The Image of the Enemy by Maddrell Paul

Author:Maddrell, Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Published: 2015-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

The BND and the End of the GDR

In 1985, after a brief interlude during the early 1980s when the service was headed by Klaus Kinkel, Hans-Georg Wieck took office as BND president.107 That meant the end of the Org. generation at the service, which was now radically transformed and further expanded, with a special focus on intelligence regarding East Germany. Wieck, a former NATO defense expert who had moreover served as ambassador to Moscow during the early 1980s and thus had firsthand experience of the stagnation of “real-existing socialism,” wanted to open the service up to the outside, so that for the first time not only diplomats but also politicians, business representatives, and journalists were allowed to attend selected BND briefings. Moreover, the new president used his administrative experience and the ever greater efficiency of West Germany’s foreign intelligence service to finally increase its importance among political decision makers in Bonn. For the first time since Gehlen’s day, he regained the privilege, in his capacity as BND president, of briefing the chancellor personally on the international situation. According to available information, these intelligence briefings for the chancellor took place regularly once a week.108

Although it was generally assumed that Chancellor Helmut Kohl was not particularly interested in the BND, a look behind the scenes reveals a different picture.109 For example, Gabriele Gast, a staff member at the Soviet Analysis Desk and also an MfS spy, reports that Kohl showed himself to be extremely well informed during BND briefings. During these meetings with the BND president and his top staff, the chancellor also raised aspects of interest for political decision making and often requested additional information in order to get a more thorough picture of certain issues.110

The BND gained much of its knowledge of the East German situation by systematically questioning GDR citizens who were visiting West Germany or who had abandoned their country for good.111 Using a carefully developed questionnaire, the BND examined the extent to which citizens of the GDR still identified with their state. Hence, up to six hundred persons were interrogated every six months, and their statements analyzed by the GDR Analysis Section of the BND, with its approximately thirty staff members. The result was surprising, both for Wieck and for the West German political leadership, for in spite of the apparent stability of the East German state, “between 72 and 78 percent of all those questioned desired reunification.”112 Nonetheless, these figures sparked vigorous resistance, especially in the Chancellery and in the Ministry of Intra-German Relations (formerly the Ministry of All-German Affairs), since the question of reunification had become increasingly “unpopular” in West Germany during the 1980s. Thus the BND reports were swimming against the political mainstream and were therefore not taken seriously in large parts of the government for a long time.113

The service was, moreover, able to gain information on numerous details about the actual situation in East Germany and especially on the mood of the population there, thanks to its ever more extensive monitoring of the mail between the two German states.

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