Scouts of Peace

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In the terminology of the GDR , agents of the Central Enlightenment Administration (HVA) of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) deployed abroad or in Germany against foreigners and foreign institutions were referred to as scouts of peace (also scouts for peace ), in short: scouts. or that of the Military Reconnaissance of the National People's Army (NVA). Also spies who worked for the GRU during the Second World War , such as B. Richard Sorge , have been referred to as spies of peace.

Background of the choice of term in the GDR

The euphemistic term "spies of peace" was for a Pravda used only as a term for their own (eastern) agents -Article 9 September 1964th This was justified by the fact that a distinction had to be made between "whether someone spies on imperialist wages or whether he serves as a spy for peace and progress". The nimbus of the peace-promoting and allegedly clean work of the "scouts of peace" should distract from the actual orders and tasks. In the portrayal of the GDR, they were exclusively aimed at securing the GDR and preventing war in Germany. In the official account of the GDR, the MfS and NVA did not take part in preparations for wars of aggression, conspiracies, coups, assassinations or in the murder and torture of people.

The historian Hubertus Knabe points out that he never found any indications of peacemaking measures in any document from the GDR secret service. Instead, “hateful jargon” prevails in reports about the West, according to Knabe. The espionage was primarily aimed at gaining military advantages in the event of a military conflict.

The political scientist Helmut Müller-Enbergs , however, was of the opinion in 2002 that it was still too early to give an answer to the question of whether the Stasi spies were now saving the peace or not. "The scientific and historical analysis of western espionage by the GDR secret service, which must be a prerequisite for a professional judgment, is only just beginning." Even decades after reunification, employees of the HVA continue to stylize themselves as "scouts of peace".

Evaluation of the Stasi foreign espionage after 1989

According to evaluations by employees of the BStU , agents were mostly recruited by active unofficial employees of the HVA, with four out of five recruits taking place in the GDR. According to information from their commanding officers, 60% were politically motivated, 27% materially, 7% had fallen into “ honey traps”, 4% had been recruited under a false flag and only 1% were blackmailed into cooperation or offered to cooperate on their own initiative .

In contrast to the self-image as “scouts of peace”, the political leaderships of the GDR and the Warsaw Pact were “deliberately deceived about the potential and intentions of NATO” by the situation reports of the East German military intelligence.

Contrary to the knowledge acquired by the intelligence service, the NVA espionage service had "greatly exaggerated military potential and intentions". In addition, the MfS initiated extensive sabotage and terrorist preparations through specially trained task forces in and against the Federal Republic in the event of tension or war and was also massively involved in repression and internal party disputes within the GDR.

Although industrial espionage took up a significant part of the MfS's foreign activities , it would hardly have been able to implement the knowledge gained, for example in the so-called microelectronics program of the GDR, microelectronics lagged behind in international comparison.

Well-known GDR agents

Former “scouts” at the UZ press festival

The “Initiative Group Scouts of Peace Demand Law” is an association of many Stasi spies sentenced to prison terms in Germany.

Movie

The official understanding of the scouts of peace is shown in the multi-part GDR television series The invisible visor and fire dragon as well as in the feature film For Eyes Only .

The theme is also taken up in the feature film Scouts of Peace , which premiered in 2017 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Angela Schmole: Department VIII. Observation, investigation, search, arrest. (pdf) MfS manual. BStU, 2011, p. 54 , archived from the original on September 23, 2015 ; accessed on September 13, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Franz Krahl: Out of the shadows. About the unusual life and heroic death of our comrade Richard Sorge , Neues Deutschland, October 18, 1964, p. 6
  3. ↑ Helmut Bärwald: “You see ghosts!” New findings about the West German espionage (I). In: Das Ostpreußenblatt , January 9, 1999, p. 11 ( PDF ; 13.42 MB)
  4. ↑ Andreas Förster: Scouts of Peace or War Spies? In: Berliner Zeitung. October 26, 2002, accessed September 13, 2015 .
  5. ^ Matthias Hannemann: Stasi conference: Notes from Odense. Half a year ago, at a conference in Denmark, former employees of “Headquarters A” stylized themselves as “spies of peace”. The conference proceedings have now been published - and are once again arousing emotions. In: FAZ. May 30, 2008, accessed September 18, 2015 .
  6. ↑ a b c d e f Georg Herbstritt, Helmut Müller-Enbergs (ed.): The face of the West too ... GDR espionage against the Federal Republic of Germany (= analyzes and documents; vol. 23), Bremen: Edition Temmen 2003, 458 S., ISBN 3-86108-388-4 .
  7. ^ Sven Felix Kellerhoff : Stasi: The unholy wrath of the red spies. In: The world. June 13, 2007, accessed September 13, 2015 .