The Enemy Within by Terry Crowdy

Author:Terry Crowdy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Enemy Within: A History of Espionage
ISBN: 9781780962245
Publisher: Osprey Publishing
Published: 2011-11-18T05:00:00+00:00

Armed with these facts, Bismarck asked Stieber to stir up the Austrian population by spreading false stories in the Austrian press. The idea was to make the Austrian government so unpopular at home that it provoked them into declaring war on Prussia. At the same time, Bismarck asked Stieber to stir up trouble among the many different ethnic groups in the Austrian empire. Stieber hired 800 agitators from among Czech and Slovak dissidents who would start uprisings in Hungary, Dalmatia and Moravia should war be declared. He also made plans for a ‘Hungarian Freedom Legion’ made up of Austrian army deserters who would attempt to break Hungary away from Austria.

With war looming, Bismarck ordered Stieber to shut down his intelligence service in Austria so that there would be no clues that Prussia had spied on Austria in peacetime.5 Stieber’s concluding report to Bismarck included the allegation that Austrian emperor Franz Joseph had begun using a double on public occasions because of his fear of assassination. Additionally, two of the emperor’s closest advisors were highly paid Prussian agents and his wife was in love with an 18-year-old stable groom, while many members of his court had become opium addicts.

On 23 June 1866, ten days before the outbreak of the war, Stieber was placed in charge of protecting the king, Bismarck and the supreme Prussian headquarters on campaign, ensuring its safe movement through occupied terrain. To this end he formed a ‘Secret Field Police’ which accompanied headquarters through the war.

Although Stieber’s intelligence went a good way to deciding to go ahead with the war, it perhaps proved less effective during the actual conflict. The Austrians, Stieber noted, showed unexpected resolve and the Hungarian uprising was quickly quashed. If anything, the victory over the Austrians at the battle of Sadowa on 3 July 1866 was more due to the superiority and rapid-fire of the new Prussian rifles than any great intelligence coup. At the end of the war, although Stieber was officially appointed a ‘privy councillor’, his failure to raise a Hungarian rebellion greatly rankled him.

The bitter tinge left after failure in Hungary would not fester for long, as Stieber was given even greater scope to build on his successes and failures during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). After defeating Austria, Bismarck decided upon the need for war against France and asked Stieber to spy on the country, primarily to warn of any French first strike. Bismarck told Stieber that money would be no object this time, as he had secretly confiscated funds from the Kingdom of Hanover, one of a number of smaller states incorporated into Prussia’s German empire, or Reich. Euphemistically dubbed the ‘funds of the Central News Bureau’, the use of the Hanoverian money meant that the costs of Stieber’s operations would not appear on the official Prussian defence budget and therefore his entire operation would remain secret from everyone.

In November 1869 Bismarck sent Stieber to Paris and had him investigate the new French Chassepot rifle and the much-dreaded mitrailleuse – an early form of machine gun.

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