Obranné zpravodajství
The Obranné zpravodajství (Czech; abbreviation OBZ ) or Obranné spravodajstvo (Slovak; abbreviation OBS ; German: Abwehrnachrichtendienst) was founded in the spring of 1945 as a Czechoslovak domestic secret service . He was officially under the Ministry of Interior of what was then Czechoslovakia .
The tasks included, among other things, exposing and combating the remnants of hostile organizations and liquidating agencies of hostile organizations and collaborative organizations. Furthermore, the OBZ should uncover and eliminate new espionage organizations and subversive organizations in the state territory, guarantee the internal security of the Czechoslovak army and protect the military and war industries from espionage and attacks. In the early years, the OBZ was also responsible for protecting the borders from hostile activity and for educating the Czechoslovak army in dealing with military secrets.
The first official head of the OBZ, which was organized as Department Z in the Ministry of the Interior, was Colonel Josef Bartík . The actual leader, however, was his deputy captain Bedřich Pokorný .
From the beginning, and founded as such, the OBZ was an effective instrument of the Interior Ministry under Interior Minister Václav Nosek , which was already under Communist leadership . At the turn of the year 1948/49, the OBZ was reorganized into a “small state security service” within the Ministry of the Interior and renamed Státní bezpečnost (StB) (German: State Security).
literature
- Helmut Roewer , Stefan Schäfer, Matthias Uhl : Lexicon of the secret services in the 20th century . Herbig, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7766-2317-9 .
- Ladislav Kudrna: Vojenské obranné zpravodajství (1945–1950). Vývoj, organizačnístructy, personální obsazení. Paměť a dějiny. No. 1, 2008, ISSN 1802-8241 , pp. 76-89, (PDF; 789 kB) .