The Great East German Housecleaning – The intelligence drain of 1989
The West German intelligence services were – publicly but to a certain degree also among the (Western) family of intelligence organizations - a laughing stock in both West and East almost from the point where the Gehlen Organization, teeming with ex-Nazi intelligence personnel (although the Konrad Adenauer’s words uttered when challenged that ex-Wehrmacht officers were serving in the Bundeswehr, “NATO would not accept 18-year-old generals” could just as well be applied to the intelligence services) , was turned into the BND.
A lot of the scorn stems from disinformation campaigns instigated by the Staatssicherheit and the KGB over the course of five decades and some of the very public blunders the BND and BfV committed in the same timeframe. Although of the latter some have almost certainly been manufactured for reasons of camouflage (nobody takes an inept secret service seriously, after all). Especially leftist journalists and writers were eager to lap up the disinformation and paint especially the BND as a bunch of quasi-Nazi bureaucratic nitwits who could not have found their own behinds without a map and a flashlight [1].
Real and fabricated failures notwithstanding, the BND actually did manage to provide the FRG and NATO with useful information especially about the organizational structure of the GSFG and the NVA. By the year 1989, the order of battle of the Warsaw Pact in East Germany and indeed much of eastern Europe was known down to the last platoon of reservists.
The roughly nine months before the Red Army and the NVA adopted the Chinese Solution of the protests and mass exodus of disgruntled DDR citizens provided an absolute intelligence bonanza to the BND, the BfV and NATO’s major intelligence services. Among the approximately 200.000 people (representing almost 1.2% of the East German population, an insanely high number) who fled the DDR in 1989 until the hammer fell on 9th November[2], there was a disproportionate number of the intelligentsia. Interestingly, the amount of representatives of the DDR system who also fled was proportionate to the number of ordinary civilians. Many of the NVA servicemen, bureaucrats from the various ministries, People-Owned Corporations (VEBs) and most glaringly also members of the MfS brought with them documents and knowledge which, after having been cross-referenced and gone over with a fine-tooth comb to exclude disinformation, managed to severely compromise the Eastern intelligence endeavours especially in West Germany.
The defections and the general uncertain situation in the DDR until the Soviet Union reasserted its dominance among its satellites led to a situation in the security organs of the DDR that could best be described as “bedlam”. Not a few of the defectors from Stasi and NVA cited the chaos and – perhaps surprisingly, given the reputation of the NVA, Interior Ministry, Stasi and Border Protection in the West – utter incompetence while attempting to bring the situation back under control. The louder and louder voices demanding to pull a Tiananmen proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back as even in the Stasi and the NVA there were people who put the good of the people first.
Examples include first-hand information about Stasi “Einsatzgruppen” (note the uncomfortable similarity in name to the Nazi death squads behind the eastern Front in World War Two), deep-cover commandos in West Germany tasked with assassination, sabotage, disinformation and other nefarious activities up to and including chemical and bio-warfare in the event of war with the West [3], the NVA and its relationship to “Big Brother” (the Red Army) etc.
Of particular interest were the identities of a large number of Stasi Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA) plants, agents and informers (IMs) in West Germany provided by a deputy head of HVA IV (military espionage in West Germany) who had chosen to defect with his family on 11th November 1989 in an Interflug jet because of personal disputes with his superiors concerning the matter in which the democracy movement had been crushed in its infancy. The man and his family were debriefed in absolute secrecy by NATO intelligence over the course of several months in the 10th SFG’s compound in Bad Tölz and later given new identities to live in rural Canada, with the officer providing consultant services to NATO until his death from natural causes in 2002.[4] Especially the Chekist “Einsatzgruppen” who numbered around a thousand active men and women but of whom only a fraction were deployed to West Germany, fortunately, were of particular interest to the West in general and the Federal Republic of Germany in particular. Over two hundred of those who lived in West Germany under cover were apprehended, killed when resisting arrest or fled the country in the following months. Their portfolio explicitly stated that they could also be employed in times of crisis, not just war. In all likelihood, the chaos in the East German administration at that time coupled with the decisive action taken by the West German security apparatus against the (now) known clandestine warriors in country prevented a series of attacks against politicians, vital installations and the like to deflect Western attention from the East.
It was also proven conclusively that the Rote Armee Fraktion had enjoyed and was still enjoying training and financial and logistical aid by the Staatssicherheit, in the same installations as the Einsatzkommandos, by the very same instructors of “AGM /S” (Arbeitsgruppe Ministerium / Spezialaufgaben - Ministerial Working Group “Special Tasks”). This news, eventually leaked to the press, led to a noticeable decrease in sympathizer numbers for the RAF in West Germany. A lot of the active RAF terrorists in the West fled to East Germany and other countries, rightly fearing their being uncovered and snatched up by the BKA and/or GSG 9. The remnants either turned even more radical or in some cases decided to renounce terrorism and try to live in obscurity.
By a conservative estimate, the majority (a common ballpark figure is two thirds) of Stasi plants, moles and informers active in West Germany at that point were uncovered and either arrested and detained or they fled the country to safer shores. How many of the rest decided to just cease their activities is unknown. What is certain is that this constituted a windfall for the BND and BfV and a break in the Stables-of-Augias situation that dealing with the Stasi was. The insights gained from the defectors and their documents caused several crucial changes in the West German intelligence apparatus. They became more flexible and, amazingly for German organizations, less bureaucratic which led to more streamlined and efficient work.
Over the course of the first years following the massacres in the DDR, the BND, the ministry of the interior and the Federal Chancellery instigated a vigorous and at times vicious anti-Left PR campaign based on facts mixed only with a little fiction. Information was leaked to the media who for a change co-operated and in some cases even made amends for their old biased reporting in Western intelligence services.
Over in the DDR, the finger-pointing and accusations concerning the apparent inability of the security organs to predict, let alone quell the dissident movement in a politically acceptable manner began as soon as the first bullet plowed its path through a demonstrator. Erich Mielke, the geriatric, paranoid and downright vicious head of the Staatssicherheit went right back to his Stalinist roots and instigated an immediate purge of his own ministry, along with the ministry of defence and the ministry of the interior, aided by the new ministers. Over the course of three months, the Stasi crippled itself, the NVA and the non-Stasi inner security organizations by going after functionaries and apparatchiks, using “evidence” that often wasn’t even circumstantial.
Thousands of people were incarcerated, hundreds liquidated, which does not even take into account the tens of thousands of civilians who suffered the wrath of the wounded and insecure country. People were arrested left and right and vanished into the prison system of the DDR, while on more than one occasion, squads of police, Stasi and Combat Groups of the Working Class dished out extra-judicial capital punishment to resisters and well-known members of the opposition. Daily life as it was known, indeed the whole country nearly ground to a halt, exacerbating the crisis even more.
As it was, the purges led to a second wave of defections by key personnel – now threatened with prison, torture and execution - to the West which further hamstrung the DDR’s executive organs. Mielke reportedly hit the roof and was on the verge of widening the scope of the ongoing purge but was felled by what was described as a cataclysmic stroke. It is unknown to this day if he went out the way Stalin is still rumoured to have been dispatched (injected with warfarin and adrenaline) or if it really was of natural causes. In the Staatsrat and the Central Committee, a comparatively moderate group led by Egon Krenz, who was to become the new Chairman of the State Council and the CC of the SED in due course, decided to intervene decisively and unseated Erich Honecker and the rest of the ministers and hard-line members of the Central Committee by force, aided by the NVA who dispatched units of the 40th Air Assault Regiment and motor-rifle troops from around East Berlin. Honecker lived out his life in an isolated cottage near Wandlitz. He died in early 1991from complications brought on by cancer and cardio-vascular illness.
Over the course of 1990’s first trimester, the new leadership of the country managed, supported by material aid from the Soviet Union and a gradual relaxation of the Draconian security measures that hung above the heads of the DDR citizenry, to stave off a complete collapse of the country. Nevertheless, the DDR would never be the same. The fabled Stasi had received a near-fatal blow that it would struggle to recover from. Markus Wolf, the long-time number two in the Stasi who had decided to retire in 1986, was called back on duty, taking over overall leadership of the Ministry for State Security, in the process shedding the mantle of intrigue and mystery that had surrounded him for most of his professional life now that he was in the public eye.
Even his noted abilities were taxed to the breaking point as he struggled for the coming ten years to rebuild the Stasi, especially its foreign intelligence arm into the formidable instrument it had been before 1989. Western intelligence – notably the BND, now shed of a number of Stasi moles and informants in its ranks – was now wiser to the ways of the DDR and made its work harder than it was before. Just like his predecessor, Wolf decided to stay at the Staatssicherheit’s helm way beyond normal retirement age and was still active as a major consultant to his successor – who took over in 2001 – when World War Three broke out. Interestingly, he was one of the few voices in the DDR’s leadership who had tried to dissuade the DDR and the Soviet Union from embarking on their disastrous adventure.
[1]A lot of the books written by German authors about the blunders of the BND and the BfV were written using only secondary sources and insider accounts that mostly were dubious at best. In essence, the authors were copying each others’ work instead of doing proper research.
[2] This the number of people who fled the DDR in @ before the Wall came down.
[3] I am not making this up.
[4] This is based on @’s Oberleutnant Werner Stiller who defected in 1979. His help caused the arrest of over a dozen DDR spies in West Germany and the escape of another 40 or so back to East Germany. He was given a new identity to live in the USA. Perversely, he later worked as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers in the USA. For further information, read Beyond the Wall, Brassey's, Washington 1992, ISBN 0-02-881007-4
