Main Directorate for Reconnaissance
The Main Directorate for Reconnaissance was the foreign intelligence service of the Ministry of State Security, the main security agency of the German Democratic Republic, from 1955 to 1990.
The HV A was an integral part of the Stasi, responsible for operations outside of East Germany such as espionage, active measures, foreign intelligence gathering, and counterintelligence against NATO-aligned countries and their intelligence agencies.
The Stasi was disbanded in January 1990 and the HV A's mode of operation was revealed to the public, including its internal structure, methods, and employees. The HV A became the subject of broad interest and intensive research under the responsibilities of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records. The HV A is regarded by some as the most effective foreign intelligence service during the Cold War.
Predecessors
In 1951, the Außenpolitischer Nachrichtendienst was founded, under the leadership of Anton Ackermann, disguised as the Institut für wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Forschung . According to Markus Wolf, eight Germans and four Soviet "advisers" were present at the founding on 1 September 1951 in Bohnsdorf in the borough of Treptow-Köpenick. The APN was subordinated to the GDR Foreign Ministry. The first leader was Ackermann, his deputy was Richard Stahlmann. The head of the "advisers" was the KGB officer Andrei Grauer, who, according to Wolf, had been personally assigned by Stalin to this "reconstruction aid."In 1952, the APN College came into being, where agents known as "scouts for peace" in Stasi jargon were prepared for operations in Western countries. Toward the end of the year, Ackermann petitioned the ruling party's Politburo to replace him, and Walter Ulbricht assumed direct control of the APN.
Duties
Focus
The primary mandate of the HV A was foreign reconnaissance, which included political, military, economic and technological intelligence-gathering. Among its other duties were activities against western intelligence agencies, preparing acts of sabotage, as well as the so-called "Active Measures" in the "Operational Sector Federal Republic of Germany", including West Berlin.In the early 1980s, military espionage began to gain significance. The Soviet Union, the SED-led administration of the German Democratic Republic, and secretary of national security Erich Mielke expected paramount information in regard to the early discovery of Western war preparations from the HV A, in light of the rising tensions between the two Cold War superpowers.
Cooperation with the KGB
Optimal conditions allowed the HV A to provide its eastern "sister services", especially the KGB, the greatest amount of intelligence flowing out of the Federal Republic of Germany, which was the most significant European NATO member. The KGB was headquartered in Berlin-Karlshorst, the Soviet Union's secret service was located in Potsdam-Babelsberg, and in addition, liaisons were present to each district administration. Successful operations against NATO headquarters in Brussels, as well as some other Western European states, such as the United Kingdom, also contributed to the HV A's significance. In the United States, on the contrary, the HV A was never able to break any ground, as the KGB operated there almost exclusively.Organisation and structure
Sections
In 1989 the HV A had 21 sections and five task forces. In addition, there was the Headquarters of the HV A and the Sector for Science and Technology , responsible for technological espionage, whose responsibilities were spread across sections. In a sense the Main Directorate was a secret service within the secret service with an autonomy within the Stasi similar to that enjoyed by the First Chief Directorate within the KGB or the Directorate of Operations within the CIA. The HV A had its own budget and its own enterprises, which not only provided cover employment for its operatives, but also contributed finances from their business activities to the upkeep of the service. The Main Directorate also handled its own counterintelligence. This was an exclusive prerogative of the Stasi within the German Democratic Republic, but while the Main Division I handled this mission within the National People's Army and the Border Troops, the Main Division VII handled the Ministry of the Interior and the People's Police, the Main Division XX handled espionage penetration attempts within the GDR's state apparatus and the Main Division II handled counterintelligence among the East German public in general, counterespionage within the HV A was handled exclusively by its organic Division A IX.Werner Großmann – Deputy Minister and Chief of the HV A, Generaloberst
- Work Group S – internal security within the HV A
- Division A X – Active measures in the Federal Republic of Germany
- Division A VII – analysis and Information
- Division A IX – penetration of enemy intelligence services in the Federal Republic of Germany and counterintelligence within the HV A
- Department 5 – the work group of the Deputy Chief of the STS Matthias Warnig
- Work Group 1 / STS – officer-residents abroad working in line of the STS
- Work Group 3 / STS – operational acquisition of defence materiel
- Work Group 5 / STS – exploitation of official channels
- Division A V – analysis for the STS
- Division A VIII – operational technology, signals equipment
- Division A XIII – fundamental studies
- Division A XIV – electronic, optics, digital data processing
- Division A XV – military technology, mechanical engineering
- Division A XX – data processing and computing center
- Staff of the HV A
- Work Group XV / BV – coordination center for the Divisions XV. Before expanding to the status of an autonomous super-department the external intelligence department of the Stasi was called Division XV, so the territorial units have retained this designation.
- Division A XVII – border closure
- Division A XXI – rear services, administration and finances
- Division A VI – operational travel movement
- Division A III – legal officer-residents in Western countries other than the Federal Republic of Germany
- Division A XIX – training and personnel care
- Division A IV – military intelligence in the Federal Republic of Germany. The Ministry of National Defence had its own intelligence service, which changed its name several times. In its final reiteration before the end of East Germany its official name was the Intelligence Sector. The Ministry for State Secirity also had its own division for military intelligence. Naturally both had West Germany as their main focus. In order to avoid mutual interference they have introduced a separation of their areas of operations. The Intelligence Sector concentrated on the operational side of intel – data about operational plans, manpower and day-to-day operational readiness of the weapons and equipment of the Bundeswehr. The Stasi's Division A IV concentrated on the political and longer term side of intelligence gathering. It operated on military matters in the West German political parties, the Federal Ministry of Defence, the Weaponry Technical Administration, the administrative departments of the various armed services, research and development establishments, weapons and equipment manufacturers and future weapon acquisitions. Nevertheless overlapping between the two was not uncommon.
- Division A XI – Intelligence in North America and US military installations in the Federal Republic of Germany
- Division A XII – penetration of NATO and the EEC institutions
- Division A I – penetration of the West German state institutions
- Division A II – penetration of the West German political parties and public organisations
- Division A XVI – exploitation of official channels, coordination of HV A business enterprises
- Division A XVI – sabotage preparations
Leadership
Sections VII, IX, X and task force S were directly subordinated to the head of the HV A, Colonel General Werner Großmann.His predecessor was Colonel General Markus Wolf, who led the HV A over 34 years until 1986 and was held in high professional regard in the intelligence community.
The head of the HV A had five deputies. In the last case, these were Major Generals Horst Vogel, Heinz Geyer, Heinrich Tauchert and Werner Prosetzky as well as Colonel Ralf-Peter Devaux.
Recruitment and training
Initially, the "HV A College", disguised as the Zentralschule der Gesellschaft für Sport und Technik Edkar André, was initially headquartered in Belzig. Starting in 1965, it was incrementally absorbed into the Juristische Hochschule des MfS , located in Golm, initially as a vocational training school. From 1968 on, it was called "Fachrichtung für Aufklärung der JHS", and was later renamed to "Sektion A". The "Fremdsprachenschule des MfS", also referred to as "Educational Department F", was attached to it. In 1988, the HV A College, including the College of Foreign Languages, previously located in Dammsmühle bei Mühlenbeck, moved to Lake Seddin in Gosen near the Berlin city limits, approximately 4.5 miles south of the city of Erkner. The backup bunker for the headquarters of the HV A was also located there.In 1989 the college had approximately 300 employees and was headed by Lieutenant Bernd Kaufmann. It worked in close cooperation with "Dept. A XIX", and was structured into three Educational Departments:
- Educational Dept. A: Training for political operatives. Dean: Lieutenant Helmut Eck. 4 courses including Marxist–Leninist training, politics, and history.
- Educational Dept. B: "Special Operations" and methodology of service work. Dean: Lieutenant Horst Klugow. 5 courses, including Operative Psychology, Security and Law, as well as foreign residency training.
- Educational Dept. F: College of Foreign Languages. Dean: Lieutenant Manfred Fröhlich. Responsible for the language training for missions abroad, as well as interpreter-training.
Personnel
Full time
The HV A had more than 3,800 full-time employees in 1989. Among them were, according to the agency's directory, approximately 2,400 professional agents and 700 deputies, 700 unofficial employees, and 670 special agents . In the course of the HV A's self-disestablishment, the number of employees rose at times above 4,200.In the autumn of 1989, seven supervisors had a ranking of "general": highest-ranking associate was manager of the HV A, Werner Großmann, as lieutenant general. Four of his deputies, as well as Harry Schütt and Otto Ledermann were Major Generals.
The HV A associates regarded themselves to be the elite of the Ministry of State Security. A high degree of personal engagement, flexibility, performance, and primarily absolute loyalty to the SED was expected of them. Qualified employees of other Stasi departments, such as those with secondary educational degrees, knowledge of foreign languages, etc., could, as a reward for "remarkable achievements", be transferred to the HV A as needed, which was akin to a decoration. On the other hand, HV A personnel could, due to inadequate performance or following an investigation, be transferred to other departments of the Stasi, practically constituting a demotion.
Unofficial and other employees
The full-time staff of the HV A were complemented by more than 10,000 "unofficial collaborators" or "unofficial employees", the so-called IMs. These were primarily GDR citizens with permission to travel to the West, residents of East Germany who were related to "functionally interesting" target persons in the West, couriers and instructors, but also thousands of residents of West Germany and West Berlin, partly in exposed positions in society.The HV A was particularly interested in recruiting Western students who were visiting the GDR. These were young academics who were suitable for leadership roles and therefore particularly predestined for confidential information; they were developed over decades at a high financial and personnel cost, with the goal of placing them in high positions in the state and the economy, through which they gained access to secret information.
A famous example of such a recruitment operation was Gabriele Gast, who committed herself in 1968 as a student and rose to the rank of Regierungsdirektorin in the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the foreign intelligence agency of West Germany. As a high-level source, she was led by Markus Wolf personally.
The actual sources of espionage operations in the West were not necessarily registered as IMs with the HV A. In many cases, they were noted as Kontaktpersonen , which reveals little about the degree of cooperation with the intelligence service.
Headquarters
The HV A's predecessor, the APN resided in the early 1950s first in Pankow, then at the Rolandufer in Mitte.The headquarters of the HV A was situated since the mid- to late 1950s in the building complex of the Stasi's headquarters in the Berlin borough of Lichtenberg. After completion of the new office buildings at the corner of Ruschestraße and Frankfurter Allee, the HV A established its base of operations there. The Operativ-Technische Sektor was located in the Roedernstraße in Hohenschönhausen.