The Triumph of HUMINT: The GDR Foreign Intelligence Services’ Collection of Defense Intelligence, 1951–1989

Abstract

During the Cold War, the German Democratic Republic (GDR)’s foreign intelligence agencies collected much defense intelligence from human sources in West Germany. By the mid-1960s, the two services had created agent networks in their principal targets in West Germany’s government, armed forces, industry and universities. For the next 25 years, these agent networks supplied a wealth of varied and valuable military intelligence and scientific and technological intelligence. At their heart was a small number of outstanding human sources. The GDR’s intelligence agencies significantly strengthened the Soviet Bloc’s intelligence collection. The intelligence they obtained was more valuable to the Warsaw Pact than the GDR’s armed forces and would have been of great benefit to the Pact if war had broken out. Their success ran counter to the trend of military intelligence collection at that time, which was to rely increasingly heavily on technical collection.

This article analyzes the collection of defense intelligence by the intelligence agencies of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the communist state established in 1949 by the Soviet Union in its zone of occupation in Germany. Defense intelligence is defined as both military intelligence (information on armed forces, their weaponry and employment in war) and scientific and technological intelligence (S&TI; information on scientific and technological developments that can increase military capability, above all by enabling the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction and other advanced weapons). Military intelligence is a very broad field, encompassing not only information on armed forces, their weaponry, equipment, physical condition and morale, but also the plans and intentions of a country’s political and military leaderships for their employment. War-related S&TI is even more diverse: it extends to all scientific research and development and technological advance which might increase a state’s military capability. That defense intelligence is so diverse means that it both can and must be collected by every available means of intelligence collection: by human spies and by every technical means of intelligence collection. Human spies are well suited to collecting S&TI, much of which consists of research plans, projects, and data (so information that passes through the heads and across the desks of human beings) and of computers and other electronic or mechanical devices (which belong to companies staffed by people).¹

The GDR’s intelligence agencies had great success in collecting both military intelligence and S&TI. This is largely because they ran valuable human spies in West Germany, which proved an easy target for their espionage. They skillfully exploited the plentiful opportunities for intelligence collection that a divided country offered. The key to their success was their skill in recruiting agents and infiltrating them into the institutions they were targeting.² Their success in obtaining valuable military intelligence from human sources ran counter to the trend during the Cold War period of Western intelligence agencies, which increasingly relied, both in Germany and elsewhere, on technical sources to collect military intelligence. From the 1960s the West German foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND, Federal Intelligence Service), relied heavily on the interception of electronic signals (signals intelligence [SIGINT]) to obtain military intelligence; in the last three decades of the Cold War, SIGINT accounted for 90% of all the intelligence it collected.³ From the mid-1960s, the U.S. military intelligence agencies in West Germany had less need of human spies in the Soviet Bloc because advances in telecommunications enabled photographic intelligence collected by reconnaissance satellites to be transmitted from the United States to the headquarters in West Germany of the U.S. armed forces’ European Command. From the 1960s, the Soviet Union also relied heavily on reconnaissance satellites for military intelligence collection.⁴ For all their great advantages, reconnaissance satellites only give insight into armed forces as they are at the time of collection. Human sources can provide information on military plans, intentions, and decisions taken in secret.⁵

The GDR’s collection of defense intelligence was part of a combined effort by the Soviet Bloc’s foreign intelligence services to obtain such intelligence. This effort was led and directed by the intelligence agencies of the USSR. The intelligence agencies of the GDR, Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia all collected defense intelligence on West German soil during the Cold War. From their establishment in 1951–1952, the GDR’s foreign intelligence agencies had instructions from their Soviet masters to collect military intelligence and S&TI. For its own part, the GDR’s communist regime placed great importance on the collection of military intelligence and S&TI. As a front-line state in the East–West military confrontation, the GDR needed military intelligence to defend itself. It also wanted military intelligence for ideological reasons. The GDR exaggerated the military threat to it. In its ceaseless propaganda, its communist regime presented the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as aggressive even though the communist leaders knew that NATO was a defensive alliance with a defensive military strategy. The Federal Republic of Germany was presented as an imperialistic state bent on destroying the GDR when this was also false. Intelligence (e.g., of American military and nuclear deployments in West Germany) was collected to serve the ideological needs and propaganda objectives of the GDR’s communist regime. Because the GDR’s economic and technological development always lagged behind that of the Federal Republic, the theft of Western technology in West Germany was also important to it.⁶

The GDR’s defense intelligence collection agencies

The Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung

The GDR’s principal foreign intelligence service, the Aussenpolitischer Nachrichtendienst (APN; Foreign Political Intelligence Service), was founded in 1951. The Soviets created it so that it could exploit, on their behalf, the exceptionally good conditions for intelligence collection offered by divided Germany. The innumerable family, personal, and commercial connections between the two German states made them rich territories for intelligence collection.⁷ Despite its name, from its creation the APN collected military intelligence. In the words of the former chief of the military intelligence assessment staff of the APN’s successor, the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HVA; Main Department for Reconnaissance), the APN regarded itself “above all and principally as a high-grade agency for the collection of espionage information for the Soviets. In particular, the Soviets desired military information.”⁸ The APN was incorporated into the Stasi in 1953 as its HA XV (Hauptabteilung XV [Main Department XV]) and renamed the HVA in 1956.

Like the APN, the HVA collected military intelligence on behalf of the military leaderships of the Soviet Union and the GDR. Some of it was also supplied to other member states of the Warsaw Pact. The principal consumer of its intelligence was the Soviet General Staff, which dominated the Warsaw Pact and its military planning. In the 1970s and 1980s, military intelligence reports consistently represented about 30% of the HVA’s intelligence product; they were sent directly by its collection departments to the intelligence headquarters in East Berlin of the USSR’s Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti (KGB; Committee for State Security). Intelligence collected in West German industry made up another 16% of the information the service collected. War-related S&TI represented a significant part of both this military and industrial intelligence.⁹ The KGB’s East Berlin office also received the military intelligence reports of the HVA’s intelligence assessment staff, Department VII. The HVA’s tasking reflected Soviet military priorities. The Soviets always placed a high priority on the collection of military intelligence and demanded that the HVA penetrate the military installations, mainly in West Germany, of the Federal Republic, the United States, and NATO. Above all, they sought warning of a nuclear first strike and an attack by conventional military forces. The rapid development of military electronics in the 1970s caused the Soviets’ fears of a nuclear first strike to grow; the KGB accordingly demanded that the HVA collect more information on NATO’s military policy and the weapons-related research, development, and production of the United States and its NATO allies.¹⁰

Since its dissolution, the HVA has established a reputation as one of the best intelligence services of the Cold War era. Its long-serving chief, Markus Wolf, has called his service “probably the most efficient and effective such service on the European continent.”¹¹ The First Chief Directorate of the KGB (KGB–FCD), its foreign intelligence service, shared Wolf’s high opinion of the HVA. In his memoirs, Oleg Kalugin, the former chief of the KGB–FCD’s counterintelligence division, recalled, “As for NATO’s strongest European power, West Germany, we … had access to huge quantities of intelligence, and virtually without lifting a finger. The East German foreign intelligence agency, headed by the brilliant Markus Wolf, had so deeply penetrated the West German government, military and secret services that about all we had to do was lie back and stay out of Wolf’s way.”¹² Even the HVA’s foes have praised its skill. Heribert Hellenbroich, a former president of both the BND and the West German security service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV), identified its outstanding qualities as its “almost perfect exploitation of characteristics of a divided country for purposes of espionage” and a “good leadership team.”¹³ The HVA created a large and excellent network of agents in West Germany, which supplied it quickly and secretly with a flood of intelligence. The military intelligence collected by the HVA consisted almost entirely of documents obtained from spies (human intelligence [HUMINT]).¹⁴

The HVA’s principal military targets were West Germany’s military institutions, the NATO alliance, and the United States armed forces in Western Europe. It collected much more military intelligence than the foreign intelligence services of the USSR’s other satellites. Its military intelligence collection was more important to the Warsaw Pact than were the GDR’s armed forces. According to Colonel Heinz Busch, who was in the 1980s the chief of the service’s military intelligence assessment staff, from the mid-1960s at the latest the HVA had enough suitably placed, high-quality human sources to be able to provide the Soviet and GDR General Staffs with valuable military intelligence. At any time, the service could supply documentary information on NATO’s military policy and planning, weapons development plans, and arms control policy. It was continually able to assess NATO’s military strength, both human and material, and plans to develop it, as well as the economies and scientific and technological capabilities of NATO’s leading Western European members. The HVA obtained advance information on NATO’s plans for exercises, maneuvers, troop movements, and intelligence operations. It could place these under surveillance when they took place. The HVA had a comprehensive and continually updated picture of NATO’s knowledge of the military policy, weaponry, armed forces, and military capability of the Warsaw Pact. It also obtained much, highly specific intelligence on the nuclear forces present in Western Europe, including the places where their nuclear warheads were stored. There were limits to its knowledge: the HVA did not obtain reliable information on NATO’s nuclear targeting. Nor was it able to form a comprehensive and up-to-date picture of the alliance’s operational planning.¹⁵

The GDR had two procurement networks for science and technology. The first was the HVA’s Science and Technology Sector (Sektor Wissenschaft und Technik, SWT), established in 1971. It consisted of three collection departments—Departments XIII, XIV, and XV—and an assessment department, Department V. Its job was principally industrial espionage, which was intended to benefit the GDR’s economy rather than the armed forces.¹⁶ That part of the HVA’s intelligence collection falls outside the scope of this article.

The HVA–SWT was also under pressure from the KGB to obtain high technology of military application; about one-third of its staff was permanently engaged in obtaining war-related scientific information or technical equipment.¹⁷ It procured much military science and technology (S&T), including intelligence on the weaponry in development and production for the armed forces of the Federal Republic and its NATO partners. This it passed on to Moscow. This intelligence influenced the USSR’s weapons production. The HVA–SWT’s sources supplied chiefly scientific and technical plans and designs and internal information on their companies’ products; sometimes they provided models or prototypes of the products.¹⁸ In 1980, just over half of the intelligence acquired by the KGB–FCD’s division for S&T collection, Directorate T, was received from partner intelligence services, above all the HVA and Czechoslovakia’s Státni Bezpecnost (StB; State Security). Directorate T passed this S&T on to the USSR’s Military-Industrial Commission for use in Soviet weapons development; in that year, 10.5% of the S&T received by the commission came from West Germany. The HVA was an important source of S&TI for the USSR’s defense industries.¹⁹

The GDR’s second procurement network was the “Commercial Coordination Sector” (Bereich Kommerzielle Koordinierung, KoKo) of the Ministry for Foreign Trade, which obtained embargoed Western technology, legally and illegally, by means of a network of front companies.²⁰

The Verwaltung Aufklärung of the Nationale Volksarmee

The East German military intelligence service was founded in 1952, at the initiative of the Soviet military intelligence service, the Glavnoye Razvedivatelnoye Upravleniye (GRU, Main Intelligence Directorate). Initially known as the Verwaltung für allgemeine Fragen (Directorate for General Questions), it was later called the Verwaltung Aufklärung of the Nationale Volksarmee (VA/NVA, Reconnaissance Directorate of the National People’s Army) and it is by that name that it will be called here.²¹ It was a successful service that obtained valuable military intelligence from well-placed sources in West Germany’s armed forces and defense institutions and in NATO.²² Its “Spitzenquellen” (“first-rate sources”) were in important positions in NATO and the West German Bundeswehr (Federal Armed Forces). Open-source intelligence formed the greater part of the information in its intelligence reports.²³ However, the most valuable military intelligence it collected was the HUMINT of its spies. It passed its intelligence reports to the GRU.²⁴

The VA/NVA’s targets were the West German armed forces, the NATO armed forces in West Germany and Western Europe, and the war-related political and technological institutions of the Federal Republic and NATO. Its objectives were to give warning of any attack by NATO and to penetrate the highest political and military bodies of which the NATO military leaderships and their staff were members. By the mid-1970s, its main aims were to collect intelligence on weapons development and the principal diplomatic efforts to limit military strength, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the arms control negotiations between the USSR and United States, the SALT II and START talks.²⁵ The targets it tried hardest to penetrate were West Germany’s Ministry of Defense and the main offices of the Bundeswehr; West Germany’s principal weapons development companies; the Federal Office for Military Technology and Procurement (Bundesamt für Wehrtechnik und Beschaffung), which was the West German government agency for weapons development; the NATO commands Army Group Center and Army Group North; and the Allied military units stationed in West Berlin. Although formally independent, the VA/NVA lost its independence over time and became an arm of the HVA.²⁶ While the HVA was keen to collect intelligence on military policy and strategic matters and the VA/NVA obtained much information on the West German armed forces (so tactical matters), there was a great deal of overlap in the two agencies’ intelligence collection. The VA/NVA provided intelligence on strategy as well as tactics: its agent network provided very good information on the strategic planning and intentions of the Bundeswehr and NATO, and particularly on NATO’s capabilities.²⁷

Sources

Sources on the HVA

Enough of the two services’ records survive for the success of their HUMINT collection to be assessed.

The GDR’s communist regime was overthrown by a popular movement for civil rights in November and December 1989. This movement seized the Stasi’s records. It established institutions, the so-called Bürgerkomitees (citizens’ committees) and the Zentraler Runder Tisch (Central Round Table), to negotiate with the regime its abdication from power. These institutions allowed the HVA to dissolve itself. The HVA used this opportunity to destroy most of its archive. Consequently, little documentation is available on the service’s operational casework (its “Operativ-Vorgänge”) and its running of its agents. A comprehensive picture of the HVA’s operations cannot be formed.²⁸

Nevertheless, enough sources were not destroyed and are now available to historians for them to form a clear idea of the size of the HVA’s informer network in West Germany, how it was assembled and run, what intelligence it provided and how useful the information was. These sources are as follows.

One consists of the so-called Rosenholz (Rosewood) records. Two card indexes of people who were subjects of the HVA’s interest in 1988 were microfilmed. These F16 and F22 indexes include, among other people, the service’s agents. As the GDR was collapsing, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency obtained a copy of the indexes, which it made available in 1993 to the BfV. The indexes state the real name and codename of each spy. In the 1990s, they enabled the foreign intelligence network of the HVA and the Stasi’s security departments to be uncovered. They enabled the size of the HVA’s agent network to be established: between the early 1950s and the late 1980s the service ran approximately 6,000 spies in West Germany. The Stasi’s security departments ran a similar number of spies in the Federal Republic in the same period. These 12,000 agents were supported by a network of approximately 40,000 East German couriers, instructors, and intermediaries. The ministry’s foreign intelligence network consisted of approximately 52,000 people in all.²⁹

A second source is called the System der Informationsrecherche der Aufklärung (SIRA, The Foreign Intelligence Service’s System for Researching Information), which became available to researchers in December 1998. This is a set of electronic databases that record information that the HVA received and passed on. SIRA began in 1969; the data it contains relate to the period from then on. Using Rosenholz and SIRA together has enabled researchers to research into people because information the HVA received bore the codenames of the sources. SIRA provides the codename of the agent and basic information about an intelligence report (although not the report itself); this information can be connected with the agent’s real name and codename in the Rosenholz indexes. Most intelligence reports were awarded a mark between “I” (“sehr wertvoll”: “very valuable”) and “V” (“ohne Wert”: “valueless”). SIRA records the mark.³⁰

Intelligence reports that the HVA’s assessment staff, Department VII, wrote for the GDR’s leaders represent a third source. Approximately 60% of all the intelligence reports that the HVA sent to the party leadership, the GDR’s military leaders, and other recipients were not destroyed in 1989 and 1990.³¹ The records of the HVA’s local branches in the GDR, Line XV, were also not completely destroyed.³²

Court and prosecutorial records constitute a fourth source. Much information about the HVA’s agent network came to light in the 1990s when the Federal Republic’s prosecutors investigated the service’s West German agents to establish whether there was enough evidence of crime to prosecute them. The prosecutors relied heavily on the Rosenholz card indexes and on information obtained after the collapse of the communist regime from HVA officers about their service’s network and the agents they had run.³³ The agents these turncoats betrayed supplied their prosecutors with further evidence when they confessed to their crimes. To this evidence the prosecutors added information obtained from West Germany’s police and intelligence agencies, as well as the remaining records of the Stasi and VA/NVA. The Stasi’s records were important because approximately 40% of its agents in West Germany reported to the ministry’s domestic security departments, which did not destroy their records on their agents. The records of the Stasi’s military counterintelligence department, HA I (Hauptabteilung I, Main Department I) also allowed many of the VA/NVA’s agents to be exposed (see below). Owing to the passing of the limitation period for prosecution, many of the spies investigated could not be put on trial; only those spies who were still active in the late 1980s could be prosecuted. The investigations and such trials as subsequently took place therefore concentrated on them. The trials revealed the HVA’s network as it was in the last phase of the Cold War. Other sources, such as the SIRA databases, are needed to research into the HVA’s spies further back in time. The prosecutors failed to expose some agents. But the HVA’s agent network in the late 1980s was largely uncovered. Joachim Lampe, the German prosecutor who directed the investigations, has stated that “all agents who were run by the most important [foreign] espionage units of Stasi have been exposed” with the exception of some of the spies in the West German economy and “Händleragenten” (“dealer agents”) run by the HVA’s Science and Technology Sector, the ministry’s department for economic security, HA XVIII, and the Ministry for Foreign Trade’s Commercial Coordination Sector. Some of the investigations led to prosecutions and even convictions. Some of the spies convicted feature prominently in this article.³⁴

A fifth and final source are the memoirs of former East German foreign intelligence officers and West German counterintelligence officials and the books of investigative journalists.³⁵

Sources on the VA/NVA

Like the HVA, the VA/NVA was allowed to dissolve itself and, as part of this process, was allowed to destroy its operational records. The service’s last director, General Alfred Krause, destroyed almost all of them (some 15,000 files) in 1990. Only about 130 files were not destroyed.³⁶

However, large collections of official records relating to the VA/NVA still remain. The reason is that the agency formed part of the GDR’s armed forces and was given security by the Stasi. Both the armed forces and the Stasi therefore kept records on it. The German Federal Military Archive (Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv) now holds the records of the GDR’s armed forces, including numerous files on the VA/NVA created either by the service itself or by other branches of the East German armed forces. These files concern matters of organization and personnel, the direction of the service by the GDR’s National Defense Council (Nationaler Verteidigungsrat), the Minister for National Defense and the General Staff. As appears above, the Stasi’s military counterintelligence division, HA I, was responsible for securing the VA/NVA from penetration by Western intelligence agencies; the VA/NVA did not have its own counterintelligence division. HA I kept records of the VA/NVA’s agents, which enabled the service’s spy network to be uncovered. The Stasi Records Archive now holds the records of HA I. The VA/NVA was also overseen by institutions of the GDR’s ruling Socialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED). The party’s records are now held by the Foundation Archive of the Parties and Mass Organizations of the GDR at the Federal Archive (Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv). Its holdings contain files recording the direction of the VA/NVA by SED institutions.³⁷

The court and prosecutorial records relating to the espionage trials in the Federal Republic of the 1990s are an important source on the VA/NVA’s spies, just as they are for the HVA’s spies. Thanks to these sources, as with the HVA, an adequate picture can be formed of the military intelligence service’s organization and personnel, its agent network, the intelligence this network supplied, and the usefulness of this information. This article will analyze the two intelligence services’ agent networks and demonstrate that they supplied valuable defense intelligence. In the interest of brevity, it will focus on the services’ “Spitzenquellen.”

Agents

The GDR’s Network of Agents Abroad in 1988–1989

In the late 1980s, the GDR’s intelligence agencies had a large agent network in the Federal Republic. The HVA, the Stasi’s security divisions, and the VA/NVA combined ran at least 3,000 informers in West Germany. This is the lowest reasonable figure; it may be that the figure was as high as 4,000. The Rosenholz card indexes establish that, in 1988, the HVA was running 1,553 agents with West German citizenship, and in addition an unknown, but much smaller, number of agents of other nationalities. It is estimated by state prosecutors that the Stasi’s security and counterintelligence divisions and the VA/NVA ran at least the same approximate number of West German agents. The prosecutions of the 1990s indicate the proportions in which the East German intelligence agencies ran these sources: half of the Western informers prosecuted were sources of the HVA; approximately 40% were sources of the Stasi’s security divisions, and 8% were sources of the VA/NVA.³⁸ A large proportion of these agents were tasked with collecting defense intelligence. One SIRA database shows that the HVA’s Department VII recorded approximately 4,500 “sources” in the fields of political and military espionage.

The core of the HVA’s network of 1,553 agents consisted of about 650 people who provided a wide range of information from within West German politics and government, the armed forces, media, industry, and higher education. Four hundred and forty-nine supplied information from within targeted institutions (they were, in the service’s terminology, “Objektquellen”: “target sources”). The HVA’s agent network in West Germany was at its peak in the 1970s, when “Perspektiv-IM” (“prospective informers”) developed since the 1950s and 1960s succeeded in penetrating important targets.³⁹ According to its last chief, General Krause, in 1989 the VA/NVA had 138 agents. Bodo Wegmann confirms this in his 2005 book, Die Militäraufklärung der NVA (The NVA’s Military Reconnaissance).⁴⁰

“Spitzenquellen” Who Supplied Military Intelligence

Of the HVA’s eight operational departments, three devoted either all or most of their resources to the collection of military intelligence. The collection of military intelligence was the responsibility of Department IV. In 1988, 74 West Germans were either informers or contacts of this department; 22 of them were “Objektquellen” who reported from within targeted institutions. An outstanding such source was Alfred Spuhler who reported from within the BND. Department XI collected intelligence on American targets, chiefly soldiers and U.S. government officials in West Germany and Western Europe. It had 101 sources in 1988. The responsibility of Department XII was the collection of intelligence on NATO and the European Economic Community. In 1988, 72 West Germans were either informers or contacts of this department; twelve of them were “Objektquellen,” the best of them being Rainer Rupp who reported from within NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.⁴¹ Department IX, the HVA’s counterintelligence department, also collected military intelligence because among the information it collected was much on the NATO states’ military intelligence capabilities, the state of NATO’s knowledge of the Warsaw Pact, and the Federal Republic’s defense policy. Other departments of the HVA played their part as well. The reports obtained by Department I from within the Federal Chancellery and West German Foreign Ministry included much information on defense policy, disarmament, and arms control. Department II obtained reports on West Germany’s armed forces and defense policy from the defense and foreign policy committees of the West German Parliament, as well as information about the West German armed forces’ information technology system and information saved on it.⁴²

Consequently, in the late Cold War, the HVA had an agent network of a few hundred people supplying military intelligence. At the heart of this were a few dozen “Objektquellen,” among whom was a small number of “Spitzenquellen.” The VA/NVA’s 138 agents, a few of whom were important sources, should be added to this number. Foreign intelligence networks are always small because ordinarily it is rare for people with access to secret information to be willing to betray it. For networks of agents supplying foreign intelligence, the GDR’s military intelligence networks were relatively large.

The courts which in the 1990s tried the West German agents of the HVA and VA/NVA concluded that a small number of outstanding sources had severely undermined the Federal Republic’s capacity to defend itself. Examples of such “Spitzenquellen” were Rainer Rupp, Alfred Spuhler, Karl Gebauer, Joachim Preuß, Wolf-Heinrich Prellwitz, Wolfgang Nolte, Irene Schade, Dieter Feuerstein, and Heidrun Kraut and her husband Peter. These “Spitzenquellen” will be examined in the paragraphs that follow. The courts’ assessment is supported by the SIRA databases, which were decoded in December 1998, after the spy trials of the 1990s had ended. The HVA in its SIRA archives gave its best mark (“I”) to reports obtained from a handful of outstanding sources. Those to whom the service gave that mark most often were Alfred Spuhler, whose information received no fewer than 451 “I”s; Rainer Rupp, whose information was awarded 279 “I”s; Wolf-Heinrich Prellwitz; Irene Schade (69 “I”s); and Heidrun and Peter Kraut (58 “I”s).⁴³ All supplied military intelligence and S&TI, although Spuhler provided counterintelligence as well.

Of the VA/NVA’s 138 agents, the prosecutors who put General Krause before a court considered 31 to be “important agents.” Of the 31, it considered 20 to be “Spitzenquellen.” Joachim Zöller, once the director of the counterintelligence department of the Federal Republic’s Military Security Service (Militärischer Abschirmdienst), disagrees that twenty of these agents were “Spitzenquellen”; he suggests that ten were first-rate sources and the rest were much less valuable.⁴⁴

Rainer Rupp was the HVA’s top spy in NATO. He reported from the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels, where he was a member of its International Staff. He was a valuable source from 1977, when he accepted a job in NATO’s economic directorate and thus obtained access to documents up to the classification of “Cosmic Top Secret.” In time, Rupp obtained access to all documents relating to NATO’s planning on defense and armed forces.⁴⁵ The court that tried him concluded that the information betrayed by Rupp could have been decisive in war because thanks to Rupp the Warsaw Pact knew “all [NATO’s] cards.” Of course, in practice no harm was done because war did not break out.⁴⁶

Alfred Spuhler spied for the HVA in the BND from 1972 to 1989. The Bavarian court that sentenced him considered that Spuhler, by altering the balance of military power in favor of the Warsaw Pact, had aggravated the arms race and reinforced the USSR’s domination of Eastern Europe. The court pointed out that his treason had benefited as well as harmed the Federal Republic: Spuhler showed the HVA that NATO had extensive knowledge of the Warsaw Pact. The court reasoned that that would have had a deterrent effect on the Warsaw Pact which protected the Federal Republic; the GDR’s leaders will have concluded that an attack on West Germany and Western Europe could not be successful and might have catastrophic consequences for the Warsaw Pact and the GDR.⁴⁷

Karl Gebauer was, from 1975 to 1986, an agent of the Stasi’s principal counterintelligence department, HA II. He was a technical draughtsman, archivist, and security official at International Business Machines (IBM)’s installation in Wilhelmshaven. He supplied HA II with details of the computer-guided direction system used by the West German navy and its NATO allies in the North Sea. The information he betrayed gravely undermined the navy’s operability and would have given the Warsaw Pact an advantage in war. The West Germans considered Gebauer to be one of the most damaging of their Cold War traitors.⁴⁸

Wolf-Heinrich Prellwitz was an official in the weaponry department of the West German Ministry of Defense who from 1968 to 1990 supplied the HVA with well over 1,000 documents, including ones on the West German air force’s planning for weaponry, airwar strategy, and information obtained from leading armaments manufacturers such as Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm and Industrie-Anlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH (IABG).⁴⁹ The intelligence he supplied was so valuable that the HVA paid him 820,000 Deutsche Marks for it.⁵⁰ For sixteen years, until their arrest in 1976, two other “Spitzenquellen” also supplied the HVA with first-rate military intelligence from within the Defense Ministry. They were Lothar-Erwin Lutze, an official in the ministry’s weapons department, and his wife Renate, a secretary at the ministry. The Lutzes, particularly Lothar-Erwin, supplied highly valued intelligence on NATO policy (particularly on oil), exercises, plans for mobilization (including how much time NATO’s forces would need to mobilize), and cooperation in weapons development. They also provided analyses of the Warsaw Pact’s forces, assessments of the quality of, and shortcomings in, NATO’s own forces; information on the type of war NATO was expecting; and what military strategy it was adopting in consequence.⁵¹

Irene Schade was, at first sight, an unlikely source of valuable military intelligence: she worked in the Interior Ministry of the federal state of Lower Saxony. She was nevertheless considered a “Spitzenquelle” because as a secretary in the ministry’s secret registry she had access to all its confidential documents. Schade supplied the HVA with large parts of official plans for a civilian emergency, which were kept very secret in West Germany, and documents on NATO’s Army Group North. The HVA thought highly of this information; between 1978 and 1988, it gave the top mark of “I” to 69 of the information reports it received from her.⁵²

Joachim Preuß and Wolfgang Nolte were both “Spitzenquellen” who supplied military intelligence to the VA/NVA. Preuß was the deputy director of the German Air Force’s Central Printing Office. He betrayed a mass of intelligence about the West German air force, including its planning for an emergency. Nolte was an officer in the Bundeswehr who from 1967 to 1990 supplied intelligence on exercises and military planning, including excerpts from the Bundeswehr’s General Defense Plan, exercise plans, and information on mobilization and NATO’s Wintex 1979 exercise. Five more of the military intelligence service’s “Spitzenquellen” were Hans Lob, Ulrich Steinmann, Egon Streffer, Thomas Hartmann, and Ulrich Schatte. Lob worked for the Bundeswehr’s Office for Studies and Exercises. From 1968 to March 1990, he supplied documents on NATO exercises, NATO conflict analyses and operational plans, as well as documents on NATO’s conferences, plans and exercises. Steinmann was the director of construction of the Weapons Department of West Germany’s Ministry of Defense. From 1966 to 1990 he betrayed plans for weapons and ammunition, the Wintex/Cimex exercises, and intelligence collected by the BND about the Warsaw Pact states. Streffer was a source in the planning staff of the West German Ministry of Defense. For nineteen years, from 1970 to 1989, he supplied documents from within the ministry, including documents relating to the planning of the Bundeswehr and NATO for their armed forces, documents on disarmament negotiations, analyses of the military situation and military threats, and ministerial documents.⁵³ Thomas Hartmann was a government inspector in a military office in Detmold who from 1973 to 1990 supplied information on military exercises. Ulrich Schatte was an officer in the reserves who from 1969 to 1990 supplied information on exercises and mobilization plans. He also placed American Pershing missile forces under observation.⁵⁴

Among the HVA’s “Spitzenquellen” was at least one American serving in the U.S. Army in West Berlin. This was James W. Hall III, a sergeant serving in the U.S. Army’s Intelligence and Security Command at Field Station Berlin, the great SIGINT interception base on the Teufelsberg in West Berlin. Hall supplied the HVA with documents with the highest security classification relating to American electronic surveillance of Eastern Europe and plans for electronic warfare in the event of war. Hall revealed to his controllers how penetrating was the electronic intelligence being obtained from Field Station Berlin on the Warsaw Pact’s armed forces in Eastern Europe. He also enabled the Soviet armed forces to take countermeasures against American plans for electronic warfare.⁵⁵ The SIRA archive refers to 232 information reports from Hall for the period from October 1980 to February 1988; of these, 169 received the mark of “I” and a further 59 the mark of “II.”⁵⁶ The information Hall betrayed was so important that he was sentenced by an American court-martial in March 1989 to 40 years’ imprisonment. In his memoir, Markus Wolf crows that, “… the documents stolen by him [Hall] helped our service cripple American electronic surveillance of Eastern Europe for six years.”⁵⁷

The historian Georg Herbstritt suggests a further “Spitzenquelle,” one whom the Rosenholz records do not enable to be identified by name. This was IM “Balkan,” a female official in the Federal Republic’s Foreign Ministry. The SIRA databases establish which “Balkan” supplied 499 information reports that between 1971 and 1980 were added to the archive. The HVA thought highly of this intelligence; in the years 1978 to 1980 alone 124 of these information reports were awarded the mark “I.” Between 1977 and 1980 the agent supplied numerous documents from the Federal Chancellery about the Federal Republic’s position at arms limitation negotiations taking place in Vienna (the Mutual Balanced Forces Reduction [MBFR] talks, which lasted from 1973 to 1989 and ended without agreement). This mark of “I” was above all awarded to information reports on the Federal Republic’s approach to the MBFR talks and its dealings with its allies on the subject.⁵⁸ The VA/NVA had its own “Spitzenquelle” who supplied intelligence on the MBFR negotiations. This was Heinz Werner, codenamed “Günter,” a communications official at the West German Foreign Ministry.⁵⁹

“Spitzenquellen” Who Supplied War-Related S&TI

The HVA built up a large and sophisticated network of spies supplying S&TI from West Germany. It placed agents in at least 150 of the companies, universities, research institutes and other institutions it was targeting in West Germany.⁶⁰ In 1988 it was running 334 informers (Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter, IM: “unofficial co-workers”) and contacts (Kontaktpersonen) who supplied S&TI. One hundred and seven of the informers were “target-sources.”⁶¹ Examples of such spies have come to light since the GDR’s dissolution. They confirm that the HVA penetrated its targets and obtained valuable war-related S&TI. It circumvented the Western states’ embargo on trade of military significance with the Soviet Bloc states, which was implemented by their Consultative Group–Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom).⁶²

One such spy is the physicist Gerhard Müller, who migrated to West Germany in 1955 and obtained a job with an electronics company called Standard Electric Lorenz. For 35 years Müller supplied the HVA with information about electronic communication systems. This technology was subject to the CoCom embargo owing to its possible military applications. In the 1980s the information on microelectronics supplied by Müller was highly regarded by the HVA; it received very high marks (generally the best mark, “1”) owing to its importance to the GDR’s efforts to develop its microelectronics industry.⁶³

In the 1970s, computer technology assumed top priority in the HVA’s S&TI collection. Both the HVA–SWT and KoKo made great efforts to obtain S&TI from microelectronics companies. The HVA had successes, as the West Germans discovered after its dissolution: agents were uncovered in the American computer giant IBM, Texas Instruments, Siemens, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), AEG Telefunken, as well as smaller companies. The HVA obtained microelectronic devices such as Intel micro-processors in defiance of the CoCom embargo. From the 1970s, the GDR’s production of computers was based on copying designs of IBM. The HVA obtained much computer technology from IBM and other leading computer companies; Markus Wolf described the GDR’s leading microelectronics company, Robotron, as “so heavily dependent on surreptitiously acquiring IBM’s technological advances that it was, in effect, a sort of illegal subsidiary of that company.”⁶⁴ The HVA’s success in secretly and illegally obtaining Western computer technology was confirmed by the defection in 1979 of Werner Stiller, an officer in Department XIII of the Science and Technology Sector. One of the spies arrested in the wake of his defection was a source in IBM’s West German subsidiary, the engineer Gerhard Arnold. Stiller called Arnold one of the secret “fathers of data processing equipment in the GDR.” The HVA’s records demonstrate that Arnold was a “Spitzenquelle.” Department XIII’s annual plan for 1978 states that documents that “Storm” (Arnold’s codename) had provided on software and database systems were “of high economic and military importance.”⁶⁵ Information he supplied from within IBM enabled East German engineers to supply their armed forces with better computers. Two other agents run by Stiller were the nuclear scientists Karl Hauffe and Reiner Fülle.⁶⁶

The HVA–SWT managed to place many agents either in Siemens or close enough to it that they had access to its documents: in the 1980s at least 85 people supplied the HVA–SWT with Siemens documents.⁶⁷ IM “Schneider,” an S&TI source for the service, was a manager at Siemens. Between 1980 and 1989 “Schneider” supplied technical documents about computers and information technology, including information about computers developed and manufactured specifically for the Bundeswehr. The SIRA databases 11 and 12 refer to 1,107 information reports from “Schneider,” 127 of which were considered “valuable” and seven “very valuable.”⁶⁸

IM “Seemann” was a computer expert. He and his wife supplied the HVA with intelligence from 1976 to 1989. “Seemann” provided more information than any other agent reporting to the Science and Technology Sector: the relevant SIRA database contains the record number of 4,889 information reports from him. The quality of this information was also very high: the information obtained from “Seemann” was among the intelligence that enabled the GDR computer industry to copy DEC’s VAX-11/780 computer and manufacture Robotron’s K-1840.⁶⁹

A key target of the HVA, in its efforts to obtain S&TI of military application, was West Germany’s largest arms manufacturer, Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB). It had two “Spitzenquellen” in the company: Dieter Feuerstein, an engineer in MBB’s research department, and Heidrun Kraut. Feuerstein supplied intelligence on the construction designs for the Tornado and Jäger 90 jet fighters, as well as on military helicopters and tanks and missile technology. The SIRA archive refers to 206 reports of information obtained from him between 1975 and 1986. In the two years between mid-1986 and mid-1988 the HVA gave the mark of “I” to 23 information reports from Feuerstein on jet fighters and other military aircraft. The information was passed to the KGB, which thought highly of it.⁷⁰

Both the HVA’s marks in the SIRA archive and the assessment of German courts indicate that Heidrun and Peter Kraut were damaging spies. The Krauts worked as scientists in weapons factories near Munich, Heidrun for MBB and Peter for IABG. They provided information on weapons systems at an early stage of planning and testing. This information was valuable to the Warsaw Pact and the court which tried them considered that their treason had gravely endangered the Federal Republic’s defense capability. This view is supported by the SIRA archive, in which 58 information reports received from the Krauts in the years 1978 to 1989 were given the mark “I.”⁷¹

Conclusion

HUMINT proved itself a valuable source of military intelligence and S&TI for the Warsaw Pact in the years from 1951 to 1989. It was obtained by networks of agents skillfully placed in their targets. The core of the HUMINT network of each of the two East German intelligence agencies, supplying intelligence which was high grade and markedly superior in quality to that of the other agents in the network, consisted of a small number of outstanding sources.

All this was done in the service of the Soviet Union. The military intelligence collected benefited above all the Soviet General Staff. The scientific information and S&T procured were fed into the weapons development of the USSR’s defense industries. Both types of intelligence enhanced the military strength and readiness for war of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact.

The HVA and VA/NVA supplied their consumers with high-grade intelligence from within NATO, including its headquarters, and all of West Germany’s principal military institutions: the Defense Ministry, armed forces, and intelligence agencies. This intelligence concerned strategic questions, the political views of NATO member states and disagreements between them, developments in weaponry and military technology, exercises and maneuvers and lessons learned from them, planning on the use of tactical and strategic nuclear weapons, and NATO’s view of the Warsaw Pact’s plans for war. They supplied much intelligence on the West German armed forces, and particularly about tactical and operational matters. The Warsaw Pact’s armed forces had a detailed picture of their West German counterparts, right down to particular units. They were well-informed about the strengths and weaknesses of the West German armed forces; they were aware of their counterparts’ fighting strength and combat readiness. They were also familiar with the West Germans’ weapons and plans for weapons development. They were well-informed about the West Germans’ long-term military planning too. In sum, the two services gave their masters a comprehensive picture of West Germany’s and NATO’s military strategy, military capability, weaponry and military technology. They also gave their consumers a deep insight into the political dealings regarding military affairs of the Atlantic alliance, West Germany and other NATO states. This intelligence would have been of great benefit to the Warsaw Pact’s armed forces if war had broken out.

Precisely how much damage the information would have done to NATO’s military capability if war had been waged is hard to measure because it did not break out and the information received from the GDR’s intelligence agencies represented only part of the information possessed by the Warsaw Pact’s armed forces. The Pact’s armed forces had even more information available to them owing to the intelligence operations of other intelligence agencies, particularly those of the USSR. What that information was is only partly known.

The military intelligence collected by the HVA and VA/NVA had no influence on Soviet military strategy. The HVA’s military intelligence reports informed their recipients that NATO rested its war planning on the assumption that the Warsaw Pact would be the aggressor in war and that it would fight on the defensive. The HVA’s reports in the 1970s do not refer to any plans on NATO’s part to attack or to undertake a nuclear first strike. This contradicted Soviet military doctrine, which insisted that NATO would be the aggressor in war. Even though it knew that NATO expected to fight on the defensive, the Warsaw Pact did not change its military plans: it planned in war to launch a massive invasion of Western Europe, attacking the NATO forces in North and Central Europe with five fronts. The dominant influence on this plan was the USSR’s experience in World War II, not any military intelligence.⁷² Consequently, Jens Gieseke, a prominent historian of the Stasi, maintains that the HVA’s military intelligence reporting did not exaggerate the military threat posed by NATO.⁷³

That was not true of the GDR’s military command, as Joachim Zöller points out. A study by the Federal Republic’s Ministry of Defense of the records of the East German armed forces concluded that the political leaderships of the USSR, the GDR, and the other Warsaw Pact states had been deceived by the GDR’s military leadership about NATO’s capability and intentions. East Germany’s military commanders greatly exaggerated NATO’s military capability and distorted its intentions. They manipulated the intelligence their secret services had collected to do so. They suppressed information about NATO’s forces and operational planning which indicated that NATO planned to wage war on the defensive. Other intelligence was used to make NATO’s forces and plans seem aggressive and justify the Warsaw Pact’s military doctrine. Because the East German and Soviet military leaderships were responding to pressure from their regimes to present NATO as aggressive, the regimes essentially deceived themselves.⁷⁴ Zöller also points out that the Soviet General Staff and Warsaw Pact also knew, thanks to the intelligence, particularly NATO’s General Plans, which they had received from their German sources, that NATO, for logistical reasons, had only a limited ability to resist a Warsaw Pact invasion. So their military superiority must have been clear to them.

It is hard to measure the effect of the HVA’s collection of S&TI in West Germany on Soviet weapons development because the KGB and its other partners collected so much other science and technology throughout the world (including West Germany). However, it is clearly established that the Western S&TI obtained increased the military capability of the Warsaw Pact: in the view of the U.S. Department of Defense, in the early 1980s up to 70% of all the weapons systems in service with the Pact’s armed forces were based on Western technology.⁷⁵

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Maddrell

Dr. Paul Maddrell is a Lecturer in International History and International Relations at Loughborough University, United Kingdom. He is the co-editor of Spy Chiefs (Georgetown University Press, 2018) and the editor of The Image of the Enemy: Intelligence Analysis of Adversaries since 1945 (Georgetown University Press, 2015). He is a Fellow of the United Kingdom’s Royal Historical Society and the Higher Education Academy. The author can be contacted at [email protected].

Notes

1 Paul Maddrell, Spying on Science: Western Intelligence in Divided Germany, 1945–1961 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 1–4.

2 Peter Siebenmorgen, “Staatssicherheit” der DDR. Der Westen im Fadenkreuz der Stasi (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1993), pp. 130–131.

3 Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, “The Rise and Fall of West German Intelligence Operations against East Germany,” in East German Foreign Intelligence: Myth, Reality and Controversy, edited by Thomas Wegener Friis, Kristie Macrakis, and Helmut Müller-Enbergs (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), p. 37.

4 See Peter A. Gorin, “Zenit: The Soviet Response to CORONA,” in Eye in the Sky: The Story of the Corona Spy Satellites, edited by Dwayne A. Day, John M. Logsdon, and Brian Latell (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press), pp. 157–172.

5 William Odom, Fixing Intelligence: For a More Secure America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 9; Paul Maddrell, “Im Fadenkreuz der Stasi: Westliche Spionage in der DDR,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 51, No. 2 (2013), pp. 157–159.

6 Joachim Zöller, “DDR-Militärspionage,” in Das Gesicht dem Westen zu … : DDR-Spionage gegen die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2nd ed., edited by Georg Herbstritt and Helmut Müller-Enbergs (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2003), p. 204.

7 See Paul Maddrell, “Battlefield Germany,” Intelligence and National Security, Vol. 13, No. 2 (1998), pp. 190–212.

8 Heinz Busch, “Die Militärspionage der DDR-Staatssicherheit,” Europäische Sicherheit, Vol. 42, No. 12 (1993), p. 618. In German: “vor allem und in erster Linie als hochrangiger Beschaffungsapparat von Spionageinformationen für die Sowjets. … Militärische Informationen waren von der sowjetischen Seite besonders erwünscht.”

9 David Childs and Richard Popplewell, The Stasi: The East German Intelligence and Security Service (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), p. 165.

10 Jens Gieseke, Der Mielke-Konzern: Die Geschichte der Stasi, 1945–1990 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2006), pp. 217–220.

11 Markus Wolf (with Anne McElvoy), Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism’s Greatest Spymaster (London: Jonathan Cape, 1997), p. xi.

12 Oleg Kalugin, Spymaster: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage against the West (New York: Basic Books, 2009), p. 195.

13 Gieseke, Der Mielke-Konzern, p. 202.

14 Busch, “Die Militärspionage der DDR-Staatssicherheit,” pp. 617–618.

15 Ibid., pp. 617–618, 620.

16 See Kristie Macrakis, “Führt effektive Spionage zu Erfolgen in Wissenschaft und Technik?,” in Das Gesicht dem Westen zu, edited by Georg Herbstritt and Helmut Müller-Enbergs, pp. 250–273.

17 Busch, “Die Militärspionage der DDR-Staatssicherheit,” pp. 617–618.

18 Kristie Macrakis, “Führt effektive Spionage zu Erfolgen in Wissenschaft und Technik?,” p. 259.

19 Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West (London: Allen Lane, 1999), p. 597.

20 Gieseke, Der Mielke-Konzern, p. 222.

21 Bodo Wegmann, Die Militäraufklärung der NVA (The NVA’s Military Reconnaissance), 2nd ed. (Berlin: Verlag Dr. Köster, 2006), p. 37.

22 Zöller, “DDR-Militärspionage,” p. 212.

23 Bodo Wegmann, “Die Aufklärung der Nationalen Volksarmee,” in Das Gesicht dem Westen zu, edited by Georg Herbstritt and Helmut Müller-Enbergs, pp. 220–222.

24 Jens Gieseke, “East German Espionage in the Era of Détente,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3 (2008), p. 410.

25 Wegmann, “Die Aufklärung der Nationalen Volksarmee,” pp. 216–217. SALT stood for Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; START stood for Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

26 Zöller, “DDR-Militärspionage,” pp. 205, 212.

27 Ibid., pp. 208–209; Gieseke, “East German Espionage in the Era of Détente,” p. 403.

28 Georg Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2007), pp. 45–47.

29 See Helmut Müller-Enbergs, Geschichte der HV A und ihrer Militärspionage: Analysen und Fallstudien, BF informiert 44 (Berlin: Bundesarchiv/Stasi-Unterlagen-Archiv, 2021), pp. 13–20; Helmut Müller-Enbergs, “Kleine Geschichte zum Findhilfsmittel names ‘Rosenholz,’” Deutschland Archiv, Vol. 36, No. 5 (2003), pp. 751–761.

30 Stephan Konopatzky, “Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der SIRA-Datenbanken,” in Das Gesicht dem Westen zu, edited by Georg Herbstritt and Helmut Müller-Enbergs, pp. 112–113; Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, pp. 54–64.

31 Gieseke, Der Mielke-Konzern, pp. 206–207; Gieseke, “East German Espionage in the Era of Détente,” pp. 397–398.

32 Konopatzky, “Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der SIRA-Datenbanken,” p. 112.

33 Macrakis, “Führt effektive Spionage zu Erfolgen in Wissenschaft und Technik?,” p. 261.

34 Gieseke, Der Mielke-Konzern, pp. 206–207; Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, pp. 30–51.

35 Memoirs by Stasi officers about the HVA started to appear during the Cold War: a well-known example is Werner Stiller, Im Zentrum der Spionage (Mainz: von Hase and Koehler, 1986). More appeared after the GDR’s dissolution. The best-known are those of the HVA’s chiefs, Markus Wolf and Werner Großmann. Wolf’s memoir is called Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg. Erinnerungen (Munich: List Verlag, 1997). The English-language edition is called Man Without a Face: The Autobiography of Communism’s Greatest Spymaster (London: Jonathan Cape, 1997). Großmann’s memoir is called Bonn im Blick. Die DDR-Aufklärung aus der Sicht ihres letzten Chefs (Berlin: Das Neue Berlin, 2001). An example of a publication by a West German counterintelligence official is Joachim Zöller’s chapter on GDR military intelligence collection in Das Gesicht dem Westen zu … : DDR-Spionage gegen die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 2nd ed., edited by Georg Herbstritt and Helmut Müller-Enbergs (Bremen: Edition Temmen, 2003). Zöller used to head up the counterintelligence department of the Federal Republic’s military security service, the Militärischer Abschirmdienst. An example of a work by an investigative journalist is Andreas Kabus’ book on the VA/NVA, Auftrag Windrose. Der militärische Geheimdienst der DDR (Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben, 1993).

36 Dirk Dörrenberg, “Erkenntnisse des Verfassungsschutzes zur Westarbeit des MfS,” in Das Gesicht dem Westen zu, edited by Georg Herbstritt and Helmut Müller-Enbergs, p. 94; Wegmann, Die Militäraufklärung der NVA, pp. 612–614.

37 Wegmann, Die Militäraufklärung der DDR, pp. 3–4, 13–14, 686–711.

38 Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, p. 82.

39 Gieseke, Der Mielke-Konzern, pp. 209–213.

40 Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, p. 82, n. 232; Wegmann, Die Militäraufklärung der NVA, pp. 201–203.

41 Gieseke, Der Mielke-Konzern, pp. 217–219; Helmut Müller-Enbergs, “Was wissen wir über die DDR-Spionage?,” in Das Gesicht dem Westen zu, edited by Georg Herbstritt and Helmut Müller-Enbergs, pp. 60–61.

42 Busch, “Die Militärspionage der DDR-Staatssicherheit,” p. 620.

43 Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, p. 305.

44 Zöller, “DDR-Militärspionage,” pp. 208–209. Zöller, a former West German counterintelligence official, has suggested three more “Spitzenquellen” who supplied first-rate military intelligence. These are spies who were not necessarily considered by the German courts or historians of the HVA to be outstanding sources: see Zöller, “DDR-Militärspionage,” pp. 210–211. They were Margarete Lubig (IM “Rose”), a secretary for foreign languages with the Federal Republic’s representation on NATO’s Military Committee who supplied valuable intelligence from 1961; IM “Hildrun,” who worked for the West German Ministry of Defense as a sanitation inspector and from 1966 supplied medical information relating to bacteriology and chemistry, including many NATO and Ministry of Defense documents; and IM “Frank,” a doctor at a military office in Münster, who from 1969 to 1990 provided secret NATO documents and academic studies.

45 Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, p. 304. The HVA had other spies in NATO of whose intelligence it thought highly: see Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, p. 304 n. 7. Ursel Lorenzen was a secretary in NATO’s headquarters in Brussels who supplied intelligence from 1961 until her flight to the GDR in 1979. The HVA gave high marks to information on NATO defense planning with which she supplied it. SIRA refers to 151 information reports received from her in the years 1969 to 1979. Marks were awarded to 82 of these; 33 received the highest mark (“I”) and 30 received the next highest (“II”).

46 Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, p. 303.

47 Ibid., pp. 63 n. 174, 409.

48 Georg Herbstritt, “Die Westarbeit des MfS im Lichte bundesdeutscher Justizakten,” in Das Gesicht dem Westen zu, edited by Georg Herbstritt and Helmut Müller-Enbergs, p. 349 n. 67; Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, p. 245.

49 Zöller, “DDR-Militärspionage,” p. 210.

50 Müller-Enbergs, Geschichte der HV A und ihrer Militärspionage, pp. 70–71.

51 Ibid., pp. 51–52; Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, p. 304 n. 7; Zöller, “DDR-Militärspionage,” p. 211.

52 Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, p. 305.

53 Wegmann, Die Militäraufklärung der DDR, pp. 206–207.

54 Zöller, “DDR-Militärspionage,” p. 208. The VA/NVA called its spies “agent co-workers” (“agenturische Mitarbeiter,” AM). Zöller gives different codenames for these sources from Herbstritt in Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, pp. 118–119 n. 67. Being based on archival research, Herbstritt’s are the more reliable and I have used them. Thomas Hartmann is identified as the VA/NVA’s AM “Drache” in Friedrich W. Schlomann, Die Maulwürfe (Munich: Universitas Verlag, 1993), p. 172. Ulrich Schatte is identified as the VA/NVA’s AM “Wurich” in Friedrich Schlomann, Die Maulwürfe, pp. 176–177. For further examples of agents of the VA/NVA, see Wegmann, Die Militäraufklärung der DDR, pp. 204–218. “Wintex” and “Cimex” exercises were NATO exercises during the Cold War. Wintex stood for Winter Exercise; Cimex stood for Civil-Military Exercise.

55 Kristie Macrakis, Seduced by Secrets: Inside the Stasi’s Spy-Tech World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 94–111; John O. Koehler, Stasi: The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), pp. 225–238; Stuart A. Herrington, Traitors among Us: Inside the Spy Catcher’s World (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1999), pp. 251–371. Sergeant Jeffrey Carney, who served in the U.S. Air Force’s 6912th Electronic Security Group in the Marienfelde district of West Berlin from 1982 to 1984, was probably not a “Spitzenquelle.” While he supplied some valuable intelligence on American electronic intelligence collection and plans for electronic warfare, he only betrayed information for two years (from 1983 to 1985, when he defected to the GDR); he did not have access to information as secret as that available to James Hall; and only 24 of the information reports received from him were awarded the mark of “I”: see Kristie Macrakis, Seduced by Secrets, p. 98. A third American source of electronic intelligence was an HVA spy codenamed “Optik,” who has not been identified by name. The value of the intelligence obtained from “Optik” has not yet been established either.

56 Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, pp. 158–159. Some of the 245 information reports recorded in SIRA as having been received from Hüseyin Yildirim, the HVA agent who recruited and ran Hall, may also contain information obtained from Hall.

57 Wolf, Man Without a Face, pp. 293–298.

58 Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, p. 319.

59 Wegmann, Die Militäraufklärung der NVA, pp. 217–218.

60 Macrakis, “Führt effektive Spionage zu Erfolgen in Wissenschaft und Technik?,” p. 257.

61 Gieseke, Der Mielke-Konzern, pp. 221-222.

62 On CoCom, see Michael Mastanduno, Economic Containment: CoCom and the Politics of East-West Trade (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992).

63 Macrakis, “Führt effektive Spionage zu Erfolgen in Wissenschaft und Technik?,” pp. 262–264; Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, pp. 67, 192–193. For the source’s name, see Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, p. 63 n. 174.

64 Wolf, Man Without a Face, p. 182.

65 BStU, ZA (Bundesbeauftragter für die Stasi-Unterlagen, Zentralarchiv), HVA 402, Jahresplan 1978 des SWT/Abteilung XIII von 6.12.1977, p. 4, quoted in Macrakis, “Führt effektive Spionage zu Erfolgen in Wissenschaft und Technik?,” p. 261.

66 Macrakis, “Führt effektive Spionage zu Erfolgen in Wissenschaft und Technik?,” pp. 261–262 n. 26.

67 Ibid., p. 257.

68 Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, p. 404.

69 Ibid., pp. 265–266.

70 Ibid., p. 303 n. 4. The engineer Frank Musalik was another HVA source in MBB; for 24 years, until he was exposed in 1989, Musalik supplied information on military aircraft under development at the company. See Macrakis, “Führt effektive Spionage zu Erfolgen in Wissenschaft und Technik?,” pp. 266–267.

71 Herbstritt, Bundesbürger im Dienst der DDR-Spionage, p. 305; Müller-Enbergs, Geschichte der HV A und ihrer Militärspionage, pp. 73–76.

72 Gieseke, Der Mielke-Konzern, pp. 220–221.

73 Gieseke, “East German Espionage in the Era of Détente,” pp. 412–418.

74 Study by the Federal Ministry of Defense, “Militärpolitische Planungen des Warschauer Paktes in Zentraleuropa” (Bonn, 1992), quoted in Zöller, “DDR-Militärspionage,” pp. 212–214.

75 Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive, pp. 723–724.