State security agency of the former GDR. Stasi anarchists

The former head of the Stasi foreign intelligence service is Markus Wolf. All over the world he was called "a man without a face." For decades, no intelligence agency could even get hold of his photographs. Today, Wolf is no longer alive. He died almost 10 years ago on November 9 - by the way, this date in Germany is celebrated as the day the Berlin Wall fell. In recent years, he lived on a state-reduced pension and earned only his interviews, memoirs and books. But, despite the interest of journalists and investigators in the methods and employees of the Stasi, Wolf did not name the secret agents until his death.

Markus Wolf was the world's first head of the intelligence service, which used specially trained scouts-ladies to achieve results ...

Amazingly, Markus Wolf became the all-powerful gray eminence of the GDR, even without a higher education. He comes from a family of Jewish emigrants from Germany, studied at the Moscow Aviation Institute. But it was not possible to finish it - in the summer of 51, a Moscow student, like many emigrants, was recalled to post-war Germany - to build socialism. In the same year, on August 16, the first intelligence service begins its activities in East Germany - for conspiracy, its headquarters is called the "Institute for Economic Research". There are only four scientists there so far. And the party decides to appoint 29-year-old Wolf as a senior researcher. The task of the institute's employees is to conduct political, economic and technical intelligence on the territory of Germany and NATO countries. This is how the Stasi is born, and from that moment on, the inexperienced leader of a small underground intelligence service begins to compete with the West German intelligence service - the so-called Gehlen organization, which has existed for several years.

By the end of the existence of the GDR, the Stasi, which began its work with only 4 full-time employees, already had 91,000 full-time agents and more than 200,000 freelance ones. That is, approximately every 50th citizen of the GDR was a Stasi informant! But with what money did foreign intelligence, which was not even helped by the Soviet KGB, manage to deploy such a network of agents? Some experts are sure that for this, the Stasi had to resort to fraud.

In 1966, the secret service of the GDR creates a secret association called "CoCo", that is, commercial coordination. And its leader is appointed Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade of the GDR, who was an agent of the Stasi. Through a chain of front companies, Koko's employees transported the latest NATO technical developments from the West to the GDR and the USSR - for example, microelectronics or small arms. Valuable art was transported west for hard currency, and weapons were sold to some Third World countries. For enrichment, the Stasi even gave for the ransom of dissidents serving time in the GDR. Only for the release of 34 thousand prisoners, the Stasi earned more than 5 billion marks. All this money went towards a generous payout to recruited agents. That is, blackmail for recruitment was not used.

But foreign intelligence chief Markus Wolf's favorite method of recruiting new agents was sex espionage. And men recruited women. Agents under false names and with non-existent biographies went to Bonn, where the seat of the government of the FRG was located, and most West German politicians lived, got acquainted with their lonely secretaries, and they shared official secrets with future suitors. Thus was recruited the young secretary Gabriella Gast, who would later become the only woman in the history of the Stasi to reach a leadership position.

The Stasi was the most effective intelligence service in the world. After all, unlike the intelligence agencies of the United States and the USSR, it operated mainly in a small area, and there was no language barrier between recruiters and a potential enemy. But most importantly, the Stasi, thanks to its methods, almost always remained in the shadows. Unlike the Israeli Mossad, which preferred high-profile killings of Islamic terrorists, the Stasi acted much more subtly. The intelligence of the GDR simply lured their enemies to their side ...

In the fall of 1989, the famous Berlin Wall that separated East and West Germany fell. Germany soon became a single state again. At this very time, many social groups are calling on the people to seize the headquarters of the state security agencies. Allegedly, citizens can take from there dossiers on themselves, collected by the Stasi, while journalists want to publish sensational data about intelligence methods and about celebrities who worked for the Stasi. But the first who called on the people to storm were NATO agents - it was they who, in the general confusion, got the most important documents. The rest were cut into small pieces. Today, all these scraps are collected in bags. And until now, historians collect them like a puzzle - one after another. Without the help of a computer, this will take another few hundred years.

Markus Wolf, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, went to his sister in Moscow. By this time he had been retired for several years. In Germany, not only public persecution awaited him, but also a trial. After leaving for Austria, Wolf writes a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev. In it, he reminds the leader of the Soviet Union about how much he and his agents did for the security of the USSR, about the invaluable information received by his agents, who are now in Germany as prisoners of war, even without being charged. And at the end, Wolf asks Gorbachev to defend his agents during his upcoming visit to Germany. There was no reaction. In 1991, Wolf returned to Germany, where he was immediately arrested ...

In October 1993, the citizens of Russia were in a state of shock after the shooting of the parliament from tanks, perpetrated by the President Yeltsin, and, frankly, they were not up to the events that took place at the same time abroad.

And on the black bench, on the dock...

But in vain, because in those same days a real circus was going on in the German court, ahead of the so-called "Basman justice" for years.

In the dock was an 85-year-old man, suffering from a whole bunch of diseases, who was accused of a crime committed in the distant past. No, the accused was not a Nazi executioner, but, on the contrary, a staunch anti-fascist, a member of the Resistance Movement. The crime that he was accused of was committed in 1931, when the Nazis were already rushing to power in Germany. The old man, according to investigators, was guilty of killing two policemen.

One can envy the principles of the German Themis - on October 26, 1993, 62 years after the crime was committed, the old man was sentenced to six years in prison.

If you think that all the criminal offenses of the era of the Weimar Republic are still being investigated in Germany, then you are mistaken. It was just that the authorities of the united Germany needed to condemn this man at all costs. And if it weren't for the 1931 case, the veteran anti-fascist would have been reprimanded for crossing the street incorrectly or loud TV sound disturbing neighbors.

The Stasi will come for you, better lock the door

The fact is that the defendant was Erich Mielke, the former head of the all-powerful secret service of the GDR, the Stasi.

The Ministry of State Security of the GDR, in German Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, which is better known by the unofficial nickname "Stasi", to this day in the West is presented as the main scarecrow not only of East Germany, but of the entire socialist bloc.

All Russian writers of the horrors of the Cheka - NKVD - KGB - FSB are pitiful jerks compared to their Western counterparts, who still drive the townsfolk to enuresis with stories about the intrigues of the Stasi, its secret prisons and sophisticated methods of torture.

There is only one problem: there is some truth in all these stories. The Stasi did not have either gloomy burial grounds with thousands of those who were shot, or their own Gulag. The guys of Erich Mielke worked diligently to preserve the socialist system, but much more subtle than the henchmen of a comrade Yezhov.

communist party fighter

The man, whose name will be firmly associated with the Stasi, was born in Berlin on December 28, 1907 in a working-class family. Erich Mielke, the son of a seamstress and woodworker, was 11 years old when the German Empire, which lost the First World War, ordered a long life. The country slipped into chaos, followed by poverty, fixed by the enslaving terms of the peace treaty, according to which the Germans had to pay for the defeat for decades.

The Weimar Republic with its order did not suit everyone, especially the youth. The young maximalists went either to the right, joining the nationalists, or to the left, joining the communists. Erich was not even 14 when he made his choice by joining the Komsomol.

By the early 1930s, Mielke was a member of the German Communist Party and a reporter for the party newspaper Rote Fahne. Passions ran high in the country. Stormtroopers of the NSDAP Adolf Hitler hunted for left-wing activists, primarily communists. The authorities turned a blind eye to these massacres.

But in the command of the leader of the KKE Ernst Thalmann were collected by no means rags. The demonstrations of the party were guarded by self-defense detachments, made up of determined people who did not let the Nazis down. One of the fighters of such a detachment was Erich Mielke.

Shots in Berlin

After the fall of the GDR, the German media, describing this period of Mielke's life, would call him "a full-time killer of the Communist Party." In fact, Erich did not commit any contract killings. However, quite a few of Hitler's stormtroopers from among the inhabitants who had gone crazy on the basis of Nazism tied up with their hobby, once meeting Erich on the street.

The police of the Weimar Republic differed little from the Nazis in relation to the communists. When the communist self-defense units fought back the Nazis, the police either sympathetically stood aside, or even helped the stormtroopers. On August 9, 1931, during a manifestation of the Communist Party of Germany, a police patrol tried to twist Mielke and his associates. As a result, two policemen were shot and one seriously injured.

A case was brought against Milka, which, after Hitler came to power, ended with a death sentence. The young communist was supposed to end his days on the guillotine, but getting to him was not so easy. The verdict was passed in absentia, since Milke, not counting on a fair trial, left Germany, first for Belgium, and then for the USSR.

Life on the edge

In Moscow, the German communist graduated from the International Lenin School, where he later taught. In 1936, a civil war broke out in Spain, where he rebelled against the republican government. General Franco supported by Hitler.

As part of the international brigade under the pseudonym "Fritz Leisner", he fought the Nazis until the spring of 1939, when the republic fell. And the illegal life began again. Erich moved from country to country. Settling in Belgium, he was forced to flee from there after the Nazi invasion. Several times he miraculously avoided a meeting with the Gestapo, lived, posing as a Latvian émigré, and participated in the Resistance. In 1943, he was nevertheless arrested, but, without revealing his real name, he was sent to build defensive structures. In December 1944, Mielke fled to territory controlled by the Allies.

After the fall of the Third Reich, he returned to his homeland. The new Germany had to create security structures from scratch, and Mielke, who had been involved in ensuring the security of communist rallies in the 1930s, became a police inspector. When the German Democratic Republic was created in October 1949, it needed its own state security service, and Mielke became one of those who stood at its origins.

"Comrade Milke, the hamster confessed to everything!"

In November 1957, Erich Mielke became Minister of State Security of the GDR.

Even those who consider the Stasi a fiend of evil admit that the East German secret service was one of the strongest in the world. Mielke created a structure that was equally successful in ensuring stability within the country and supplying valuable information from abroad.

KGB officers who worked in close contact with their Stasi colleagues sometimes had frank table conversations with them. Soviet foreign intelligence officials said: "Guys, your agents in the FRG are super, but the political investigation inside the country is a real abomination." To which the Germans, inflamed, replied: “You don’t understand the conditions in which we live! If porridge is brewed and you grapple with the Americans, we will become a battlefield! Therefore, we will not allow any subversive activities in our country!”

Until now, Germany does not know how many full-time and freelance Stasi informers were. Every tenth, every fifth, every second? And maybe even more. When the Stasi archives were opened after the fall of the GDR, members of the same family sometimes found out that they were "colleagues", telling each other where to go.

Here it must be emphasized that the Germans have a somewhat different attitude towards such practice than ours. Most agents worked for the Stasi not out of fear or money, but out of a love of keeping order. It seems that for the time being, East Germans believed in socialism more than the inhabitants of the USSR.

An anecdote from the GDR era sounded like this: once Erich Mielke went hunting for hares. But the day was not successful, and he managed to shoot only a hamster. In the evening, the upset boss was pleased by the subordinate: “Comrade Milke, we interrogated the hamster, and he confessed that he was a hare!”

Erich Mielke, 1959 Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / German Federal Archives

Something about the "victims of the regime"

Jokes aside, but the subordinate heads of the Stasi smashed the agents of the West German intelligence on the territory of the GDR masterfully. And this task was very difficult, given the fact that relatives lived on both sides of the border of divided Germany, which is an extremely convenient situation for the needs of intelligence.

Once, the Soviet secret services found that information about the number of units of a group of Soviet troops in Germany was being leaked to the West. It was clear that the informant was on the territory of the GDR, but it was not possible to locate him. Stasi operatives took over the case. Scrupulous development went on for many months, and yet gave the result. The informer turned out to be a German woman who worked at an enterprise that supplied food to Soviet military units. Data on the number of products shipped and the places where they were sent, the woman sent by mail to her son, who lived in Germany. When the Frau was detained, it turned out that the guy was asked to help the secret services of West Germany, and he turned to his mother, who could not refuse her beloved offspring. At the same time, the remuneration for the services rendered was scanty. As a result, the lady was sentenced to two years, but it was not long before the fall of the GDR, and she did not fully serve her term. Now, perhaps, members of this family also talk about themselves as innocent victims of the Stasi.

The Stasi never dreamed of such

Without a doubt, Erich Mielke suppressed dissidents and dissidents in the GDR with an iron fist. At the same time, they somehow keep silent about the fact that in Germany the persecution of the Communists took place at the official level, in 1956 the Communist Party was banned, and its activists were tried by the thousands.

If someone thinks that everything is somehow different in a united Germany, then he is a naive romantic. From year to year, German journalists reveal the facts of surveillance by the secret services of their own politicians. Behind the representatives of the left-wing parties, tacit supervision was established. And in 2013, Germany was shaken by a grandiose scandal when it became known that the German intelligence service BND and the Federal Service for the Protection of the German Constitution carried out total surveillance of their citizens in the interests of the United States. According to Spiegel magazine, with the help of a special X-Keyscore program, American intelligence agencies received monthly data on five hundred million contacts of German citizens, including correspondence in Internet chats, e-mail, as well as phone calls and SMS messages. Under the "cap" was even German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

There was a lot of noise and indignation, however President of the Federal Service for the Protection of the Constitution (in fact, the political police) Hans-Georg Maasen, with whose knowledge all the private lives of the Germans were made available to the secret services, is still at his post. Head of BND Gerhard Schindler resigned in 2016, but it had nothing to do with the wiretapping scandal.

But just as Russians are frightened by the “villain Lenin”, ignoring what happened in the post-Soviet period, the Germans are still frightened by Milke and the Stasi, saying nothing about the realities of today.

Why judge him?

Unlike iron Erich Honecker, whom the dungeons of prison were not forced to renounce his convictions, Mielke did not show such fortitude in his old age. In October 1989, the head of the Stasi personally took part in the removal of an old friend and colleague of Honecker, accusing him of all mortal sins.

And already on November 7, 1989, Milke himself was removed from the post of minister, expelled from the Politburo and deprived of the deputy mandate of the People's Chamber of the GDR, and a month later he ended up in prison, where he met the end of the country he served.

The press of West Germany was looking forward to the "second Nuremberg", expecting that the head of the Stasi would be convicted of persecution of dissidents, torture, secret reprisals and other crimes.

But then there was an embarrassment - it turned out that there was nothing to judge Erich Mielke for. From the point of view of the laws of the GDR, he did not commit crimes. At the very least, it was extremely difficult to prove the existence of such. To declare the GDR itself criminal? But this country was a member of the UN, it signed a lot of agreements, including with Germany. Declaring East Germany a criminal state would entail so many consequences that German politicians clutched their heads and closed the topic.

Mielke and Erich Honecker, 1980. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / German Federal Archives

Retired from Berlin

And here the case files from the 1930s came in handy, which, as it turned out, Erich Mielke kept in the safe of his office as a souvenir. On their basis, he was convicted.

It turned out clumsily, because the judiciary of modern Germany followed the path of the judges of the Third Reich. To complete the picture, all that remained was to drag a guillotine from the museum and cut off the head of the head of the Stasi. Without a doubt, there would be many who would applaud this.

It didn't come to that. In 1994, all other cases opened on Milka were closed for humanitarian reasons, due to advanced age and poor health. Not the worst way out in a situation where there is no evidence and never will be. On August 1, 1995, also due to poor health, Erich Mielke was released early from prison.

He lived out his days in Berlin, in a modest two-room apartment, with his wife. When in the spring of 2000, the state of health no longer allowed to be at home without constant medical supervision, Mielke was placed in a nursing home where his son worked.

Twice Hero of the GDR and Hero of the Soviet Union died on May 21, 2000. A modest funeral ceremony took place at the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery, which since the beginning of the 20th century has had a second name - the “Cemetery of the Socialists”.

By the way, until his death, Erich Mielke received a pension as a victim of Nazism and a veteran of the Resistance Movement. As the first president of Russia used to say, this is, you know, a squiggle.

The Stasi, the Ministry of State Security of the GDR, for almost a third of a century terrified the ill-wishers of socialism both in East Germany and abroad. The special service directly influenced not only the lives of citizens, but also politics.

For some, the employees of this intelligence and counterintelligence structure have become frightening symbols of total control over the individual, as if they embodied the worst pages of Orwell's dystopias. For others, they are romantic heroes who for many years led the best CIA agents by the nose. What were the Stasi really?

Hunt for archives

On December 14, 1989, by decision of the government of the GDR, the Ministry of State Security was liquidated. The "showcase of socialism" itself, as propaganda called the democratic republic, ceased to exist a little less than a year later. This was preceded by well-known historical events: the socio-economic crisis of the socialist camp; the weakening of its leader, the USSR, during "perestroika"; mass demonstrations that led to the fall of the regimes of Eastern Europe (and it’s good if after a little bloodshed, as in Romania, and not after a civil war, as in Yugoslavia).

In recent months, anticipating the inevitable, the Stasi officers have been destroying archives. For 29 years, so many materials have accumulated that knives in first-class German shredders have become dull and broken. Documents were torn by hand, tearing fingers into blood. Every day, trucks left the offices of the MGB for waste incineration plants ... But, perhaps, that was the only task that the Bundes-special service could not cope with.

In late 1989 and early 1990, during the "peaceful revolution", the buildings of the Ministry of State Security in Berlin and the regions were taken over by angry citizens. Everyone was eager to get to the legendary card file, the publication or destruction of which became a matter of continuing a career (and sometimes maintaining freedom) for so many Germans. After all, according to some statements, every fourth adult resident of the GDR managed to visit among the employees or informants of the Stasi. Of course, such a figure is largely a product of the imagination of publicists who like to exaggerate the unattractive aspects of the communist system. However, it is known for certain that the "authorities" had secret dossiers on almost every adult citizen of the republic, not to mention the majority of big businessmen and politicians of capitalist Europe. Today, the total length of the racks where reports, audio recordings, microfilms are stored (and this is counting only what they could save and decipher) exceeds 150 kilometers.

Under reliable care

In West Germany alone, there were about 38,000 secret agents of the GDR. During the post-war confusion, when many archives burned down in the flames of the Second World War, and thousands of Germans, for obvious reasons, hid the facts of their collaboration with the Nazis, it was quite easy to come up with a “trustworthy” biography and impersonate a respectable burgher.

This is exactly what Günter Guillaume did when he moved from East Berlin to Frankfurt am Main in 1956. An ambitious young man joins the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Makes a political career. Demonstrating outstanding talents, he successfully manages the election campaigns of West German politicians. In 1972, he became personal assistant to Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt. And he greatly appreciates his referent, not knowing that his brilliant analytical notes are compiled not without the help of the best minds of the Stasi, whose agent Genosse Guillaume has been since 1950. Needless to say, the secret documents with which the “mole” dealt with on duty fell into the hands of his eastern curators almost earlier than on the table of the head of the government of West Germany. The huge scandal that erupted after the exposure of Guillaume in 1974 cost Willy Brandt the resignation from the post of chancellor.

Special funds

There are allegations that Stasi agents secretly treated dissidents' clothes with weakly radioactive substances so that in the future any KGB officer equipped with a portable Geiger counter could identify "enemies of the regime", say, at a street demonstration.

Enough and "traditional" technical means. Miniature cameras capable of silently shooting through a millimeter aperture. Tiny microphones placed in apartment telephone sockets and transmitting sound directly through telephone wires to where it should be. Sensitive voice recorders hidden in a ballpoint pen or a lady's watch. And, of course, the world-famous service kennels of German Shepherds, capable of following the trail for many kilometers.

According to the precepts of Lavrenty Pavlovich

The structure of the "Stasi" repeated the Soviet MGB (if anyone does not remember, until 1954 the all-powerful KGB was called that). The German intelligence service consisted of three main departments: counterintelligence; sabotage; and subversive activities.

“Informal collaborators are the most important factor in the struggle against the class enemy,” read the 1959 instruction. This elegant term was used to refer to informers who snitched on acquaintances, colleagues, sometimes even family members. Over the 29 years of the existence of the MGB of the GDR, in its card file, only according to official information, data have settled on 624,000 such "sexots", about 10,000 of which at the time of the beginning of "unofficial cooperation" were under 18 years old. Moreover, the recruitment of informants was by no means always carried out at the initiative of the authorities: many became “unofficial employees” themselves and free of charge, sincerely wanting to help build the socialist system.

Can such hopes be considered unfounded?.. In East Germany, 4 times fewer crimes were committed per 100,000 people than in West Germany. In terms of economic indicators per capita, the country occupied one of the first places in the world. At almost every Olympic Games, the 16 million GDR was in the top three, second only to the USSR and the USA in the overall medal standings. Whether all this justifies the state policy of total control over the individual is up to you.

Bees against honey, or generals for peace

It should be recognized that in the times of “developed socialism”, from the 60s to the early 80s, the key to the success of the Stasi was often the genuine spiritual superiority of communist values over Western ones. The ten-year nightmare of the Vietnam War unleashed by America, the economic crises that constantly arise in the "first" world, and finally, the traditionally left sympathies of European intellectuals created a favorable information background for the covert and overt struggle of ideas.

So, in 1980, Professor Gerhard Kade of the University of Hamburg created the interethnic movement "Generals and Admirals for Peace", which included high-ranking retired military men from various NATO countries. As you might guess, veterans of local conflicts advocated the reduction of strategic weapons, in particular, American medium-range missiles deployed on the territory of Germany.

Funding for "Generals for Peace" was provided by non-profit organizations, as well as personal donations from civil activists who sincerely supported anti-war ideas. However, the fiery pacifist speeches of retired officers were written by Stasi analysts, of course, in secret from the former. And the liberal professor Gerhard Kade, as you understand, was an agent of the MGB of the GDR.

Nostalgia for the GDR

Today, after the revelations of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, the Stasi toolkit looks like child's play. In fact, the history of the East German secret service shows how even absolute control over words and deeds cannot limit the freedom of our spirit. For neither total wiretapping nor powerful border fortifications prevented thousands of Ozzies from fleeing from communist Berlin to West. And any secret policeman is powerless if the discontent is fueled by real reasons - inequality, poor social mobility, lack of civil liberties.

However, many emigrants, who nevertheless deceived the Stasi agents and broke free, actually deceived only themselves, voluntarily ending their lives with alcoholism, depression, creative impoverishment, unable to find a place in the coveted market economy. Because the real, real West was sometimes very different from our dreams about it.

Stasi anarchists

Relations between the Stasi and the "Red Army Faction" began in March 1978 after intense West German police action ended with a series of arrests that forced the rest of the terrorists to flee West Germany. When several terrorists managed to escape in Paris, Inge Wit decided to head to the GDR. Crossing the East German border was not too difficult. The West German authorities did not check on anyone who traveled to the East, maintaining the myth of free movement throughout Germany. This was indeed a myth, since the entry control by the communist GDR was the most stringent in the world.

Wit arrived in East Germany through a checkpoint at Laueberg, about 25 miles southeast of Hamburg, armed with a pistol. Here she asked permission to speak with a Stasi representative and was detained until the arrival of Colonel Dahl from Berlin. Dahl spoke with the terrorist and received permission from General Nyber to let her into the GDR. Wit spent several days as a guest of the MGB of the GDR in a villa near Berlin. She then flew to South Yemen, where many members of the "Red Army Faction" were trained in camps set up by intelligence officers from South Yemen and the Palestine Liberation Organization. She received the plane ticket from the Stasi. Wit continued to maintain contact with Dahl and subsequently took part in the resettlement of "pensioners" of the Fraction, of which she became a member in 1983.

On April 18, 1991, prosecutor Alexander von Stahl prepared for decisive action. Based on the statements of fugitives - former Stasi employees and imprisoned terrorists, as well as on the files of the GDR MGB found in East Berlin, von Stahl issued six arrest warrants on charges of inciting premeditated murder and terrorism.

Five days later, on April 23, detectives from the federal crime agency based in eastern Berlin received five more arrest warrants. In addition to Nyber and Dahl, they arrested Günter Jaeckel, a former MGB colonel and deputy head of the anti-terrorist department; Gerhard Plomann - a former lieutenant colonel who was in charge of personnel in the MGB apparatus; former Major Gerd Seimseyl from the anti-terrorist department, who took care of the "pensioners" - "Red Army" on the orders of the leadership. The sixth warrant was “intended” for the head of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR, Erich Mielke, who was subsequently placed in the Berlin Plötzensee prison, where he had been held since the winter of 1990, being accused of two murders. The seventh person under investigation was the former Lieutenant Colonel Helmut Voigt, who trained and patronized West German terrorists for more than ten years. He managed to escape to Greece, where he was arrested in 1994. He was sent to Germany, where he was convicted and sent to jail for 4 years.

Particularly appalling was the participation of former Stasi officers in the activities of the Stern-1 and Stern-2 training camps, where members of the Red Army Faction were trained in the use of anti-tank grenade launchers, weapons, and the handling of explosives. In these camps, MGB instructors - explosives specialists demonstrated to them the operation of grenade launchers equipped with a laser sight, which was powered by batteries and was intended to more accurately hit moving targets. The contact of the target with the laser beam led to the detonation of the explosive device.

On November 30, 1989, a shell containing about six kilograms of explosives pierced the side of an armored Mercedes in which Alfred Herrhausen was located. The 59-year-old head of Deutsche Bank, one of the brilliant West German businessmen and chief adviser to Helmut Kohl, was assassinated. The terrorists used the same grenade launcher that the Stasi specialists trained the Red Army terrorists to use. The shot was fired from a motorcycle parked on the side of the road near Herrhausen's home in Bad Homburg, near Frankfurt, on the only stretch of road Herrhausen used to take to his Frankfurt office.

The charge was set up and installed in such a way that, like an anti-tank projectile, it pierced the right rear door of the car and, having exploded in the passenger compartment, knocked out all four armored doors.

The “Wolfgang Beer group” claimed responsibility for the incident, reporting this in a letter to the police. The letter also contained an image of a five-pointed star, inside of which a machine gun and the letters RAF (Rote Army Fraction) were drawn. It was the "Faction" logo, used when terrorists claimed responsibility for their use of force.

Wolfgang Beer, a Faction terrorist, died in a car accident in 1980. His brother Henning appeared in East Germany shortly thereafter and made a confession about his involvement in the "Red Army".

Less than a year later, Fraction struck again. Its latest victim was Hans Neusel, the 63-year-old state secretary of the West German Ministry of the Interior, who was in charge of matters of domestic security. On June 27, 1990, a powerful rocket hit the starboard side of an armored BMW as it turned onto the autobahn near Bonn. Neusel that day gave his driver a day off and got behind the wheel himself - this saved his life. He received only minor injuries. The terrorists used exactly the same as in the case of Herrhausen, a grenade launcher with a laser sight, and again, the “Red Army Faction” took responsibility for the attack.

Specialists from the Stasi trained terrorists in the use of such weapons as the West German 9mm Heckler-and-Koch submachine gun, as well as the G-Z automatic rifle, the standard weapon of the German army; American revolver "Magnum-357" "Smith and Wesson" and the Soviet Kalashnikov AK-47. The shooting training, which took place in March 1981, was followed by practice - the "Red Army" learned to handle the Soviet RPG grenade launcher, which had long been the favorite weapon of terrorists around the world. During interrogations conducted by detectives of the federal criminal department, former Stasi Major Hans-Dieter Gaudich said that in these practical exercises they somehow placed mannequins made of sawdust stuffed with sawdust and a German shepherd in a Mercedes - the instructors wanted to bring the training situation as close as possible to real, combat. Three volleys from the RPG-7 tore the dummies and the dog to shreds.

In addition, the “probationers” were taught how to lay bombs and explained the most vulnerable places for explosions near cars. And finally, the terrorists from the "Red Army Faction" learned how to make explosives from medicines sold in any pharmacy. Explosives were placed in fire extinguishers, which were placed under the front and rear fenders of the car and exploded. According to Inge Wit, these classes took place in March 1982.

Five months later, on August 31, 1981, a bomb exploded in front of the European Headquarters of the US Air Force, located southwest of the German city of Ramstein. The explosion occurred at seven o'clock in the morning, when the personnel had just begun to arrive at the base. Twenty people were injured, including Brigadier General Joseph Moore, Deputy Chief of Operations and Staff Officer Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Young. Experts from the Federal Criminal Investigation Agency found that the bomb had been planted "quite professionally" in a Volkswagen car. Another bomb was in another car, but did not explode. Two days after the explosion, the West German news agency DPA received a letter from the "Red Army Faction" stating that the explosion had been carried out by "a unit of the Sigurd Debus Command". Debus was a member of the Fraction who died in a Hamburg prison in April 1981 as a result of a hunger strike.

From the book The Great French Revolution 1789–1793 author Kropotkin Petr Alekseevich

XLI "ANARCHISTS" But who, finally, are these anarchists about whom Brissot speaks so much and whose extermination he demands with such bitterness? First of all, anarchists are not a party. In the Convention there is a Mountain, a Gironde, a Plain, or rather a Swamp, or Belly, as they say.

From the book Makhno and his time: On the Great Revolution and the Civil War 1917-1922. in Russia and Ukraine author Shubin Alexander Vladlenovich

1. Anarchists in exile Once in Romania, the Makhnovists were disarmed by the authorities. Nestor and his wife were settled in Bucharest. The Bolsheviks demanded his extradition, and in April 1922 Makhno chose to move to Poland. April 12, 1922 Makhno and his associates were placed in Poland in

by John Keller

Moscow borrows Stasi technology A valuable side of the Stasi's cooperation with the KGB was the possibility for the first to use a computer data bank called the Joint Enemy Intelligence System. In fact, this system was created by engineers

From the book Secrets of the Stasi. The history of the famous secret service of the GDR by John Keller

The collapse of the KGB-Stasi alliance While participating in Operation Moses, Stasi officers discovered that the information that was obtained through their efforts and transferred to the KGB residency in the GDR was presented to their leadership in Moscow as being obtained exclusively by tireless

From the book Secrets of the Stasi. The history of the famous secret service of the GDR by John Keller

The Stasi strikes back The East German state security organs, still operating under the tight control of the Soviets, began active operations against the Committee of Free Lawyers in 1952, despite the fact that agents Friedenau and Rosenthal (the latter became

From the book Secrets of the Stasi. The history of the famous secret service of the GDR by John Keller

The Stasi is gaining strength ... In 1953, the Stasi staff numbered about 4,000 people. Following a popular uprising in June, the regime took steps to strengthen and reorganize the secret police. By 1973, the Ministry of State Security was reorganized into

From the book Secrets of the Stasi. The history of the famous secret service of the GDR by John Keller

The attitude of the Stasi to the press In the late 70s, the Western media were allowed to open their branches and bureaus in East Berlin. The GDR was the last country in the communist bloc to open its doors to Western journalists. This was done with the aim of forming in the eyes of the Western

From the book Secrets of the Stasi. The history of the famous secret service of the GDR by John Keller

Stasi agents in the BND The West German federal intelligence service - the BND - tightened the requirements for employees back in the 50s after a number of "moles" who worked in the KGB were exposed. However, the personnel checks were not too thorough, and most importantly

From the book Secrets of the Stasi. The history of the famous secret service of the GDR by John Keller

Failures of the Stasi In 1973, General Wolf decided to test the possibilities of his department in the continental United States, arranging a kind of competition with the KGB and the GRU. In the same year, Major Eberhard Luttich arrived in New York and organized an "illegal residency" there. This

From the book Secrets of the Stasi. The history of the famous secret service of the GDR by John Keller

A hole in the Stasi network Despite the total surveillance of the population and guests from the West, the counterintelligence of the GDR was not so omnipotent. The American intelligence agencies carried out many successful operations in the GDR that did not come under the attention of the Stasi. In 1987, the KGB told General Kratch,

From the book Secrets of the Stasi. The history of the famous secret service of the GDR by John Keller

The Stasi in Nicaragua The Minister of State Security of the GDR, Mielke, began to consider options for the possible assistance of his department to the Sandinistas almost immediately after they captured Managua and overthrew the Somoza regime, giving rise to doubts among the Stasi staff about the expediency

From the book Secrets of the Stasi. The history of the famous secret service of the GDR by John Keller

Stasi Solidarity with Terrorists In the spring of 1974, when Mielke returned from one of his many consultations with Moscow, he immediately ordered a large meeting of the heads of the main department of the MGB. It took place in Lichtenberg - one of

From the book Adventurers of the Civil War author Vetlugin A.

Anarchists(9) I "The word belongs to Karelin Vladimir!..(10)" One hundred and sixty Bolsheviks who filled the former concert hall of the ill-fated Mamontovsky Metropol begin to cackle in advance. But laughter will not embarrass this restless, good-looking old man with

From the book History of Russian Investigation author Koshel Petr Ageevich

Anarchists go on the offensive Report of the IBChK on the disclosure of a conspiracy of the anarchist underground On December 28, 1919 and September 25, a bomb was thrown at a meeting of senior officials of the Moscow organization of the RCP, which took place in the premises of the Moscow Committee of the RCP. On this

From the book Explosion in Leontievsky Lane author Aldanov Mark Alexandrovich

From the book Nestor Makhno, an anarchist and leader in memoirs and documents author Andreev Alexander Radievich

Chapter IX. Anarchists in the Makhnovshchina

KGB and Stasi. Two shields, two swords

In its plans for communist expansion in Western Europe, the Soviet leadership attached particular importance to that part of Germany that its troops had occupied since 1945. With the onset of the Cold War, the Soviet zone - and later the "sovereign" GDR - became an outpost of Soviet intelligence and a communist springboard to push into Western Europe. As the westernmost satellite of the Soviet Union, East Germany was at the forefront of the ideological struggle against capitalism. The problems of not only ensuring the security of the USSR, preventing escapes to the West and combating the activities of Western intelligence services, but also suppressing any anti-communist sentiments among the population, rose to their full height. The Stasi served as a tool for the implementation of these tasks, which until the mid-50s was completely under Soviet control.

The key figure in Soviet control was General Ivan Aleksandrovich Serov. As a reward for his significant contribution to the Sovietization of Eastern Europe, Serov was promoted and in March 1954 was appointed chairman of the newly created KGB. This was another recognition of Serov's merits as a representative of the Soviet security agencies in the GDR, despite the 1953 uprising. The blame for this failure was placed on the head of the secret police, Lavrenty Beria, and served as one of the reasons for his execution. Leaving Germany in the late 40s, Serov left behind a well-established apparatus, which he handed over to the reliable hands of his obedient servant Erich Mielke.

In 1957, when the internal situation in the GDR stabilized and communist control became absolute, the KGB ceased to openly dictate its will and Milke was appointed Minister of State Security. This outwardly trusting gesture was, however, deceptive. In fact, the KGB kept liaison officers in all eight main Stasi departments until the very end, until the GDR finally ceased to exist. Each liaison officer, in most cases with the rank of colonel, had his own office in the ministry building complex in Berlin. The Soviet security officers attached particular importance to the main department "A", which was led by Markus Wolf. It occupied three buildings in this complex. In addition, the KGB was represented in each of the fifteen district offices of the Stasi. Soviet KGB officers had access to all the information that the Stasi collected. The structure of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR was an exact copy of the KGB of the USSR.

Gradually, the nature of relations between the KGB and the Stasi changed, moving from an orderly one, characteristic of the first post-war years of occupation, to a “fraternal” one. This process gained more and more strength as the Stasi showed its zeal and achieved success in espionage, subversion, foreign and domestic counterintelligence. So close was the commonwealth between the two services that the KGB proposed to its East German ally that they set up operational bases in Moscow and Leningrad to monitor visiting East German officials and tourists. Stasi officers did not experience any kind of inferiority complex with their Soviet counterparts. Minister Milke at meetings and in official directives constantly emphasized that MGB officers should consider themselves "Chekists of the Soviet Union." He never tired of swearing absolute loyalty to the alliance between the Stasi and the KGB. There is hardly a single speech between 1946 and 1989 in which Mielke did not pay tribute to the Soviet Chekists and exalt the virtues of the brotherhood between the KGB and the Stasi, even when he spoke in agricultural cooperatives and factories.

For twenty years, relations between the MGB of the GDR and the KGB were based on informal agreements between Milke and the heads of the Soviet security agencies. On March 29, 1978, the first official protocol on cooperation between the KGB and the Stasi was signed. It was signed by Milke and Yuri Andropov, who later succeeded Brezhnev as head of state. The chief of the Stasi made sure that KGB officers in East Germany enjoyed the same rights and powers as in the Soviet Union, with the exception of the right to arrest citizens of the GDR. In terms of the number of employees, the KGB residency in the GDR was the largest among all its foreign residencies and led all intelligence operations in Western Europe.

Four years later, on September 10, 1982, KGB chairman Vitaly Fedorchuk signed a formal agreement with Mielke, who undertook to take over the entire technical support of the KGB residency in East Germany, which numbered about 2,500 people. The Stasi provided residential buildings, kindergartens, as well as automotive technology and its maintenance. Villas and apartments have been fully furnished. It is now impossible to calculate how much this cost the East German taxpayers, but the cost must have been measured in tens of millions of marks. On average, the cost of furnishing one such apartment was about 19 thousand dollars.

General Serov determined the location of the KGB representative office in the GDR Karlshorst - one of the districts of Berlin. From 800 to 1,200 KGB officers, including members of their families, worked and lived there at various times. Until the mid-50s, the entire area was a carefully guarded military town, which also housed the Soviet Military Administration. Later, the barbed wire was removed, but the buildings of the KGB complex remained surrounded by a two-meter wall.

Five of the six main departments of the KGB operated at Karlhorst, including political intelligence, foreign counterintelligence and infiltration of agents into Western intelligence, technical support for agents in Western Europe, economic and technological espionage in Western Europe and beyond, and espionage against the Bundeswehr.

The sixth department, which was subordinate to the second main directorate (counterintelligence), was located in Cecilienhof, in Potsdam, the former summer residence of the Prussian kings and German Kaisers. There, in 1945, a post-war Allied conference was held, which developed the foundations of a common policy towards defeated Germany. It was the think tank of the Soviet military intelligence (GRU) in Germany, among other things recruiting non-German West Berliners. This activity played an important role in KGB operations in Turkey and the Middle East. Turks and Arabs were recruited in West Berlin, trained in East Germany and sent back to their homeland. The Stasi provided training centers, covert meetings and provided agents with travel documents.

Milke and the KGB chairmen periodically signed cooperation agreements - the so-called long-term plans for future joint operations. The last such document, which was in force from 1987 to 1991, was signed by Viktor Chebrikov and Milke. It reflected the hard line that had prevailed in Soviet society until Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985. Despite the reforms he announced, Gorbachev obviously wanted to maintain this firm line in the sphere of state security. The document stated the following: “The strengthening of joint cooperation in the fight against hostile secret services is due to the military-political situation in the international arena, which is deteriorating due to the adventurist policy of American imperialism. The United States, its NATO allies and other states, using their secret services and propaganda agencies, conduct intelligence and subversive activities against the national and combined armed forces of the USSR, the GDR and other states of the socialist community.

The KGB relied on the support of the Stasi in all areas of intelligence activities. The main emphasis, however, was placed on foreign intelligence and counterintelligence. The Stasi created "legends" for Soviet intelligence agents operating around the world, and especially for those who worked in West Germany. Scouts who acted under the guise of East Germans, including those who penetrated other countries as "refugees", were issued real East German passports. Others were supplied with forged documents made in the secret laboratories of the Stasi. One must think that many KGB agents, introduced with the help of the Stasi for a long period of time - "illegals", as they are called among professionals - are still working today. The chances of them being exposed by Western counterintelligence are extremely small, since no data on them has been preserved in the Stasi archives. To uncover at least a couple of them, you need to have a couple of talkative high-ranking Soviet defectors. There was also an agreement between the Stasi and the KGB that if a deep cover agent failed while Moscow was trying to mend relations with the West, East Germany would take all the fire.

The exposed agents during interrogations had to impersonate employees of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate of General Wolf. This lie allowed the Soviet government not only to save face, but also facilitated the repatriation of such spies by exchanging them for Western spies caught in the USSR or for political prisoners.

The Soviets benefited from close cooperation with the Stasi in another way: all the information obtained by Wolf's spies was immediately passed on to the KGB, sometimes even before it reached the tables of Stasi analysts. This was especially true in cases where Stasi agents managed to infiltrate Western intelligence, higher military structures, NATO headquarters and scientific and technical areas. There is no doubt that the activities of East German intelligence allowed the Soviet Union to save millions of dollars on developments in the field of high technologies.

From the book Broken Sword of the Empire author Kalashnikov Maxim

CHAPTER 10 LOST HEROES. PEOPLE OF SWORD AND HAMMER 1 The mighty sword of the Empire fell into the hands of cowardly dwarfs in the 80s. It is sad to know this truth. And these dwarfs have not gone away - they simply moved from their chairs to the Politburo and the Central Committee of the CPSU, from regional committees and central committees to the chairs of presidents, mayors

From the book The Battle of Two Empires. 1805–1812 author Sokolov Oleg Valerievich

Chapter 11 The Way of the Sword So, there was no more doubt. Both sides deliberately sought a military conflict. Troops marched and marched from the west and east to the border of the Duchy of Warsaw and Russia. Never before have both countries participating in the confrontation prepared for war for so long and so

From the book Confession of the Sword, or the Way of the Samurai by Cassé Etienne

Chapter One HOW IT ALL STARTED, OR THE FIRST SWING OF THE SWORD And it all began, as a matter of fact, from ... the plow. Even the samurai are from her. And believe me, I'm not going to just shock you for the sake of a red word! The fact is that the word "samurai" itself comes from an ancient verb

by John Keller

From the book Secrets of the Stasi. The history of the famous secret service of the GDR by John Keller

CHAPTER 6 The Stasi Against the United States and NATO In 1956 Trinity Monday fell on May 20th. Following an age-old tradition, the Germans celebrated a three-day weekend with their families, or went out into the bosom of nature to enjoy the fresh green foliage and the aroma of blooming gardens. More

From the book Secrets of the Stasi. The history of the famous secret service of the GDR by John Keller

Chapter 8 The Stasi Operation in the Third World The GDR authorities spent huge sums of money on supporting the so-called liberation movements in the Third World. The Ministry of State Security was the closest ally of the Soviet KGB, which tried to build

From the book Secrets of the Stasi. The history of the famous secret service of the GDR by John Keller

CHAPTER 9 The Stasi and Terrorism: The Explosion at the La Belle Disco In the early hours of Saturday morning, April 5, 1986, soldiers from the US Army garrison stationed in West Berlin were relaxing at the La Belle disco in Friedenau, in the American sector of the city. It was a favorite vacation spot.

From the book Secrets of the Stasi. The history of the famous secret service of the GDR by John Keller

Stasi anarchists Relations between the Stasi and the "Red Army Faction" began in March 1978 after intense West German police action ended with a series of arrests that forced the rest of the terrorists to flee West Germany. When several

From the book Icebreaker 2 the author Surovov Viktor

Chapter 4 I. Goebbels In 1922, the publishing house "Soviet Russia" published a book: Yu. L. Dyakov, T. S. Bushueva. “The fascist sword was forged in the USSR. Red Army

From the book Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of the Secret Service of the British Admiralty author Bywater Hector Charles

Chapter 5. "The Song of the Sword" and Mortars When the German legions crossed the Belgian border in the first days of August 1914, public opinion in the Entente countries encouraged itself with the reasoning that the wave of the offensive would stop at the "impregnable" fortresses of Liège and Namur. thick

From the book Tank Sword of the Country of the Soviets author Drogovoz Igor Grigorievich

CHAPTER I. THE CREATION OF THE SWORD THE TANK SWORD OF THE EMPIRE In the second half of the twentieth century, there seemed to be no such force that could stop the Soviet tank armada, should it suddenly decide to move to the West. For almost fifty years, Europeans were no longer afraid of missiles with nuclear

From the book Emperor Trajan author Prince Igor Olegovich

Chapter VI. "The man of the sword" "the man of the toga" Trajan returned victoriously to Rome in June 107. Here, in addition to the jubilant Romans, he was met by numerous embassies from different countries and peoples up to India. Was this not evidence of the successful reign of the emperor, again