Military intelligence service in Czechoslovakia

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The military intelligence service of Czechoslovakia was reorganized and renamed several times between 1919 and 1992, according to the history of the country. The internal name was Druhé oddělení Hlavního štábu , German Second Department of the General Staff .

The period 1918–1938

After the founding of Czechoslovakia on October 28, 1918, the new state became the target of activities of some minorities, especially the Sudeten Germans and subsequently Germany, but also Hungary, which lost the territory of Slovakia to Czechoslovakia, and partly also on the part of Poland - all three states raised territorial claims. As early as January 1919, the German consuls Fritz Freiherr von Gebsattel and Paul Schwarz were expelled for espionage. Numerous Sudeten German associations emerged, which soon propagated their wish to belong to Germany and often acted illegally. That is why the General Staff of the new Czechoslovak Army decided in 1919 to start the formation of its own intelligence service , known as the “2. oddělení (zpravodajské) hlavního štábu ”( 2nd [intelligence] department of the General Staff ) to take appropriate countermeasures. From around May 1919 there was an intelligence department at the Army General Staff, whose staff were initially trained by French officers.

The second division fulfilled both the task of an intelligence service and defense. After initial problems, the department became one of the most effective components of the security apparatus. The activity intensified especially after 1933, after Hitler came to power in Germany and after Canaris reorganized the defense service from 1934 and enormously intensified his actions against Czechoslovakia from 1935. A second surge in activity occurred roughly at the same time as František Moravec was appointed head of the research department (1934) and deputy head of the entire second department. In the period that followed, the Czechoslovak military intelligence service achieved two great successes.

The first success was the recruitment of Paul Thümmel , a member of the German Defense Service known as Agent A-54 , head of Division III F, who was also supposed to set up a network of agents in Czechoslovakia. Thümmel provided the second department with partly exclusive information, including the exact date of the occupation of the remaining area on March 15, 1939, information about the German offensive against France, about the attack on the Netherlands, reports of the Abwehr about the Finnish-German war , the preparation for the occupation of Yugoslavia, etc.

The second great success was the procurement of the compromising material with which the Hungarian military attaché in Prague, General Ujzazy, was forced to cooperate in 1938; On his return to Budapest, Ujzazy was the head of the Hungarian military secret service. However, because the Second Division ceased to exist shortly afterwards, it turned this agent over to the British Intelligence Service .

Munich Agreement

After the occupation of the Sudetenland as a result of the Munich Agreement on September 30, 1938, this second department continued, but the Ministry of Defense essentially banned agency activity in the direction of Germany; On March 14, 1939, the recently newly appointed (provisional) head of the Second Department, František Moravec , left Czechoslovakia with ten other officers and a lot of material on the plane and arrived in London - just one day before the so-called occupation of the rest of Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939.

In exile

With the presence of some Czechoslovak army units in France and briefly in Poland, these have also maintained intelligence departments in exile, particularly in France. The small Parisian news center operated from May 1, 1939 to June 1940. With the occupation of France (and Poland), from then on there were only army and intelligence officers in London who could effectively participate in the resistance. After the Czechoslovak government- in- exile was recognized in London on July 21, 1940, the Ministry of Defense was set up with a new structure in the autumn. (zpravodajský) odbor ”( II. intelligence department ) under the direction of Moravec .

The task of Division II under the war conditions was, in addition to the usual activities of an intelligence service, to maintain contacts with people and resistance groups in the Protectorate and to coordinate their activities accordingly and provide appropriate assistance such as the provision of technical resources, etc. To the non-conventional task above all, however, the preparation and implementation of acts of diversion and sabotage in the protectorate . This also included numerous actions with paratroopers who were dropped over the area of ​​the Protectorate.

This strategy was partly caused by the position in which the Czechoslovak government-in-exile found itself in the second half of 1941. The repression of the new deputy Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich , led to a significant weakening of the resistance in the Protectorate, among other things the strongest resistance group Obrana národa was almost wiped out and the actions of the resistance came to a standstill. Because the British government consistently evaluated the results of the resistance movements in the occupied countries and orientated itself accordingly, the Czechoslovak government in exile under Edvard Beneš was forced to act. It was under these circumstances that the still controversial decision to carry out a spectacular assassination attempt on Heydrich was made. This action, which was given the code name Operation Anthropoid , was prepared by the II. Department, in the plans only five other people apart from the leader Moravec were informed. This action, which was a success from a military point of view, led to even stronger repression in the protectorate.

After 1945

After 1945 there were two intelligence services in Czechoslovakia: the “2. oddělení (zpravodajské) Hlavního štábu MNO ”( 2nd [intelligence] department of the General Staff of the Ministry of Defense ) under the leadership of Moravec, and the new“ Obranné zpravodajství ”(OBZ) ( Defense Service ).

The Obranné zpravodajství OBZ was established without the consent of the Ministry of Defense by decree of the commander of the Czechoslovak army units in the Soviet Union, General Ludvík Svoboda , because there were strong concerns about it both in the communist party and in the leadership of the Soviet Union the pro-western intelligence service from London. The OBZ was therefore conceived from the beginning as an instrument that should represent a counterweight to the Second Department in London and, on the other hand, secure the Communist Party's claim to power. Head of the defense ministry, who built this essentially and coined, which was NKVD -Agent and since 1948 Brigadier General Bedrich Reicin determined which, however, already arrested on February 8, 1951, in Slánský process condemned to death and executed was.

The Defense Service OBZ played an essential role both in the takeover of the Ministry of the Interior by the Communist Party before 1948 and in the actual change of power in February 1948. After 1948, the OBZ was subject neither to the General Staff of the Army nor to the Ministry of Defense, but to the Ministry of the Interior under the direction of the Central Committee member Václav Nosek (or temporarily the Ministry of National Security). In addition to close contacts with the Soviet NKVD, one of the duties of the service was to be active outside the military sector in the civilian sector; the interweaving with the apparatus of the other security and intelligence services and the secret police was also decisive. According to Order 25/1954 of the Ministry of the Interior of April 1954, the OBZ should "follow the decisions of the CPC Central Committee, the government and the orders of the Ministry of the Interior".

The Intelligence Service (Second Department), which was renamed “Zpravodajská správa Generálního štábu” (ZS / GŠ) ( Intelligence Administration of the General Staff ) in 1948 , was the only intelligence service that was not subordinate to the Interior Ministry. This independence was only formal, however, because the OBR had access to the structures of the military intelligence service and could control them to a certain extent.

The defense service OBZ, briefly in “5. oddělení hlavního STABU "was renamed, was from August 15, 1950" Hlavní informační správa "(HIS) ( main information service ) and from March 30, 1951" Velitelství vojenské zpravodajské služby "(VVZS) ( headquarters of military intelligence ) and was the Ministry of subject to national security. On June 28, 1952 "Hlavní správa vojenské kontrarozvědky" (HS VKR) ( Headquarters of the Military Defense Service ) was established, which was later closely intertwined with the Ministry of the Interior and its other services such as the secret service , of which it was part in the late 1960s and early 1970s was intermittent.

After 1990

After 1990, legislation was the first to ensure that the abuse of the military intelligence service as an instrument against the civilian population, as happened in the past, would be ruled out.

The defense HS VKR was replaced on July 1, 1990 by the "Vojenské obranné zpravodajství" (VOZ) ( Military Defense Service ) and the "Vojenská zpravodajská služba" (VZS) ( Military Intelligence Service ) later emerged from the intelligence service ZS / GŠ .

After the establishment of the Czech Republic , there was a single military service, Vojenské zpravodajství (VZ) ( Military Intelligence Service ), in the Slovak Republic there were two organizations - Vojenská spravodajská služba (VSS) ( Military Intelligence Service ) and Vojenské obranné spravodajstvo (VOS) ( Military Defense Service ).

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ History Vojenské kontrarozvědky a Obranného zpravodajství 1945 - 1989, online at: www.gotisek.estranky.cz / ...  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.gotisek.estranky.cz