulbricht und die geheime Sicherheitspolitik der SED (Berlin, 2002), 432–4, 438.

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US: that of stopping the refugees from being able to reach West Berlin in the first place. He accepted less than he wanted and took an action which he knew involved heavy political costs. The Wall made clear the repressiveness of Communism. Consequently, its construction was a defeat for him.³ Nevertheless, action had to be taken. The situation was critical. As Ulbricht told a summit of Warsaw Pact leaders on 4 August 1961, the migration of skilled workers to the West had caused grave economic difficulties. The number of people working in the East German economy was in decline. To retain its people, the government was having to try to increase their standard of living by more than it could afford. To do this, it was having to buy goods from Western countries and thus run up debts with them. The West was succeeding in its aim of gaining influence over the DDR. Unrealistically, Ulbricht regarded the entire refugee stream as the work of the Western governments, and in his speech he denounced ‘the subversive work of the espionage and sabotage centres in West Berlin’. Western inducement of defection, in all its forms, had, he said, caused ‘serious harm’ to the DDR economy. He feared the West’s reaction to the border closure. Most of all, he feared that the economic embargo would be intensified and that the Federal Republic would repudiate its trade agreement with the DDR. Therefore, he also appealed to the Soviet Union and the other satellites for economic assistance if the West retaliated.⁴ Although the Western governments had long seen the closure of the border as a possibility, it nevertheless surprised them. The reason is that Khrushchev, having made a very threatening ultimatum which menaced their vulnerable access routes to West Berlin and thus their entire position in the city, resolved the crisis in a way which neither threatened their position in West Berlin nor was indicated by the ultimatum. In his ultimatum, the Soviet leader demanded negotiations which would lead to a peace treaty with the two Germanies (together representing ‘Germany’). In practice, the treaty would set the seal on Germany’s division for, by signing it, the Western Powers would recognize the DDR. Khrushchev also intended to drive them out of West Berlin and establish Communist control there. In theory, there would be three Germanies, for Khrushchev’s demand was that West Berlin become a ‘free’ and demilitarized city. In practice, however, as a demilitarized city it would be at the mercy of the DDR and USSR. Since it depended on external supplies of food and coal for its very existence, in reality it would be an East German satellite, because Khrushchev insisted that it would have to negotiate with the DDR for the concession of transit rights along access routes connecting it with the Federal Republic: it would not inherit those of the Allies. Khrushchev was also determined to drive the Western secret services out of West Berlin. Although in his ultimatum he said that there would be unhindered communication between the two of them, he added that the new ‘free’ city would ³ See R. Steininger, Der Mauerbau: Die Westmächte und Adenauer in der Berlinkrise 1958–1963 (Munich, 2001). ⁴ Harrison, Driving the Soviets, 116–21, 182–7, 192–207.

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have to undertake not to permit ‘any hostile subversive activity’ against East Germany. He also demanded the suppression of anti-Soviet organizations. If negotiations were not successful within six months, he threatened to sign a peace treaty with the DDR. This would give the latter control of all transport routes across and over its territory and, as he saw it, automatically end the Western Allies’ right of transit along them. More subtly than Stalin in 1948, he would have initiated a blockade of West Berlin. He threatened that the Warsaw Pact would respond with force if the West tried to break it.⁵ The Second Berlin Crisis thus seemed to resemble the first, and it was with this in mind that Khrushchev’s intentions were interpreted. Western governments racked their brains to work out what he intended to do. Every possibility was considered in the two and three-quarter years leading up to the border closure. At heart, the ultimatum was an aggressive attempt to settle the problem of West Berlin on terms favourable to the USSR. Two questions therefore had to be decided. The first was whether Khrushchev would really pursue the policy declared in the ultimatum. It indicated that he was determined to deprive them of their access routes. If they yielded, they would lose them. If they did not yield but he carried out his threat, they would also lose them, since the DDR would deny the Allies use of the access routes so as to stop the refugees’ flight. In either case, their access routes would be lost. Alternatively, Khrushchev might use some other means to stop the refugee stream. If he did, he would leave the Western Allies in the city and achieve much less than the ultimatum indicated he wanted. However, the DDR was bleeding to death. Western governments did not know what action would be taken; nor did they know when the blow would fall. But they saw clearly that something would be done. As matters turned out, their thinking was swayed too much by the ultimatum. However, this was reasonable: Khrushchev turned East–West relations upside down for three years with his ultimatum, and yet resolved the problem of West Berlin by another method altogether. The loss of their access routes was the worst imaginable result of the crisis and the West’s governments inclined towards a worst-case analysis. The Americans’ and West Germans’ view was that Khrushchev would most likely initiate a blockade. The CIA monitored the crisis carefully. Most of all it feared that the access routes would be cut. They could be cut easily and without using force. The air routes could be cut by making Allied flights to West Berlin very dangerous (for example, by electronic interference or by filling the air corridors with planes⁶). The land and water routes could simply be closed. All the routes were crucial for the population of West Berlin for, by the late 1950s, the ⁵ J. Schick, The Berlin Crisis, 1958–1962 (Philadelphia, Penn., 1971), 10–14, 19–23; J. Dunbabin, The Cold War: The Great Powers and their Allies (London, 1994), 211–15; CIA Current Weekly Intelligence Summary, 15/1/1959, in Steury, Front Lines, 435. ⁶ The East Germans contemplated such measures: see Uhl and Wagner, Ulbricht, Chruschtschow, 28, 68–9.

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Americans thought that it could no longer be sustained by an airlift alone. So a successful blockade was possible. By contrast, a complete closure of the sectoral border throughout the whole of Berlin seemed impossible, though, in retrospect, ‘unimaginable’ would have been a better word. The CIA concluded early in 1959 that ‘police, border guards, and workers’ militiamen could be posted at strategic points, but it would be impossible to seal the dividing line effectively. Instead, the Communists are likely to continue their tactics of intimidation, infiltration, and harassment’.⁷ Kennedy was more prescient, remarking to Walt Rostow shortly before the Wall went up, ‘Khrushchev is losing East Germany. He cannot let that happen. If East Germany goes, so will Poland and all of Eastern Europe. He will have to do something to stop the flow of refugees—perhaps a wall.’⁸ But, when he set out the ‘three essentials’ of his Berlin policy, on 25 July, he did not forbid the construction of a wall; however, he did insist that the Allies retain unhindered access to West Berlin. In the last phase of the crisis, between April and August 1961, CIA analysts expected Khrushchev to repeat what he had done between November 1958 and January 1959: demand a peace treaty which would end the Allied rights of access to West Berlin, give the DDR control over these routes, and thus end the exodus of refugees. Their reports stress the importance of preparing to break a blockade; they do not mention a wall. General war was considered very unlikely.⁹ The West German government thought the same. War would not serve Soviet interests as it might prompt the United States to use nuclear weapons. This left three possibilities: a complete blockade of West Berlin, as in 1948–9; a Soviet demand that either they or the DDR take control of the West Berlin airports, which would prevent refugees from being flown to West Germany; or the sealing of the border, perhaps by a wall. A blockade was the worst case and the most likely. The Allies would not concede control of Tegel, Tempelhof, and Gatow airports; the Soviets would realize this and would not favour this option. The sealing of the border was seen as unlikely, though Ulbricht’s denials in the summer of 1961 of any intention of building a wall meant that the prospect had to be taken seriously. So a blockade was expected and NATO military planning concentrated on ways of breaking it. The terms of Khrushchev’s ultimatum suggested one. Military intelligence proved very influential. There was much intelligence on the strength and movements of Soviet forces in East Germany and it indicated that a blockade was possible. Though the first blockade had failed, the cutting of land and water routes might this time be maintained for longer; it would do more damage to the West Berliners’ standard of living because they now lived so much better than they had in 1948; and there might not be the airlift capability to supply the city, as had ⁷ CIA Current Intelligence Weekly Summary, 5/2/1959, in Steury, Front Lines, 452. See also Dulles, Craft of Intelligence, 154. ⁸ Quoted in Harrison, Driving the Soviets, 192. ⁹ B. Stöver, ‘Mauerbau und Nachrichtendienste’, in Hertle et al., Mauerbau, 139–41; Uhl and Wagner, Ulbricht, Chruschtschow, 195–7; SNIE 2–61, ‘Soviet and Other Reactions to Various Courses of Action Regarding Berlin’, 13/6/1961, in Steury, Front Lines, 550–69.

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existed in the 1940s. This view was reached on the basis of intelligence reports not only of the BND but also of allied services.¹⁰ As so often, sharing of intelligence encouraged decision-makers to reach the same conclusions. Rumours of plans to prevent refugees from crossing into West Berlin did circulate. Only days before the border was closed, Western foreign ministers, meeting in Paris, discussed whether such a measure might provoke a popular uprising. All the Western Powers had warning of the closure of the sectoral border; it came from one of the SPD-Ostbüro’s sources in the DDR Interior Ministry. On 4 August the source was suddenly summoned to a meeting in the Ministry of Health at which preparations for the border’s imminent closure were discussed. In the Potsdam district alone 14,000 East German troops were in readiness for this; the police and workers’ militia there were under army control; and all leave for soldiers and policemen had been cancelled. The Ostbüro sent copies of the report to the BND and representatives of the three Western Powers. Gehlen rushed immediately with it to the federal government in Bonn. It had an electrifying effect on the mayor of West Berlin, Willy Brandt. Addressing a party meeting in Nuremberg on 12 August, he said that the Soviet Union was preparing ‘an attack on our people’; East Germans were fleeing because they ‘are afraid that the meshes of the Iron Curtain will turn to cement. Because they fear being locked inside a gigantic prison.’¹¹ But the closure of the entire sectoral boundary still surprised the West. The British deputy commandant later commented that, when the border was closed ‘the three Allied Commandants hadn’t the remotest idea what to do because we had no plans for the actual contingency which had arisen’.¹² The prospect of a blockade—the cutting of West Berlin’s access routes to West Germany—dominated their minds. During the last blockade, the sectoral border had remained passable. Even after the Wall was built, in September 1961, intelligence passed on by Penkovsky, albeit very speculative in nature, indicated that it was still possible that the Soviets might challenge Allied access rights and try to bring West Berlin under their control.¹³

PREPARING FOR KHRUSHCHEV ’S SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF WEST BERLIN

Intensified Espionage Khrushchev’s ultimatum of November 1958 made the situation in the DDR look threatening. Therefore, the Western secret services intensified their espionage. ¹⁰ F. J. Strauß, Die Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1989), 380–8. ¹¹ P. Merseburger, Willy Brandt 1913–1992: Visionär und Realist (Stuttgart, 2002), 393–5; H.-P. Schwarz, Die Ära Adenauer 1957–63 (Stuttgart, 1983), 427 n. I am grateful to Dr Arne Hofmann for bringing this report to my attention. ¹² J. Gearson, Harold Macmillan and the Berlin Wall Crisis, 1958–1962 (Basingstoke, 1998), 182–5. ¹³ Penkovsky, meeting no. 31, 22/6/1961, and SNIE 11-10/1-61, ‘Soviet Tactics in the Berlin Crisis’, 5/10/1961, in Steury, Front Lines, 611–16, 619–26.

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This was particularly true of the American services and the BND. Gathering military and political intelligence took priority over scientific intelligence. One of their initiatives was to create groups of agents, generally equipped with powerful radios suited to war conditions. Groups were formed so that the members could give support to one another; the controller would no longer be able to support them if the border were closed, if war broke out, or if the Allies pulled out of West Berlin. The groups would function independently of one another. For the most part, the agents hid the radios. They were tasked to report on all troop movements, on the popular mood, and especially on whether the armed forces had popular support. They were also to provide information on matters connected with this, such as the supply of foodstuffs and essential goods, and any signs of resistance. Until the border was closed, this information most of them supplied by secret writing in letters sent to cover addresses and by going to meet their controllers in West Berlin. Naturally, they were also meant to supply intelligence by radio if war actually came. A few transmitted intelligence by radio before 13 August 1961. The MfS was successful in arresting many of them, particularly ones working for the BND. Individual agents who did not form part of these groups were also provided with radio sets suitable for use in wartime, as well as with secret writing materials. This only represented an intensification of preparations they had been making for years. They prepared for war throughout the 1950s. Mielke reported to the Central Committee on these preparations in 1955 (see Chapter 5, p.144). The Org was even in the early 1950s preparing for war by laying ‘dead letter boxes’ and equipping agents with radio transmitters. In 1953 it even tried secretly to lay telephone cables between East and West Berlin.¹⁴ The Americans strengthened their clandestine presence in the DDR while there was still time, so that they would still be able to operate there if West Berlin were lost or the border closed. They recruited West Germans as agents who applied for asylum in the DDR. They recruited more sources among those who travelled between the two German states—railway workers, lorry drivers, and sailors on river and canal boats. They made approaches to East German sailors whose ships docked at harbours in West Germany. They stepped up approaches to scientists and other East Germans who visited West Germany. They supplied Poles and Czechs in West Germany with forged permits to travel to the DDR. Lastly, they made even greater use of the refugee stream. More refugees wrote to relatives and friends in East Germany, asking them to visit West Berlin. From mid-1959 they also sent well-trained spies, usually refugees from East Germany or further East, back into the Bloc to report on troop movements and military preparations. These people were taught how to overcome the border defences and carried false identity papers and weapons. Some carried out brief intelligence tasks; others were meant to stay in their target country and provide intelligence if war broke out. Some were flown to West Berlin and slipped into East Germany over the sectoral border. ¹⁴ Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 23–31.

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Others penetrated the defences along the inner-German border. They made other preparations for war as well. Spies in East Germany were told to find places suitable for use as airfields or dropping points so that partisan groups could be supplied.¹⁵

New Communication Methods The ultimatum made it clear that a solution to the refugee and West Berlin crises was imminent and the Western secret services had to be prepared for every eventuality. More stringent Soviet security measures had made spying more difficult during the blockade of 1948–9, though, crucially, movement between the two halves of the city had remained possible.¹⁶ That a further attempt might be made to blockade West Berlin was thereafter consistently in their minds, as the MfS learned when it interrogated arrested spies. The sectoral border was closed briefly in 1953, 1957, and 1960, which kept the danger alive in their minds.¹⁷ Moreover, they depended so heavily on an open border that they had to prepare for its closure. The CIA was ‘haunted’ by the prospect and even objected to the US government’s humanitarian distribution of food to East Germans in the summer of 1953 on the ground that the latter would rush to West Berlin to collect it, which would give the Soviets an excuse to close the border.¹⁸ It advised the administration in that year that ‘preparations for sealing off West Berlin from East Germany and East Berlin have been substantially completed’.¹⁹ So, though it considered a complete sealing of the border to be impossible, the CIA still thought that an effort might be made to close it, which might be effective enough to stop any significant traffic over it. Indeed, throughout the 1950s, as arrested spies told the MfS, the Western services had had this possibility in their minds and had made preparations. A spy of the unofficial West German Defence Ministry, the Blank Office, was told after the suppression of the June 1953 uprising that it planned to lay ‘dead letter boxes’ for couriers to fill and empty. This was to prepare for ‘a blockade of West Berlin’; it would enable intelligence to be transferred even if the sectoral border were sealed and spies could no longer reach West Berlin.²⁰ Gisela Zurth, spying for a West German service the MfS believed to be the West Berlin Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz, was likewise told in either 1956 or 1957 to create a ‘dead letter box’, just in case the ‘sectoral borders’ were sealed off. The verb used in the MfS ¹⁵ Neue Arbeitsmethoden westlicher Geheimdienste, MfS-HA IX 4350, 343; Einschätzung der Spionage- und Wühltätigkeit der imperialistischen Geheimdienste gegen die Deutsche Demokratische Republik, 21/11/1961, MfS-HA IX 4350, 262–4. ¹⁶ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 57; ORE 41–48, CIA, ‘Effect of Soviet Restrictions on the US Position in Berlin’, 14/6/1948, in Steury, Front Lines, 178–80. ¹⁷ Wagner, Sicherheitspolitik, 433; CIA Information Report, 18/6/1953, in Steury, Front Lines, 249. ¹⁸ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 178–80. ¹⁹ NIE-81, ‘Probable Soviet Courses of Action with respect to Germany through mid-1954’, 22/5/1953, in Steury, Front Lines, 238. ²⁰ Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1957, MfS-HA IX, MF-11171.

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report on this case, as in its reports on others, is abriegeln, which means to seal, cordon, or block off.²¹ Franz Brehmer, an important CIA spy, was told in April 1958, months before Khrushchev’s ultimatum, that he was no longer to come to West Berlin to meet his controller. Instead, he was to receive his instructions by radio and provide intelligence by ‘dead letter box’ or by secret writing in a letter. This decision, he was told, had been taken for security reasons. He was informed by radio of cover addresses to which to send reports. He used both methods to communicate intelligence until his arrest in 1959.²² MI6 also took precautions well before Khrushchev’s ultimatum. In 1959 the MfS arrested one of its spies, a housewife who spied on military targets. She took photographs using a camera concealed in a secret compartment in her shopping bag. She passed on her information both in letters to cover addresses and in meetings with her controller. During the winter of 1957–8 she received a message from her controller that ‘it was necessary to prepare for the possibility that the state and sectoral borders might be sealed’. If this happened, she was to pass on her intelligence by secret writing.²³ A military spy of the BND collected a radio set and transmitter from a ‘dead letter box’ in August or September 1958; he was to use it to transmit information if the border around West Berlin were closed (again, the word used is Abriegelung).²⁴ Then came the ultimatum. It galvanized all the Western services into action, particularly the CIA and BND.²⁵ An MfS report comments on the immediate reaction of Western intelligence officers to it: ‘Officers disturbed, confused— however, unlike politicians of the Western Powers [they] evaluated the situation relatively realistically—that means: comprehensive re-ordering of their operations.’²⁶ Above all, this meant arranging alternative means of communication to provide for all possible eventualities: the transformation of West Berlin into a ‘free’ city; the closure of the entire border around it (the DDR state border, which ran round most of the Western Sectors, and the sectoral boundary running between them and East Berlin); and war. They prepared for all three. Over the next several years, the MfS managed to arrest very many spies who had been notified of new communication methods and equipped accordingly. That an effort might be made to close the sectoral border was seen as a distinct possibility. Some spies arrested by the MfS had been told specifically that preparation was being made for this. The BND arranged with one of its spies that, in the words of one MfS report, ‘if the state border ²¹ Auswertungsplan, 13/4/1958, MfS-AU 253/59, (Band 2), 280; Schlußbericht, 5/3/1958, MfSAU 253/59 (Band 7), 43–4. ²² Oberstes Gericht der DDR, Strafsache gegen Brehmer und andere, 26/8/1959, MfS-AU 314/61 (Band 1); Bericht, 19/9/1958, MfS-AU 600/59 (Band 1a), 9–11; Vernehmungsprotokoll, MfS-AU 600/59 (Band 1a), 112–13. ²³ Tätigkeitsbericht für Dezember 1959, MfS-HA IX, MF-11195. ²⁴ Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1961, MfS-HA IX, MF-11211. ²⁵ Einschätzung der Spionage- und Wühltätigkeit der imperialistischen Geheimdienste gegen die DDR, 21/11/1961, MfS-HA IX 4350, 260. ²⁶ Neue Arbeitsmethoden westlicher Geheimdienste, MfS-HA IX 4350, 341.

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between the DDR and West Berlin were closed, he would be charged with leading a so-called BND headquarters on the territory of the DDR’.²⁷ However, there was also fear both of war and that West Berlin might be surrendered. Fearing that the Allied forces might be withdrawn and the city become a Communist satellite, intelligence units were transferred to West Germany, from where they could operate against the Bloc in safety. War was considered likely and the BND made great efforts to ensure that it received warning of it. Its spies were trained to send coded warnings of tension in postcards. Many ‘dead letter boxes’ were laid, particularly around Berlin and along the transit routes leading to West Germany.²⁸ It also agreed with its spies on two or three places in East and West Berlin where meetings could take place or ‘dead letter boxes’ created if the crisis led to special measures being taken. Paths for smuggling people across were made along the Demarcation Line and the sectoral boundary in Berlin. Some spies were issued with two-way radio sets. These were dangerous because the agents’ transmissions could be detected. Moreover, an MfS informer might learn that the agent had such a set. To reduce the chances of detection, the Americans and French gave their spies tape recorders on which they were to record their messages. The tape recorders played what was recorded fast, enabling the spies to transmit a message fast—ten times faster than normal. This made it difficult for the MfS to determine where the transmission had been made. The BND distributed transmitters which took no more than 20–30 seconds to transmit a standard message. Spies were also trained to encode transmissions. The radio transmitters and the ‘dead letter boxes’, particularly the former, were also meant to be used in wartime to convey intelligence.²⁹ The BND appointed some spies to act as ‘emergency radio operators’ (Ernstfallfunker). They would start transmitting only in an emergency, taking intelligence from the ‘dead letter boxes’ and passing it on by radio to West Germany.³⁰ The main problem was how controllers were going to communicate with spies if they could no longer meet in West Berlin. This would happen if any of the three eventualities came to pass. The main communication system put in place for this day was that the secret service would communicate by radio and the spy by secret writing in a letter. It was the communication system put into action after 13 August 1961. The secret service transmitted encoded instructions by radio at agreed times. Each spy identified his call number and took down and decoded his instructions. To send information, the spy wrote in invisible ink onto a letter specially prepared for him by the secret service. He encoded information which could lead to his identification. He signed the letter using a false name and sent it to a cover address, usually in West Germany or West Berlin, but also in other ²⁷ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1961, MfS-HA IX, MF-11217. ²⁸ Neue Arbeitsmethoden westlicher Geheimdienste, MfS-HA IX 4350, 341–60; MfS-AU 314/61 (Band 3), 54; Erfahrungsaustausch, 18/8/1959, MfS-HA IX 4350, 326–9; Heinert, Diplomarbeit, 2. ²⁹ Aufstellung über im Gebiet der DDR seit 1/1/1959 festgenommene Agentenfunker, 22/6/1959, MfS-HA IX 4350, 291–9; Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1961, MfS-HA IX, MF-11217; Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11221; Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11237. ³⁰ Heinert, Diplomarbeit, 23–4.

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countries like Denmark or Greece. This address was a very ordinary one. Spies were informed of cover addresses before the border was closed; they were also given special paper and trained and equipped to encode secret writing.³¹ Many were already sending intelligence by post (particularly those spying on the Soviet and East German armed forces). After the border closure, the overwhelming majority of spies did so—in 1965 94 per cent of the military spies in the Potsdam area.³² They continued to use the post until the end of the Cold War. Secret writing required that many collaborators be recruited among West Germans to receive the letters and pass them on. Often those who lived at cover addresses did not know that they were receiving letters for the BND. Some of the addresses were fictitious; in fact, the letters were collected by BND agents in the West German post office. The addresses were changed very frequently. The numbers of letters, postcards, and packages passing from East to West made it the safest method: it was impossible to examine all of them. By the 1980s, in an average year, more than 100 million letters were sent from the DDR and some 60 million from West Germany. The MfS’s reaction was even closer examination of the post.³³ Of course, secret writing had disadvantages. It was slow and the intelligence received by the secret service was often out of date. This was a problem when the information was of military movements; to monitor these, the BND had to use agents with radios or travelling spies.³⁴ Furthermore, secret writing allowed only a small amount of intelligence to be communicated. The secret service had to ensure that it could send messages to the spy. Shortwave converters were issued to spies which they could plug into radio sets, thus enabling them to receive shortwave transmissions at agreed times during the week. The BND distributed many of these, as HA IX’s reports for the years 1959–65 show. These reports summarize important cases (not all cases) of crimes such as espionage. They contain very many examples of agents who were suddenly told that the communication methods in use would have to change. For example, a husband-and-wife team spying on the docks in Wismar on behalf of the BND received a shortwave converter in the autumn of 1959. To communicate intelligence if war came, they also laid a ‘dead letter box’ in a nearby graveyard.³⁵ A spy working for the British and observing military bases and movements in the Dresden area had, by 1960, long been sending his information to West German addresses in secret writing; in the spring of 1960 he was given a converter to attach to a radio set so that he could receive instructions from MI6.³⁶ Alternatively, they were told to buy radio sets considered appropriate. Both the BND and American services told spies to buy ‘Ilmenau 210’ radios, which were ³¹ Arnold, Diplomarbeit, 13–15; Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 351–4; Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11226; Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11236. ³² Lapp, Diplomarbeit, Anlage, 7. ³³ Schwarz, Bis Zum Bitteren Ende, 33; E. Martin, Zwischenbilanz: Deutschlandpolitik der 80er Jahre (Stuttgart, 1986), 103–4; Dulles, Craft of Intelligence, 138. ³⁴ Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 46. ³⁵ Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11200. ³⁶ Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11206.

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sold in East German shops. After the border closure the American spy in the NVA’s telephone exchange was supplied with money with which to buy one of these radios. This may have led to her downfall, since it may have been possible for East German detector vans to establish which frequency was being listened to. The HA IX’s reports refer to a number of arrested spies who used this type of radio.³⁷ The CIA eventually learned that some models were not secure, and told agents to buy Grundig radio sets because detection equipment could not establish which frequency a listener had tuned in to. There is some evidence that the BND did the same. The HA IX’s reports refer to many cases of arrested spies who had been equipped to communicate differently. Some show the shift to radio transmission and secret writing. An engineer working in a factory in Oranienburg which manufactured infra-red devices was, early in 1961, trained by his American controller in the use of chemicals for secret writing and the reception of radio transmissions.³⁸ A spy recruited in August 1960 and told to join the NVA was given secret writing equipment with which to send his reports to Hamburg cover addresses, and a radio with which to receive instructions from the BND.³⁹ Military intelligence had to be passed on quickly. A BND military spy in Magdeburg was given a converter in the summer of 1958. In December he was given a radio set, allowing him to transmit; he was told to use it for communication if the borders were closed.⁴⁰ Other cases show that the Western services were preparing for all three possible eventualities: war, withdrawal from West Berlin, and the closure of the sectoral border. In the Leipzig area a BND spying team made up of a wartime intelligence officer and his ex-wife supplied military intelligence. The husband was twice told to prepare for war by laying ‘dead letter boxes’ in the vicinity of Leipzig—the first time in 1956 and the second time in 1960. Shortly before his arrest, in May 1960, his controller contacted him to say that preparation had been made for a possible Allied withdrawal from West Berlin: the controller had laid a ‘dead letter box’ there. The explanation given was that, even if West Berlin became a free city, it would be easier for any spy to reach than West Germany. The spy was also told that he would be sent a shortwave converter.⁴¹ Two BND military spies in Groitzsch, another married couple, were told at the start of 1959 to lay ‘dead letter boxes’ in their area and in West Berlin, to prepare for the eventuality that West Berlin might become a ‘free’ city. In mid-1959 they were given a shortwave converter and codebooks with which to decode the messages transmitted. The wife introduced her brother to the BND controller; the brother was recruited and ³⁷ Tätigkeitsbericht für Dezember 1961, MfS-HA IX, MF-11219; Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11221; Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11226; Tätigkeitsbericht für September 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11228; Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11237; Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11244. ³⁸ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11250. ³⁹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11205. ⁴⁰ Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11206. ⁴¹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11200.

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run under the codename ‘Krause’. The controller informed ‘Krause’ that, to provide for a closure of the entire border around West Berlin, he was to be trained as a radio operator.⁴² An American spy whose house lay right next to the sectoral border was given a radiotelephone with a range of 3,000 metres in March 1959. The spy, codenamed ‘Beethoven’, was told that she should use it if the border were closed. She was also sent parts of a radio set so that she could transmit intelligence if war broke out.⁴³ The Second Berlin Crisis lasted long enough for some spies to be prepared twice for the loss of access to West Berlin. One spy, representative of several cases in the HA IX’s reports, was supplied in 1959 by the BND with a radio transmitter adapted for rapid transmission. Early in 1961 he was told to destroy it and was given a newer model.⁴⁴ The new communication methods were tried out before the border was closed. Most is known about the BND’s preparations. In its case, the communication of intelligence other than by meeting in West Berlin or elsewhere—and chiefly by secret writing—had already been widely tried out before August 1961; in part, it had started in earnest. Some spies were receiving instructions by radio by 1960 at the latest.⁴⁵ Some American spies had also started communicating intelligence by secret writing by 1960.⁴⁶ In the MfS’s view, when the border was closed the BND was the best-prepared of all the Western services for the new conditions for spying. By contrast, the CIA claims that it was.⁴⁷ Naturally, some of the BND’s precautions turned out to be futile. Measures such as the establishment of stations under cover in West Berlin and the laying of ‘dead letter boxes’ there had been designed to prepare for its enforced withdrawal from the city and to enable secret operations there to continue. However, it did not have to leave it. THE IMPACT OF THE WALL The border closure had a profound impact on spying. No East German could any longer reach West Berlin without passing through border controls. Most could not reach it at all. Nor could West Germans enter East Berlin or the DDR without doing the same. Such human traffic as took place did so with Communist permission. Thus the Wall largely deprived the Western services of their two greatest assets: the refugee stream; and West Berlin. Consequently, it was now harder to identify and recruit spies, and much harder to communicate with them. Flight to the West was now very difficult and only a few made it there. So far fewer East Germans could be named as spy candidates by refugees. One response was to ⁴² Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11206. ⁴³ Aufstellung über im Gebiet der DDR seit 1/1/1959 festgenommene Agentenfunker, 22/6/1959, MfS-HA IX 4350, 293. ⁴⁴ Tätigkeitsbericht für März 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11234. ⁴⁵ Arnold, Diplomarbeit, 6; Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1960, MfS-HA IX, MF-11196; Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11237. ⁴⁶ Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11236. ⁴⁷ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 386.

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target people named before the border was closed. Another was to identify promising spies—people living near the Defence Ministry in Strausberg, for example—by intercepting phone calls made to West Germans from that district. Then the West Germans who received these calls were used to recruit the callers. Intercepted letters yielded the same kind of information.⁴⁸ The huge number of spy candidates named by an army of refugees had enabled the Americans to implement their policy of mass recruitment. Mass recruitment therefore ended in August 1961, though the BND continued thereafter to run a large network of spies.⁴⁹ The Wall also ended the heyday of mass interrogation of refugees for vast quantities of economic, political, scientific, and technical intelligence. Luring East Germans who visited West Berlin into spying, as the Kulturelle Hilfe had done, was now only possible on a small scale. Since most East Germans could no longer reach the West, the Western secret services were forced to send Westerners into the DDR (or another Bloc State) to recruit and train spies and supply them with spying equipment. Without spying equipment, money, and instructions, they would soon become useless. It was harder after 13 August 1961 to do all three. Before then, they had been trained by their controller in West Berlin. Thereafter, in part, training had to be done in writing. Written instructions were left for spies in ‘dead letter boxes’ or sent by post; or instructions were transmitted by radio.⁵⁰ They had to be very detailed. One spy working for the Americans received, via a ‘dead letter box’, a thirty-six-page set of instructions for spying on the Soviet armed forces.⁵¹ By 1963 or 1964 the Americans were supplying military spies with an instruction book containing pictures of all the missiles, tanks, weapons, and marks of rank which they were asked to recognize.⁵² The Western services were used to exploiting visitors to a Communist state. Several years earlier, in the mid-1950s, they had abandoned direct infiltration of agents in favour of debriefing travellers to the USSR. However, the MfS was in a strong position to defeat these operations. Western agents applying to enter the DDR could be examined very carefully before permission was given. Reliance on Westerners who could travel to the DDR gave the MfS greater opportunity of infiltrating its informers into the Western networks, since it could make available to the Western services suitable candidates—who were reporting to it. It was much harder for betrayed agents to flee to the West; so the MfS had better chances of ‘turning’ them in return for offering them their freedom. The DDR’s representatives abroad could be—and were—targeted by the Western services for recruitment. However, the MfS selected them carefully, conducting a thorough background ⁴⁸ Schmidt-Eenboom, Schnüffler ohne Nase, 61–3. ⁴⁹ Lapp, Diplomarbeit, 3. ⁵⁰ Ibid., 19; Hauptmann Radzuweit, Diplomarbeit, ‘Die politisch-operative Zusammenarbeit mit IMF aus dem Operationsgebiet und der sich daraus ergebende Nutzeffekt bei der Bearbeitung des Bundesnachrichtendienstes durch die aüßere Spionageabwehr’, 14/9/1970, MfS-JHS-MF-GVS55/70, 51. ⁵¹ Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11242. ⁵² Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11250.

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check, preparing them to resist any approach, and recruiting many as informers.⁵³ Consequently, its ability to manipulate the human traffic between the German states gave the Ministry marvellous scope for double-agent operations. Very importantly, East Germans’ lack of access to West Berlin made it much more difficult for the spy to pass on his intelligence to his controllers. His new communication method—secret writing—allowed less information to be transferred.⁵⁴ From now on, it was more difficult for scientists to defect; though they were allowed to attend international conferences and participate in exchange programmes, their families remained trapped behind the Wall. Wives and children would either have to be supplied with false papers or smuggled out in a vehicle. Such operations were dangerous. Although Ulbricht’s and Khrushchev’s main reason for closing the border was their determination to keep the DDR in being, they were not blind to the Wall’s security benefits. Though West Germany still offered considerable opportunities for intelligence collection, West Berlin was no longer a uniquely valuable asset. The CIA greatly reduced its staff in the city. Taking advantage of trade going through the port, the Hamburg station became the main base for operations against the DDR.⁵⁵ With the border closure the East German Communists closed the gap in the security screen which they had built around the people they dominated. The loss of their ideal espionage base was less of a blow to the American services than to the others. From 1960 the Americans had much less need of human sources in the Soviet Bloc, since their satellite reconnaissance programme yielded intelligence in unprecedented quantity, greatly reducing the need for human espionage. A single satellite could collect more intelligence than any conceivable number of spies: KH-1, on its first mission, took photographs of 1.5 million square miles of the once ‘denied areas’. Reconnaissance satellites excelled at providing technical intelligence and supplied a wealth of information on weapons which had been deployed or were in testing. For example, they passed over all the USSR’s missile launching sites and photographed the missiles being tested there. They were also very suited to gathering military intelligence and providing warning of attack: the deployment and movements of armed forces and the nature of their weapons, vehicles, and equipment could all be observed from space—with growing clarity as the satellites’ camera lenses were improved.⁵⁶ From the technology photographed, the level of scientific advancement of the target country could be estimated. However, human spies were still needed. Space-based cameras could only photograph what already existed and was visible. They could not photograph what was still in the early stages of development or only an idea or an equation in the mind of a scientist working in a highly secret research institute. To obtain such ⁵³ Wolf, Man Without a Face, 99. ⁵⁴ Arnold, Diplomarbeit, 4–5, 19; Kurze Einschätzung der im Jahre 1961 erzielten Untersuchungsergebnisse in der Bearbeitung von Spionageverbrechen, 9/1/1962, MfS-HA IX 4350, 233. ⁵⁵ Eichner and Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, 93, 111–12. ⁵⁶ See K. Ruffner (ed.), CORONA: America’s First Spy Satellite (Washington, DC, 1995).

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secrets, as well as samples of weapons, human spies had still to be recruited. Henceforth, the Americans also had much less need of East German sources who could report on the USSR. Satellites gathered intelligence on the USSR directly and kept watch on the DDR as well. Nevertheless, the difficulty of running spies in the Bloc States is one reason why in the 1960s the CIA and MI6 gave more attention to developing states and less to Europe.⁵⁷ Third World states were less centralized, less concerned with security, and much easier to penetrate. The Soviet-style police state was a very hard nut for a Humint service to crack. The Western services were not deprived of all their assets. Large-scale recruitment remained possible because of the multiplicity of connections between the two German peoples. The main method of recruitment after August 1961 was to use West Germans to try and recruit their East German relatives, friends, and business partners. This forced the Western services—largely the BND and CIA— to enlist the services of West German agents who could identify a promising source, make the recruitment, and give support to the spy. This altered the structure of their agent network considerably for, before 1961, most of the Western spies run against the DDR had been East Germans. The BND was best placed to recruit West Germans and, unsurprisingly, in the 1960s it increasingly took the leading role in spying on the DDR.⁵⁸ The BND was forced to use its fellowcountrymen on a scale which is very unusual for a foreign intelligence service; this was the effect of the Soviet police state and the Wall on it. It also had to rely more after August 1961 on people motivated by money rather than politics.⁵⁹ However, the Western services had exploited cross-border connections in the 1950s; this was not an innovation. Their recruitment methods remained the same: what changed were the opportunities for them. The fundamental change was in their communication methods. It was now riskier for a spy to communicate intelligence. This communication was very vulnerable to conscientious counter-espionage work by the MfS. Like recruitment, it had largely taken place in West Berlin. Now, again like recruitment, it had to take place largely in East Germany. This strengthened the MfS’s hand. The spy’s letter bearing secret writing had generally to be posted in the DDR. The MfS could intercept it, identify the cover address as one used by a secret service, and uncover the secret writing. A radio message transmitted by the spy could be detected and located by the MfS. The two other ways of passing intelligence to the controlling service—meeting a courier or filling a ‘dead letter box’ which a courier emptied— also took place on East German soil. The MfS could identify a courier or ‘dead letter box’ and put him or it under surveillance. This might lead them to the spy. Even some radio transmissions to the spy proved to be insecure because the MfS was sometimes capable of identifying the frequency to which East Germans were listening. In short, the spy was now easier to identify.⁶⁰ In the words of one MfS ⁵⁷ Marchetti and Marks, CIA, 384–6. ⁵⁹ Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 46, 55.

⁵⁸ Lapp, Diplomarbeit, 3. ⁶⁰ Arnold, Diplomarbeit, 4–6.

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counter-intelligence officer, the communication system was, ‘the weakest link in [the chain of ] espionage activity and thus the principal link to work on in trying to expose people suspected of spying’.⁶¹ Passing intelligence on is inherently less secret than obtaining it. For this reason, the Western secret services constantly tried to improve their communication methods. The methods described above were used for the rest of the Cold War.⁶² In one respect the Wall assisted the recruitment of spies. By making flight very difficult, it gave East Germans an incentive to spy. If they wanted to escape and thought they might fail if they attempted it on their own, there were two possibilities: either they could contact Fluchthelfer (flight assisters), who, based mainly in West Berlin and West Germany, helped East Germans to escape; or they could do a deal with a Western secret service. The deal would be that, if the East German spied for a while, it would arrange his escape and that of his family; he would also be compensated for the loss of his property. The defectors would escape by using identity papers which documented them as foreigners (usually West Germans). The documents needed were passports and permits allowing the bearer to visit the DDR, which would be forged by the secret service and supplied secretly to the defectors. One who chose this way out quite soon after the Wall was built was the nuclear physicist Heinz Barwich, the returnee who, on his return to the DDR, had become director of the Central Institute for Nuclear Research at Rossendorf, near Dresden. In 1957 he brought East Germany’s first nuclear reactor into operation. (In 1959, on release from a British prison, Klaus Fuchs became his deputy.) Barwich was a Socialist and when he returned to Germany in 1955 he was keen to play his part in creating a socialist society. However, he lost faith in Soviet-style ‘real existing Socialism’ and came to despise the SED and DDR. The Wall played a decisive part in convincing him that he had to defect: it trapped him in a society which he saw as unacceptably unfree and which offered little to his children. As one of East Germany’s leading scientists, who numbered important Soviet scientists among his friends, he was allowed, even after August 1961, to travel to conferences outside the DDR. He could even take his wife with him. But his children remained behind and served as hostages to ensure his return. Barwich’s time in the USSR had made him very familiar both with the methods of the Western secret services and with the counter-espionage practice of the KGB. Above all, he had realized that, even from Sukhumi, it was possible to communicate secretly, using secret writing, with people in West Germany, either by writing to them directly, or indirectly via correspondents in East Germany. The KGB’s examination of the post was not strict enough to prevent this. In 1961, disenchanted with the DDR, ⁶¹ Heinert, Diplomarbeit, 1. ⁶² Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 114–18; Heinert, Diplomarbeit, 13–14. See Adams, Sellout, 95–6, and B. Weiser, A Secret Life (New York, 2004), 229–30, for descriptions of the special high-speed electronic transmitters built by the CIA for Dmitri Polyakov, its spy in the GRU, and Ryszard Kuklinski, its spy in the Polish Defence Ministry.

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he returned to the Soviet Union, becoming deputy director of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna. Within a year of the Wall’s construction, Barwich and his wife had resolved to defect to the West. In June 1964 they returned to Dresden, where Barwich resumed the directorship of the Central Institute. Three months later, on 6 September 1964, he did indeed make a sensational defection at the third UN ‘Atoms for Peace’ Conference in Geneva. On the same day his wife used forged West German identity papers to cross from East to West Germany. Two of Barwich’s children tried to escape at another checkpoint but were arrested. Relying on the statements made by these two in interrogation, the MfS concluded that Barwich had been recruited by an American secret service in about September 1962. This service was probably the CIA: the penetration of Dubna formed part of its strategic mission. The MfS suspected that the approach had been made at a conference in Vienna that month. It might well have been made by a returnee based in West Germany who also attended the conference. For the next two years Barwich sent intelligence from Dubna to his children in Dresden, using negative film and secret writing in letters and books; they sent these on to West Germany. He also sent intelligence using secret writing from both Dubna and Dresden to a cover address in the West.⁶³ Barwich’s main value will have lain in the information on nuclear scientists throughout the Bloc which he could provide. He defected just before the first Chinese atomic test and had met many Chinese scientists at Dubna. He was very well acquainted with many Soviet scientists and the MfS thought that this information would be very useful to Barwich’s controllers. He gave some information on scientists to a sub-committee of the United States Senate, which questioned him in secret session in December 1964. The record of the session was published in May 1965. He also assured the sub-committee that American nuclear science was ahead of that of the USSR, particularly in the experimental field. Indeed, some of the questions put to him indicate that the sub-committee regarded Soviet science as inefficiently managed; perhaps it had read some ‘Dragon Return’ intelligence.⁶⁴ Barwich was not alone in choosing this way of escaping. An engineer in a research institute for shipping technology agreed soon after the border closure to provide intelligence in return for forged papers for himself and his wife.⁶⁵ The post was once again an essential source of information. For instance, after the Wall was built an engineer in a vehicle factory in Berlin wrote to an old friend living in West Germany telling him that he was desperate to escape. The friend, who had left East Germany before August 1961, wrote back saying that a lady friend of his would pay a visit. In October 1963 she duly presented herself at the engineer’s ⁶³ Abschlußbericht, 7/8/1967, MfS 10660/67 (Band 11), 97–104; Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11253; Gutachten, 25/6/1965, MfS-AOP 10660/67 (Band 5), 23; Williams, Klaus Fuchs, 176. See P. Maddrell, ‘The Scientist Who Came In from the Cold: Heinz Barwich’s Flight from the GDR’, Intelligence and National Security, 20/4 (2005), 608–30. ⁶⁴ ‘Nuclear Scientist Defects to United States’, US Senate Sub-committee on Internal Security hearing, 15/12/1964, 17–34, 43–5; Barwich and Barwich, Rote Atom, 49–50, 239–50. ⁶⁵ Tätigkeitsbericht für September 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11228.

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front door. In fact, she represented an American secret service and offered him exfiltration in return for spying. He agreed. Soon afterwards, he was visited by a courier, a West German and director of the external relations department of the Technische Hochschule in Braunschweig, who handed over spying equipment.⁶⁶ Espionage in return for exfiltration was a standard method of the Western secret services for the rest of the Cold War. The Wall had one further benefit for the West. By deepening Germany’s division, it not only increased the DDR’s security it also increased the West’s. The Western services themselves profited: it was henceforth more difficult for the MfS to identify their officers. Before August 1961 this had been easy since some of the spies who had met their controllers in West Berlin had been reporting to the MfS. But these personal meetings were largely ended by the Wall and many of this generation of agents were lost. The new generation was not recruited by intelligence officers but by intermediaries. Moreover, the MfS’s foreign intelligence service, the HVA, and the KGB had infiltrated many of their agents into West Germany by sending them over as refugees. The sheer number of refugees had protected them from discovery. However, few people were now able to come over from the East and the Bf V could examine more carefully those who did. Even the MfS’s counter-espionage divisions had to make more use of informers in West Germany and West Berlin. Such people would not have to undergo the Bf V’s security checks. To maintain its connection with them, the MfS would likewise have to make less use of the personal meeting. It called the use of spies abroad ‘offensive counter-espionage’; the Wall forced the counter-espionage service to make use of such people to an unusual degree.⁶⁷ RUNNING SPIES AFTER 13 AUGUST 1961

Intelligence Responses to the Border Closure The Wall meant that those dissatisfied with life in the DDR could no longer leave it. Therefore, it was reasonable to assume that there might be a popular uprising like that of 17 June 1953. The CIA and BND sent instructions by radio to their agents, telling them to find out whether angry crowds were massing and whether troops were on the move. The CIA also sent Americans into East Berlin to see what was happening.⁶⁸ A further surprise of 1961 was that no uprising took place. Spies were quickly infiltrated over the inner-German border to gather military intelligence.⁶⁹ Some of these people were East German refugees, armed with false ⁶⁶ Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11247. ⁶⁷ Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 48. ⁶⁸ Stöver, ‘Mauerbau und Nachrichtendienste’, 142–5; Tätigkeitsbericht für August 1961, MfSHA IX, MF-11215; Tätigkeitsbericht für Dezember 1961, MfS-HA IX, MF-11219; Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11229. ⁶⁹ Kurze Einschätzung der im Jahre 1961 erzielten Untersuchungsergebnisse in der Bearbeitung von Spionageverbrechen, 9/1/1962, MfS-HA IX 4350, 233–4; Einschätzung der Spionage- und Wühltätigkeit der imperialistischen Geheimdienste gegen die DDR, 21/11/1961, MfS-HA IX 4350, 270.

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identity papers. Some had left the DDR before the border was closed; some after. They acted as couriers, or as spies, or both. One had left the DDR in May 1961. He had served for two years in the NVA and was interrogated by the Americans about it. They recruited him and trained him to spy on military bases. He was also to report on the public’s attitude to the SED regime. He then returned to the DDR. On his arrest, he was found to have on him not only a false identity card but also a forged permit to enter the 5 kilometre exclusion zone along the border. The Americans were presumably looking for gaps in the border defences.⁷⁰ Another refugee managed to escape across the border in February 1963. Again, he was interrogated by the Americans in West Berlin and Oberursel. He agreed to settle in West Berlin, go to the DDR using false papers, and spy.⁷¹ A refugee who managed to escape across the border near Potsdam in October 1961 was recruited by the French and sent back into the DDR using a West German identity card. There he recruited a spy and acted as his courier.⁷² The Americans planned to exfiltrate some spies to West Berlin using false identity papers. False passports (Austrian, for example) and instructions were smuggled into the DDR for this purpose.⁷³ They also planned to smuggle people out permanently by car, using the transit routes. Couriers were sent from West Germany along the transit routes to East Berlin to find out how rigorous the checks were and how close was the surveillance of parking places.⁷⁴ One American unit, known to the MfS as ‘X-10’ commissioned Fluchthelfer in West Berlin to smuggle East Germans out in lorries along the transit routes.⁷⁵ People who managed to escape over the inner-German border were questioned closely about the route they had taken; they were also offered payment for bringing others out of the DDR.⁷⁶ The West Berlin Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz made false identity papers available so that people could escape to the Western sectors.⁷⁷ At least one group of Fluchthelfer in West Berlin introduced those smuggled out to the Allied interrogators at Marienfelde so that they could be questioned like all the other refugees.⁷⁸

Communication after 13 August 1961 As soon as the border was closed, the Western services put into operation the communication system they had prepared for this day. The HA IX’s monthly reports for the years 1961–5 show that they were successful in staying in touch ⁷⁰ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1961, MfS-HA IX, MF-11217. See also Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11250. ⁷¹ Tätigkeitsbericht für September 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11240. ⁷² Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11241. ⁷³ Tätigkeitsbericht für September 1961, MfS-HA IX, MF-11216; Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11226. ⁷⁴ Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11235. ⁷⁵ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11241. ⁷⁶ Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1965, MfS-HA IX, MF-11259. ⁷⁷ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11250. ⁷⁸ Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11244.

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with many agents. Some examples will be given below. Thanks to its extensive preparations, the BND was quick to resume contact with its network.⁷⁹ Of more than 100 agents, the CIA had resumed contact with more than 25 by November 1961. By August 1962 the number had risen to more than 30 and the re-activation of more was planned.⁸⁰ Conditions for spying were now harder. Communication and recruitment usually took place in the DDR, where the MfS could undertake very extensive surveillance. Moreover, to communicate the spies needed to be supplied with paper for secret writing, chemicals both for secret writing and for making it visible, codebooks for encoding and decoding texts, radios for receiving messages, and radio transmitters. They also needed letters written for them by the secret service. These gave no clue to the spy’s identity; the spy wrote the secret message on them. To spy, military spies needed radar detection devices and diagrams showing the Soviet tanks and weapons they were to look out for. Special containers with secret compartments in which stolen documents could be placed were also needed.⁸¹ The BND and CIA saw that lack of contact with their controllers might make agents feel isolated and give up spying. It was essential to resume contact with them and tell them what to do. Those who had not been trained in the new communication methods needed to be taught them.⁸² As planned, the Americans chiefly gave instructions by radio. Money and spying equipment were sent to agents by courier.⁸³ The courier placed the package in a ‘dead letter box’ which was used only once; the spy was informed by radio where it was. It was also keen to organize meetings with its spies either in the West or in other Bloc States. False papers provided one way of doing this. The spy responsible for the East German and Soviet armed forces’ telephone lines in the central telephone exchange was supplied with money, codebooks, secret writing paper, and chemicals by means of a courier and a ‘dead letter box’. She received instructions in weekly radio transmissions from her controller. She was also given a forged West Berlin identity card so that she could cross over to the Western sectors. There she was trained in the use of secret writing equipment. Twice a week, she sent intelligence to cover addresses in West Berlin. She was arrested in July 1962.⁸⁴ Couriers supplied more sources with alternative communication equipment and informed them of the location of a ‘dead letter box’. The Americans did make use of the post, packages, and couriers who went directly to the spy,⁸⁵ but less use than the BND. A spy for an American service received a package containing ⁷⁹ Arnold, Diplomarbeit, 6. ⁸⁰ Dispatch, Chief of Base, CIA Berlin, ‘Berlin since 13 August’, 6/11/1961, in Steury, Front Lines, 630–1; memorandum on Berlin, 14/9/1961, in Steury, Front Lines, 605; Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 384–7. ⁸¹ Lapp, Diplomarbeit, 18–23; Tätigkeitsbericht für März 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11234. ⁸² Schwanitz, Diplomarbeit, 29. ⁸³ Tätigkeitsbericht für August 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11239; Tätigkeitsbericht für September 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11252. ⁸⁴ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11226. ⁸⁵ Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11242; Tätigkeitsbericht für August 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11251.

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codebooks, secret writing paper, and money in May 1962; it was attached with magnets to a car which had driven in from West Berlin.⁸⁶ Another American spy was visited in March 1962 by a courier who handed over money and collected photographic films. That August he received money with which to buy a motorbike. It was concealed in sausage sent to a relative in East Berlin.⁸⁷ Those who knew and could make contact with East Germans would often be refugees themselves. One American courier, arrested in 1965, had a number of traits characteristic of clandestine operations in divided Germany. Himself a refugee from East Germany, after the border closure he joined a group of Fluchthelfer trying to smuggle East Germans to freedom. There must have been a tipper for the Americans in the organization, for in 1964 he was recruited by an American secret service to act both as a courier and spy. Using a forged West German passport, he travelled to East Berlin. From there, using forged DDR identity documents, he travelled round it, trying to recruit an old friend as a spy and filling a ‘dead letter box’.⁸⁸ The French also sent instructions and spying equipment by post.⁸⁹ In January 1962, one French spy received a letter resuming the connection. It informed him of a cover address in West Berlin to which he should write, sending information. Sent with it was a packet of cigarettes. In the packet were two glass tubes. One bore a couple of pipettes filled with chemicals with which to make invisible ink; the other contained instructions for doing this.⁹⁰ The French also sent West German couriers into the DDR to deliver supplies to spies, inform them of cover addresses, and collect intelligence.⁹¹ The BND tried hard to maintain the link with its agents, sending couriers into the DDR, often to meet agents personally, and using the post. Fatefully, it was less careful than the CIA. It made much more use of the post than the Americans or any other service. It sent much spying equipment, instructions, and money by post, concealing them in parcels containing clothes and foodstuffs.⁹² They were also hidden in tools, toys, and the sides of cardboard boxes and cases. Some of the letters and parcels contained instructions on tiny negative photographic film.⁹³ Instructions were also sent by letter using codes and secret writing.⁹⁴ Special ⁸⁶ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11226. See also Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11247. ⁸⁷ Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11229. ⁸⁸ Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1965, MfS-HA IX, MF-11266. ⁸⁹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11249. ⁹⁰ Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11221. ⁹¹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11233; Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1965, MfS-HA IX, MF-11259. ⁹² Heinert, Diplomarbeit, 14–15; Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11235; Tätigkeitsbericht für August 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11239; Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1964, MfSHA IX, MF-11244. ⁹³ Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11237; Tätigkeitsbericht für März 1964, MfSHA IX, MF-11246; Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11247. ⁹⁴ Tätigkeitsbericht für Dezember 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11231; Tätigkeitsbericht für März 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11234; Tätigkeitsbericht für Mai 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11236; Tätigkeitsbericht für September 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11240.

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messages were sent by postcard.⁹⁵ Sometimes secret instructions were sent in fabrics which revealed their content when treated with a special substance. The money and goods were meant to encourage the spies to keep on supplying information. They were also told how much money they had in their bank accounts in the West and how highly the service thought of them.⁹⁶ In one case, a married couple was told that a bottle containing motor oil was waiting for them at the home of the wife’s grandmother, in East Berlin. In the bottle they found a shortwave converter and codebooks, together with diagrams of the types of Soviet weapon and soldier they had to look out for. Some time later, they received a box of chocolates, also at the wife’s grandmother’s house. In one of the chocolates was a piece of paper saying that money and a list of cover addresses were to be found hidden in the lid.⁹⁷ The senders were either West German relatives of the recipients or fictional people.⁹⁸ The recipients were told by radio that the package was on its way and where to find the money or other concealed article. Sometimes the spy was told by a message in a parcel to create a ‘dead letter box’, perhaps along one of the transit routes, so that he could be supplied with equipment that way.⁹⁹ In at least one case, the BND tried to recruit a spy by post. It had already approached him just before the border closure but he had asked for time to think about the request. The border was closed before he had made up his mind. So, in November 1962, the BND tried again, this time making its approach by post. He agreed. Spying equipment was duly sent to him concealed in packages. Equipment and money were also left in ‘dead letter boxes’. Some of these lay along the transit routes.¹⁰⁰ Couriers were essential after 13 August 1961. They now entered the DDR to provide spies with money, spying equipment, and instructions too long and detailed for the radio or the post.¹⁰¹ They also collected intelligence from them. They both went directly to agents and filled ‘dead letter boxes’ with supplies for them. The BND used couriers to maintain the link with its Spitzenquellen (top sources): instead of packages being sent, couriers informed the spies of new cover addresses, put letters into the internal post, or laid ‘dead letter boxes’. The other Western services used their couriers to do exactly the same things. Often the couriers brought the equipment into East Berlin hidden in the secret container of a car. Some used their own passport; others used false ones.¹⁰² Some were businessmen. Others were relatives of East Germans.¹⁰³ Some were ⁹⁵ Kurze Einschätzung der im Jahre 1961 erzielten Untersuchungsergebnisse in der Bearbeitung von Spionageverbrechen, 9/1/1962, MfS-HA IX 4350, 235; Tätigkeitsbericht für Dezember 1961, MfSHA IX, MF-11219; Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11221. ⁹⁶ Schwanitz, Diplomarbeit, 29. ⁹⁷ Tätigkeitsbericht für Dezember 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11231. See also Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11233. ⁹⁸ Arnold, Diplomarbeit, 15–16; Heinert, Anlage 9; Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11232. ⁹⁹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11233. ¹⁰⁰ Lapp, Diplomarbeit, 12; Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11242. ¹⁰¹ Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11221; Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1965, MfS-HA IX, MF-11262. ¹⁰² Höferer, Diplomarbeit, 13–17. ¹⁰³ Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1965, MfS-HA IX, MF-11259.

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refugees.¹⁰⁴ Others were students. A student codenamed ‘Günter Heine’ was first recruited, in November 1961, to visit East Berlin and observe what he could. This he did. Then, in June 1962, the BND asked him to act as a courier. He agreed and carried instructions to East Berlin in the hollowed-out soles of his shoes. He brought the spy’s films back in the same container.¹⁰⁵ Günter Kiefer, a senior official in the Council of Ministers’ Central Statistics Administration and a Spitzenquelle, was brought spying equipment by his brother and money by a girlfriend.¹⁰⁶ Of course, some of these couriers were those who had recommended the spy for recruitment in the first place. The French used as couriers refugees who had managed to escape from the DDR since the border closure. Armed with West German identity papers, they entered the DDR carrying money, instructions, and spying equipment in the secret compartments of cases, shoes, and umbrellas.¹⁰⁷ In short, the BND used all available methods to resume contact with its spies. Seeing their vulnerability, it continually tried to improve them.¹⁰⁸ Its operations with packages and couriers sent to meet spies were risky ones; moreover, it did not always observe the best security procedures in undertaking them. The MfS was therefore able to intercept letters and parcels and arrest the spies who received them. It also managed to identify some couriers.¹⁰⁹ The years 1963 and 1964 were terrible ones for the Bundesnachrichtendienst. Many of its spies were arrested; it lost far more than any other service. In an effort at maintaining greater security, it adopted new codes and secret writing procedures and supplied its spies with several cover addresses. It also made less use of the post and more careful use of couriers.¹¹⁰ The danger of using couriers to make direct contact with spies was that each then learned the identity of the other and could betray him. So, from 1962 to 1963, the BND made more use of ‘dead letter boxes’; couriers were sent into East Germany to lay and fill them. The spy did not learn the identity of the courier and, if he were under MfS control, could not betray him. The courier, if identified and arrested, no longer knew the name of any spies and could not betray any directly. So the ‘dead letter box’ was a safer way of supplying spies with equipment. It was safer than parcels, too, since the MfS could not examine the goods smuggled across the border. It also allowed delivery in some bulk. Before the border was closed, the BND had made relatively little use of the ‘dead letter box’ to supply spies. It had laid them, but to enable supply and communication to take place if war came or if the sectoral border in Berlin were closed; its main way of supplying and communicating with spies until August 1961 was by personal meeting in West Berlin. From now on, the ‘dead letter box’ became its principal ¹⁰⁴ ¹⁰⁵ ¹⁰⁶ ¹⁰⁷ ¹⁰⁸ ¹¹⁰

Tätigkeitsbericht für August 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11239. Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11242. Tätigkeitsbericht für Januar 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11244. Tätigkeitsbericht für März 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11246. Radzuweit, Diplomarbeit, 51. ¹⁰⁹ Höferer, Diplomarbeit, 1. Heinert, Diplomarbeit, 3–5, 10.

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means of supplying spies with spying equipment and detailed instructions. It did not use those laid before 1961; it laid a completely new network. Each was only used once; consequently, the MfS could not place it under surveillance. The spy was told by radio where to find it and to empty it. A considerable number of them were laid, chiefly in East Berlin and other big cities and along the transit routes running through East Germany. In cities, they laid them in such places as parks, woods, graveyards, and sometimes restaurants and museums.¹¹¹ Of course, this was the CIA’s practice. The BND also made less, and more careful, use of letters and parcels. Its aim was to make it more difficult for the MfS to find secret communications and, if it failed in this, to prevent it from tracking down the spy. It made more use of encoded messages on tiny photographic film. Better secret writing procedures were employed and its spies were given detailed instructions on how to use them. For instance, it provided them with a new invisible ink which was more difficult to make visible. The spies were also given strict instructions on how to make and send their reports without arousing the MfS’s suspicion. The content of the letter had to correspond to the cover address to which it was sent and the writer had continually to change the handwriting he used. Cover addresses were changed more frequently; the letters were sent more seldom to them; the letters were posted far from the writer’s home; the secret text was entirely in code; decoy letters were sent; the reliability of cover addresses was carefully checked. If there were any breach of its security procedures, the BND would change the cover addresses and suspend communication with the spy for a time. Parcels were only sent on special occasions, such as birthdays or holidays. If the spy held an important job, then parcels would be sent to an intermediary for passing on to him. Pre-written postcards and even magazines were despatched over to the East; the spy would insert secret writing and send the article back.¹¹² The BND also made preparations to smuggle spies out of the DDR so that meetings could be held with them in West Berlin. More use was made of the railway traffic passing between the two Germanies. Trains were used to carry spying equipment and money East and intelligence West (their secret hiding places were known as ‘rolling dead letter boxes’).¹¹³ One spy received money hidden in the toilet of a train arriving in Rostock from West Germany.¹¹⁴ The BND tried to ensure that all its spies had a radio with which to receive instructions. To replace shortwave converters, it told them to buy radios. By the mid-1960s it was also trying to supply military spies with special radio sets enabling them to broadcast quickly to the West. However, such transmissions still required an external antenna which could be spotted, whatever attempts were made to conceal it.¹¹⁵ Use of sophisticated communications equipment and ¹¹¹ ¹¹² ¹¹³ ¹¹⁴ ¹¹⁵

Höferer, Diplomarbeit, 1–9; Arnold, Diplomarbeit, 6, 18. Heinert, Diplomarbeit, 15, 26; Radzuweit, Diplomarbeit, 88. Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1962, MfS-HA IX, MF-11229. Tätigkeitsbericht für Dezember 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11255. Heinert, Diplomarbeit, 16–17.

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thorough training of agents had, by 1965, made it more difficult for the MfS to identify spies without penetrating the services which ran them. The number of spies identified by its network of informers was at this time quite small.¹¹⁶ The personal meeting was by no means abandoned. Some spies were still able to travel to West Berlin or a Western country; obviously, they could still meet their controllers.¹¹⁷ So could agents smuggled out of the DDR. Some controllers even went into the DDR to meet their agents. Some of those who passed supplies to spies did not know that they were acting as couriers for the BND. Some were West Germans who went to the DDR; others were East Berliners. Some were relatives or acquaintances of the spy; others were people unknown to him. They were told that they were helping East Germans trapped behind the Berlin Wall by taking goods to them, or receiving them there and passing them on to someone else. One spy, an official in a state-owned factory, arranged for letters to him from the BND to be received by the parents of his ex-wife. She had divorced him shortly before the border closure and fled to the West, taking their children with her. His explanation to his former parents-in-law for asking them to receive his post was that his children wanted to write to him without making their mother jealous. To supply its spies with money, the BND even helped East Germans to make illegal payments to their relatives in West Germany or West Berlin. It took the money from such people and passed it on to its spies; the same sum was paid in Deutschmarks to the West Germans or West Berliners intended to benefit. These transactions enabled the BND to supply its agents with Ostmarks without smuggling them into the DDR.¹¹⁸

The Loss of Spies The change in communication methods forced by the border closure enabled the MfS to arrest very many spies. In 1962 its counter-espionage unit in East Berlin arrested more than 2.5 times as many spies as in 1961; 1963 was a golden year for it—it arrested more than 7.5 times as many as in 1961. In 1964 it arrested four times as many spies as in 1961.¹¹⁹ The service hardest hit was the BND. The MfS managed to intercept packages sent to spies which contained money and spying equipment. It also succeeded in identifying some of the BND’s couriers.¹²⁰ Helmut Wagner, then an officer in the East Berlin unit responsible for counterespionage against the BND, claims that the MfS managed to make invisible ink visible, read at least some of the text (either because it was not all encoded or because MfS experts decoded it), and establish who was in possession of the information concerned. The BND has released some information supporting this claim. Treason added to the service’s losses. Heinz Felfe, the KGB’s spy in its ¹¹⁶ ¹¹⁷ ¹¹⁸ ¹²⁰

Sommer, Diplomarbeit, 5, 23–4. Heinert, Diplomarbeit, 8–9; Höferer, Diplomarbeit, 5. Heinert, Diplomarbeit, Anlagen 8–9. ¹¹⁹ Heinert, Diplomarbeit, Anlage 3. Höferer, Diplomarbeit, 1.

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counter-espionage service, was arrested in November 1961. Thereafter, BND spies throughout Eastern Europe whom he had betrayed were rounded up by the Bloc’s security services. He confessed to having betrayed 94 people.¹²¹ Without question, the service lost spies on a disastrous scale. In its reports for the 53 months between August 1961 and December 1965, the HA IX summarizes important cases of espionage involving 258 spies. Of these, 156 (approximately 60 per cent) were spies of the BND; 54 (about 21 per cent) were American spies; 27 (approximately 10 per cent) were spies of the BfV; 20 (about 8 per cent) were French spies. Only one MI6 spy (0.4 per cent) was arrested in this period; this shows not MI6’s skill but the value of Blake’s treachery, which had enabled a hundred of its spies to be arrested in the three years before the border was sealed (see Chapter 5, p. 146).¹²² Wagner also claims that the BND made the bad decision to put its Schweigefunker into action. They were told to transmit intelligence. They were swiftly identified by the MfS; indeed, the MfS had, by 1966 or 1967, succeeded in wiping out the BND’s and CIA’s networks of radio operators in East Germany.¹²³ Charisius and Mader make the same claim, maintaining that all the Western services told radio operators to transmit military intelligence but that the BND’s losses of agents were particularly heavy.¹²⁴ Another MfS veteran, Josef Schwarz, maintains that in the 1960s (and 1970s) the Ministry was particularly successful in identifying cover addresses used by Western services. Interception of post targeted the areas concerned and yielded suspicious correspondence.¹²⁵ A considerable number of arrests combined with the much harder conditions caused many sources to dry up.¹²⁶ A BND officer claimed in 1968 that the service lost most of its spies in East Germany as a result of the Wall’s construction.¹²⁷ Among those arrested were some very good sources. The BND lost Günter Kiefer in 1963. He was arrested when the MfS identified his girlfriend, Waltraud Ruf, living in West Berlin, as his courier. She was interrogated and spilled the beans. (After the border was closed, the BND had also supplied Kiefer with communication materials by means of his brother, Claus, who lived in the West.) Frau Ruf ’s identification itself proceeded from the arrest of another courier, Karl-Heinz Pälzke, who had maintained the BND’s connection with two more agents in the DDR. Pälzke’s arrest shows how useful to the MfS tight control of traffic over the sectoral border could be. He was arrested at the Friedrichstraße crossing-point, when his behaviour struck the guards as odd. When they searched his bag, they found a secret compartment. His confession led to Ruf ’s arrest; she betrayed Kiefer. In 1965 the Americans lost another excellent source in the ¹²¹ Schmidt-Eenboom, Schnüffler ohne Nase, 118–19, 261–2; J. Richelson, A Century of Spies (New York, 1995), 273–4. ¹²² MF-11215–MF-11267; Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 64–5. ¹²³ Interview with Helmut Wagner, formerly MfS Line II. ¹²⁴ Charisius and Mader, Nicht Länger Geheim, 306–8; cf. Schmidt-Eenboom, Schnüffler ohne Nase, 222. ¹²⁵ Schwarz, Bis Zum Bitteren Ende, 129. ¹²⁶ Radzuweit, Diplomarbeit, 12. ¹²⁷ Capital 8/1968, 67.

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Central Statistics Administration, who had provided information on the supply of goods to the Soviet and East German armed forces.¹²⁸ Another lost agent was a young journalist called Peter Papist, who worked for an SED newspaper in East Berlin. He volunteered to work at weekends for the Party district committee, which gave him access to important decisions; he used secret writing to send this information to cover addresses. His downfall began when the MfS identified the addresses as ones used by the BND. The secret writing was made visible. The MfS was able to establish which postboxes he was using and thus identify him as the spy.¹²⁹ Also among those arrested were very long-standing sources. One spy, a chief engineer in an East Berlin factory who was arrested in February 1965, had been spying for Gehlen since 1947.¹³⁰ The BND was not the only service to suffer. The Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz suffered a heavy blow early in 1963, when the MfS arrested fifteen agents of its West Berlin branch. All of them worked for government agencies, or were members of the SED or one of the other parties permitted in the DDR. Some were quite prominent people. One was an important SED official in Potsdam. Assessing the damage they had done, the MfS concluded that the Bf V had received from them ‘for several years extensive and detailed information’. Much of this consisted of internal documents of the SED, LDPD, and CDU.¹³¹ The Americans’ spy in the Karlshorst post office was arrested in 1963.¹³² The French, like the Americans, managed to recruit a spy who worked in an exchange responsible for the telephone connections of government agencies. He was also supplied with tape recorders with which to record telephone conversations and managed, for example, to record conversations of Foreign Ministry officials.¹³³ The CIA lost one of its star sources in February 1966. Gertrud Liebing, a communications technician for the SED Central Committee, was arrested when the MfS intercepted a letter she had written in invisible ink to a CIA cover address. She had been recruited in 1955 in West Berlin. Before the border closure the CIA had given her ciphers with which to decipher radio broadcasts from the West. Her case shows that the days of large-scale espionage were not over. There were still plenty of people in the DDR who passionately despised the regime. Frau Liebing had suggested to the CIA no fewer than 42 East Germans who, in her view, might be recruited. In the course of its operation to find her, the MfS arrested 5 other employees of the Central Committee’s Communications Department. One of those arrested, Harry Wierschke, may have given his controllers tape recordings of Party committee meetings.¹³⁴ ¹²⁸ ¹²⁹ ¹³⁰ ¹³¹ ¹³² ¹³³ ¹³⁴

Tätigkeitsbericht für Juni 1965, MfS-HA IX, MF-11261. Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 87–93; Tätigkeitsbericht für Oktober 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11253. Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1965, MfS-HA IX, MF-11257. Tätigkeitsbericht für Februar 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11233. Tätigkeitsbericht für September 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11240. Tätigkeitsbericht für August 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11239. Koehler, Stasi, 285–6.

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New Recruitments Cross-border connections were essential to supplying spies and to renewing the communication link with those who had not been given radios before 13 August 1961. West Germans permitted to travel to the DDR were also essential to recruiting new spies. Since Easterners could no longer go West, Westerners had to go East. Many did so; they represented the Western services’ best opportunity in the new conditions. As before, since the DDR was connected with the other Bloc States, East German spies could spy on them, too.¹³⁵ West Germans and citizens of other Western countries could still visit the DDR; the Wall was meant not to keep them out but to keep East Germans in. Its construction completed the biggest kidnapping in history. West Berliners without West German passports were not able to enter the DDR until the pass agreement (Passierscheinabkommen) of 1963.¹³⁶ West Germans and West Berliners had to be allowed to enter the DDR regularly to visit their relatives. By the mid-1960s the number of West Berliners, West Germans, and other foreigners visiting East Berlin with one-day passes was so great that the MfS could not place them all under surveillance.¹³⁷ In the first half of 1965 alone, more than 12 million people passed through the DDR’s borders. Of course, many of these were merely travelling between West Berlin and the Federal Republic, or between the rest of the Soviet Bloc and the West, but, if these people are disregarded, the DDR’s borders were crossed by approximately 2.8 million West Berliners, 2.2 million West Germans, 772,000 citizens of other Western countries, and even 2.3 million East Germans (most going East).¹³⁸ All kinds of connections were exploited, but family ties were favoured because the relationship would be one of confidence. If a friendship was being exploited, it would be one which lay some time in the past and was now being revived. Naturally, particularly sought after as agents were West Germans who knew East Germans in possession of secret information (Geheimnisträger), or others who would be good spies. They were not only used as spies but as tippers, recruiters, couriers, and instructors. Some served both as spies and as intermediaries (perhaps at the same time, perhaps at different times). The BND’s tendency was to make as much use as possible of all agents, whether West or East German.¹³⁹ The BND investigated West Germans very thoroughly. As a rule, its representatives did not reveal their real employer when they introduced themselves to promising candidates. Their cover story was maintained for as long as possible. In the autumn of 1962 a young couple in Kiel were visited by a man who claimed to work for the Institute for Opinion Research but was, in fact, a BND officer. He asked them whether he could put a few questions to them about their relatives in ¹³⁵ ¹³⁶ ¹³⁷ ¹³⁹

Radzuweit, Diplomarbeit, 9–10. Höferer, Diplomarbeit, 11; Bark and Gress, History of West Germany, ii. 15–16. Heinert, Diplomarbeit, 22. ¹³⁸ Heinert, Diplomarbeit, Anlage 5. Radzuweit, Diplomarbeit, 16–17.

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East Germany. On a later visit, he asked them to recruit these relatives as spies. They agreed to do so and successfully recruited them on a visit to them the following year. Having been instructed themselves in communication methods, they duly taught them to their relatives and gave them money with which to buy a radio.¹⁴⁰ The BND ran agents in West Berlin whose job was to report the names of West Berliners who had connections with the DDR.¹⁴¹ One such man, who was approached in the autumn of 1961, was the representative of a Dutch company which did business with the DDR and so had dealings with its foreign trade bureaucracy. He therefore had a pass entitling him to enter East Germany. He was asked to provide information on the trading connections of East German enterprises.¹⁴² The Americans used West German agents to identify others living in their area who had relatives in East Germany.¹⁴³ The BND’s agents lived throughout West Germany. When the approach was made, the BND officers stressed that the target would be serving the cause of German reunification; he was also assured that he could make some money by co-operating. The controller trained and briefed the recruits (often in their homes, or in hotels or pubs, as in West Berlin in the 1950s) and supplied them with spying equipment and other items which were to be smuggled into East Germany. When they came back, he listened to their reports on how the mission had gone. Sometimes the agents sent their reports in letters sent to cover addresses or post office boxes; sometimes they made them by phone. Sometimes, if the agent went into the DDR to recruit or instruct someone known to him, their addresses in West Germany were the cover addresses to which the spy sent his letters. The BND recruited its couriers tasked with laying, emptying, and filling ‘dead letter boxes’ from West Germans who were entitled to travel quite frequently to East Germany.¹⁴⁴ This West German network was used to recruit promising East Germans. An East German’s suitability for spying was assessed by a West German agent, frequently a relative. The West German recommended to the BND that the person in question be recruited. If headquarters gave its approval, as a rule the same West German tried to recruit him. If he was a relative of the target, he would do so while in the DDR making a permitted family visit. If he was a friend, then he would attempt the recruitment while on a business trip or a visit to East Berlin. If the attempt was successful, the West German stayed as long in the DDR as his visa allowed and trained the spy in spying and communication techniques. The fourweek visa given for a family visit was the most suitable for this. He also sought to strengthen the spy’s hostility to the SED regime and collected intelligence from him. So it was common for recruiters and couriers to act as instructors as well; indeed, very often one person performed all three functions. The BND made ¹⁴⁰ ¹⁴¹ ¹⁴³ ¹⁴⁴

Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11250. Heinert, Diplomarbeit, Anlage 6. ¹⁴² Heinert, Diplomarbeit, Anlage 11. Tätigkeitsbericht für April 1964, MfS-HA IX, MF-11247. Radzuweit, Diplomarbeit, 50–8.

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much use of students, professional people, and housewives as intermediaries. Some carried money and spying equipment concealed in their belt. In mid-1962 the BND tried to recruit an officer in the NVA by these means. This officer was related to a West German woman; her husband visited the DDR on the BND’s behalf and tried to make the recruitment. He acted as courier as well, supplying the spy with all the equipment he needed. Unfortunately, the spy was reporting to the MfS.¹⁴⁵ The other services did exactly the same. An American service in July 1962 recruited a worker in an East Berlin factory by means of his brother, a refugee who paid him a visit. A courier then assumed responsibility for the spy, entering the DDR to post instructions to him. One instruction, sent from Leipzig, told him to look for missile bases in the Berlin area. The courier also supplied secret-writing equipment.¹⁴⁶ In the late 1960s the BND tried to create groups of agents in East Germany, all of whom either belonged to the same family or were close relatives.¹⁴⁷ This was a promising way of obtaining good intelligence. Although the spy first recruited might be an ordinary source, another family member might be a better one. For instance, in 1955 the BND recruited an official of an agency which imported chemicals. He continued to provide intelligence after the Wall was built. His son worked at the data-processing centre of an atomic power station, and from him the spy obtained very penetrating information on computer development centres and computer technology in both East Germany and the Bloc; this he passed on to the BND. The son also travelled to the USSR and brought back information on Soviet computers.¹⁴⁸ Naturally, the BND’s reliance on friendships and family relationships which crossed the inner-German divide caused the MfS to adopt the same technique so as to penetrate its adversary. Indeed, it found this tandem of one agent in the DDR and one in West Germany to be a particularly stable, reliable, and productive one. It was also secure, since the BND would find information very hard to check which was ultimately received from a source in the DDR but via an agent in the West.¹⁴⁹ Naturally, East Germans were recruited who were connected with West Germans known to be collaborating with the BND.¹⁵⁰ Trading connections between the Germanies were more thoroughly exploited. In 1964 3,018 West Germans were allowed into the DDR on business; an additional number of West Berliners was also allowed in.¹⁵¹ The BND maintained in companies, big, middling, and small, which did business with the Bloc either single agents or whole groups of them. Often the sales representatives or other important figures were recruited; sometimes the company’s proprietor was ¹⁴⁵ ¹⁴⁶ ¹⁴⁷ ¹⁴⁸ ¹⁴⁹ ¹⁵¹

Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11242. Tätigkeitsbericht für Juli 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11238. Radzuweit, Diplomarbeit, 58–9. Tätigkeitsbericht für November 1963, MfS-HA IX, MF-11242. Radzuweit, Diplomarbeit, 29. ¹⁵⁰ Sommer, Diplomarbeit, 25. Böhme, Diplomarbeit, 2–4.

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an agent. These companies acquired in the course of their business a very good understanding of the DDR’s factories and foreign trade system. In West Berlin, in particular, there was a concentration of companies engaged in trade with East Germany. In the MfS’s view, spies were present in sales offices and representative companies in West Berlin; in the technical offices of West Berlin enterprises; and in small and middling companies throughout West Germany. It also strongly suspected that spies were to be found in the departments of the big companies which handled trade with the Bloc and employed people to specialize in dealings with particular satellites. In addition to efforts to recruit them as spies, wherever they were encountered East German trade officials and scientists, particularly Geheimnisträger, were questioned for as much information as could be obtained from them about such matters as products under development and the DDR’s import needs. This was above all done in the course of business contacts; the questioning was presented as connected with the deal being done. The big trade fairs in the Bloc—Leipzig, Brno, Poznan, and Sofia—were particularly suitable for selecting promising targets and making contact with them. The BND officers or agents were to be found either in the companies which maintained a stand at these fairs or in the bodies which organized the participation of West German companies at the event. The MfS called this questioning Abschöpfung: skimming off information.¹⁵² Efforts were stepped up to recruit spies among the East Germans who were allowed to travel abroad: diplomats, commercial representatives attending trade fairs, and scientists attending conferences and making exchange visits to foreign universities. By the mid-1960s, the DDR traded with more than 100 countries and had trade bureaux in 48 of them. In 1964 5,608 DDR representatives (Reisekader), sent by particular enterprises or the foreign trade bureaucracy, visited West Germany or West Berlin. West Germany’s border police informed the BND of the arrival in the country of someone from the DDR; it kept a particular lookout for Reisekader, as well as for such people as refugees, former prisoners, and pensioners. Lorry drivers working for East Germany’s transport company, VEB Deutrans, drove out of their country daily and passed through West Germany’s border checkpoints. Many drivers were recruited to observe the Warsaw Pact forces stationed in the DDR and particularly those in border areas. Any information they could provide on these forces’ weapons was much valued, especially information on missiles, aircraft, or tanks. The border police also had to record information about people going to the DDR. Again, these people were often lorry drivers.¹⁵³ Interception of post and telephone calls to and from the East grew in importance after August 1961. Efforts to intercept communications within the DDR were stepped up. The BND sought to make greater use of open sources, such as the East German press, and tried to obtain as much information as possible from ¹⁵² Böhme, Diplomarbeit, 6–30. ¹⁵³ Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 139–45, 163, 175; Sommer, Diplomarbeit, 25.

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trading organizations doing business with the Bloc and research institutes studying it. It sought to recruit more journalists. West German correspondents were only accredited in the DDR after the Grundlagenvertrag (Treaty on the Basis of Relations) had been concluded between the two German states in 1972; so until then the BND had to make do with journalists who were allowed to travel to East Germany.¹⁵⁴ Its operations were less risky, but also less penetrating than before. The quality of its assessments declined.¹⁵⁵ In the early 1970s only about 20 per cent of the information on which they were based was actual secret intelligence and only a tiny fraction of this was obtained from spies (most was Sigint).¹⁵⁶ The BND sought to infiltrate spies into the DDR as returners (Rückkehrer) and immigrants (Neuzuziehende). Often these people were pensioners or invalids.¹⁵⁷ As in the 1950s, the Western interrogators in the reception camps were told, in their interviews with people who had managed to leave the DDR, to determine whether the refugee might agree to go back, perhaps to spy, perhaps to contact someone known to him in whom the secret service concerned was interested.¹⁵⁸ Spying on the East German economy continued in the 1960s to be a key part of the BND’s work. Since the DDR was not going to collapse owing to loss of population, whether it could survive economically needed to be established. Spying continued to concentrate on the main sectors of the economy, on economic planning, and on new scientific and technological developments. Moreover, spies continued to be used to wage economic warfare. As instructed, they provided information on economic weaknesses, shortages of goods, and public opinion. This information was exploited in the same ways as in the 1950s. Firstly, it was used to enforce the embargo as effectively as possible. Secondly, it was used in the Federal Republic’s worldwide information policy and was meant to undermine the appeal of the state-run economy, above all in the newly independent and nonaligned states which might otherwise be attracted to it. Thirdly, it was used in inducing defection. Indeed, spies’ information was even more important to these operations than it had been before August 1961. Before then many economic weaknesses and people whose induced defection would aggravate them had been identified by refugees. But they were now few. So spies had to provide more of the information establishing whether and how particular people might be persuaded to defect. Relatives or friends in the West remained the favoured way of making an approach. Spies also provided information on weak points in the border which could be used to smuggle people over. Scientists, doctors, skilled people in industry, and sportsmen remained the BND’s main targets.¹⁵⁹ ¹⁵⁴ Eichner and Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, 202; Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 84. ¹⁵⁵ Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 65–6; Höhne and Zolling, Network, pp. xxii, 266–8. ¹⁵⁶ Schmidt-Eenboom, Schnüffler ohne Nase, 277–8. ¹⁵⁷ Heinert, Diplomarbeit, 25; Arnold, Diplomarbeit, 6. ¹⁵⁸ Die Funktion der ‘Hauptstelle für Befragungswesen’ im Mechanismus des staatsmonopolistischen Herrschaftssystems der BRD, 19/7/1967, MfS-ZKG/Nr. 2077. ¹⁵⁹ Schwanitz, Diplomarbeit, 8, 12–28.

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The Spying System in the Era of Ostpolitik The Federal Republic’s treaties with the DDR (Ostverträge) of the early 1970s gave the Western services greater opportunities, exposed the Communist state to greater Western influence, and accordingly led to the biggest-ever expansion of the MfS’s staff and to a broadening of its responsibilities. By 1985 transit journeys across East Germany numbered 23.7 million; about 2 million West Germans were visiting the DDR annually; more than 1 million East German pensioners were being allowed to visit West Germany; and increasing numbers of East Germans, even younger ones, were being permitted to visit the Federal Republic because of ‘urgent family matters’. In 1986 there were some 85,000 such visits. These visits were dangerous from the MfS’s perspective because they might perform West Berlin’s function in the 1950s: they might allow East Germans to come into contact with the Western secret services beyond the reach of its instruments of surveillance and control. They also brought with them the risk of defection. Just as there was greater scope for spying from the early 1970s, so there was also greater scope for defection. Not only could more East Germans travel West, but, owing to the transit agreement (Transitabkommen) of December 1971, the opportunities for smuggling them out increased. The agreement was meant to prevent the East German authorities from obstructing civilian traffic between West Germany and West Berlin. The agreement only permitted vehicles, ships, and trains to be searched if there was a strong suspicion of crime or of an infringement of the agreement. It led to a big increase in traffic and was exploited by Fluchthelfer. The extent to which the BND and CIA exploited the Ostverträge is unclear.¹⁶⁰ In the 1980s the greater movement of people between the two German states made spies harder for the MfS to find. The BND recruited particularly Reisekader, lorry drivers, and West Germans who visited East German relatives. Of course, Reisekader travelled further afield than the Federal Republic. The CIA and FBI targeted scientists and students of science who visited the United States under the ‘International Researchers Exchange Programme’ (IREX). These people were under surveillance throughout their time in the US (American scientists making exchange trips to the Bloc likewise performed intelligence tasks). Between ten and twenty attempts to recruit Reise- and Auslandskader were reported to the MfS every year. Werner Großmann, the last chief of the Ministry’s foreign intelligence service, thinks it likely that about as many were not reported.¹⁶¹ Efforts were also made to induce them to defect. All leading sportsmen and sportswomen were Reisekader; since their defection would humiliate the DDR, many attempts to persuade them to defect were made.¹⁶² ¹⁶⁰ Schwarz, Bis Zum Bitteren Ende, 101–5; Bark and Gress, History of West Germany, ii. 204–6; B. Zündorf, Die Ostverträge (Munich, 1979), 208–9. ¹⁶¹ W. Großmann, Bonn im Blick (Berlin, 2001), 286; Eichner and Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, 259–61. ¹⁶² Schwarz, Bis Zum Bitteren Ende, 44, 85–6, 128–32, 144–9.

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Recruitment abroad and exploitation of those who travelled into East Germany were the most prominent elements in a spying system made up of many. The greater contacts between the Germanies enabled Abschöpfung to be practised on a large scale. Despite systematic warnings given to East German officials to be careful in their discussions with Westerners, skilful questioning often produced excellent results and was a significant source of information. Its importance grew throughout the 1980s as an opposition movement developed. Intelligence officers at the American, British, and French embassies made contact with these dissidents and obtained information from them. The military missions, based in Potsdam, also travelled through the DDR to observe military targets. American satellites passing overhead monitored the movements and weaponry of the Warsaw Pact forces. Sensors concealed near military bases transmitted highly technical data to them.¹⁶³ Outside the DDR, the thin stream of refugees and the growing stream of legal emigrants were questioned for information on it. Electronics enterprises were an important target of intelligence collection. From the early 1970s the BND was so deeply penetrated by the HVA that the East Germans had its operations under control. One of the HVA’s sources, Alfred Spuhler, had access to the computer database of information held on spies. Although the source’s name was not recorded, the database contained personal details meant to enable analysts to judge the reliability of the information received. This allowed the HVA to establish who many spies were; Spuhler thus betrayed more than 300 in the Bloc. The judge who sentenced him ruled that Spuhler had made the Bundesnachrichtendienst ‘transparent’; it had become ‘an instrument of the enemy’. The MfS’s counter-espionage service also proved very effective at catching spies; its most successful element was the post interception division, Abteilung M. Consequently, many of the BND’s agents reporting on East Germany were double agents under MfS control. Intercepted communications, made both within and from the DDR, and intercepted post coming from it, were by the late 1980s far and away the service’s main sources, accounting for 70–80 per cent of the intelligence it collected.¹⁶⁴ The DDR itself was not an important target for the CIA, which left it to the BND. The agency was active in East Germany largely to obtain intelligence on scientific research and development conducted jointly by the DDR and USSR, as well as on collaboration within Comecon and the Warsaw Pact. Penetrating intelligence on the DDR’s economy was obtained from Sigint. In the mid-1980s a CIA defector, Edward Lee Howard, told the KGB that the agency had only six or seven East German sources of real significance, most of them in the economy and science, and saw no need for more. Though it did not provide names, the KGB passed this information on to the MfS. The East Germans compared this information with the facts of their own double-agent operations. It fitted well; there were ¹⁶³ Eichner and Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, 145–6, 251–2. ¹⁶⁴ Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 11–13, 107–8, 140–8; Schmidt-Eenboom, Schnüffler ohne Nase, 108–10.

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six or seven important double-agents with whom the CIA was in contact. So the MfS concluded that it had largely defeated the agency’s operations against East Germany, small-scale though they were.¹⁶⁵ So, as far as Humint was concerned, the glory days of the 1950s were never recaptured. One reason was that, owing to the advance of technology, they did not need to be. The MfS’s skill in counterespionage was another reason. A further reason was the Wall. ¹⁶⁵ Eichner and Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, 133–5, 226–7; interview with Klaus Eichner.

10 The Uses of the Intelligence Gathered WEAPONS DEVELOPMENT AND MILITARY STRATEGY Intelligence of a huge Soviet arms build-up using German weapons technology fuelled fear of war. American intelligence analysts warned in 1949 that, though it was not imminent, ‘Both sides are actively preparing for eventual war’. The USSR, it pointed out, ‘has maintained, and possibly accelerated, its efforts to enhance its military capabilities through both the intensive development of basic war industries and the qualitative improvement of its military forces’.¹ This made the gathering of more scientific and technical intelligence crucial; during the Cold War intelligence collection developed a momentum of its own. Scientific and technical intelligence was needed because it reveals what weapons the enemy has and will have, and thus what kind of war to prepare for. It shows weaknesses which can be exploited and strengths against which defence must be made. Thus, it helps to determine what weapons to develop and what military strategy to pursue. It also shows what weapons are not needed and so helps to save money. During the Cold War, it both fuelled the arms race and kept the West from panicking. The CIA’s tribute to Pyotr Popov, its spy in the GRU from 1955 until 1959, mentioned that his information had saved at least $500 million in defence-related R&D.² The frantic and revolutionary weapons development of the period 1945–61 is too large a subject to be examined in depth here. All that will be attempted is to show that intelligence had a significant impact on war planning and weapons development. Britain was acutely sensitive to its military weakness in face of a Soviet attack and to its vulnerability to an atomic strike. This made it a keen gatherer of intelligence on Soviet weaponry and on the USSR’s air and guided missile forces. Financial crisis in the late 1940s also made the government reluctant to spend money on manufacturing new weapons; to avoid falling behind other countries as a result, it gave the highest priority to research and development.³ So intelligence on Soviet R&D was particularly sought after. The intelligence gathered in Germany was passed to the weapons design offices of the Ministry of Supply to guide them in their work.⁴ ¹ ORE 46–49, ‘The Possibility of Direct Soviet Military Action during 1949’, 3/5/1949, in Steury, Front Lines, 162–5. ² Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 281. ³ A. Pierre, Nuclear Politics (London, 1972), 152. ⁴ DSI/JTIC(52)14, ‘Targets for STIB in Eastern Germany’, 16/6/1952, DEFE 41/153.

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Of course, intelligence of the other side’s weaponry does not solely determine one’s own. Political ambition, financial, scientific, and technological resources, strategic thinking, and assessment of the utility of the weapons in question and of the risk of war all play important roles. Economic crisis was a severe constraint on British weapons development. The obvious utility of weapons of tremendous power created pressure to develop them, independently of any intelligence that the USSR was trying to do so. The government’s decision, in 1947, to develop an atomic bomb was chiefly motivated by factors unconnected with intelligence: its desire that Britain remain a world power; the momentum of development built up by participation in the Manhattan Project; the need to wield influence with the United States; and the economic benefits of atomic energy. Nevertheless, a further reason was the knowledge that the USSR was developing one.⁵ Analysis of radioactive fallout from the Soviet thermonuclear test of August 1953 (‘Joe-4’) established that a thermonuclear reaction had taken place; William Penney, the director of the British atomic bomb project, used the analytical data to argue for the development of a hydrogen bomb.⁶ Intelligence of strenuous Soviet efforts to develop advanced weaponry quickly encouraged the British government to give priority to research into, and development of, new weapons. This is a consistent refrain in the policy documents of the period. In their Global Strategy Paper of 1952, the Chiefs of Staff maintained that the NATO Powers would have to ‘press on with research and development if they are even to keep abreast of the development and re-equipment of the Russian armed forces’.⁷ NSC-68 shows that intelligence of the first Soviet atomic test had the same effect on the US government. It decided that the looming threat of surprise atomic attack required ‘the intensification of our efforts in the fields of intelligence and research and development’.⁸ Intelligence also influenced British military strategy and weapons development. The fact that the USSR would soon have weapons of mass destruction convinced the Chiefs of Staff that Britain had to have them, so as to deter the Soviets from using them. As they argued in a paper on ‘Future Defence Policy’ in 1947, ‘The only means whereby we can prevent her [Russia] using them, therefore, is by facing her with the threat of large-scale damage from similar weapons if she should employ them.’⁹ Military planners seem to have believed that possession by Britain of each weapon of mass destruction might deter the use by the USSR of that weapon. They were attracted to ‘the argument that the preparedness by both sides to use Chemical Warfare in the last war stopped its use during the war’.¹⁰ ⁵ A. Goldberg, ‘The Atomic Origins of the British Nuclear Deterrent’, International Affairs, 40 (1964), 426–9. ⁶ Goodman, ‘British Intelligence Estimates of the Soviet Nuclear Weapons Programme’, 227–9, 344. ⁷ Para. 15, COS(52)361, DEFE 5/40. ⁸ NSC-68/2, ‘United States Objectives and Programs for National Security’, 30/9/1950, Folder ‘Meetings: 68, 29/9/1950’, PSF-Subject File, 1945–53: NSC Meetings, Box 180, HSTL. ⁹ Quoted in J. Lewis, Changing Direction: British Military Planning for Post-war Strategic Defence, 1942–1947 (London, 1988), 377. ¹⁰ Ibid., 321.

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Intelligence therefore spurred on the development of chemical weapons and defences against them. British intelligence concluded, in 1949, that the Soviet Union would soon be capable of the mass production of at least one of the nervegases. Its reason for this was the intelligence obtained from ex-PoWs of the establishment of a nerve-gas factory at Beketovka using the plant taken from Dyhernfurth and German know-how (see Chapter 4, pp. 111–12).¹¹ The Joint Committees therefore pressed for greater R&D efforts to develop protective clothing for British troops, and equipment to detect nerve gases in the field. Until then the Defence Research Policy Committee had been content with target dates of 1953 for physical protection and 1955 for detection in the field. The intelligence about Beketovka established that quicker progress needed to be made.¹² That the Soviets might, in war, make use of chemical and biological weapons was a theme of intelligence assessments from the late 1940s on.¹³ In the early 1950s, the use of chemical weapons in war played a significant part in NATO’s war plans. In 1952, for example, the Air Ministry assumed that 10 per cent of the overall effort of strategic bombers and 5 per cent of the effort of tactical bombers would be devoted to dropping bombs filled with mustard gas. Tabun-filled bombs captured in Germany were modified so that they could be carried in British aircraft. The British planned to use sarin as well. Unlike mustard gas, it was regarded as more of a tactical weapon than a strategic one. Accordingly, while only 5 per cent of the strategic bomber effort would be devoted to dropping sarin bombs, they would account for 10 per cent of the effort of tactical bombers. Britain even briefly manufactured sarin itself in the mid-1950s at a plant at Nancekuke in Cornwall.¹⁴ British policy on chemical weaponry and warfare was formed in close consultation with the Americans and the Canadians. The greater the nuclear capabilities of the superpowers became in the 1950s, the more unthinkable was a nuclear exchange between them, which was a factor weighing strongly in favour of using chemical weapons. Nevertheless, military planners held a poor view of the strategic value of biological and chemical weapons. That of biological weapons was insignificant; that of chemical weapons was dwarfed by the strategic value of nuclear weapons. Therefore, Britain ultimately decided that it needed no offensive or retaliatory capability in either chemical or biological warfare. In 1957 it abandoned its programme to develop chemical and biological agents as offensive weapons. From then on, its policy was to rely on the United States: the Americans had these weapons and would use them if Britain were attacked. Nancekuke was closed down. Research into chemical and biological warfare continued; in particular, scientists tried to develop equipment to protect British soldiers against such weapons.¹⁵ ¹¹ JS/JTIC(49)63, DEFE 41/150. ¹² JS/JTIC minutes, 16/6/1949, DEFE 41/72. ¹³ See JIC(47)7/2, CAB 158/1. ¹⁴ CW(52)9, ‘Chemical Warfare Reserve Policy’, 30/7/1952, DEFE 41/157; Hartcup, Silent Revolution, 175–6. ¹⁵ G. Carter, Porton Down: Seventy-five Years of Chemical and Biological Research (London, 1992), 68.

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By contrast, intelligence on Soviet research into biological weapons was so limited that British efforts in the field were more a response to the capabilities of biological agents than to hard evidence that the Soviets might use them. In 1952, for example, the Acting Director of Scientific Intelligence noted that, ‘There is . . . no firm evidence regarding the existence in the Soviet Union of any BW project, whether concerned with research, the mass production of BW agents, or the development of the special weapons and equipment required.’¹⁶ Other reports from these years say exactly the same.¹⁷ The JIC, in its intelligence assessments, still thought it possible that the USSR might use chemical and biological weapons. The reason was that the Soviet military training programme and statements by those responsible for it indicated that this was possible. Nevertheless, there was no conclusive evidence to this effect and the JIC tended to think that the Soviets would not use these weapons at the start of a war.¹⁸ The intelligence obtained on the Soviet army’s radio sets in the late 1940s and 1950s served needs of military strategy. If enemy radio communications were to be intercepted or jammed in war, NATO had to know the characteristics of Soviet sets. Above all, it had to know the frequency range on which they operated, so that a frequency jammer could be designed to jam those parts of it and so disrupt Soviet forward area communications. In the early 1950s the British thought that they had more or less complete information on the radio sets then used by the Soviet army. However—a fact which illustrates their failure to penetrate the USSR’s research complex—they had no intelligence on the sets which the Soviets then had in development. Almost all Soviet sets then in service worked on High Frequency. For as long as the Soviet army confined itself to a narrow part of the frequency spectrum, there was a clear opening for a major NATO jamming offensive against the High Frequency band in the early days of a war. This would cause chaos among Soviet forces as their ability to communicate with one another by radio was destroyed. Though the British thought that this was the right strategy to pursue, in 1952 there were many Americans opposed to jamming. Inspired by the Comint triumphs of the Second World War, they believed that Soviet communications should be intercepted instead. With the intelligence gathered of the location and movements of Soviet units and the location and intentions of their high command, NATO’s commanders would be better able to fight and win the war. By contrast, NATO forces used a wider range of frequencies. Determined to have the option of jamming Soviet communications, they maintained it by moving to frequencies which the Soviets were not using; intelligence helped them to do this. By the early 1950s most of the US army’s tanks had moved up to VHF; the USAF had moved up to Ultra High Frequency. Jamming the HF band would still interfere with a substantial part of British radio communications, but the British were trying to ¹⁶ Young to Evans, 1/5/1952, DEFE 41/156. ¹⁷ See JS/JTIC(49)47, DEFE 41/150. ¹⁸ JP(58)65, ‘Biological and Chemical Warfare’, 30/7/1958, DEFE 41/156.

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move to VHF.¹⁹ Planning the use of electronic warfare continued throughout the Cold War. Even in the 1980s contingency planning for a nuclear strike on the Warsaw Pact included provision for jamming or interfering with the communications of the Pact’s political and military centres so as to prevent any counter-strike.²⁰ Though Britain had some idea of the scale of the USSR’s efforts to develop advanced weaponry, the S&TI gathered during this period was generally inadequate, failing to penetrate Soviet research and development centres. The immense Soviet effort therefore produced surprise after surprise. Intelligence did not warn of the principal advances: the manufacture of jet fighters not long after the war was over (the Iak-15 and MiG-9 were test flown in April 1946); the testing of the first Soviet atomic bomb earlier than had been expected; and the testing of the first-ever thermonuclear bomb in 1953, a year earlier than expected and only nine months after the Americans had tested their first thermonuclear device. The Soviets also deployed a long-range bomber before they were expected to.²¹ British decisions were affected by the lack of good intelligence. For example, Britain adopted too complacent an aircraft development policy in the late 1940s. At a time when aircraft were developing fast, it decided to wait a decade and then carry out a full re-equipment of the RAF. This greatly underestimated the speed of Soviet development and many types of RAF aircraft lagged behind Soviet counterparts throughout the 1950s. The MiG-15, for example, was far more sophisticated a plane than the British expected.²² Better intelligence would have facilitated the adoption of a more appropriate policy. The intelligence obtained was alarming: it told them that they had to spend money on research and development, but was not good enough to show either what was coming next or when it was safe to stop spending. For the latter information they had to wait for aerial reconnaissance of the USSR. Their German sources gave them information crucial to these operations, too. Of course, the intelligence obtained, though it showed a rapid improvement in Soviet armaments, tended to indicate that, overall, the Western Powers were still ahead. The ex-PoWs’ reports on airfields, atomic plants, and cities in the Soviet Union made a crucial contribution to British and American war planning by enabling the RAF and SAC to draw up viable plans for an air assault. The ex-PoWs’ information on the location of airfields and atomic plants was essential to the RAF. Britain’s highly concentrated population and industry meant that it could not afford to suffer an atomic attack: it would do too much harm. Therefore, one would have to be prevented by destroying the long-range bomber fleet on the ground, at its airfields. Until 1949 the British did not know where these airfields were. Planning for an air offensive until that year concentrated on destroying the industries which made up the Soviet war economy. In 1949 an important change ¹⁹ ²⁰ ²¹ ²²

Major Stoney, Signals 3, MI10 Conference 1952, DEFE 41/126. Eichner and Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, 243–5. Freedman, US Intelligence, 77–8; Holloway, Stalin, 235. C. Bartlett, The Long Retreat (London, 1972), 67–8.

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took place; it began before the Soviet atomic test, though was given added impetus by it. From then on, air force planners placed more emphasis on the destruction of military targets, particularly airfields and atomic installations.²³ It can be no accident that ex-PoWs were, at this very time, providing information on precisely these targets. SAC’s targeting strategy likewise became more varied from 1950, though its core remained an onslaught on the USSR’s cities and the war industries centred there. In that year the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave high priority to the destruction of airfields, so as to pre-empt a Soviet atomic attack, and of atomic plants, so as to diminish the USSR’s ability to wage atomic warfare. As with the British, this was an effort at limiting the damage the Soviets could do. Of course, SAC’s war planning was more ambitious than the RAF’s. Its aim was nothing less than to inflict defeat on the Soviet Union in any future war by means of a strategic offensive. The problem in the late 1940s was that it did not have the target information with which to draw up adequate plans for accomplishing this mission or to train its pilots to carry it out. Its commander was determined to deliver at least 80 per cent of the entire American atomic stockpile in a single attack, and to maintain his force in a constant state of readiness. ‘Wringer’ interviewers were, therefore, told to obtain information which would enable plans of cities and other targets to be drawn up, and other training aids to be made. A large proportion of the reports duly provided descriptions of industrial and military installations and of the areas in which they were located. On the basis of the reports, three-dimensional models of targeted cities were made and photographed on film which showed what the target would look like as a radar image. As LeMay made clear in his autobiography, such intelligence played a crucial role in his training programme: We fathered a master war plan. Everyone knew, eventually, what he was going to do. Each crew was assigned an enemy target, and they studied those targets . . . People working for us and with us invented and constructed training aids whereby a man, if he was assigned a target at Moscow, could bomb Moscow hundreds of times, merely by using his training aid.²⁴

Some of the information on targeted places even shed light on the air defences around them and their consequent vulnerability to air attack. This information influenced SAC’s planners in deciding how strong a force to allocate to attacking them. The ‘Wringer’ interviewing teams maintained that they produced more than half of all the intelligence reports on the Soviet Bloc used by SAC in preparing its war plans. Of course, this information also served the institutional interests of the SAC in its competition for primacy with the army and navy. Shedding light, as it did, on the military-industrial reconstruction of the Soviet Union, it showed ²³ A. Macmillan, ‘Britain and Atomic Weapons 1945–1949: The Development of a Deterrence Frame of Mind’, International Politics Research Paper No. 9 (University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 1991), 14–21; I. Clark and N. Wheeler, The British Origins of Nuclear Strategy (Oxford, 1989), 91–111. See also J. Baylis and A. Macmillan, ‘The British Global Strategy Paper of 1952’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 16/2 (1993), 209–10. ²⁴ C. LeMay, Mission with LeMay: My Story (Garden City, NY, 1965), 436.

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how large a task a knockout atomic assault would be. It was, therefore, used to help make the case for expansion both of the SAC and of the nuclear stockpile. The expansion of SAC had the highest priority in the military build-up undertaken by the United States following the outbreak of the Korean War. Its importance was such that the USAF was awarded a larger share (more than 40 per cent) of the defence budget than either of the other two services.²⁵

OVERFLIGHT AND OTHER TECHNICAL COLLECTION MEASURES Much of the valuable intelligence gathered from German sources was not scientific and technical intelligence. Rather, they provided a flood of basic intelligence on science and the military-industrial complex in the USSR. This was used to gather more intelligence. Indeed, the Germans laid the foundation stone for the West’s intelligence operations against the Soviet Union for the rest of the Cold War; this was the main benefit of their exploitation. In a country as immense as the USSR, these places were at this time impossible to find by any other means. The Germans either identified and located key installations in the Soviet militaryindustrial complex, or they identified cities, like Sverdlovsk, which were of such industrial significance that a closer look at them was clearly going to pay dividends. This intelligence was used in choosing the routes taken by the spyplanes which, in the 1950s, were sent over the Soviet Union on photographic reconnaissance missions. It also enabled other technical collection measures to be taken. These operations yielded scientific and technical intelligence which had a decisive impact on American defence policy. The deported Germans were not the only sources of information on war-related installations in the USSR, but they were the main one. Intercepted radio communications and electronic emissions were other valuable sources. By the end of 1952 some 300 Soviet radar stations had been identified, doubtless largely by the USAF’s systematic programme of ‘Ferret’ flights and other Sigint operations.²⁶ In the later 1950s communications intelligence revealed possible locations for ICBM sites, including the first such site, at Plesetsk in north-western Russia.²⁷ By the mid1950s, whatever the nature of their sources, the Americans had clearly had considerable success in identifying targets for air attack and intelligence operations, though intelligence is said then still to have been ‘severely limited’. At the end of 1956 the SAC’s basic war-plan target list contained 2,997 targets. Overflight by U-2s in the late 1950s identified a great many new targets, chiefly guided-missile bases, airfields related to the USSR’s growing nuclear strike capability, and air defence systems.²⁸ ²⁵ Rosenberg, ‘US Nuclear War Planning, 1945–1960’, 39–43; Erdmann, ‘The Wringer’, 178–80. ²⁶ DSI/JTIC minutes, 18/11/1952, DEFE 41/76; Jones, Reflections, 15. ²⁷ Freedman, US Intelligence, 72. ²⁸ Rosenberg, ‘US Nuclear War Planning’, 49.

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Overflight, Radar Detection, and Signals Interception Intelligence from German sources was, by the late 1940s, already sending spyplanes up into the air. The evidence gathered in Germany of Soviet atomic development caused the USAF to use weather reconnaissance aircraft to monitor levels of radioactivity in the atmosphere well before the first Soviet atomic test was predicted to take place. Early in September 1949 this Long Range Detection Program yielded conclusive evidence that the Soviets had tested an atomic device a few days earlier. Sonic information about the shock wave from the test also revealed the location of the test site, which was near Semipalatinsk, in Kazakhstan. German sources played a bigger role in sending planes into the USSR, since they told the pilots precisely where to go. American and British spyflights against the Western USSR were conducted in collaboration; this was supplemented by a global division of responsibility for aerial reconnaissance. Truman and Attlee reached an agreement to this effect at the beginning of the 1950s.²⁹ Most flights were electronic and photographic reconnaissance flights along the USSR’s borders. In these cases, photographs were taken with a camera so installed that it pointed out through the side of the aircraft. Others were shallow-penetration missions. Deep-penetration flights were the rarest of all. Night flights, taking photographs of the radar image of the target, were safer than day flights, taking photographs of the visual image. Both were made. Radarscope images were essential to a bombing assault on the USSR, which would be made at high altitude and (since Soviet fighter-interceptors had not then been fitted with radar) might take place in bad weather or at night, making it impossible for navigators to identify their targets with the naked eye. Soviet fighters’ lack of radar also made the spyplane very difficult to track down. Evidence exists that the British were overflying the USSR as early as 1948. Among the bases used were those at Habbaniya in Iraq, and in Crete, which, being close to the Soviet Union, allowed the RAF to fly deep into its airspace. The Soviets claim that flights were made from Iran. A number of years have been mentioned as marking the start of American overflights; they clearly began at about the same time.³⁰ Until 1956 these missions were flown by aircraft of the USAF and US navy; then the CIA had sole responsibility for them. They were meant to obtain intelligence on bombing targets, air defences, weaponry, and the general level of scientific advancement. Overcoming Soviet air defences would, of course, be essential to any nuclear-armed air attack. The USAF and RAF agreed to exchange target intelligence in 1948.³¹ ²⁹ Peebles, Shadow Flights, 10, 14–27; Lowenhaupt, Studies in Intelligence (2000), 54; Andrew, President’s Eyes Only, 177. ³⁰ R. Jackson, High Cold War (Sparkford, 1998), 37, 47–8; Peebles, Shadow Flights, 8; R. Hopkins III, ‘An Expanded Understanding of Eisenhower, American Policy, and Overflights’, Intelligence and National Security, 11/2 (1996), 333. ³¹ Cabell to Pendred, November 1948, quoted in R. Aldrich (ed.), Espionage, Security and Intelligence in Britain, 1945–1970 (Manchester, 1998), 97.

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From 1950 the Soviets defended their airspace very aggressively and American presidents proved reluctant to authorize overflights which would damage superpower relations and risk the lives of American pilots. In May 1950 a US navy Privateer was shot down by Soviet fighters off the coast of Latvia, and President Truman for a time forbade American flights over the USSR. Only one deeppenetration mission was flown during his presidency—in 1952. Dwight Eisenhower, president from 1953, was more determined to obtain intelligence than his predecessor. However, he also wanted to avoid an international incident and authorized overflights only when he thought that intelligence was urgently required. In 1953–4 USAF planes flew missions over Murmansk, the Kola Peninsula, and Siberia. Photographing airfields had highest priority; the most urgent intelligence requirement of the time was to find out whether the Soviets had a long-range airforce capable of attacking the United States. The Kola Peninsula, in the very north of the USSR, was a well-placed forward area from which bomber strikes could be made on the United States. In 1954–5, deep-penetration missions were flown over the western USSR, targeting long-range airbases, military-industrial targets, and Moscow itself. The northern USSR was also overflown in 1956. The USAF flew missions over Eastern Siberia, too. In 1956, at the Tushino air show outside Moscow, Khrushchev threatened the USAF’s Chief of Staff, Nathan Twining, that his Canberras would be turned into ‘flying coffins’ if they continued their violations of Soviet airspace.³² One benefit of collaboration with the RAF was that the USAF was able to get round the caution of its presidents. So in the early 1950s it was the RAF which bore the burden of deep penetration of the USSR. British overflights of the USSR continued throughout the 1950s, although by the mid-1950s they were fewer than American overflights.³³ Pursuant to Truman and Attlee’s agreement, in 1952 and 1954 a special unit of the RAF, equipped with American planes and cameras, undertook overflights of the western USSR. The USAF gave the RAF photographs of the radar images of the targets. Night flights were made over Moscow and the region to the south of the city, and over targets, including industrial cities, throughout southern Russia and the Ukraine. They certainly penetrated deep into the USSR, sometimes 1,000 miles or so into the country. This would take them approximately as far as Kuibyshev or Stalingrad, but not as far as the Urals. The Baltic States were also overflown. The aircraft were RB-45Cs, which could fly high (up to 38,000 feet) and fast. But they were rapidly becoming obsolete, and were unlikely to have the speed or height to evade their pursuers for much longer. From 1953 the Canberra was used, because it was capable of flying beyond the range both of Soviet anti-aircraft weapons and fighter-interceptors. In May 1953 a Canberra B-2 WD952 set a world record for altitude of 63,668 feet. Consequently, it could take photographs during the day. From 1956 the Americans used the Lockheed U-2. In 1958, when President Eisenhower became ³² Peebles, Shadow Flights, 49–58, 123–9, 140, 162–3.

³³ Aldrich, RIS (1998), 344.

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particularly reluctant to authorize the CIA to send its U-2s over Soviet territory, the agency, like the USAF before it, turned to the RAF for help. Four British pilots were accordingly assigned to the U-2 programme and Harold Macmillan was given the right to order them to overfly the Soviet Union. This right he used only twice.³⁴ In conducting their overflights, both the British and the Americans made use of intelligence obtained from their German sources. It was ‘Dragon Returnees’ who established that the location of the principal Soviet MRBM and IRBM testing site was at Kapustin Yar. The Americans certainly received this intelligence from the British; they may also have obtained it themselves. STIB copied its returnee report on the site’s location to various American intelligence offices, including, most importantly, the USAFE’s Director of Intelligence. It was the USAFE which proposed, in October 1951 (five months later), that technical collection stations be built in Turkey, to the south of Kapustin Yar. From the mid-1950s at least two signals interception stations, Karamursel and Sinop, were in operation there, gathering a wide range of signals transmitted in the USSR, including missile telemetry. The most important base was the radar station at Samsun, operational from 1955, which pioneered the use of radar detection to gather intelligence. Its enormous radar provided a wealth of good information on the missile tests at Kapustin Yar. It was capable of tracking missiles in flight 1,000 miles away (its range was later increased to 3,000 miles). It was able to determine how many tests took place and whether they succeeded or failed. It was also sophisticated enough to ascertain the main characteristics of the missiles being tested and, in particular, their speed, thrust, course, altitude, and approximate range.³⁵ A new era had dawned. Eisenhower’s Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles, revealed in his book The Craft of Intelligence that excellent information was gathered on Soviet missiles and missile engines from precisely this time, ending ten years in which it had been very scarce. The missiles tested at Kapustin Yar were shown to be good ones, as were the ICBMs launched from Tyuratam. This knowledge gave added impetus to the Americans’ own missile and space programmes. The CIA’s intelligence analysts used it to predict accurately how quickly the Soviets’ space programme would make progress, and approximately when they would launch their first satellite.³⁶ The British had to make do with inferior information. They intercepted Comint from Kapustin Yar and used it to test whether the ‘informed speculation’ about Soviet missile development provided by sources like Gröttrup was correct. Information about the dates, times, and success rates of test firings was obtained from radio communications made in the area of the site and intercepted by GCHQ. On the basis of this information, the distances covered by the missiles were estimated. This gradually revealed flight characteristics and allowed specific ³⁴ Peebles, Shadow Flights, 22–7, 45–9. ³⁵ Richelson, American Espionage, 84–7; Freedman, US Intelligence, 69; Andrew, President’s Eyes Only, 219–20. ³⁶ Dulles, Craft of Intelligence, 162–7.

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types of missile to be distinguished. The rate and sequence of the test firings of the various kinds of missiles enabled conclusions to be drawn about the course of Soviet missile development. Since Kapustin Yar was connected with other warrelated installations, other intelligence targets were identified.³⁷ Given the urgency of gathering intelligence on Soviet guided-missile technology, Kapustin Yar was a natural target for overflight. The RAF sent a plane to overfly it in 1953; a modified Mark II Canberra took photographs of the site before making its way to Iran. U-2s overflew the site in 1957 and 1959.³⁸ They also flew missions along the Soviet border during tests there to intercept ground-level telemetry signals.³⁹ Balloons were used as well as spyplanes. Under the half-baked ‘Genetrix’ programme, balloons equipped with high-altitude cameras were released in Europe and sent drifting over the USSR to Japan. The Luftwaffe’s aerial photographs of the USSR were well out of date by the end of the 1940s, and they were of those parts of the Soviet Union which lay west of the Urals. The USAF was keen to acquire photographs of the eastern USSR because it lacked, in the words of a memorandum written in October 1950, at the birth of the operation, ‘prints to aid in the confirmation or denial of such reports as those of atomic production centers, of new industrial developments, of new rail yards, and airfields’.⁴⁰ In other words, it wanted photographs of such installations as Cheliabinsk-40 and Tomsk-7, the existence of which the ex-PoWs had reported; 516 balloons were released in the first two months of 1956. The wind blew many too far south. Useful photography was obtained from only 34 of them. One stumbled across the Dodonovo nuclear refining facility in Siberia (where Krasnoyarsk-26 was located, much of it buried underground). However, the operation was not of much value because it proved impossible to tell precisely where the pictures had been taken. It was called off early.⁴¹ From July 1956 the CIA sent U-2s on photographic reconnaissance missions over the USSR. The U-2 could fly above 70,000 feet. In 1955 President Eisenhower gave the Soviets the opportunity of avoiding spy flights with his ‘Open Skies’ proposal, which would have permitted each superpower to conduct aerial reconnaissance of the other. The Soviet government’s rejection of the proposal forced him to use the U-2 to obtain intelligence because knowledge of Soviet weapons development was then so poor that the United States did not know what development it had to undertake itself. It faced the prospect of either not undertaking enough weapons development, and so endangering its own security, or spending far too much and undermining its economy. However, unwilling to increase the tension between the superpowers, Eisenhower was very reluctant to ³⁷ R. Mathams, Sub Rosa (Sydney, 1982), 26–8. ³⁸ Pedlow and Welzenbach, U-2 Program, 143; Peebles, Shadow Flights, 43–5, 253; cf. C. Pocock, ‘Operation “Robin” and the British Overflight of Kapustin Yar: A Historiographical Note’, Intelligence and National Security, 17/4 (2002), 185–93. ³⁹ C. Pocock, Dragon Lady: The History of the U-2 Spyplane (Shrewsbury, 1989), 35. ⁴⁰ Quoted in Richelson, American Espionage, 129. ⁴¹ Ibid., 138–9; Pedlow and Welzenbach, U-2 Program, 84–5.

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authorize overflights and only 24 U-2 missions were flown over Soviet territory in the four years of the operation. Nevertheless, the photography obtained related to 15 per cent of the total area of the USSR. In these years, the U-2s had two overriding priorities: to determine the strength of the USSR’s long-range bomber and intercontinental ballistic missile forces.⁴² The U-2’s first task was to determine whether there was indeed a ‘bomber gap’ which favoured the Soviets; a large long-range bomber force, widely dispersed, could not be entirely destroyed on the ground and, armed with thermonuclear bombs, could inflict unacceptable damage on the United States. Accordingly, the early U-2 flights targeted the known Soviet bomber bases. The very first flight, on 4 July, photographed long-range bomber bases in the western USSR.⁴³ The second flight overflew aircraft and missile-development centres in the Moscow area, including Ramenskoye airfield, the Fili aircraft factory, the missile factory at Podlipki, and the missile engine centre at Khimki.⁴⁴ Among the aircraft stationed at Ramenskoye were Myasishchev M-4 (‘Bison’) long-range bombers; the bomber was manufactured at the Fili plant. When 9 of the bombers had appeared at the air force display of 1955, the Soviets had artfully flown them twice past the reviewing stand, so leading the Americans to believe that they had 18 of them and provoking fears of a ‘bomber gap’.⁴⁵ This, like the first Soviet thermonuclear test two years before, had spurred on the U-2 development programme. But when they were photographed and counted at Ramenskoye, there proved to be far fewer of them than had been feared.⁴⁶ This is of much interest since intelligence sources in Germany had provided information on Ramenskoye years before. Tokaev had mentioned it in 1948, because TsAGI, the principal Soviet centre for aerodynamic research and development, was a couple of kilometres away. The British knew it then to be an experimental flighttesting centre.⁴⁷ Germans had had much to do with the base. A Junkers team had worked there, testing the Soviet version of the V-1 and other aircraft. One of its members, a mechanic called Horst Richter, fled the DDR in 1951 and provided the British with information on the airfield. He had also been to two further airfields in the Moscow region, Toplistan and Borki, and gave their location.⁴⁸ Of course, by the mid-1950s, Ramenskoye’s prominence was such that even Western air attachés were allowed to visit it.⁴⁹ Subsequent flights targeted other places which had once held large numbers of prisoner-of-war camps, such as Byelorussia, Ukraine, and the Crimea. U-2 overflights of long-range bomber bases undermined the idea of a ‘bomber gap’ because they yielded no evidence of a large ⁴² ⁴³ ⁴⁴ ⁴⁶ ⁴⁷ ⁴⁸ ⁴⁹

Pedlow and Welzenbach, U-2 Program, 93–100, 316. D. Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball (New York, 1991), 30. Pedlow and Welzenbach, U-2 Program, 105–6. ⁴⁵ Prados, Soviet Estimate, 43. Lashmar, Spy Flights, 143. DSI/JTIC(50)6, ‘Places of Interest to DSI/JTIC in the USSR’, 1/11/1950, DEFE 41/152. STIB Interrogation Report No. 305 (Horst Richter), DEFE 41/96. Richelson, American Espionage, 51.

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force. By December 1956, only a few months after the start of the operation, estimates of the size of the Soviet long-range bomber force had been greatly reduced.⁵⁰ They were reduced further in the light of intelligence acquired by U-2 flights in 1957 and 1958. In time, the Americans concluded that there was no ‘bomber gap’.⁵¹ Attention then shifted to missile and nuclear targets. U-2 photography also undermined the ‘missile gap’ scare, which had begun in August 1957, when the first Soviet test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile had been detected, and had risen to fever pitch with Sputnik’s flight the following October. August 1957 was, in fact, the period of the most intensive overflight of the USSR: seven U-2 missions were carried out, under the codename ‘Soft Touch’. One of their tasks was to find the space-launch and ICBM-testing site at Tyuratam, which was indeed achieved that month. The thermonuclear-weapon testing site near Semipalatinsk was also overflown. U-2s overflew areas of ICBM production and possible deployment in the Urals region and Siberia. Searching along railway lines, they failed to find any deployment site.⁵² Indeed, by the end of 1960 only one such site had been identified—Plesetsk. Satellite reconnaissance late in 1960 established conclusively that the USSR’s force of ICBMs was tiny—only four missiles, deployed at Plesetsk. Khrushchev’s repeated claims of superior missile strength were a bluff and the Americans, partly thanks to U-2 photography, knew it. This encouraged them to stand firm over West Berlin.⁵³ Atomic production and development installations were also among the planes’ targets in the years 1957–9. Biological and chemical warfare installations were photographed as well. Nuclear installations were particular targets of the seven overflights in August 1957 and the information provided by Germans determined the targets chosen. Uranium mines, processing installations, reactors, enrichment plants, weapons production facilities, and stockpile sites were all overflown to confirm intelligence received of them.⁵⁴ At the very least, German sources provided intelligence of the location of the first four and so helped to guide the U-2s to some of their atomic targets. Among their targets in August 1957 was the enormous nuclear complex Tomsk-7, the plutonium production complex Krasnoyarsk-26, the uranium metal factory near Novosibirsk, and uraniumconcentration plants and mining areas in Central Asia. Since Semipalatinsk was also overflown, the flights photographed all stages of the nuclear weapon production cycle, from uranium mining to weapon-testing. They brought back a huge amount of intelligence. It contradicted Antropov’s observation to Riehl in 1951 that the USSR’s own supplies of uranium were large enough for its needs. Examining the photography, the CIA concluded that a shortage of fissionable material would, ⁵⁰ ⁵¹ ⁵² ⁵³ ⁵⁴

Pedlow and Welzenbach, U-2 Program, 111–12; Prados, Soviet Estimate, 46–9. Freedman, US Intelligence, 67; Andrew, President’s Eyes Only, 224. Pedlow and Welzenbach, U-2 Program, 135–9. Brugioni, Eyeball, 35–55; Andrew, President’s Eyes Only, 250. Pocock, Dragon Lady, 35–6.

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until 1966, continue to act as a constraint on the Soviet nuclear weapons production programme.⁵⁵ There were only three flights in 1958 and 1959, partly because, owing to the tension caused by the Berlin Crisis, Eisenhower did not want to aggravate superpower relations even more. One of the missions in 1959 overflew Sverdlovsk-44 and an atomic installation further north, at Nizhnaya Tura; cloud cover prevented photographs from being taken of the Kyshtym reactors.⁵⁶ Much ignorance about the strength of the Soviet intercontinental missile force still remained. To dispel it, three flights took place in 1960. The first, in February, did not find a single ICBM site, but did photograph a new bomber at Kazan’ (where STIB had known of an aircraft factory years before). The second, on 9 April 1960, particularly enraged Khrushchev since the plane took photographs of three of the USSR’s most secret weapons development facilities: the great complex at Sary Shagan, where missiles to intercept incoming ballistic missiles were being developed; Tyuratam (again); and, finally, Semipalatinsk (again). Sary Shagan, like Kapustin Yar and Tyuratam, was a research and development centre as well as a testing range; it was overflown in order to obtain intelligence on missile R&D. The third flight was Gary Powers’s fateful mission, undertaken on 1 May. It was the most ambitious of all the U-2 overflights for he was to cross the whole of the USSR. It followed a route marked out by Germans. Powers took off from Peshawar in Pakistan and entered the USSR in the Dushanbe region, where Soviet radar defences were poor. He overflew Stalinabad (where, according to intelligence acquired by STIB in Germany, uranium was mined), passed over Tyuratam, and then, according to one of the CIA’s interpreters of U-2 photography, made his way north to overfly ‘the nuclear plants in the Urals’.⁵⁷ He passed over Cheliabinsk, photographing Cheliabinsk-40 and Cheliabinsk-70 as he did so, and made for Sverdlovsk, where his plane was shot down. Two uranium-enrichment plants (Sverdlovsk-44 and Sverdlovsk-45) were located near the city. In the same region lay the warhead-assembly plant codenamed Zlatoust-36. Not only had the CIA learned the location of Sverdlovsk-44 from returnees but many thousands of German PoWs had worked in the vicinity of the city and their interrogation had established its military-industrial importance. The exploitation of German intelligence documents had stressed the wartime relocation of Soviet war-related industry to the Urals region, as well as Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia. Even if Sverdlovsk-45 was not among Powers’s targets, it will have been too big for any U-2 to miss. Even then it was a very large complex, incorporating a number of plants, where not only was uranium enriched, but warheads were also assembled and weapons stored. Powers had been meant to fly on to the ICBM base under construction at Yurya, the missile test centre at Plesetsk where ICBMs were being deployed, the submarine shipyard at Severodvinzk, various of the many military ⁵⁵ Peebles, Shadow Flights, 176–81.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 242–4.

⁵⁷ Brugioni, Eyeball, 43.

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installations in the Kola Peninsula, and, lastly, the naval bases at Murmansk, before landing in Norway.⁵⁸ Some of the instructions given to the U-2 pilots were so precise that it is difficult to believe they can have come from any source other than a human source who had worked either in, or near, the targeted installation. For example, a British U-2 pilot who managed to photograph a new type of bomber had targeted the very factory in which it was made, as he himself has related: The picture I was most proud of was of an aircraft factory. The CIA told me to fly exactly down this road through a town. They didn’t normally have maps of the town but they did of this town. It was essential to go down this road because on one side of the road was the airframe factory, on the other side was the engine factory. I was able to film both sides.⁵⁹

On this flight, the pilot took photographs of at least three places on which STIB had gathered information from German sources: the Saratov airbase for longrange bombers; the city of Kuibyshev, where military aircraft were manufactured; and Kapustin Yar.⁶⁰ So Germans played a notable role in providing spyplanes with targets. Indeed, the utility of the ‘1037(P)’ scientists’ information went beyond that. Their information enabled the CIA’s photographic interpreters to derive a greater understanding of the USSR’s atomic installations from U-2 photographs than would otherwise have been possible.⁶¹ By a pleasant irony, the most common nickname for the U-2 was ‘Dragon Lady’. This nickname owed nothing to the intelligence operation of a similar name, but was inspired by an Oriental character in an American comic strip. German sources thus enabled a penetrating investigation to be made of the USSR’s military-industrial complex and war-making capability. Allen Dulles told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1960: The U-2 program has helped confirm that only a greatly reduced long-range bomber production program is continuing in the Soviet Union. It has established, however, that the Soviet Union has recently developed a new medium-range bomber with supersonic capabilities. The U-2 program has covered many long-range bomber airfields, confirming estimates of the location of bases and the disposition of Soviet long-range bombers. It has also acquired data on the nuclear weapons storage facilities associated with them. Our overflights have enabled us to look periodically at the actual ground facilities involved with respect to the Soviet missile system programs. . . . Our photography has also provided us valuable insight into the problem of Soviet doctrine regarding ICBM deployment. It has taught us much about the use . . . which the Soviet Union is making of these sites for training troops and the operational use of the short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. ⁵⁸ Peebles, Shadow Flights, 261–8; Pocock, Dragon Lady, 56. ⁵⁹ Lashmar, Spy Flights, 153. ⁶⁰ Peebles, Shadow Flights, 250–4. ⁶¹ Lowenhaupt, Studies In Intelligence (2000), 69.

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The program has provided valuable information on the Soviet atomic energy program. . . . This coverage has included the production of fissionable materials, weapons development, and test activities, and the location, type, and size of many stockpile sites. . . . The Soviet nuclear testing ground has been photographed with extremely interesting results more than once. The photography also has given us our first firm information on the magnitude and location of the USSR’s domestic uranium ore and uranium processing facilities vital in estimating the Soviet fissionable material production. We have located national and regional nuclear storage sites and forward storage facilities.⁶²

In short, the U-2 programme was a resounding success. Richard Helms, Director of Central Intelligence under Johnson, declared in 1975 that the U-2 flights had yielded 90 per cent of the hard intelligence on Soviet military developments which US intelligence had acquired in the four years of the programme.⁶³ The programme established both that the USA’s war-related scientific research and development was of better quality than that of the Soviet Union, and that its actual military capability was greater. This influenced the Pentagon’s research and development programme. The U-2s demonstrated that the United States had better weapons than the USSR and that its strategic weapons—long-range bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles—were more extensively deployed. Moreover, the United States’s military advantage was growing. U-2 photographs showed the ‘bomber gap’ to be a myth; Eisenhower’s immediate response was to refuse requests from the USAF to build more B-52 bombers. In combination with satellite reconnaissance, U-2 photography also established that Khrushchev’s claims to a strong ICBM force were false. Eisenhower therefore refused to increase the numbers of American missiles deployed by manufacturing liquid-fuelled rockets which were now obsolete. Instead, the administration continued with the development of solid-fuelled missiles. The president realized, as he said publicly in November 1957, that ‘the over-all military strength of the Free World is distinctly greater than that of the Communist countries’.⁶⁴ Consequently, his general response to U-2 imagery was to resist demands for expenditure on weapons to counter weapons he now knew the Soviets did not have. U-2 photography thus averted a further escalation of the arms race and helped to stabilize the Cold War. It was also passed to American military commanders around the world and used by the United States’s intelligence agencies to gather more intelligence.⁶⁵ The utility of the Germans’ information did not end with the loss of Powers’s plane. Three months later, in August 1960, photographic reconnaissance of the USSR recommenced when the USA’s first spy satellite was orbited. Known to the CIA as KH-1, the public knew it as Discoverer XIV. The ‘Corona’ series of satellites, orbited until 1972, made possible photographic reconnaissance of the whole of the ⁶² Quoted in Richelson, American Espionage, 151–2. ⁶³ Prados, Soviet Estimate, 102. ⁶⁴ Quoted in Peebles, Shadow Flights, 198. ⁶⁵ Pedlow and Welzenbach, U-2 Program, 316–18; Dulles to Goodpaster, 19/10/1961, in Ruffner, CORONA, 94–5.

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Soviet Union and its visible military deployments and military-industrial and scientific complexes. The first four successful missions alone provided imagery of some 13 million square miles of the Soviet Bloc. However, the very volume of imagery caused problems. One was in ascertaining where the photographed installation was. As far as the installations already identified and located by Germans were concerned, that was no difficulty at all: the photographic interpreters knew full well where they were. Moreover, as with the U-2 and other spyplane missions, intelligence already gathered from Germans influenced which targets were particularly looked for in examining satellite imagery. To give only a few examples, in August 1960 the nuclear plants at Kyshtym and Sverdlovsk, the airbase at Ramenskoye, the missile development centre at Khimki, and the missile development and testing centres at Kapustin Yar and Sary Shagan were all listed as targets of the highest priority. Other sites on which Germans had provided intelligence, such as the war-gas plants at Dzerzhinsk, were also photographed in the early years of the programme.⁶⁶ The Americans kept on photographing such targets for the rest of the Cold War. In the 1980s KH-11 satellites photographed test aircraft on the ground at Ramenskoye and chemical warfare vehicles deployed at Shikhani.⁶⁷ The satellite programme also persuaded US administrations that they did not need frantically to build up American military strength. It allowed them to plan their weapons development rationally and held down the sums allocated to military expenditure.⁶⁸ In 1967 President Johnson remarked that the space programme, which had by then cost approximately $40 billion, had paid for itself ten times over, simply by reason of the intelligence on the USSR which it had enabled to be gathered.⁶⁹ THE STRATEGIC EMBARGO Spies, of course, provided some of the information on which the embargo was based. This was valuable intelligence. The embargo had some success in preserving the West’s lead time in applying science and technology to military capability. An American intelligence study in 1965 concluded that in a number of respects denial of Western technology had held back the Bloc’s military development. Denial of computer technology had hampered Soviet military R&D. Denial of metallurgical technology had prevented the Soviets from developing warplanes as sophisticated as might have been made. Denial of semiconductor and transistor manufacturing expertise and plant had hampered the development of miniaturized military equipment. Denial of telecommunications technology had prevented the ⁶⁶ ‘List of Highest Priority Targets, USSR’, 18/8/1960, in Ruffner, CORONA, 49–58; CIA/ NPIC, Photographic Intelligence Report, August 1963, ibid., 185–9. ⁶⁷ J. Richelson, America’s Secret Eyes in Space: The U.S. Keyhole Spy Satellite Program (New York, 1990), 186–7. ⁶⁸ Kenneth Greer, ‘Corona’, in Ruffner, CORONA, 38. ⁶⁹ ‘Satellite Spying Cited by Johnson’, New York Times, 17/3/1967.

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Bloc States from improving their communications networks and thus their air defence capability. Induced defection may also have played some role in restraining Soviet research and development, though its effect is likely to have been tiny.⁷⁰ Further evidence for the effectiveness of the embargo is the Bloc’s reaction to it. All its secret services made strenuous efforts to obtain embargoed technology illegally. Several Soviet agencies were involved; by the 1980s one alone, the KGB’s Directorate T, is estimated to have had a worldwide procurement network of some 20,000 agents. Much of the directorate’s recruitment effort was directed at Western scientists, and it maintained a large force of agents among Soviet scientists to identify and recruit them. It obtained much S&TI from satellite services; in 1980 more than half was supplied by the HVA and Czechoslovakia’s StB.⁷¹

DISINFORMATION There is evidence that the British and Americans responded to intelligence of the USSR’s backwardness and tendency to copy Western technology by instituting operations of scientific deception. Soviet engineers told German deportees in the USSR that they believed that technical literature was doctored to deceive them. The outstanding aero-engine designer Arkhip Liul’ka told Siegfried Günter that he believed that false technical information was put into the British press to conceal technical progress.⁷² The interviewer of the atomic scientist Karl-Franz Zühlke noted that, ‘Source mentioned that the Russians told the Germans that they were aware of the fact that Americans had planted in some cases obviously wrong information in the technical literature.’⁷³ Disinformation was certainly an element in British covert action against the Soviet Bloc and included the dissemination of bad scientific ideas.⁷⁴ By the late 1940s representatives of the three armed forces in the government’s deception unit, the London Controlling Section, were devising ideas for poor weapons. These ideas were passed to the USSR through agents in Britain and abroad by MI5 and MI6.⁷⁵ Like the West’s research and development, the strategic embargo, and intelligence collection, disinformation was another attempt to contain the USSR’s scientific potential and stay ahead in the arms race. Like other measures, it was regarded as worthwhile because Soviet science was seen as less advanced than that of the West. Intelligence of scientific backwardness and copying encouraged it; particular deceptions must have been guided by information on the quality of Soviet science. ⁷⁰ Mastanduno, Economic Containment, 118–20, 325–7; cf. M. Goldman and R. Vernon, ‘Economic Relations’, in J. Nye Jr (ed.), The Making of America’s Soviet Policy (New Haven, Conn., 1984), 168–73. ⁷¹ Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, 283–5; Tuck, High-Tech Espionage, 15. See also I. Pacepa, Red Horizons (London: Heinemann, 1988). ⁷² STIB Interview Report No. 182, DEFE 41/102. ⁷³ Annexure ‘B’, STIB Interview Report No. 253, DEFE 41/106. ⁷⁴ Aldrich, Hidden Hand, 178–9, 256, 646. ⁷⁵ Unattributable interview.

Conclusion: The Years of the Germans Stalin’s post-war arms race with the West deserves a larger place than it has in the historiography of the Cold War’s origins. Historians tend to present the threat the USSR was seen to pose as being one of political and territorial expansion.¹ This is largely accurate. However, growing military strength would enable the USSR to pursue an aggressive foreign policy and so added to the threat it posed. Evidence of Stalin’s arms build-up immediately after the war, exploiting German science and technology, increased British and American suspicion of his intentions and influenced the character of their containment policy. Soviet science needed to be contained, just like Soviet Communism. This intelligence also prompted them to improve their weaponry. They demanded more intelligence on the Soviet build-up and decided to induce the defection of East German scientific workers so as to deny them to their rival. This policy yielded appreciable intelligence benefits and encouraged the inducement of defection as a means of gathering intelligence on Soviet science. This led to the exploitation of the scientific returnees of the 1950s. The two governments had adopted policies of inducing the defection both of East German and Soviet citizens, for both intelligence and denial purposes, by 1951 at the latest (and probably before). Inducing defection became a central element in American subversion. Like espionage, doing it on any scale required an open border across which the targets could flee. Until 1961 one existed in Berlin. The inner-German border was also porous. The division of Germany was not complete—yet. By its very nature, scientific knowledge could not be contained as completely as Communism. It grows and grows. Subversion cannot reverse it: all it can do is restrain its growth. The USSR’s control of Central and Eastern Europe was different: it could be so completely undermined that the Kremlin allowed its satellites to go their own way. The United States’s policy of inducing the defection of key East German scientific and industrial personnel, enunciated in 1951 in NSC-86/1, aimed to hold back the growth of the Bloc’s scientific capability, transfer expertise to the West, and add to the impact of a wide range of subversive measures designed to shake the USSR’s control of Eastern Europe. It was both a way of staying ahead in the arms race and an important element in an aggressive policy of containment which enhances historians’ understanding of that policy. The current academic literature does not sufficiently stress the aggressive dimension of containment. The reason is that it was largely secret and much has ¹ J. L. Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford, 1997), 37–9; Dunbabin, The Cold War, 53–83.

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remained so. Studies of American foreign policy in the early Cold War period do make brief mention of efforts to undermine the USSR’s control of the Bloc—for instance, the propaganda broadcasts of Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberation from Bolshevism, and Voice of America, and ‘Valuable’, the covert paramilitary operation to overthrow the Hoxha regime in Albania.² Nevertheless, containment is presented as chiefly a defensive policy, meant rather to prevent further Soviet expansion than to drive the USSR out of Eastern Europe. That is the understanding of it set out in John Lewis Gaddis’s book We Now Know, which argues that the policy reflected an American and British determination ‘to hold the line, remain true to one’s own principles, and wait for the passage of time to bring a better world’.³ Similarly, Stephen Ambrose and Douglas Brinkley maintain that, ‘The crusade against Communism . . . took the form of containment rather than attack’.⁴ American policy was more aggressive than that. Though containment had a large defensive component, it was also an offensive policy. In talks with the United States’s ambassadors to the Bloc States in 1949, Kennan stated the United States’s aim of compelling the Soviets to withdraw from Eastern Europe and added, in a characteristically apt phrase, that he wanted ‘to determine what are the weak spots on which to hammer relentlessly’.⁵ This book has shown that one of the weak spots was the flight of refugees over East Germany’s open border with the West. Flight was the best propaganda possible and the US government tried to undermine Soviet control of East Germany by encouraging it. The conventional view that the SED’s allegation of induced defection was ‘conspiracy theory’ and largely ‘fantasy’ is wrong. One way of stimulating defection was by finding work in the United States and West Germany for key scientific workers. By the mid-1950s the Eisenhower administration had decided to make its covert action in the Bloc less provocative. However, it intensified its efforts to induce the defection of East German scientific personnel because it saw them as less provocative to the Soviet Union than other forms of covert action, and also because they helped to maintain the United States’s lead over the USSR in the arms race. Furthermore, the most valuable scientific deportees were being returned from the USSR to East Germany at precisely that time. The US government also used the radio to call upon East Germans to take flight. In NSC-158, of June 1953, the US government told the CIA to ‘launch black radio intruder operations to encourage defection’ (a ‘black’ radio station was one which appeared to have no connection with the US government). RIAS also encouraged qualified people to come West (it was a ‘grey’ propaganda station: though connected with the US government, it was not officially ² M. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, Calif., 1992), 181, 356; W. Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947–1950 (Princeton, NJ, 1992), 203–11; D. Mayers, George Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy (New York, 1988), 158. ³ Gaddis, We Now Know, 20, 37, 199; Leffler, Preponderance of Power, 499–506. ⁴ S. Ambrose and D. Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy, 1938–1970 (New York, 1997), p. xiii. ⁵ Quoted in Miscamble, Kennan, 205–6.

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broadcasting on its behalf ). The evidence gathered by the MfS and made public in the Abwerbung trial before the DDR Supreme Court in August 1961 (see Chapter 7, pp. 194–6) indicates that lots of letters were also sent to categories of East German who were valuable to the regime, warning them to defect to avoid arrest. This is a very plausible allegation: US government records on psychological warfare techniques show that there was much interest in provoking purges of the army and security service by prompting the defection of their officers. Moreover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation used anonymous letters at this time to cause dissension in left-wing organizations in the United States and provoke defections from them.⁶ Was the policy of inducing the defection of key scientific personnel successful? To answer this question, its intended function must be borne in mind. By ‘function’, both its role in overall policy and its own intended effects are meant. It formed part of a collection of denial measures, the aim of which was to keep the West ahead in the arms race. The centrepiece of this collection was the strategic embargo, which was supported by other forms of resource denial and, until 1954, measures of economic warfare. All these measures together could not stop the USSR from developing advanced weaponry and becoming the second-greatest military power after the United States; its scientific and economic resources were too large for that. However, their main purpose was to help the West develop its advanced weaponry faster by applying science and technology to war better. They had some success in this. Inducing defection was intended to have both scientific and ‘psychological’ (i.e., political) effects. It had some success in holding back the growth of the scientific potential available to the USSR and its satellites. It was also meant to increase hostility to the SED regime, in particular among targeted categories of people like scientists, thus undermining their loyalty. It had some success in this as well. A number of factors have to be considered in determining why the Soviet Union applied science and technology to weapons development more slowly than did the West. Chief among them is its own inferiority in scientific and technological innovativeness; others are the efficiency of the weapons procurement systems in Western countries, the effectiveness of Soviet spying abroad, and the Soviets’ efficiency in applying the Western technology they obtained to their purposes. Small-scale operations of induced defection are another factor on top of these. The precise significance of any one factor is very difficult to establish. That of induced defection has not been authoritatively investigated; any assessment of it can only be a guess. The guess is particularly hard to make since it is not known who many of those enticed into defection were. Nor is it certain what work the defectors would have produced had they remained in East Germany. Thus, it involves a counter-factual analysis: what would they have accomplished had they remained there? A reasonable conclusion is to assume that it did, to some extent, ⁶ Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, 72–5; W. Churchill and J. Vander Wall, The COINTELPRO Papers (Boston, Mass., 1990).

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reduce the scientific potential available. This loss is likely to have been small— indeed, smaller than that of any other factor. For the USSR, it is likely to have been tiny and negligible: it had enough scientific talent to shrug off any loss of German expertise. Moreover, Western countries undercut their own policy by allowing their scientists and engineers to publish their research results and technical information in a wealth of scientific and technical journals (hence, the importance of scientific disinformation). What is important about the policy is that it was carried out at all. The West was determined to win the Cold War; it did whatever it could.⁷ Like economic warfare, induced defection harmed the DDR more than the USSR. Research and development there were certainly disrupted. As was related in Chapter 1, the British were confident that their ‘Matchbox’ evacuations broke up R&D projects. These disruptions were only reduced to manageable proportions with the border closure in 1961. The best evidence that defection had an impact on science is that the East Germans tried hard to prevent it. Higher salaries were offered to those suspected of planning to defect. The MfS vetted the lists of those participating in delegations sent to conferences in the West. Like the KGB, it placed informers among the delegates.⁸ Campaigns were launched to draw West German technical personnel to the DDR; they were offered good jobs and opportunities of promotion. The regime tried to find out why people were fleeing; the police had to investigate every instance of flight and find out the cause. Flight was made a criminal offence. Furious propaganda campaigns were waged against Abwerbung.⁹ Like the factory dismantlings of 1945–6, defection, whether induced or not, tended to make East German science more dependent on Soviet expertise. Indeed, induced defection was a kind of intellectual dismantling. Many of those enticed West were those whose factories had been dismantled after the war and who had been deported to the USSR with them. Dependence on the USSR was a bad condition because it was niggardly in giving assistance. In the late 1950s the USSR was slow in providing research institutes in the satellites with raw materials needed for atomic research; exchange of ideas between Soviet scientists and those of the satellites was much less than that between scientists in Western countries and, indeed, wholly unsatisfactory.¹⁰ According to Heinz Barwich, Khrushchev deliberately kept assistance to atomic development in East Germany to a minimum.¹¹ Induced defection reinforced the damage done by mass flight to the DDR. The latter was by far the more damaging. Many skilled people, including engineers, ⁷ Mastanduno, Economic Containment, 15, 118–20, 127–8. ⁸ Barwich and Barwich, Rote Atom, 244–5; Andrew and Mitrokhin, Mitrokhin Archive, 713; Dulles, Craft of Intelligence, 135. ⁹ C. Ross, ‘ “sonst sehe ich mich veranlasst, auch nach dem Westen zu ziehen”, “Republikflucht”, SED-Herrschaft und Bevölkerung vor dem Mauerbau’, Deutschland Archiv 4/2001, 615–16. ¹⁰ Barwich and Barwich, Rote Atom, 187–8. ¹¹ ‘Nuclear Scientist Defects to United States’, US Senate Sub-committee on Internal Security hearing, 15/12/1964, 38–40.

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were among the migrants. The number of engineers among them rose sharply in the mid-1950s and in 1960–1.¹² The CIA noted, in 1959, that the flight of a greater number of scientists the previous year had caused ‘serious problems’.¹³ Some 20 per cent of those lost every year to the DDR had worked in industry; well over 60 per cent had been members of the working population. Moreover, the refugees tended to be young people: about half of them were less than 25 years old.¹⁴ Since the DDR was losing so many people, it could ill afford to lose more. The induced defection operations complemented the refugee stream well: the latter deprived the DDR of a huge number of young people; while the former deprived it of scientific and industrial leaders (of which it had too few anyway). The two together reduced East Germany’s scientific potential from top to bottom. The DDR started off with a smaller stock of scientific workers than did the USSR. By the late 1950s flight had reduced this to alarmingly small groups of skilled people in particular scientific fields. In the atomic field, for example, their number was so few that research and development was in grave difficulties. The atomic industry was only founded in the mid-1950s. In 1956 the USSR agreed to help the DDR build an atomic power station; in 1957 Heinz Barwich brought East Germany’s first atomic reactor into operation at the Central Institute for Nuclear Research in Rossendorf. But in 1958 Barwich reported to the chairman of the State Planning Commission that the number of middle-aged and older scientific workers had been ‘decimated’, chiefly by migration to West Germany. He mentioned specifically that among them were ‘leading specialists’ who had worked in the USSR. These people are likely to have been induced to defect. Flight was an important reason why atomic research was not keeping pace with that of Western countries.¹⁵ The same problem existed in the aircraft industry, which was crippled by a lack of leaders. Its life was indeed short: founded in 1954, the SED Politburo decided in February 1961 to close it. In practice, it was the Soviet Union which forced the closure of the industry. Its decision to supply its airline companies with planes manufactured domestically deprived the East German industry of its largest potential customer.¹⁶ The industry was a weak one anyway. The main reason for this was that aeronautics in East Germany had been damaged by Soviet dismantlings and migration. Factories and test facilities were lacking and needed to be restored. Aircraft manufacture was shackled by the planned economy, which restrained technological innovation. Industry, damaged by dismantlings, proved incapable of supplying aircraft factories adequately with raw materials. The SED officials who oversaw the industry had little understanding of aeronautical matters. ¹² Major, ‘Innenpolitische Aspekte der zweiten Berlinkrise (1958–1961)’, 103. ¹³ CIA Current Weekly Intelligence Summary, 12/2/1959, in Steury, Front Lines, 457. ¹⁴ Heidemeyer, Flucht und Zuwanderung, 48–53. ¹⁵ Barwich and Barwich, Rote Atom, 187–8; Weiss, ‘Kernforschung und Kerntechnik in der DDR’, in Hoffmann and Macrakis, Naturwissenschaft und Technik, 298–310. ¹⁶ B. Ciesla, ‘Die Transferfalle: Zum DDR-Flugzeugbau in den fünfziger Jahren’, in Hoffmann and Macrakis, Naturwissenschaft und Technik, 202–11; Mick, Forschen für Stalin, 302–10.

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There was a shortage of people skilled in aeronautical research and development. Brunolf Baade, the industry’s leading aircraft designer, complained in 1955 that a severe lack of experienced technical personnel was holding back aircraft production. These were exactly the people targeted by the Western services; this weakness could be aggravated by inducing defection. Baade contrasted the state of the East German industry with the conditions which had faced such German companies as Junkers and Heinkel which, before 1945, had had factories in the East. Then, since the companies had had large bodies of trained personnel, new and inexperienced workers had consistently formed a minority of the workforce and had been trained by the rest. However, the DDR faced the opposite situation: most of the workers lacked technical training. This unskilled majority had to be trained by a small minority of experienced workers, and these men had many other jobs to do as well, such as planning the development programme, supervising it, and correcting mistakes in the work. Owing to their many tasks, their skills were spread too thinly across the work of the factory. Baade remarked pessimistically, ‘It is impossible to expect that the tasks will actually be achieved with this tiny staff.’¹⁷ He was right: by the end of the 1950s only a small number of aeroplanes had been made. Party officials complained that research work fell well below a world standard, but the responsibility for this was theirs: they had not promoted it on a sufficient scale. The USSR made very little scientific and technical information available to compensate for this.¹⁸ Ulbricht told the conference of the Warsaw Pact leaders in August 1961 that induced defection, in all its forms, over the open border had caused the DDR’s economy ‘serious harm’. Of course, he exaggerated the impact that propaganda, limited benefits for political refugees, and job offers had done because he did not want to regard the refugee stream as being a spontaneous repudiation of Communism. Most of the refugees wanted to leave the DDR simply because their experience of life there had convinced them that they would be better off in West Germany. Most migrated for economic reasons and, particularly from the mid1950s, the Federal Republic’s Economic Miracle represented a strong inducement to go. Psychological warfare was a secondary influence.¹⁹ Ulbricht also used American subversion to justify an action which it could not justify: imprisoning East Germans in the DDR. Nevertheless, he was right that great efforts had been made over many years to harm the East German economy by drawing away its workforce, and particularly the skilled part of it; his assessment that this had done serious harm is a very plausible one.²⁰ The Communists later put a figure of more than 30 billion marks on the economic loss caused to them by flight.²¹ Moreover, there was wilful misjudgement on both sides. The United States’s policy-makers of ¹⁷ Auszüge aus einer Unterredung mit Prof. Baade, 27/10/55, DY 30/IV 2/202/56, SAPMO-BA. ¹⁸ G. Barkleit, ‘Die Spezialisten und die Parteibürokratie’, Deutschland Archiv, 28/8 (1995), 825–8. ¹⁹ Heidemeyer, Flucht und Zuwanderung, 53–8; Major, ‘Innenpolitische Aspekte der zweiten Berlinkrise (1958–1961)’, 105–6. ²⁰ Harrison, Driving the Soviets, 196. ²¹ Charisius and Mader, Nicht Länger Geheim, 322.

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the period 1948–56, many of them brilliant men, placed hopes in subversion which were disappointed. As with the strategic embargo, it is always possible that induced defection proved counter-productive. A policy of scientific denial can merely stimulate an opponent to greater creativity. The British made precisely this claim about their response to being denied American knowledge of atomic science after the passing of the McMahon Act. However, this was so obvious a possible effect that it must have been considered in framing the policy. It must have been calculated that the overall loss caused by diminishing East Germany’s pool of creative people would outweigh any gain. Certainly, though it may have led to greater creativity in some respects, overall science in the Soviet Bloc remained less innovative than did science in the West. As an instrument of psychological warfare, induced defection was flawed from the start. At its heart was a contradiction: on the one hand, the USSR was to be discredited in the hope of stirring up resistance to it; on the other hand, people opposed to Soviet control were to be brought West, where they could cause the USSR little trouble. The Americans saw this tension, which is one reason why only ‘key’ people in the satellites were targeted.²² Induced defection was meant to depict the Communists’ rule in East Germany as unacceptably repressive and so undermine it. It was a form of propaganda. Of course, the spontaneous flight of millions made this point: there was no need to make job offers to targeted people to do it. However, such operations brought the message of the West’s superiority to particular categories of people, among them scientific workers. They showed to all leading East German scientists and engineers that there was little future for science in East Germany but that a bright future and a good living awaited them in the West if they only chose to take them. Heinz Barwich’s defection shows that this point was taken and encouraged further defections. He was well aware that his fellow-returnees had made good careers in West Germany. When he saw several of them at the UN’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ conference in Geneva in 1964, he commented aloud that they all had good jobs.²³ Psychological warfare was also meant to force the Soviets out of East Germany; obviously, it failed to do this. By the mid-1950s the Americans had realized that, in all likelihood, nothing short of war would make the USSR withdraw from Eastern Europe and covert policy had shifted to holding back the growth of the Bloc’s military and economic potential, and aggravating its difficulties in the hope of bringing about evolutionary change.²⁴ Once again there was scope for a counter-productive effect. It was an article of Communist faith that the capitalist world would seek to prevent a Communist ²² Working Group meeting Panel ‘F’, 9/4/1952, Folder ‘091 Germany-PSB; D-38 minutes’, SMOF-PSB Files, Box 6, HSTL. ²³ Treff GI ‘Martin’, 10/9/1964, MfS-AOP 10660/67 (Band 1), 240–1; GI ‘Alfred’, 10/9/1964, MfS-AOP 10660/67 (Band 1), 242–3. ²⁴ Report on US Policy for the Exploitation of Soviet Vulnerabilities, 8/6/1954, Folder ‘USSR— Report on US Policy for the Exploitation of Soviet Vulnerabilities’, White House Office, OSANSA: Records, 1952–61, NSC Series, Briefing Notes Subseries, Box 18, DDEL.

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society from coming into being. Consistent efforts to deprive the DDR of valuable scientific expertise, undertaken by secret services (one containing many veterans of the Abwehr and SS) acting in collaboration with big West German companies which had lost property in the Communists’ nationalizations, could only convince the SED and MfS that this faith was securely founded on fact. The evidence showed not only that the West was trying to destroy their state but also that without a capable security service the DDR would be nothing more than President Eisenhower’s punchbag. The spy trials of this period and the sentences handed down show how alarmed the Communists were and how determinedly they fought back. Spies and resistance fighters were condemned to death and guillotined so as to deter others from imitating them. The spies tended to be unimportant ones; the penalty was meant to be not a just punishment for their crime but a deterrent to others. The trials were carefully prepared. Witness testimony was selected which would best assist the prosecution; some accused were persuaded or tricked into co-operating with the prosecutors. The trials were mere show trials in two further, decisive respects: the verdict was never in doubt; and those invited to attend were there to take in propaganda designed to serve the regime’s purposes.²⁵ However, in one respect the trials were real: real evidence was used. The MfS did not invent it because there was no need to do so. Indeed, it tended to recommend for public trial those against whom there was convincing evidence and who had confessed. It observed the conduct of the trials and, in its reports, often commented that the evidence had impressed those present. Real evidence was made public as proof of Western malice and used to explain away mass flight caused by the Communist regime itself. The Party and MfS also launched propaganda campaigns designed to inform East Germans about Abwerbung and deter them from having anything to do with the Western secret services. The Ministers of State Security signalled no compromise in their speeches to the SED’s conferences of the 1950s: they stressed that the Western services were making great efforts to overthrow the Party’s rule, but that the political police would be its ‘sharp sword’.²⁶ Wolfgang Schwanitz, the last Stasi chief, has spoken of how, as a young MfS officer in the 1950s, he genuinely felt that it needed to be protected against the ‘exceptional activity’ of US intelligence, the Org, and the KgU.²⁷ Aggression against an aggressive enemy led to aggression in response. Vigorous psychological warfare was just what they expected and wanted. The MfS’s counter-attack naturally extended to counter-espionage. It intensified its own control of East Germans in response to Western spying. The Western services’ use of couriers to post letters in East Germany to spy and defection candidates—thus getting round the MfS’s interception of post entering the DDR—encouraged the Ministry to intercept post circulating within it.²⁸ The ²⁵ See Fricke and Engelmann, ‘Konzentrierte Schläge’, 119–221. ²⁶ Quoted in K. W. Fricke, MfS Intern, 78–89. ²⁷ Quoted in Wagner, Schöne Grüße, 49. ²⁸ Eichner and Dobbert, Headquarters Germany, 206.

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recruitment of people known to refugees caused the MfS to place the personal circle of an important refugee under surveillance as soon as his absence was noticed.²⁹ Germany also played a key role in Western intelligence collection in the years 1945–61. Indeed, in the history of Western intelligence, these were the years of the Germans. Until recent years, historians tended to underestimate the significance of intelligence-gathering on the USSR in the first ten years of the Cold War, and failed to appreciate the importance of Germany. They assumed that the decisive breakthrough in intelligence collection on the USSR came with the start of the U-2 programme in 1956. For example, Professor Lawrence Freedman maintained in his book, US Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat, that, ‘Prior to overhead reconnaissance, the only “hard” evidence on the Soviet military effort came either from information produced by the Soviet government, which was sparse and not trusted, or else from visible observations [by attachés at Soviet military parades].’³⁰ This is not so. The first intelligence penetration of the USSR, with all its consequences for foreign and defence policy, was a result of the occupation, division, and exploitation of Germany and Berlin. It began in 1948, when the Soviet government started to send home German prisoners-of-war. Germany remained an important intelligence source on the USSR and the Bloc throughout the 1950s—indeed, until the sectoral border in Berlin was closed in 1961. In 1956 U-2 aerial reconnaissance surpassed it in importance; moreover, from 1955 the great radar at Samsun collected excellent intelligence on Soviet missile development. In 1960–1 satellite reconnaissance established itself as far and away the most important source on the USSR’s military capability. However, until 1955–6, owing to the limited success of Comint operations, the great scarcity of Imint, and the repeated failure of efforts to infiltrate agents into the USSR, the security of Soviet weapons development was chiefly penetrated by exploiting the sources of intelligence available in Germany and Austria, where East and West met face-to-face. These sources were mainly human, but not entirely so. The Germans are the missing link between Ultra and the U-2. Although the greatest intelligence success of the Second World War was a Sigint triumph and the prized yield of U-2 overflight in the later 1950s was Imint, the breakthroughs of the intervening period were chiefly in the field of Humint. The Berlin Tunnel was an untypical success. Some of this Humint came from spies. The open border made it far easier to spy on East Germany than on the Soviet Union. Owing to their connections with the USSR, East Germans could provide intelligence on Soviet science. The KGB and MfS achieved tremendous successes in counter-espionage in the 1950s, and arrested large numbers of spies and resistance fighters. Their success was of great benefit to the Soviet and East German Communist parties because of the strength of the Western services’ position until August 1961. Although at this time ²⁹ Murphy et al., Battleground Berlin, 351–2.

³⁰ Freedman, US Intelligence, 65.

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the KGB was finding good agents increasingly difficult to recruit in Britain and the United States, in East Germany they were available to the Western services in very large numbers. East Germans were generally anti-Communist and the crises of the period—most importantly, the Blockade of 1948–9 and the suppression of the Uprising of June 1953—made many willing to become spies or resistance fighters. The Western secret services helped to create a German resistance movement which challenged Soviet domination of East Germany, and played a key role in spying. The division of Germany into a Communist state and a free-market democracy was also crucial: the greater prosperity and freedom offered by West Germany attracted refugees in their millions. Mass flight made mass espionage possible by enabling great numbers of spy candidates in East Germany to be identified. Refugee interrogation also yielded a huge volume of information. An elaborate interrogation machinery was created to extract it, which reflected how many countries were interested in obtaining it. The open border in Berlin also enabled many East Germans to travel to the Western sectors whenever they wanted to. Mass migration and the accessibility of West Berlin together caused the DDR the intense security crisis which lasted until the construction of the Wall. West Berlin was a sanctuary, beyond the reach of the repressive arm of the KGB and MfS, where a host of secret services and resistance organizations could safely conspire against the whole of the Bloc. They used the unpopularity of Communism in all the satellites to establish agent networks in them, and carry out espionage and subversion. For the KGB, this was an unprecedented challenge. For the MfS, it was a test which helped to make it a highly effective security service. The DDR was the most vulnerable satellite of all. The Western services’ espionage was very successful. It covered the DDR’s entire territory; their spies were very numerous (in the mid-1950s, the MfS was arresting several hundred a year); many held very responsible positions and betrayed many scientific and other secrets. In spying on science, the Western services had two main aims: to harm the DDR; and to use sources there to obtain intelligence on Soviet science. These two aims were partially achieved. East German sources provided valuable intelligence on Soviet exploitation of East German science. This information shed some light on Soviet R&D. It also established a benchmark for the quality of Soviet science: the Soviets would not be making use of East German know-how if theirs was better. Though assessments of Soviet science still depended mainly on open sources, the DDR’s research and development facilities were thoroughly penetrated with spies. Consequently, assessments of East Germany’s science and economy were based on much better intelligence than those on the USSR. The latter remained speculative and contained much error, as the bomber and missile ‘gaps’ showed. A mass of intelligence was also obtained from refugees about the activities of factories and research institutes, particularly their production. Mass flight both caused serious damage to East German research and development (in electronics, for example) and supplied the West with sources who reported on its difficulties.

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It was also learned that a huge mining effort was underway in the Erzgebirge which was yielding an unexpectedly large amount of uranium. The SED was alarmed at this; not only was flight itself made criminal in 1957, giving information to the Sichtungsstellen was also punished as spying.³¹ The intelligence obtained from spies and refugees was used to enforce the embargo. It was also used to extend it: the informants identified scientific and technical personnel whose induced defection would further damage the DDR’s economy and science. The embargo was thus widened to include expertise as well as goods. Like induced defection, the embargo’s purpose was to increase the West’s strength relative to the Bloc’s and help it to impose its will. The Communist regimes fought back against both. Their secret services were used to circumvent the embargo. In addition to organizing spy trials and disseminating propaganda designed to deter East Germans from collaborating with Western intelligence, the MfS undertook large, long-lasting, and sometimes brutal operations to counter the West’s espionage and subversion. It was so effective that, by 1958, the KGB was willing to reduce its presence in the Ministry to that of a liaison staff. However, part of its success the MfS owed not to its own skill but to outstanding penetration agents of the KGB. Although the Wall was principally designed to shore up the DDR by preventing its workforce from migrating West, it was also Khrushchev’s and Ulbricht’s solution to their security dilemma. The Wall strengthened the MfS’s hand. It was a crucial element in the security regime which supported the German Communist state. It frustrated both spying and the inducement of defection. The recruitment of spies, communicating quickly, fully, and safely with them, making offers to defection candidates, exfiltrating them: these activities could no longer take place chiefly in the sanctuary of West Berlin. They had to take place mainly in the DDR, where the MfS and its army of informers were present. The MfS’s heyday had come. It achieved in 1961 what Soviet state security had achieved more than forty years before: it created an acceptably secure Western border. The importance of this to East Germany’s security has not been sufficiently recognized. Though, in Western eyes, the Berlin Wall was utterly abnormal, from the KGB’s perspective the security situation it brought about was normal. Henceforth, the Western secret services, in their operations against the DDR as against the USSR, were forced to target for recruitment people permitted to leave the Communist states and to use Westerners and others permitted to enter the Bloc. Spying occurred with a measure of Communist permission. Consequently, there were strict limits to what it could achieve. The best sources on the Bloc were necessarily technical ones. From 1956 the Americans used technology of stunning sophistication to make deep penetrations of Soviet security. Nevertheless, even operations with the U-2 and reconnaissance satellites exploited intelligence provided by human sources. Since the Americans were the only possessors of this extraordinary technology, they dominated Western intelligence ³¹ e.g. see court reports in DP1, VA, 1163, BAB.

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collection. As far as espionage was concerned, owing to the number of connections between East and West Germans, the BND still had more opportunities of penetrating the DDR than the CIA had against the USSR. Western intelligence owed its sources in Germany to Soviet policy. The ex-PoWs and the scientific deportees were extraordinary ones; others (spies, refugees, defectors, contacts, letters, phone calls) lasted for the whole of the Cold War. The USSR’s division of Germany, exploitation of its Occupation Zone, and use of Germans’ knowledge and labour in its post-war reconstruction gave the Western services their opportunities to penetrate its security. They gave many Germans knowledge of developments in the DDR and USSR which they were eager to pass on. In the DDR, Soviet policy gave rise to resistance organizations and recruited ideologically motivated agents for the West. Nationalizations encouraged companies to collaborate with the Western secret services. The SED’s second-hand revolution from above, which had little support in East Germany, caused mass migration. Fear, including fear of the regime, was the reason for most defections of Soviet officials.³² Repression gave rise to resistance and flight, and thus to espionage and subversion. True to its self-destructive character, the Communist system undermined itself. This is not, of course, how the SED leaders saw it. To them, the alliance of Western intelligence, West German resistance (some of it very right wing), and big business was proof that capitalist reaction could not tolerate their new Communist state. The main task was to penetrate the USSR, particularly after 1946, when most of the war-related R&D being conducted in East Germany was transferred to it. There were strict limits to how penetrating the information on the USSR provided by Germans could be; in consequence, the West tended to be surprised by the speed of Soviet development. Nevertheless, some of it was very penetrating; the rest was better than nothing. Otherwise, what generally came into their hands were photographs taken by attachés stationed at the embassy in Moscow, a thin stream of agent reports, information provided by defectors, a little imagery intelligence, low-grade Comint, and a substantial amount of electronic intelligence.³³ German spies did provide intelligence from the USSR itself, but this was exceptional and only made a shallow penetration of Soviet security. But human sources in Germany—scientific defectors, ex-PoWs, spies, and refugees—did provide intelligence on weapons and technology, including the Soviets’ plutonium and uranium-235 bombs, their early guided missiles, aero- and missile engines, military electronics, nerve gases, hydrogen peroxide and other fuels, and the MiG-21 fighter. In response, similar weapons, means of defence, and counterstrategies were developed. Very valuable scientific Order-of-Battle intelligence was obtained from these sources, as well as from the Berlin Tunnel, wartime intelligence reports, and aerial photography. Together, German sources betrayed the skeleton of the USSR’s post-war military-industrial complex to the West: the ³² Rositzke, Secret Operations, 40–2.

³³ Ibid., 28–9.

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major part of its nuclear weapons manufacturing complex, missile and chemical testing ranges, many aircraft and aero-engine factories, a great number of airfields, the military-industrial installations in and around Moscow and Leningrad, and the industrial complexes of a number of regions, such as those around Sverdlovsk and near Lake Baikal. This intelligence enabled later Imint, Comint, Elint, and Humint operations to be successful. U-2 pilots knew which installations to overfly; interception stations knew where to find the testing sites on which they were to eavesdrop; and visitors to the USSR knew which factories, institutes, dockyards, or railway yards to observe or photograph. Indeed, this information served as the basis for intelligence operations against the USSR throughout the Cold War. The KGB’s strict security regime prevented the scientific deportees from learning much about Soviet research and development and they could only provide occasional clues to how it was progressing. Returnees and Soviet defectors also provided an unprecedented insight into the Soviet system of war-related scientific research and development. Western governments learned that their system was far more innovative; their belief in their scientific superiority (in electronics, for instance) influenced NATO’s military strategy. It also encouraged them to pursue an aggressive policy of scientific containment by inducing the defection of scientific leaders: if the Communists’ way of managing science was inherently inferior, then their progress would depend heavily on their leading scientists. Intelligence of weaknesses in Soviet science was also of value because, when it was obtained, the USSR was celebrating scientific triumphs and seemed to be going from strength to strength. It diminished the significance of the early atomic and thermonuclear tests and the Sputnik flight. Rocket Man, the Gagarin-figure of Soviet propaganda, had feet of clay. U-2 photography confirmed that both the USSR’s war-related science and its military capability were inferior to those of the West. In the words of Eisenhower’s scientific adviser, George Kistiakowsky, ‘We went looking for a body, but only found a skeleton.’³⁴ Scientific intelligence played an important role in policy-making. It both stimulated weapons research and development and helped to hold these programmes within rational limits. It enabled the Eisenhower administration to achieve its objective of ensuring American security without damaging the country’s economic health by overspending on defence.³⁵ It was used in determining military strategy. The ex-PoWs’ intelligence on airfields, military targets, and cities in the USSR served deterrence by enabling the USAF and RAF to draw up plans for launching an atomic strike; it also made possible more precise targeting aimed at limiting the damage a Soviet atomic strike might do. Spies and deserters kept NATO informed about the weaponry and strength of the Soviet army and NVA. Their intelligence was very important during the Berlin Blockade of 1948–9, when fear of war ran high. It established that Soviet forces were below strength and that Stalin did not mean war. ³⁴ Quoted in Brugioni, Eyeball, 37.

³⁵ Peebles, Shadow Flights, 198.

302

Spying on Science

Intelligence collection and covert action also had an impact on the West itself. Their importance enhanced the standing with the Americans of West Germany and Britain; the United States, though dominant in this alliance, needed partners to gather intelligence and conduct subversion effectively in Germany. East Germany could most easily be penetrated by a German service. This quickly became the main task of the Gehlen Organization. It was well performed: until the Wall destroyed Gehlen’s network the DDR was riddled with his spies. Until 1949 Britain occupied the most populous Zone of Germany. It also occupied a Sector of Berlin. It could exploit both for intelligence. They abounded in intelligence opportunities and British intelligence was able in Germany to remain a genuine partner of the Americans. In the world as a whole, in the 1950s, it dwindled to a very junior partner, because Britain could not afford the international network of satellites, computers, and interception stations on which the Americans’ pre-eminence in intelligence-gathering has been based.³⁶ However, acquiring information from human sources is cheap, and Britain could afford it; the Occupation of Germany slowed its decline as an intelligence collector. Though dwarfed by the Americans, British intelligence achieved feats which show that it was a valuable partner, giving as well as taking. To name only a few, it recruited substantial networks of spies, including people with access to very valuable information. It screened 300,000–400,000 ex-PoWs and interrogated a fair proportion of these. STIB was, at one point, questioning between nine and ten times as many scientific returnees as the Americans.³⁷ The British exploited their fair share of returnees until the very end of ‘Dragon Return’, and evacuated some of the most important ones, including Nikolaus Riehl and Helmut Gröttrup, which meant that they succeeded in preparing an approach to these men more successfully than did their partners. They played a full role in refugee interrogation and initiated it in West Berlin. They, like the Org, constituted an important part of the secret alliance which maddened Ulbricht and undermined the DDR. It was formed to maximize the intelligence flow to each and facilitate secure espionage. Information sharing between them encouraged the partners to reach the same conclusions, which they did. They also pursued common policies. The Western Powers left their mark on the DDR and it left its mark on them. ³⁶ Andrew, President’s Eyes Only, 217.

³⁷ Smith to Evans, 25/7/1951, DEFE 41/6.

APPENDIX

Positions of Main Russian Industrial and Development Areas in Relation to Allied Air Bases. © The National Archives

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Index Abschöpfung 266, 269 Abwehr 133, 296 Adamo, Hans 203 Adenauer, Konrad 100, 107 ‘Policy of Strength’ 6, 51, 190 Admiralty 36, 43, 109 Aeronautical Research Institute, Völkenrode 35 agents-in-place 40, 79 Agfa factory, Wolfen 42, 177 Agudzeri Research Institute, Sukhumi 216 Air Intelligence 87 Air Ministry 87 air-target intelligence 82, 105–18, 275–7, 278 aircraft: British: Chipmunk 101; ‘V’ bombers 106 Soviet: Iak-15: 275; Il-28: 164; M-4 (‘Bison’) 282; MiG-9: 275; MiG-15: 275; MiG-21: 228;Tu-4: 71 US: B-29: 71; B-52: 286; RB-45C: 279; U-2: 12, 15, 110, 279–80, 281, 297, 299, see also overflights of USSR airfields: British: Habbaniya, Iraq 278 USSR 110; Borki 282; Ramenskoye 282, 287; Toplistan 282 Albania 107, 195, 290 Aldan 112 Aleksin heavy water plant 111 Allied Control Council Law No. 9: 19 Allied Control Council Law No. 25: 24 Al-Qa’eda 4, 15 Alsos Mission 20 Altai 66, 219 Ambrose, Stephen 290 Andreyev, Professor 43 Angarsk 215, 219–20 anthrax 20 antibiotics 3, 20–1 anti-Communism 90, 120, 123, 129, 170 see also resistance organizations ‘antipodal bomber’ 73–4 Antropov, P. Ia. 212–13, 217–19, 283 Arbeitsgemeinschaft Ost-West-Hilfe 128 Ardenne, Baron Manfred von 178–80, 182, 183, 189 Argentina 98

Armenia 111 Arzamas-16: 214, 220 Ärztliche Beratungsstelle Ost, see Vereinigung für Kulturelle Hilfe Askania factory, East Berlin 30–1, 40, 189 assassination (of scientific personnel) 4 associations (business and professional): Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Luftfahrttechnik 91 Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker 93 Max-Planck-Gesellschaft 91 Verband Technisch-Wissenschaftlicher Vereine 191 Verband Deutscher Werkzeugmaschinen Fabriken 96 Verein Deutscher Eisenhüttenleute 91, 191 Verein Deutscher Ingenieure 91 Astrakhan 74 asylum 79–80 atomic intelligence 2–3, 40, 60–1, 77, 85–6, 151–3, 225 on Erzgebirge mines 11–12, 63–6, 86, 99, 102, 299 ‘Atoms for Peace’ conference (1964) 252, 295 attachés 104, 111, 218, 297, 300 Attlee, Clement 278–9 Auer Company 210 Auslandskader 129, 268 Australia 34, 82, 186–7 Austria 79–80, 175, 176–7, 202, 254, 297 Ayiou Nicolaos 12 Baade, Brunolf 178, 294 Babakin, G. N. 103 Bad Hermannsborn 34, 42–3 Balashov, see ‘Gong’ balloons 135, 281 Baltic States 13, 46, 85, 279 Bandera, Stepan 142 Barczatis, Elli 137 Barghoorn, Frederick 48–9 Barwich, Heinz 91, 177, 179, 182, 185, 189, 215, 251–2, 292, 293, 295 Basic Law (Article 10) 100 Baum, Werner 225–6 Baumgart, Johann 171–2 Bay of Pigs 134

316

Index

BBC 79–80, 228 Befragungsstellen 87–9, 102 Beketovka 23, 111–12, 208, 273 Belgium 87–9, 100–1 Berezniki heavy water plant 111 Beria, Lavrenti 103, 151, 182 Beria, Sergo 182 Berlin: blockade 56, 69, 79, 104, 133, 175, 242, 298, 301 second Berlin Crisis 15–16, 58, 124, 236–47, 283–4 sectoral border closure 1, 6, 15–16, 46, 54, 194, 236 Berlin Intelligence Staff (British) 185 Berlin Tunnel, see intelligence operations (joint British–US), ‘Gold’ Berlin Wall, see Berlin, sectoral border closure Berliner Korrespondenz 138 Biermann, Franz Josef 182 Biernatzki, Herbert 37 Biersack, Otto 207 biological weapons and warfare 38, 92, 153 see also British intelligence; Soviet Union Bissell, Richard 3, 122 Black Sea 109, 179 Blackett, P. M. S. 9 Blake, George 126, 144–7, 158, 261 Blank Office 242 Bleicherode, see research institutes (East Germany), Institut Nordhausen/Institut Rabe Blokhintsev, D. I. 220 Blome, Kurt 35 Blumenkamp, Peter 113–15 BMW factory, Staßfurt 28, 30, 40, 184 Bochvar, A. A. 220 Bock, Bernd von 31, 111–12, 189, 207, 208 Bock, Professor Günther 164–5, 181, 208 Bock, Helga 165 Böhne, Albrecht 188 ‘bomber gap’ 73, 110, 205, 282–3, 285–6, 298 Brandt, Willy 240 Braun, Wernher von 17, 74 Brehmer, Franz 162–3, 243 Brest-Litovsk 171 Treaty 15 Brinkley, Douglas 290 British Army of the Rhine 109, 172 British Baltic Fishery Protection Service 85 British Commonwealth 39

British intelligence: assessment: of Soviet biological weapons capability 8, 20–1, 273–4; of Soviet chemical weapons capability 273–4; of Soviet missile development 25, 70–7, 87, 221–5; of Soviet policy 16, 29–30, 175; of Soviet science 11, 75–6, 229, 231; of Soviet uranium supply 63–6, 86 assessments of Soviet atomic project 11, 151–2, 218 collaboration: with Bundesnachrichtendienst 7, 82–3, 85, 87–9, 100–1, 119, 199; with US intelligence 7, 9, 78–9, 82–9, 98–101, 199, 278, 302 intelligence collection powers in West Germany 69, 87–9, 97–101 intended intelligence benefits of induced defection policy 77–9 interception of post 41, 72, 89, 97–101, 105, 116, 182–5 monitoring: fallout from Soviet nuclear tests 85–6, 150, 272; of telecommunications 89, 97–101 policy: of encouraging Soviet soldiers to desert 79–81, 83; of inducing defection of scientists and military personnel 1, 4–5, 30, 32–43, 77–9, 89, 187, 234, 289–97, 299, 301; see also induced defection, intelligence operations (joint British–US), ‘Dragon Return’ spying on Gehlen Organization 97 success: in penetrating East Germany 297–302; in penetrating USSR 297–302 see also disinformation; Joint Intelligence Committee; Joint Intelligence Committee (Germany); Joint Scientific Intelligence Committee and Joint Technical Intelligence Committee, Ministry of Defence; MI6; resistance organizations British Intelligence Objectives Sub-committee (BIOS) 17 British Intelligence Organization (Germany) 7, 87, 97 British Joint Services Mission 87 British Services Security Organization (BSSO) 172 Brixmis 101–2 see also military missions; Robertson–Malinin agreement Brownell Report 11 Brugioni, Dino 227 Bulganin, Nikolai 103 Bulgaria 195, 219 Bull, Gerald 4 Bund Deutscher Jugend 140

Index Bund Ehemaliger Fallschirmjäger 130 Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz 133–4, 136, 139, 169, 253 losses of spies 261–2 questioning of refugees 87–9 West Berlin Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz 202–3, 242, 254 see also Bundesnachrichtendienst Bundesbeauftragte für die Stasi-Unterlagen (BStU) 88 n.39 Bundesnachrichtendienst 7, 134, 240 collaboration with British and US intelligence 7, 82–3, 85, 87–9, 100–1, 106, 119, 133, 199–200, 302 collaboration with West German companies 91, 265–6, 296 and ‘Dragon Return’ 184 losses of spies 142–7, 258–62 monitoring of post and telecommunications 100–1, 248, 266 operations: against East Germany 120–2, 130, 135, 137–9, 145, 172, 297–302; against USSR 121, 141, 297–302 policy of inducing defection 1, 4–5, 165, 190–204, 267, 268, 289–97, 299, 301 questioning of refugees 87–9 see also Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz; Gehlen, Reinhard; spying (of Western secret services) Bundesnotaufnahmeverfahren 54–5, 56 Bundestag 100 Bundesverband der Deutschen Luftfahrtindustrie 91 Burschenbund Convent 132, 155 Buschbeck, Werner 184–5 Busse, Ernst 214 Byelorussia 13, 282 Bücherstube Ost, see Vereinigung für Kulturelle Hilfe Camp King (Oberursel) 55–6, 88, 254 Canada 34, 82, 87–9, 100–1, 273 Canberra spy-plane 12, 279, 281 Carl Zeiss, Jena 40, 41, 60, 99, 168, 175, 194 Carroll–Speier Report 48 Caspian Sea 74, 109 Castro, Fidel 131 Catsch, Alexander 179–80 Caucasus 22, 217, 219 CDU (East German) 145, 262 Central Asia 22, 66, 219, 283–4 see also uranium, mining Central Intelligence Agency 2–3, 7, 56, 57, 58, 86, 131, 132, 134, 136, 138, 139, 278, 285

317

Berlin Operations Base 79, 151, 157 early warning mission 120 induced defection operations 61, 77–9, 185 Office of Scientific Intelligence 22, 84, 87 operations: against East Germany 121–2, 125, 152–3, 169–70, 290; against USSR 12–14, 115–16, 140–2, 209, 235, 251–2, 269–70 Nuclear Energy Group 86, 214 scientific workers targeted by it 84–5 see also Returnee Exploitation Group; resistance organizations; spying (of Western secret services); US intelligence Charakteristiken 59, 149 Charisius, Albrecht 83, 121–2, 261 Cheliabinsk 113–15 Cheliabinsk-40: 86, 113–15, 151, 209, 210, 212–14, 219–20, 281, 284, 287 Cheliabinsk-70: 214, 284, 287 Cheremkovo 215 Cherniaev, I. I. 220 China 56, 60, 158, 168 first atomic test 252 Chirchik heavy water plant 110–1, 208 Chkalovsk 66, 217 Ciesla, Burghard 188 Clasen, Jean 67 Clifford, Clark 10 Coffin, W. S. 14 Combine No. 6: 66, 112, 210, 212, 217 Combined Anglo-American Intelligence Unit 86–7, 151–2 Combined Development Trust 44 Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-committee (CIOS) 17, 25 communications intelligence (Comint) 11–12, 16, 82, 274, 277, 280, 297, 300–1 Communist Bloc, see Soviet Bloc companies: West German: AEG 40, 68, 91, 93, 95, 191; Askania 95, 183, 185; Auergesellschaft 91; Bayer 91, 95; Blaupunkt 91; Carl Zeiss 91, 93; Degussa 192, 210; Deutsche Elektronik 95; Henkel 91; Heinkel 28, 227, 294; Höchst 91; Junkers 91, 93, 164, 183–4, 195, 282, 294; Klöckner-Humboldt-Deutz 91, 95; Krupp 91, 191; Kupferhütte 91; Mannesmann 91; Merck 91; Philips 91; Rheinmetall-Börsig 91; Rohde & Schwarz 92, 95; Schering 91; Siemens Group 91, 93, 95, 183, 185, 188, 191; Siemens & Halske 4, 92, 95; Telefunken 18, 91, 93–5, 162, 183, 185, 191, 194, 202; Volkswagen 18

318

Index

Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) 199–201 Consultative Group-Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom) 43–5 containment, see US Government Control Commission for Germany (British Element) 7 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) 153–4, 158, 269 Counter-intelligence Corps (US army) 121, 126–7, 134, 136, 138, 139–40, 197–8 Crete 278 Crimea 282 CS gas 23 Czechoslovakia 57, 64, 107, 136, 194, 195, 198, 219 Darwin Panel scheme 32 DCOS scheme 32–3, 35 defection 2, 14, 15, 36, 56, 86, 268 after closure of Berlin sectoral border 251 definition 68–9 interrogation 83, 300 of Soviet citizens 68–81, 228, 300 Defence Research Policy Committee 273 Dellingshausen, Ewert von 141–2, 186 Demarcation Line 68, 104, 169, 244, 289 closure 53 Denmark 245 Department of Atomic Energy, Ministry of Supply 86–7, 109, 188, 218 Derjal Gorge (Caucasus) 217 deserters: from NVA 88, 301 from Soviet armed forces 68–70, 79–80, 83, 301 Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt 27, 92, 164 Deutsche Wirtschaftskommission 168 Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund 133 Deutscher Normenausschuß 27 Deuxième Bureau 58 Diogenes Sigint station 12 Directorate of Scientific Intelligence (DSI) 9, 78, 86–7, 98, 229 Directorate of Soviet Property in Germany 151 Discoverer XIV, see intelligence operations (US), ‘Corona’; US intelligence, satellite reconnaissance of USSR disinformation 288, 292 dismantling 55, 300 effects 292–3

‘Displaced Persons’ 105, 142 ‘Displaced Persons’ camps 85, 142 Dneprodzerzhinsk heavy water plant 111 Dobbert, Andreas 6 Dodonovo nuclear refinery 281 Doolittle Report 153 Döpel, Professor 163 double agents 248–9, 269–70 Dubna, see Joint Institute for Nuclear Research Dulles, Allen 3, 60, 132, 222, 280, 285 ‘Dustbin’ 17–21 Dyhernfurth nerve gas plants 18–19, 111–12, 207, 273 Dzerzhinsk 111, 287 East Germany, see German Democratic Republic Economic Co-operation Administration 45 economic intelligence 22, 57–9, 60, 88, 90, 94–7, 108–9, 121, 127, 136, 138, 157–61, 166–8, 248, 267 economic warfare 6, 203–4, 267, 291–2 ‘E-Fall’ (Ernstfall) 171 EFEM factory, East Berlin 61, 62–3 Eich, Peter 159 Eichner, Klaus 6 Eisenhower, President Dwight 10, 16, 51, 60, 101, 279–82, 284, 286, 290, 296, 301 Élan Export–Import 126 electronic intelligence (Elint) 12, 277, 300–1 electronics 3, 4, 8, 30, 36, 38, 62, 67, 91, 93–5, 149, 159–61, 203–4, 228–9, 230–3, 298, 301 Elektro-Apparate-Werk, East Berlin 57 Elektrobau Sondershausen 37, 40 Elektrochemisches Kombinat, Bitterfeld 40, 60, 151–2, 177, 189, 190 Elektrostal’ (Factory No. 12) 179, 183, 209–21 Emel’ianov, Vasili 213 emigrants (from DDR) 269 Enigma cipher 16 Entwicklungsbau Pirna 164–5, 169 Enzian surface-to-air missile 26 Erzgebirge uranium mines 219 see also atomic intelligence; Wismut AG Esau, Abraham 18 Estonia 66, 218 European Defence Community (EDC) 100 evacuations of scientific workers 17–18, 43, 46 see also British intelligence, policy of denial of German scientific workers to USSR; US Government, policy of denial of German scientific workers to USSR

Index Evans, David (STIB Director) 84, 90 Export Control Act 1949: 45 expellees 53–4 ex-prisoners of war 4, 11, 14, 15, 60, 72 interrogation 69, 83, 103–18, 183, 226, 273, 276, 284, 300–2 Falk, K. H. 59 Falkenhagen sarin plant 19 FDGB (DDR) 139 Federal Bureau of Investigation 268, 291 Federal Republic of Germany 51, 56, 69 Economic Miracle 190, 294 Ministry for All-German Questions 137, 141–2, 186, 191 Ostpolitik 268–70 propaganda 267 recognition by USSR 96 trade agreement with East Germany 45, 237 see also Bundesnachrichtendienst; Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz Felfe, Heinz 145, 260–1 Fergana Valley 66, 112, 217 ‘Ferret’ flights 12, 277 Fessel, Ester 92 Fiegert, Werner 111 Field Information Agency, Technical (FIAT) 7 FIAT, Enemy Personnel Exploitation Section (EPES) 32 FIAT Forward, West Berlin 32–3, 41–2 Fili aircraft factory, Moscow 282 Finland 13 First Chief Directorate of the Council of Ministers (USSR) 77, 103, 210, 213, 217, 218, 220 Scientific-Technical Council 221 see also Zaveniagin, A. P. Flerov, Georgi 220 Fluchthelfer 251, 254, 256, 268 F-1 reactor (USSR) 220 Fortner, Josef 92 France 57 Frankfurt am Main 127, 162, 192, 198 Frankfurt an der Oder 171, 176 Freedman, Lawrence 297 Free University of Berlin 126 Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ) 134, 140 Freiheitlicher Erzieher, see Vereinigung für Kulturelle Hilfe French intelligence 87–9, 100–1, 172 losses of spies 143, 261 recruitment of scientific workers 98–9 see also spying (of Western secret services) Friedland camp 88–9, 103–18, 199

319

Friedrich, Rudolf 36 Friedrichs, Erwin 195–6 Fröhlich, Heinz 180 Fuchs, Klaus 2–3, 28–9, 251 Funktechnik 62 Funkwerk Erfurt 197 Funkwerk Köpenick 160–1, 194 Gaddis, John Lewis 290 Gagarin, Yuri 301 Gaidukov, L. M. 222 Gehlen Organization, see Bundesnachrichtendienst Gehlen, Reinhard, 134, 171, 240 see also Bundesnachrichtendienst General Treaty 100 Gerlach, Manfred 163–6 German Democratic Republic (DDR): Academy of Sciences 149, 169, 177 border security regime 14–15, 53, 254 rearmament policy 178 workers’ uprising (1953) 144, 242, 298 see also scientific returnees, Betreuungsmaßnahmen germanium 62, 93–4, 157 Gestapo 182 Geyer, Hans Joachim 145–6 Gießen refugee camp 54, 88–9, 137 Gladenbeck, Friedrich 18 Glazov uranium metal factory 210, 212, 219 Glushko, V. P. 103, 116, 222, 226 Goebbels, Josef 179 Golovanov, I. H. 221 Gorlovka heavy water plant 111 Gorodomlia island 181, 209, 222 Göhl, Erhard 136 ‘Gong’ 77 Göring, Hermann 179 Gouzenko, Igor 28 Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) 280 Gramsch, Walter 137–8 Great Britain: Chiefs of Staff 64, 86 Chiefs of Staff ’s ‘Global Strategy Paper’ 148, 272 covert action policy 48 n.122 embargo on strategic trade with Soviet Bloc 45; see also strategic embargo exploitation of German science 32–3, 40–3 impact of intelligence on war-related R&D and defence strategy 8, 106, 271–6, 289, 300–1 Information Research Department (FO) 80 military cooperation with United States 9

320

Index

Great Britain (cont.) policy: of denial of German scientific workers to USSR 32–43; of preventing spread of German scientific knowledge 98; of suppressing German military R&D 34, 38, see also Allied Control Council Law No. 25, Potsdam Agreement; towards USSR 9, 29–30 Greece 29, 245 Greenglass, David 2 Großaktionen, see MfS Großmann, Werner 268 Grotewohl, Otto 137 Gröttrup, Helmut 25, 32, 87, 181, 186, 209, 222–5, 227, 230–1, 232, 234–5, 280, 302 GRU (Glavnoye Razvedivatelnoye Upravleniye) 28, 90, 251 n.62, 271 Grundlagenvertrag 267 Günter, Siegfried 227–8, 231, 288 Hall, Theodore 2, 29 Hamburg 249 Hanford Engineering Works (USA) 114 Hannover 66, 138 Harriman, Averell 44 Hauptstelle für Befragungswesen 87–9 Haydon, Major-General Charles 104 Heeresgasschutzlaboratorium 18 Heisenberg, Werner 4, 19 Held, Max 167, 195, 196–8 Helms, Richard 286 Herold, Paul 190, 207 Hertz, Alfred 40 Hertz, Gustav 91, 183, 189, 215 Hescho-Hermsdorf factory, Thuringia 94 Heusler, Gerhard 195 Heydebreck hydrogen peroxide plant 26 Heyne, Hans 91 Himmler, Heinrich 179 Hitler, Adolf 20, 142 Hoch-Möller Group 176–7, 180 Holloway, David 114, 213, 233 Holocaust 105, 131, 142 homecomers 15 see also ex-prisoners of war; scientific returnees Honecker, Erich 236 Horner, John 185 Howard, Edward Lee 269 Hoxha, Enver 290 human intelligence (Humint) 1, 2, 11, 270, 297, 300–1 Humboldt University, East Berlin 155

Hungarian Uprising 46, 60 Hungary 155, 194 Hussein, Saddam 2 hydrogen peroxide 8, 26–7 Iangel’, M. K. 103 ‘Icarus’ 65, 212 I. G. Farben 18–19, 26, 91–2, 93, 191 imagery intelligence (Imint) 11, 12, 16, 28, 157, 297, 300–1 India 98 induced defection 1, 4–5, 6, 15–16, 58, 88, 92–3, 149, 151, 160, 162–3 effects on targets 39–40, 237, 288, 291–7 methods 59, 125, 130, 135, 141 see also British intelligence; intelligence operations (joint British-US), ‘Dragon Return’; US Government Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter, see MfS Intelligence Division (ID) 7, 32, 39, 55 Analysis Directorate 188 Censorship Branch 99 Security Directorate 97 see also Scientific and Technical Intelligence Branch (ID) intelligence operations British: ‘Heimkehrer’ 105; ‘Matchbox’ 32–43, 45, 56, 90, 108, 185–7, 192, 292; ‘Project Pat’/’Kidney’/’Judas’ 89–97; ‘Top Hat’ 37 joint British–US: ‘Apple Pie’ 22–4, 83, 110, 111–12, 284, 300–1; ‘Dick Tracy’ 21–2, 110, 300–1; ‘Dragon’ 97–8, 116, 182; ‘Dragon Return’ 82, 84–5, 96, 109, 176, 181–90, 205–35, 252, 300–2; ‘Gold’ 12, 155–6, 221, 297, 300–1; ‘Silver’ 12; ‘Venona’ 11, 28–9 US: ‘Aquatone’ 235, 297; ‘Corona’ 286–7; ‘Genetrix’ 110, 281; ‘Redcap’ 79; ‘Redskin’ 90–1, 235, 301; ‘Redsox’ 13, 248; ‘Soft Touch’ 283; ‘Wringer’ 105–18, 276 West German: ‘Hermes’ 106; ‘Pfiffikus’ 153 International Researchers Exchange Programme (IREX) 268 Internationaler Bund der Freien Gewerkschaften 139 Iran 9, 29, 278, 281 Iraq 2, 4 isotope separation 61, 77, 215 Jachymov 64 Jaffke, Heinz 227 Japan 16, 44, 110

Index Jenapharm 60 Joachimstal, see Jachymov Johnson, President Lyndon 286–7 Joint Allied Refugee Operations Center, Berlin 55 Joint Export–Import Agency (JEIA) 45 Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Soviet Bloc) 199–200, 251–2 Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB) 2 Joint Intelligence Committee 8, 16, 20, 28, 29, 68, 71, 77–8, 88, 100, 106, 110, 115, 218, 274 see also British intelligence Joint Intelligence Committee (Germany) 69, 78, 104 Co-ordinating Committee 107 Joint Intelligence Committee (London), sub-committee on defectors 186–7 Joint Scientific Intelligence Committee and Joint Technical Intelligence Committee, Ministry of Defence (the ‘Joint Committees’) 9, 20–1, 34, 35, 40, 65–6, 77–8, 112, 152, 273 Jöhren, Werner 139 Jones, R. V. 14 Judy, Richard 232 Junker-Jörgstraße 9–10: 42–3 Junkers factory, Dessau 28, 30, 40, 41, 184 Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg) 172 Kaliningrad, near Moscow, see Podlipki Kamchatka 112 Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit (KgU) 126–9, 133–4, 136–7, 144–5, 296 Kanis, Paul 36 Kapustin Yar 12, 74–5, 209, 226–7, 280–1, 284–5, 287 Karamursel Sigint station 12, 280 Karlshorst military and intelligence headquarters (USSR) 85, 156, 172–3 Kasernierte Volkspolizei, see Nationale Volksarmee Kastner, Hermann 145 Kazakhstan 66–7, 284 Kazan’ 110, 284 Kefirstadt, see Verkh-Neyvinsk Kennan, George 46, 290 Kennedy, President John F. 239 Kerschbaum, Hans 92–3 Keune (engineer) 197–8 Keune, Friedrich 39, 186 KGB (Committee of State Security, USSR) 14, 16, 28–9, 55, 67–8, 119–20, 149, 251, 260, 292, 298 and Berlin sectoral border closure 236

321

counter-espionage successes 145–7, 153–4, 297, 299, 301 Directorate T 288 exploitation of foreign Communist parties 131–2 foreign intelligence collection 16, 90, 253, 297–8 liaison with MfS 142–7, 154, 182, 269–70, 299 operations against resistance organizations 132, 136–7, 141–2 Khariton, Iuli 220 Khimki 116–18, 225–7, 282, 287 Khrunichev, M. V. 74 Khrushchev, N. S. 249, 279, 284, 292, 299 destalinization campaign 156 ultimatum over Berlin 54, 147, 172, 237–8; see also Berlin, second Berlin Crisis Kiefer, Claus 258, 261 Kiefer, Günter 258, 261 Kieser, Arnold (codename ‘Sender’) 135, 160–1 Kikoin, Isaak 77, 215, 220 Kirch, Franz 165 Kirovakhan heavy water plant 111 Kistiakowsky, George 301 Klaiber, Fritz 230 Kliewe, Heinrich 20 Klose, Hans-Helmut 85 Koch, Alexander 66–7 Kola Peninsula 219, 279, 285 Kolyma 63 Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD) 98–9, 137 Kopatzky, Aleksandr 142, 146–7 Korea 170 Korean War 48–9, 78, 140, 228, 277 Korolev, Sergei 72, 76, 80–1, 103, 116–17, 222–6, 234 Krasnajar factory, Leningrad 94 Krasnoyarsk-26: 115, 210, 212, 219–20, 281, 283 Krasnoyarsk-45: 212, 219 Krivoi Rog (Ukraine) 217 krypton-85: 86 Kuchino 67–8 Kuhn, Richard 19 Kuibyshev 20, 227, 279, 285 Kuklinski, Ryszard 251 n.62 Kurchatov, Igor 220–1 Kyshtym, see Cheliabinsk-40 Landsmannschaften 132, 135 Lange, Willi 179–80 Latvia 13, 279

322

Index

Laurenz, Karl 137 LDPD (DDR) 57, 145, 262 Lehesten 25 Leipunsky, A. I. 220 Leipzig 66, 246, 265, 266 LeMay, Curtis 105, 276 Lend-Lease 70 Leningrad State University 155 Leuna factory, Merseburg 40, 92, 153, 177, 189, 190 lewisite 23 Liebing, Gertrud 262 Liedtke, Willy 62–3 ‘line-crossers’ (Grenzgänger) 69, 171 Linse, Walter 136–7 Lithuania 61 Liul’ka, Arkhip 288 London Controlling Section 288 lorry drivers 129, 266, 268 Los Alamos 28–9 Lower Silesia 66 Lucius, Horst 67 Luftwaffe 21–2, 106, 281 see also intelligence operations (joint British–US), ‘Dick Tracy’ Lüschner, Hermann (codename ‘Lullaby’) 168 Maar, Otto 68 Maas, Theo 186 McCarthy, Senator Joseph 132 Maclean, Donald 29 McMahon Act 85, 295 Macmillan, Harold 280 Mader, Julius 6, 83, 91, 120–2, 129, 191, 202, 261 Mafia 131 Magnitogorsk 41, 114 Maili-Sai 217 Makhachkala 109 Malenkov, Georgi 74, 103, 151 Manhattan Project 19, 28, 211, 213, 272 Marienfelde refugee camp 53–9, 88–9, 125, 137, 155, 189, 254 Marshall Plan 45 Maschinen-und-Apparate-Bau, Schkeuditz 193 Maske, Günther 194–5 Mayer, Hans 4 Meincke, Hermann 43 Menke, Wilhelm 180, 207 Menschenhandel 6–7, 191 MfS (East German Ministry of State Security) 16, 58, 59, 60 Abteilung Agitation 202

Abteilung M 269 arrests of spies after closure of Berlin sectoral border 260–2 counter-espionage 150, 152–5, 160–1, 165, 169, 171–5, 253, 297–9 Großaktionen 133, 142–7, 297–9 Hauptabteilung I: 174 Hauptabteilung IX: 5, 146–7, 149, 156–7, 161, 175, 245–7, 254, 261 Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung 55, 90, 157, 253, 268, 269, 288 and induced defection 84, 185–6, 190–204, 292 information on Western intelligence operations 88–9, 121–2, 126–9, 132, 135, 136, 141, 240–7 Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter 149 interception of post 245, 261, 296–7 Juristische Hochschule 6, 204 operations against resistance organizations 132, 134, 135, 137, 139 and Ostpolitik 268 and trials 5–6, 193–6, 201–2, 291, 296 weaknesses before 1961: 119–20, 298 see also resistance organizations; spying (of Western secret services); ‘Wespennest’ MGB, see KGB MI5: 288 MI6: 7, 48 n.122, 87, 234, 288 and ‘Dragon Return’ 183, 202 losses of spies 142–7, 261 operations against East Germany 41, 121, 136, 138–9, 172, 188–9 operations against other satellites 85 operations against USSR 12–14, 85, 90, 116, 140–2, 153, 209 scientific workers targeted by it 84–5 see also British intelligence; spying (of Western secret services) Mick, Christoph 225 Mielke, Erich 126, 136, 137, 138–9, 143–5, 236, 241, 296 Mikoyan, Artem 228 ‘Military-Industrial-Academic Complexes’ 8 military intelligence 60, 82, 88, 101–2, 108, 121, 127, 134, 138–9, 140–1, 155–6, 167, 169–75, 241, 249, 266 Military Intelligence Service (US army) 89, 121, 126, 134, 135, 158–9, 165, 172, 185, 202–3 Military Intelligence Service Austria 105 military missions 269 see also Brixmis; Robertson–Malinin agreement

Index ‘missile gap’ 73, 205, 283, 298 missiles 8, 23, 45, 62, 233 A-4b: 25, 77 A-9: 25 A-10: 25 R-1: 76, 223, 226 R-2: 76, 223, R-3: 224 R-3A: 225 R-5: 76–7, 172, 223–4 R-7: 224 R-10: 223–4 R-14 (Iangel’ design) 225 R-14 (Ostashkov Group design) 224–5 R-113: 176–7 SS-20: 234 V-1: 25, 41, 225, 282 V-2: 25–6, 36, 38, 41, 71–2, 76–7, 117–18, 209, 222–7 Mitrovich, Gregory 10 monazite 219 Mongolia 66 Mossad 4 Mühlen, Heinrich von zur 133 Murmansk 279, 285 Musharraf, President Pervez 4 mustard gas 23, 273 Muttray, Horst 153 Mutual Defense Assistance Control Act 45 MVD 63, 66, 67, 111, 112, 113, 209, 210, 220, 222, 234 Ninth Directorate 182 Nancekuke sarin plant 273 Narodno-Trudovoi Soyuz 58, 136, 140–2, 144, 151 National Front (DDR) 6 ‘National Interest’ 36, 52 National Security Agency 3 Nationale Volksarmee 143, 145, 153, 160, 169, 173–4, 246, 254, 265 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) 43–4, 169, 272 and deterrence 148 and intelligence 87–9, 100, 102, 159, 166–8, 175, 228, 274–5, 301 military strategy 1, 239, 273, 301 naval intelligence 82 Nazi weapons of mass destruction projects 11, 17–20, 35 Nazism 141 NDPD (DDR) 145

323

Neo-Nazism 97 nerve gases 8, 18, 207 sarin 18–19, 23, 208, 273 soman 19, 23 tabun 18–19, 70, 208, 273 see also Beketovka; Bock, Bernd von; Dyhernfurth nerve gas plants; I. G. Farben Netherlands 87–9, 100–1, 154 Neues Deutschland 144, 194–6 New Zealand 34, 82 Nikitin, B. A. 213 Nixon, President Richard 44 Nizhnaya Tura 284 NKGB, see KGB Noginsk 116 Nordhausen, see research institutes (East Germany), Institut Nordhausen/Institut Rabe Nordwest Deutscher Rundfunk 80 Norilsk heavy water plant 215 Norway 285 Novosibirsk 116 Novosibirsk uranium metal factory 210, 211–12, 219, 283 NSC-10/2: 46, 131 NSC-10/5: 49 NSC-20/4: 46–7 NSC-68: 47–9, 115, 272 NSC-86/1: 49–50, 84, 198, 200, 289 NSC-158: 51–2, 290 NSC-162/2: 51 NSC-174: 51 NSC-5412/2: 46, 51 Nunn May, Alan 2, 28 Nuremberg war crimes trials 136 Oberspree factory, East Berlin, see Werk für Fernmeldewesen Obninsk, institute and atomic power station 199–200, 214, 218 OEEC (Organization for European Economic Cooperation) 45 Office of Policy Co-ordination 46, 131, 134, 136, 139–40 Office of Strategic Services 4 Okolovich, Georgi 141 ‘Open Skies’ proposal 281 open source information 2, 3, 87, 110, 150, 234, 266–7, 298 Operation ‘Engross’ 49–52, 84, 200 Order-of-Battle intelligence 56, 60, 69, 79, 123, 169–75, 239–40

324

Index

Ordway, Frederick 74, 224 Osenberg, Werner 18 Oslo Report 4 ‘Osoaviakhim’ 30–3, 38, 39, 40, 42, 55, 75, 84, 93, 98, 228 Ostbüros 133, 137, 145 CDU-Ostbüro 132, 139 Deutsche Partei-Ostbüro 132 FDP-Ostbüro 139, 144–5 SPD-Ostbüro 137–9, 144–5, 240 Ostashkov 116, 222 OUN (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) 140–2 ‘Overcast’, see ‘Paperclip’ overflights of USSR 12, 85, 118, 212, 214, 235, 275, 277–87, 297 intelligence obtained 282–7, 301 Overseas Liaison Branch, see Scientific and Technical Intelligence Branch (ID) Ozersk, see Cheliabinsk-40 Pakistan 284 Pälzke, Karl-Heinz 261 ‘Paperclip’ (also ‘Overcast’) 32, 35–6, 52, 185, 186 Papist, Peter 262 Paris Agreements 100 Pasechnik, Vladimir 2 Passierscheinabkommen 263 Pasternak, Boris 123 patents 41, 99, 192 Peenemünde 4, 26, 28, 35, 73, 75 Penkovsky, Oleg 24, 90, 209, 233, 240 Penney, William 272 Peru 98 Peters, Erhard 140 Petrov, Dmitri 77 Philby, Kim 14, 144–7 Piatigorsk 217 plague 20 Plesetsk ICBM site 277, 283–4 ‘Plutonic’ 50 plutonium 3, 11, 29, 86, 116, 151–2, 209, 212, 213, 220 see also Cheliabinsk-40 Podberez’ye 184, 188, 227 Podlipki 117–18, 282 Poland 57, 66, 85, 97, 107, 136, 156, 158, 173, 194, 195, 239 ‘Policy of Strength’, see Adenauer, Konrad political intelligence 60, 121, 138, 169, 241, 248 Polster, Gottfried 67

Polyakov, Dmitri 251 n.62 Pontecorvo, Bruno 2 Popov, Pyotr 271 Porsche, Ferdinand 18 Pose, Heinz 189, 198–202 Pose, Werner 193, 199–202 Potsdam 101, 171, 240, 245, 254, 262, 269 Potsdam Agreement 24, 30, 31, 101 Powers, Francis Gary 284–6 Preuss, Werner 159 ‘Project 63’: 36, 52 prostitutes 58, 79, 135 R-11 jet engine 228 Radio Free Europe 290 Radio Liberation from Bolshevism 290 Ratner, A. P. 213 RD-100 rocket engine 226 refugees 13–14, 300 effects of flight on East German economy 237, 292–5 and induced defection 193, 194, 195, 290 interrogation 34–5, 55–68, 69, 79, 83, 87–9, 102, 134–7, 159, 266, 267, 298–9, 302 involvement in resistance organizations 131, 134, 136–7 recognition as political refugee 54, 56, 59, 167, 192, 294 significance for espionage 54, 56–9, 88, 120, 122, 125, 247–8, 253 see also British intelligence; Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz; Bundesnachrichtendienst; Canada; Netherlands; Scientific and Technical Intelligence Branch (ID), contacts; resistance organizations; spying (of Western secret services); US intelligence Reichforschungsrat 18 Reichswehr 23 Reimann, Olga 159 Reisekader 129, 266, 268 research institutes (East Germany): Adlershof research institute, East Berlin 177, 202–3 Central Institute for Nuclear Research, Rossendorf 201, 251–2, 293 GEMA institute, East Berlin 31, 40, 41 Institut für Gerätebau 161 Institut für Regelungstechnik 161 Institut Nordhausen/Institut Rabe 25–6, 27, 28, 32, 76, 117 Institute for Nuclear Research, Miersdorf 177, 194

Index Research Institute of Solid State Physics, East Berlin 90 Zentrales Geologisches Institut 152–3 research and development institutes: USSR: Central Aero-Hydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI) 208, 231, 282; GDL-OKB (Gas Dynamics Laboratory, Experimental Design Bureau) 116–18, 222; Institute of Physical Chemistry 77; Institute of Rare and Fine Metals 210; Laboratory No. 2 of Academy of Sciences 77, 220; Lenin Institute, Gorki 181, 230; NII. 9: 220; NII. 11: 230; NII. 34, Leningrad: 181, 230; NII. 88: 116–18, 222; NII. 160, Fryazino 93, 181, 230; NII. 885, Novaya: 225 n.84; Radium Institute, Leningrad 213; Research Institute of the Academy of Artillery Sciences 224 West German: Institut Batelle 192; Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt 92; Robert Koch Institut 92 resistance organizations 13, 121–2, 126–9, 130–42, 298, 300 Returnee Exploitation Group (REG) 84, 98, 186–8 Rheintochter surface-to-air missile 26 RFT-Arnstadt 40, 60 RFT-Köpenick 60 RIAS (Radio in the American Sector) 7, 129, 132, 135, 137, 144–5, 290–1 Richter, Horst 282 Richter, Kurt 93–4 Riehl, Nikolaus 177–81, 184, 186, 189, 209–21, 222, 283, 302 Riems island 37 Robertson–Malinin agreement 101 Röchling, Hermann 18 Rosbaud, Paul 2, 11 Rosenberg, Julius and Ethel 2, 29 Rositzke, Harry 56, 69, 116, 122, 155 Rostock 102, 168, 175, 259 Rostow, Walt 239 Royal Air Force (RAF) 12, 22, 87, 102, 106, 109, 275–81, 301 Rudert, Werner 196–8 Ruf, Waltraud 261 Rügen island 102, 153 Rundfunk- und Fernsehtechnisches Zentrum, Berlin 161 SA (Sturmabteilung) 132, 155 SAC (Strategic Air Command) 105, 172, 275–7, 301

325

Sachsen factory, Radeberg 40, 42, 60, 159, 189 Samsun radar 12, 221, 280, 297 Sänger, Eugen 73–4, 224 Saratov bomber base 285 Sary Shagan ABM complex 284, 287 SBONR 142 Schilling, Erich 139 Schilling, Ingrid 179–80 Schimohr, Alfred 179–80 Schintlmeister, Josef 201–2 Schlickeiser, Hans-Georg 195 Schmetterling surface-to-air missile 26, 117 Schmidt, Fritz 179 Schmitz, Herbert 179, 212, 215 Schrader, Gerhard 19 Schröder, Paul 35 Schütze, Werner 216 Schwanitz, Wolfgang 204, 296 Schwarz, Josef 6, 204, 261 scientific intelligence 1, 2–4, 7, 15, 17, 22, 69, 70, 88, 97, 99, 153 scientific Order-of-Battle intelligence 2, 8, 10–11, 70, 74–5, 77, 88, 94, 103–18, 183, 199, 206, 210, 234–5, 277, 283, 300–1 scientific returnees 11, 15, 130, 153, 163, 204, 252, 300 and induced defection 193, 195–6, 198, 203 atomic returnees (‘1037(P) Moscow’ Group) 182–3, 188, 199 Betreuungsmaßnahmen 177–81, 188 intelligence obtained 205–35, 280, 284–7, 289, 300–1 return to Germany 176–7 see also intelligence operations, ‘Dragon’; intelligence operations, ‘Dragon Return’; ‘Osoaviakhim’; Returnee Exploitation Group; Soviet Union, deportations of German scientific workers scientific and technical intelligence 1, 7, 33–4, 40–3, 60–1, 82–8, 103–18, 121, 140, 205–34, 248, 249–50, 271, 275, 277, 280–1, 298, 300–1 see also atomic intelligence Scientific and Technical Intelligence Branch (ID) 7, 34–40, 64–6, 83–4, 87, 98, 110, 284–5 contacts 89–97, 159 and ‘Dragon Return’ 178, 181–90, 196, 199–202, 215–16, 280, 302 scientific and technical journals 3, 292 scientific and technological intelligence (S&TI) 2, 127, 159–69, 265, 267 obtained from STIB’s contacts 89–97

326

Index

Second Chief Directorate of the Council of Ministers (USSR) 219 Semipalatinsk 67, 278, 283–4, 286 Senate Sub-committee on Internal Security 252 Severodvinsk 284 SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force) 7, 17 Sharashki 67 Sharpe, Mitchell 224 Shikhani 23, 287 Siberia 22, 63, 279, 281, 283–4 Sichtungsstellen 55, 89, 299 Siebel factory, Halle 28, 41 signals intelligence 7, 11, 82, 157, 267, 269, 277, 297 silicon 62 Sinclair, Sir John 14 Sinop research institute (USSR) 207 Sinop (Turkey) 280 Smyth Report 211, 213 Socialist Unity Party (SED) 30, 131, 135, 136, 143, 147, 169, 251, 254, 264, 290, 299–300 Central Committee 133, 144, 146, 154, 169, 177, 241 and nationalization 90, 300 Politburo 293 Politburo Security Commission 144 propaganda 190–1, 194–6 Western penetration of 121, 137–8, 153, 175, 236, 262 see also German Democratic Republic; induced defection ‘Source No. 412’: 43 South Africa 34 Soviet Control Commission 61, 79 see also Soviet Military Administration in Germany Soviet Military Administration in Germany 42, 70–1, 99, 150 Soviet Union: army in East Germany (Western Army Group) 156 atomic bomb project 60, 77, 103 biological weapons development 20 border security regime 15, 67–8 chemical weapons development 23–4 deportations of German scientific workers 30–1 difficulty of obtaining intelligence on Soviet Union 11

exploitation of Germans and East German science and resources 10, 15, 27–31, 56, 206–9, 300 first atomic test 11, 48, 64, 67, 81, 114, 115, 214, 275–6, 278, 301 first post-war Five Year Plan 25, 31, 103 hydrogen bomb project 219, 220 missiles projects 25–6, 37–8, 72–7, 103, 222 other advanced weapons projects 31, 42–3, 75, 103 prospecting for uranium 112, 217–19 see also Stalin, Joseph Sowjetische Aktiengesellschaften/SowjetischDeutsche Aktiengesellschaften 150 Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) 133, 137–9 Space Shuttle 73 Special Committee for Atomic Energy 103 Special Committee No. 2: 103 Special Committee No. 3: 103 Speer, Albert 18 spies (known by codename only): ‘Beethoven’ 247 ‘Buchholz’ 161 ‘Courier’ 152 ‘Kant’ 130 ‘Krause’ 246–7 ‘Maretzki’ 168 ‘Marianne’ 57 ‘Offenbach’ 154 ‘Reppe’ 161 Spott, Hasso 64–5 Spuhler, Alfred 269 Sputnik I: 224, 283, 301 spying (of Western secret services) after border closure 254–60, 263–70 on armed forces in East Germany 150, 169–75, 245, 301 communication methods 5–6, 13, 14, 57, 120, 123–5, 130, 203 effects 149, 296–7 and induced defection 196–204 penetration of East German targets 143–7, 297–300, 301 policy 120–2 preparations for loss of West Berlin 124–5, 143–5, 240–7 on scientific targets 148–69, 298 sectoral border closure’s effects 15–16, 120, 123–5, 146, 247–53, 260–2, 292, 297, 299–300, 302

Index spy recruitment 14, 57–8, 119–20, 123, 125–42, 151 see also Bundesnachrichtendienst; Central Intelligence Agency; MI6 SS (Schutzstaffel) 132, 140, 155, 296 Stalin, Joseph 53, 67, 68, 238 and Berlin Blockade 69, 301 death 51 expansionist policy 9, 289 split with Tito 11 and weapons development 9–10, 28–9, 71–4, 103, 289 Stalinabad 66, 284 Stalingrad 74, 226–7, 279 Stasi-Unterlagen-Gesetz (StUG) 139 n.69 stay behind networks 49, 136, 139–40 StB (Czechoslovakia) 288 Steenbeck, Max 91, 189 Steimel, Karl 92–3, 184–5, 191, 228–30 Steinfurt, Kurt 61 Steinmann, Professor 23 Stiller, Ursula 43 strategic embargo 6, 43–5, 84, 237, 291, 295 and intelligence 43–4, 59, 95, 137, 138, 157–9, 267, 287–8, 299 Sudetendeutsche 135 Sudetenland 135 Sukhumi 177, 179, 182–3, 188, 196, 209, 215–16, 251 Sungul Radiological Laboratory 181, 212–14 Sutton, Anthony 233 Sverdlovsk 111, 112, 114–16, 215, 277, 301 Sverdlovsk-44: 215–16, 220, 284, 287 Sverdlovsk-45: 284, 287 Sweden 13–14 Switzerland 165 Taboshary 66, 217 Taifun surface-to-air missile 26 Tajikistan 66, 111, 217 tanks 68, 102 ‘Tarantel’ 135 Tartarstan 22 TASS 107 Technical Co-ordinating Section (MI6) 2 technical intelligence 1, 22, 68–70, 101–2, 169–75, 266 technical intelligence collection 2, 3 Technical Section 7, 146 see also Intelligence Division; MI6

327

Technische Hochschulen: East German: Hochschule für Elektrotechnik 162–3; Technische Hochschule Dresden 194, 199, 201 West German: Technische Hochschule Aachen 92; Technische Hochschule Braunschweig 92, 130, 253; Technische Hochschule Darmstadt 165; Technische Hochschule Hannover 92 Technische Universität Berlin 92, 174 Technisches Büro 11: 37, 40, 117 ‘Telegraf ’ 135, 138 telemetry 12, 280–1 Tewa factory, Neustadt 60–1, 152 ‘The Listener’ 80 thermonuclear weapons 3 ‘Joe-4’ (first Soviet thermonuclear test) 10, 50, 272, 275, 282, 301 The Voice of America 228, 290 Thieme, Herbert 179, 211, 213, 219 Thiessen, Peter-Adolf 215, 216 thorium 44, 45, 210, 219 Thyssen, Fritz 18 Tibet 66 Tikhonravov, M. K. 224 titanium 157, 158–9 Tokaev, Grigori 2, 70–81, 116, 282 Tolkachev, Adolf 2, 3 Tomsk-7: 115, 210, 219–20, 281, 283 trade fairs 266 Transitabkommen 268 Traub, Erich 37 Treu, Nikolai 61 Truman, President Harry S 10, 48, 152, 278–9 Trushnovich, Aleksandr 142 TsOPE 135 tularaemia 20 Turkey 9, 12, 14, 29 Turkmenistan 22 Twining, Nathan 279 Tyuratam 280, 283–4 Uelzen refugee camp 54, 137 Uhl, Matthias 5, 70 Uigar-Sai 217 Ukraine 13, 111, 219, 279, 282 UKUSA Agreement 82 Ulbricht, Walter 5, 16, 153–4, 178–9, 182, 236–7, 239, 249, 294, 299, 302 Ultra 11, 16, 297 United Nations 107, 228

328

Index

United Nations Charter 46 Untersuchungsausschuß freiheitlicher Juristen 133, 136–7, 144–5 Ural Chemical Engineering Factory 111 uranium 44 enrichment 116, 215–16, 220 mining 112, 210, 283–6; see also atomic intelligence; Wismut AG ore 45, 63–5, 217–18 -235: 61, 111, 115, 151 US air force (USAF) 12, 22, 73, 86, 274, 277–81, 286 and aerial reconnaissance 110 ‘Historical Research’ teams 87, 106 USAFE 84, 87, 280 see also intelligence operations (US), ‘Wringer’; overflights of USSR; Strategic Air Command US army 86, 133 European Command 83–4 Security Agency 98 US Atomic Energy Commission 86 US Government: containment policy 9–10, 36, 46–52, 148, 289–97 hydrogen bomb project 10 Joint Chiefs of Staff 276 policy of denial of German scientific workers to USSR 32, 35–6 policy of economic warfare with Soviet Bloc 44, 46, 48 policy of inducing defection 1, 4–5, 47–52, 77–9, 166–8, 176, 190–203, 289–97, 299, 301, see also induced defection; intelligence operations (joint British–US), ‘Dragon Return’ policy of suppressing German military R&D 38; see also Allied Control Council Law No. 25; Potsdam Agreement psychological warfare 47–52, 291, 294–6 ‘rollback’ policy 46–52 strategic embargo on Soviet Bloc 6, 44–5; see also strategic embargo US intelligence: assessment: of Berlin Crisis 238–9; of East Germany 293; of Soviet policy 175, 271; of Soviet science 75–6, 230 assessments: of Soviet nuclear projects 11, 115, 151–2, 283–4, 286; assessments of Soviet missile projects 25, 70–4, 76–7, 87, 221–3, 280 collaboration: with British intelligence 7, 9, 78–9, 82–9, 98–101, 278, 302; with Gehlen

Organization 7, 82–3, 85, 87–9, 100–1, 106, 119, 133, 302 effect on American defence planning 10, 272, 280, 286–7, 289, 300–1 intelligence collection powers in West Germany 69, 87–9, 97–101 interception of post 72, 82, 89, 97–101, 116, 248, 252–3, 266 losses of spies 142–7, 261 monitoring: fallout from Soviet nuclear tests 64, 85–6, 150, 278; of telecommunications 89, 97–101, 248, 266 post-Occupation involvement in refugee interrogation 87–9 satellite reconnaissance of USSR 249–50, 283, 286–7, 297, 299 success: in penetrating East Germany 297–302; in penetrating USSR 297–302 see also Central Intelligence Agency; disinformation; resistance organizations; spying (of Western secret services) US military intelligence, see Military Intelligence Service (US) US navy 86–7, 278 Ustinov, Dmitri 103, 222, 234–5 Uzbekistan 66 ‘Valuable’ 290 Vannikov, Boris 103, 217 Vereinigung der Politischen Ostflüchtlinge 135–6, 139 Vereinigung der Opfer des Stalinismus 136–7, 144 Vereinigung für Kulturelle Hilfe 126–9, 134, 136, 248 see also Kampfgruppe gegen Unmenschlichkeit Verkh-Neyvinsk 111, 215, 219 Versailles Treaty 23 Vershinin, K. A. 74 Vienna 12, 66, 201, 252 Vinogradov, A. P. 220 Vladivostok 66 Volksdeutsche 61, 66, 115 Volkspolizei 127, 192 Volmer, Max 177, 189, 213 Vorkuta 67 Voznesensky, Nikolai 151 VX gas 23 Waffen-SS 140 Wagner, Armin 5 Wagner, Helmut 260–1

Index Wallach, Severin 134 Wannsee Institute 22 Warsaw Pact 1, 144, 156, 175, 198, 234, 236, 238, 269, 275 forces in East Germany 88, 102, 169, 266, 269 summit in August 1961: 237, 294 Wasserfall surface-to-air missile 26, 117, 176 weapons of mass destruction 2–3, 4, 7–8, 37 see also Soviet Union weapons-related fields of science and technology: acoustics 38 aerodynamics 19, 35, 38 aero-engines 30, 36, 38, 41, 45, 109, 163–6 aeronautics 30, 35, 36, 38, 87, 91, 109, 130, 148, 163–6 artillery 23, 38 atomic science 8, 130, 148, 149 ballistics 35, 38 chemical engineering 38 chemistry 38, 91, 166–7, 220, 233 computers 45, 62, 75, 89, 94, 162–3, 232–4, 287 cyclotrons 45 electrical engineering 30, 38 electro-medical research 38, 67 engineering 91 explosives 28, 167, 197–8 ferrites 94 fighter planes 38 film 36, 38 fine wire mesh 60–1, 152, 168 fuels 19, 28, 38, 109, 157 glider bomb 4 gyros 31 helicopters 38 high frequency 31, 38 infra-red detection 19, 68 iron and steel 91, 96, 164, 233 jet propulsion 38 machine tools 36–7, 38, 45, 96, 233 mathematics 38 mechanics 38, 67 metallurgy 38, 96, 220, 287 missile guidance systems 4, 28, 36, 38, 62, 225, 233 missile engines 19, 41, 45 naval technology 36 navigation 38 optics 31, 36, 38, 41, 168 pharmaceuticals 155 physics 38, 220 proximity fuses 28, 38, 62

329

radar 3, 18, 28, 31, 36, 38, 70, 148, 166–8, 229 radio 18, 31, 148, 166–8; counter-measures 148, 228–9, 274–5 remote control 18, 35, 38, 41, 157, 163, 182 rocketry 28, 30, 35, 36, 38, 109 semiconductors 90, 93–4, 287–8 ship construction 30, 38, 39 sonar 28 Stealth technology 3 submarines 8, 19, 38 ‘supergun’ 4 telecommunications 28, 30, 38, 288 television 89, 109 torpedoes 8, 19, 38 transistors 62, 93–4, 157, 287–8 valves 61–2, 75, 97, 229 wind tunnels 38, 75 see also electronics; scientific intelligence; scientific and technical intelligence; scientific and technological intelligence Weber, Wilhelm 112 Wehrmacht 20, 22, 24, 35, 112, 113, 129, 140, 167, 170–1 Welsh, Eric 218 Werk für Bauelemente der Nachrichtentechnik, East Berlin 94, 130, 204 Werk für Fernmeldewesen, East Berlin 31, 40, 42, 61, 93–4, 159–60, 177, 194 ‘Wespennest’ 139, 145, 166–8, 196–8 West Berlin 80, 154 Allies’ access routes 54, 191, 236–40 monitoring of post and telecommunications 100 significance for espionage and subversion 58, 90, 119–20, 122–30, 144, 149, 298 see also induced defection; spying (of Western secret services) West Germany, see Federal Republic of Germany Wichmann, Harry 134 Wierschke, Harry 262 ‘Wildcat’ 20–1, 76 Wirths, Günther 179–80, 186, 189, 210–21 Wismut AG 40, 65, 123, 144, 150–2, 157 see also atomic intelligence Wissenschaftlich-Technisches Büro für Gerätebau, East Berlin 39, 40, 161 Wollweber, Ernst 133, 143, 146, 296 Wynne, Greville 90 Yalta Agreement 25, 140–1 Yerevan 111

330 Yerzhova, Zinaida 210 Yugoslavia 98, 107 Yurya 284 Zagorsk 227 Zaisser, Wilhelm 236

Index Zaveniagin, A. P. 114, 211–14, 218 Zheltye Vody 217 Zimmer, Karl 179–80, 212, 214, Zlatoust-36: 284 Zühlke, Karl-Franz 179–80, 216, 288 Zurth, Gisela 195, 202–3, 242