Action volcano

" Vulkan " (also the case name Vulkan ) was the name of an operation to counter industrial espionage by the Federal German Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) in the spring of 1953. This action was triggered by the transfer of the IMF department head Gotthold Kraus on April 4, 1953 from the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany .

Course of action

On April 4, 1953, the head of Department XVII of the IMF, Colonel Gotthold Kraus, fled to the Federal Republic of Germany, where he revealed to the BfV and the CIA to what extent the GDR intelligence service was successfully using so-called interzone trade for its intelligence-gathering information as part of its industrial espionage. Subsequently, at the instigation of Ministerial Director and Department Head I (Constitution, Administration, Public Security) Hans Egidi , a total of 44 people in the Federal Republic of Germany were arrested on suspicion of espionage . For most of the people, the investigation revealed that the suspicion was unprovable and in some cases even unfounded.

The entire operational process of the BfV developed into the Vulkan affair and is considered the first intelligence service breakdown in the Federal Republic of Germany, which was founded only a few years earlier, and its domestic intelligence service, which is entrusted with counter-espionage. Although doubts about the reliability of Kraus' information were increased and confirmed, the US secret service CIA continued to emphasize the reliability of the defector .

consequences

The then President of the BfV Otto John accused the FDP Minister and Vice Chancellor Franz Blücher in his memoirs for craving for validity, because he wanted to "pound the drum" during Chancellor Konrad Adenauer 's visit to the USA at the same time . The then Federal Public Prosecutor Dr. Carlo Wiechmann felt compelled in May 1953 to convene the first press conference of the Federal Court of Justice due to the mishaps that had become public during the arrest series . In this case, he rejected any error on the part of the investigating authorities, but even then the responsible department head of the Federal Prosecutor's Office Max Güde restricted this by saying: "I admit these errors in all cases in which we have made mistakes." later President of the BfV Günther Nollau later described the case as a "childhood disease" because of its lack of professionalism in processing.

literature

Helmut Roewer , Stefan Schäfer, Matthias Uhl : Lexicon of the secret services in the 20th century . Herbig, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7766-2317-9 , pages 250 and 488.
Helmut Müller-Enbergs (Ed.): Unofficial employees of the Ministry for State Security: Instructions for working with agents, scouts and spies in the Federal Republic of Germany (= analyzes and documents. Scientific series of the Federal Commissioner for the documents of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic Volume 10. Edited by the Education and Research Department). Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-8615-3145-3 , page 246.
Armin Wagner , Dieter Krüger : Conspiracy as a Profession: German Secret Service Chiefs in the Cold War , Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 3-8628-4064-6 , page 174 ff. ( Link to the limited preview on Google Books )

Web links

The Vulkan Die Zeit campaign on April 16, 1953
" Die Vukanisiert " , Der Spiegel on April 22, 1953 PDF version

Individual evidence

↑ VULKAN-AKTION The main first aid station . In: Der Spiegel , January 20, 1954, accessed on May 17, 2020.
↑ Malte Wilke: Public Prosecutors as State Lawyers? The prosecution practice of the Reich Attorney's Office and the Federal Attorney's Office from the German Empire to the early Federal Republic . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8471-0463-6 , p. 257 (chapter The criminal prosecution practice by the Federal Prosecutor's Office , limited preview on Google Books).
↑ Velten Schäfer: The American's List. Scandal company Verfassungsschutz: The "Vulkan Affair" of 1953 illustrates the climate of anti-communism in the early Federal Republic. In: Neues Deutschland , July 31, 2012. (Online under AG Friedensforschung, Reports , accessed on May 17, 2020).

[1] VULKAN-AKTION The main first aid station . In: Der Spiegel , January 20, 1954, accessed on May 17, 2020.

[2] Malte Wilke: Public Prosecutors as State Lawyers? The prosecution practice of the Reich Attorney's Office and the Federal Attorney's Office from the German Empire to the early Federal Republic . V&R unipress, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-8471-0463-6 , p. 257 (chapter The criminal prosecution practice by the Federal Prosecutor's Office , limited preview on Google Books).

[3] Velten Schäfer: The American's List. Scandal company Verfassungsschutz: The "Vulkan Affair" of 1953 illustrates the climate of anti-communism in the early Federal Republic. In: Neues Deutschland , July 31, 2012. (Online under AG Friedensforschung, Reports , accessed on May 17, 2020).