Based upon JD83's post, so as not to derail the original discussion; dedicated to interesting, weird and funny stories resulting from the rights the allied powers of WW II retained from post-war occupation of Germany to reunification of the country in 1990.

Some general introduction. Planning for the occupation actually started long before the end of WW II, at the 1943 Tehran Conference between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin; showing a foresight and commitment that seems to have since fallen victim to political ADD in more recent wars. There were various ideas for the future of Germany after occupation by the three (later four, as the US ceded some of its original zone to the French) main powers. One was the 1944 Morgenthau Plan, which beyond giving the Saarland to France, and Eastern Prussia and Upper Silesia to the USSR and Poland (which really happened) out of the pre-1938 territory would have put the industrial Ruhr area and other strategically important areas under international control, and divided the rest into one North and South German state respectively, with largely agrarian economies and the latter in a customs union with Austria.



After the war however, mounting tension between the Western allies and the USSR rapidly put paid to such plans. It had already become obvious that Stalin didn't intend to honor the commitment to free elections and independence of the Eastern European countries now under control of the Red Army as it had rolled back wartime Axis rule. There was quick realization that Western Europe couldn't be defended against Soviet numerical superiority without (West) German economic and military contribution; in fact even before V-E-Day, there was a British plan to use surrendered German Wehrmacht troops against the USSR, aptly codenamed "Operation Unthinkable". Events of 1948, with the communist coup in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet blockade of West Berlin, certainly reinforced the notion.

The Berlin blockade was of course in reply to unilateral currency reform in the Western occupation zones, which had been economically merged over the previous two years, setting the stage to form a West German state in 1949, immediately reprocitated on the eastern side. West Germany actually remained under a statute of occupation for another six years until 1955, while it was considered how its future military contribution would be put under allied control. The original idea was the European Defense Community (EDC), proposed by the French in 1950 after the outbreak of the Korean War drew US troops out of Europe; German units would have been no more than battalion-sized, with no national command. However, after a change of government French parliament failed to ratify the plans in 1954, and West Germany was instead admitted to NATO the next year.

That was much to the relief of West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer who preferred an alliance including the US and giving greater sovereignty to the FRG. While all active troops were still assigned to NATO command in peacetime already, the new Bundeswehr emerged as a distinct force of twelve divisions, with its own air force and navy, albeit some material limitations governed by the purpose-founded Western European Union (WEU). This was against considerable domestic opposition across the political board, including from the churches, pacifists and veterans - not surprising after two devastating wars of aggression within living memory. Public mood was indeed rather receptive to repeated poisoned offers by the USSR between 1952 and 1955 for a united, neutral Germany, which would have been rather easy prey for a communist takeover.

Adenauer did however chose Western integration over national unity. This also meant accepting remaining allied rights, namely consent to eventual reunification, finally resulting in the 1990 Two Plus Four Agreement between the two German states and four allied powers. Only this formally ended the state of war (a point Japan had already achieved with the 1951 treaty of San Francisco, by comparison). At German request, it was however carefully worded to "take the place" of a peace treaty rather than being one, since the latter would have put the question of WW II reparations which had been delayed until such a treaty back on the table. Already faced with a cost of literally a trillion DM to prop up the socialist basket case of East Germany, that was thought unaffordable. Whenever somebody has come up with reparation demands since, the reply of the German government has been "should have spoken up in 1990".

Until that point, even allied arrangements predating 1949 continued to shape German affairs outside NATO. Some of those artefacts:

- The allied military liaison missions where principally agreed upon as early as the 1944 London Conference on the future war crime trials. Not much came of it until 1946/47 when in the face of mounting tensions the missions were actually established on a reciprocal basis between the Soviet and each of the three western zones of occupation. They were small, with 14 to 31 personnel each, having quasi-diplomatic status and freedom of movement in the zone they were accredited in, except for prior-announced restricted areas. They continued to exist even after both German states had been established, and were naturally used for (quite open) espionage purposes.

There was a number of incidents, particularly in East Germany which gave up on the aim of reunification and began stressing its national sovereignty in the late 50s, having its Stasi intelligence service chase the mission tours and trying to block them. However, they could be detained only by personnel of the power they were accredited to, and the USSR wasn't willing to give up its reciprocal rights in the West. At least one East German soldier and two western mission members died, French Sgt. Maj. Philippe Mariotti in a ramming attack in 1984, and US Maj. Arthur Nicholson when he was shot by a Soviet guard while trying to enter a tank shed the next year; considered the last American KIA of the Cold War. There were so many crazy events surrounding the missions I honestly don't know why there was never a movie about them.

- Berlin remained notionally under four-power rule. The western allies allowed German administration of what was considered by the West German government as one of the twelve states enumerated in the 1949 constitution as the latter's area of effect. However, the votes of West Berlin members of the Bundestag were counted separately, for example. The USSR unilaterally recognized East Berlin as the capital of East Germany. Both sides regularly protested violations of the city's four-power status by the other resulting from this state of affairs.

There were enclaves and exclaves of both sides. Before any western personnel arrived in Berlin after WW II, the Soviets had already started building a war memorial in what would become the British sector, west of the Brandenburg Gate. For the rest of the Cold War, they had a honor guard there on "enemy territory" at all times. Since the sectors followed German pre-war administrative divisions, there were also little islands belonging to the city of (West) Berlin in East German territory. Two examples are Steinstücken, which had to be supplied by US helicopters, and Eiskeller, where at one point in 1961 a local kid was escorted on his way to school in West Berlin proper by a British armored car. Solutions were eventually found by a swap of some uninhabited areas in 1971.





- The Berlin air corridors which came in so handy during the 1948 blockade ironically owed their continued existence to the Soviets. They were first agreed in 1945 to give the western allied delegations safe access to the four-power Potsdam Conference at a time there was no air traffic control over Germany whatsoever. The western allies thought it provisional, until the Soviets complained about their aircraft flying outside the corridors again; they wanted air traffic channeled to preclude aerial espionage on their troops in East Germany. This led to a permanent agreement on the corridors - which of course also allowed just the kind of reconnaissance the Soviets had wanted to avoid (this is a very interesting part of the overall topic).

The USSR subsequently declared unilaterally that only transport aircraft, no combat planes were permitted, and that altitude was restricted to between 2,500 and 10,000 feet. The US challenged this once in 1959 by flying a C-130 at 25,000 feet, but didn't repeat it after Soviet protests; it wasn't a fight worth picking due to the value of the existing regime. On the civilian side, only airlines and flight crew from the three western allied powers were allowed - the sole exception being Polish LOT, a right secured due to the WW II Polish government-in-exile in the UK. There were various incidents in the corridors; in 1948 a British BEA airliner was shot down by Soviet fighters, and in 1952 an Air France C-54 was fired at.

- The Berlin Air Safety Center was the only other joint four-powers installation besides the war criminal prison in Spandau (holding Rudolf Heß until his suicide in 1987) that kept working throughout the Cold War after the Soviets withdrew from the Allied Control Council for Germany in 1948. This body authorized flights in the corridors and in the Berlin Control Zone (BCZ) with a radius of 20 statute miles around its seat. Flights had to be registered two hours in advance. If one power didn't approve, it stamped the card "safety cannot be guaranteed"; this was mostly done by the Soviets. Actual air traffic control was however by the US-operated Berlin Air Route Traffic Control Center at Tempelhof airport, so such flights could still proceed at their own risk.

All four powers could fly in the BCZ, though they were supposed to limit themselves to airspace over their own sectors if possible. Naturally both sides exploited access for their own purposes though. The western allies operated light aircraft over the entirety of Berlin and environs covered by the zone for visual reconnaissance (and got regularly shot at by Soviet ground troops - you know, "safety cannot be guaranteed"). When West German parlamentarians held meetings at the Reichstag building next to the Berlin Wall to underline claims to the city and state, the USSR made its displeasure known by having fighters go supersonic overhead. And so on.

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:

- The allied military liaison missions where principally agreed upon as early as the 1944 London Conference on the future war crime trials. Not much came of it until 1946/47 when in the face of mounting tensions the missions were actually established on a reciprocal basis between the Soviet and each of the three western zones of occupation. They were small, with 14 to 31 personnel each, having quasi-diplomatic status and freedom of movement in the zone they were accredited in, except for prior-announced restricted areas. They continued to exist even after both German states had been established, and were naturally used for (quite open) espionage purposes.

There was a number of incidents, particularly in East Germany which gave up on the aim of reunification and began stressing its national sovereignty in the late 50s, having its Stasi intelligence service chase the mission tours and trying to block them. However, they could be detained only by personnel of the power they were accredited to, and the USSR wasn't willing to give up its reciprocal rights in the West. At least one East German soldier and two western mission members died, French Sgt. Maj. Philippe Mariotti in a ramming attack in 1984, and US Maj. Arthur Nicholson when he was shot by a Soviet guard while trying to enter a tank shed the next year; considered the last American KIA of the Cold War. There were so many crazy events surrounding the missions I honestly don't know why there was never a movie about them.

I mentioned back in the Der Spiegel thread that my dad, while serving with the USMLM, was expelled from East Germany after being arrested by the Soviets for "snooping" around a Soviet air base. Below is the NYT story about the incident(according to the story, the base was about "100 miles north of Berlin"-it's a little wonder that he got busted. The story also got my dad's name wrong-his first name was Gerald).

I suspect the allegations about it having been a retaliatory measure were probably right. The game was played by the rules of diplomatic tit-for-tat: you expel some of ours, we expel some of yours. A reason could always be found, but overall both sides profited too much from the regime intelligence-wise to rock the boat too much. The missions were also useful in providing legitimate sources for intelligence actually acquired by more secret means in public, mutual assurance against surprise attacks, and demonstrating your own readiness for defense to the other side. Plus maintaining diplomatic links even in times of crisis when the regular ones were reduced or severed in protest, like during the Cuba Crisis or Soviet interventions in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. Here's a good overview of their activities.



Generally the missions were on professional or even friendly terms with the headquarters of the power they were accredited to. Not that everybody played by the official rules; they regularly tried to get into areas declared off-limits to them (at one point this included 40 percent of East German territory, and the Soviet missions in the West had similar restrictions - see permanently restricted areas in the British zone below). One of the more spectacular cases was the Soviet mission in the French zone smuggling out an East German spy who had escaped West German custody in an official vehicle in 1979.



Of course sometimes people really got pissed off. After an East German soldier died in 1969 when his motorbike collided with a French mission car in an autobahn chase, the French crew was held by the Soviets for 13 days, then released for payment of compensation and declared personae non gratae. East German protestors repeatedly attacked the US and British mission seats in Potsdam after the American intervention in Lebanon in 1958, the murder of Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba in 1961, and over intervention in Vietnam in 1965. Then in 1968 West German protestors against Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia did the same to the Soviet mission seat for the US zone in Frankfurt. The American side made a show out of telling West German police that while they had no authority over the Soviets, they were still responsible for their protection. That's the last attack on a mission seat I'm aware of. Of course the Soviet seat in the British zone was actually in the middle of a British base (or officers housing settlement, anyway) in Bünde, North Rhine-Westphalia from 1957.

The NYT coverage alludes to the official western mission seats in Potsdam being just token installations, with personnel actually based in West Berlin, because the seats weren't safe operations bases. All their phone lines were tapped, and East German house staff was divided brotherly 50/50 between the KGB and Stasi as informers. Mission tours passed the Glienicke Bridge (known for its spy exchanges) from West Berlin, then "officially" started at the seats. An unfortunate point was that East German citizens sometimes thought the buildings were official diplomatic representancies and tried to seek asylum there. When they didn't get caught by Stasi personnel outside already, they had to be handed over to the Soviets to avoid diplomatic trouble, who mostly passed them on to East German authorities.

Interesting stuff BansheeOne. Thanks for the post.

I have traveled to Germany almost every year for the past 30 years (usually for vacation and to visit my wife's relatives) and I am always fascinated by the continual changes in the country. I was traveling back from Frankfurt last night with a seat mate who had lived in Mannheim as a child while her served the US military. We were commenting how much the country has changed since then, vis-a-vis the change of the palpable military presence during the cold war. I don't think the current youngsters in Germany get how different the country was back then and how fortunate they are that things turned out the way they did. As your post points out, the original post-war plan was not a Germany that looks like the one that exists today.

The cold war stayed cold thanks in part to the SMLM/USMLM teams and their observation mission.

quote:

Originally posted by SgtGold:
The cold war stayed cold thanks in part to the SMLM/USMLM teams and their observation mission.

I remember dealing with SMLM personnel/vehicles on my first tour in Germany. They would routinely violate the "no-go" signs when we were out in the field. Just as our observers did on their side of the border.

Some of it got a little tense at times. The first and last vehicle in our convoys had signs in 3 languages. German, Russian and English marking those no-go areas. Said areas included our convoys. Strange how SMLM vehicles had collisions with American military vehicles when according to their statements their vehicles were never there.

I personally know of 2 incidents that occurred while we were out on maneuvers. Both ended badly for the SMLMs. Nobody seriously hurt.

One was when a SMLM vehicle got "drop kicked" off the road into the brush while passing an M59 in convoy. Second when a SMLM vehicle had the windshield blown out by a 90MM tank blank round.

Oh, there was a 3rd incident, when a Russian officer in uniform was dropped off a bridge into the river in Frankfurt one night.

The "proper" method to deal with mission cars on either side seems to have been boxing them in and waiting for somebody from the responsible allied command (in East Germany, the local Soviet komandantura) to show up and tell the crew politely that they were under arrest.



Picture link

Of course if people on the scene were not cool enough, sometimes shots were fired, like in the case of Maj. Nicholson. A French officer was also wounded in 1959 by a Soviet traffic regulator; in 1966 a US guard shot out the tires of a Soviet mission car that hadn't stopped outside a depot when challenged. A US vehicle got shot at in 1978 while the crew was reading unit signs off a trainload of T-64 tanks. Another USMLM member was wounded by a shot in 1987 while watching a Soviet/East German exercise.

The real trouble was when Germans got involved. West Germany largely accepted the presence of the Soviet missions since they were part of the legal regime that also made allied consent required for eventual reunification (the worst problem here was that if civilians were involved in accidents with mission cars, there was no base for public compensation in German law, unlike for incidents with NATO forces). As noted, East Germany moved away from that aim in the late 50s and stressed its sovereignity; they were pretty pissed at their Soviet comrades who paid lip service in support of their position, but wouldn't give up the arrangement for the gain it brought themselves.

The Stasi could get pretty rabid in their countermeasures, even if they had no legal basis to interfere with the missions. In 1960 they boxed in the car of the British mission chief, beat up the occupants and seized the tour equipment to present it to the press as proof for espionage (no shit, Sherlock). In 1982, another BRIXMIS chief's car got purposefully t-boned by an army truck and pushed against a tree outside a radar site. Then there was the ramming attack that killed Sgt. Maj. Mariotti in 1984; it was actually a blocking maneuver gone wrong. Sometimes shit just happened - in 1962 East German border guards expecting an escape attempt lit up a BRIXMIS car on the Berlin border; a corporal retained a bullet in his liver.

OTOH the missions got pretty inventive to shake their Stasi tails. Some of their cars had arrangements with multiple lights that could emulate the patterns of local car types, for example.

quote:

Originally posted by LoungeChair:
Interesting stuff BansheeOne. Thanks for the post.

I have traveled to Germany almost every year for the past 30 years (usually for vacation and to visit my wife's relatives) and I am always fascinated by the continual changes in the country. I was traveling back from Frankfurt last night with a seat mate who had lived in Mannheim as a child while her served the US military. We were commenting how much the country has changed since then, vis-a-vis the change of the palpable military presence during the cold war. I don't think the current youngsters in Germany get how different the country was back then and how fortunate they are that things turned out the way they did. As your post points out, the original post-war plan was not a Germany that looks like the one that exists today.

A lot of the change is actually directly or indirectly because of the allied presence. NATO integration and hundreds of thousands of troops really introduced liberal democratic Western culture in the FRG, while socialism in East Germany preserved more German pre-1945 values - for better or worse. Reunification led to quite a clash of cultures, particularly for the smaller East. Most there wanted freedom of course, but not everybody was prepared for what it really means in terms of personal responsibility and necessary tolerance.

But then for Westerners, regaining full national sovereignty also meant an end to the cushy Cold War spot where others were largely in charge of your security, and you weren't trusted to be a major player in global affairs. Suddenly you were indeed expected to, including sending troops abroad yourself rather than just hosting those of others at home. That was a hard change from the post-WW II "never again" mentality, though it's surprising how far we have come how fast - if you had told me in 1995 that German soldiers would be conducting combat operations in Afghanistan 15 years later, I'd have declared you nuts.

A lot of recent conflict in German society is due to people who want the good old times back. Not necessarily East German socialism or even national socialism, mind, though there are those, too - just an imaginary era where everybody left us alone, but still bought our stuff to secure our good life, nevermind that we're dependent upon secure international trade links and a modicum of global stability. That sentiment is much stronger in the East, and I think that's in large part due to the different influences of foreign troops - in the West they were seen rather more as allies and friends, while the Soviets kept being widely regarded as occupiers.

Sure, there are the fringenuts who think Germany remains an occupied country even today, that we're merely vassals providing bases and auxiliaries for America's wars. I worked for the Bundestag member representing the Ramstein-Landstuhl area for ten years, and I've had my share of people complaining about aircraft noise from the bloody occupiers (they're less today due to the reduced presence, but they complain more individually), protesting against use of Ramstein as a hub for operations everywhere from Africa to Afghanistan, as a relay station for drone strikes, etc.

Personally, I regret the extent of the allied post-Cold War drawdown, because I think it weakens the transatlantic link that transformed Germany. Of course with Russia's antics of the last years, we're looking at a slight reversal, though Germany is no longer a frontline nation. In fact these days we're one of four NATO lead nations having troops forward-deployed in the Baltic States to defend them against possible aggression, if on a rather small scale compared to the armed camp we used to be in the Cold War - how's that for a change of role.

For those interested in Cold War Germany you can't beat Walther Elkins’ excellent “U.S. Army in Germany 1945-91; From Occupation Army to Keepers of the Peace” site:

http://www.usarmygermany.com



For those of you who were there-lots of photos of kasernes, army stations, etc.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: JD83,

There's one other group of Western allied personnel in East Germany that's even less well-known than the missions. While lots of Germans fled west, about 200 Western soldiers defected the other way until the Wall went up in 1961. They had a variety of reasons; some were straight communists/socialists who genuinely believed to join the right side and/or feared persecution in the McCarthy era. Then there were the black US soldiers who found that they were not just treated better by Germans than either at home in the US South or in the still-segregated army, but could even date and propose to white women - however they would eventually have to return home, where mixed-race marriages would not be accepted. They were particularly valuable to Eastern propaganda since their discrimination at home could be used against the American claim to defend liberty.

Others were trying to avoid deployment to the hot zones of the time like Korea, Indochina or Algeria. Some French soldiers were Algerians or Moroccans themselves, who didn't want to fight their own. National independence probably also motivated an Irish soldier of the British Army who may have been an IRA member. There were the general malcontents and quasi-criminals who had problems with military discipline, too, many of which seem to have thought that simply by defecting they would be rewarded in the East with an easy and comfortable life. An American, troubled over things he had done as a tank commander in Korea and on occupation duty in Germany, and in love with the bottle, stepped over the border after a drunken quarrel with his superior and professed he didn't know how he got there, but went with the program once he was there. Or so he said at his trial after he eventually came back West.

Finally, there were the probable Western agents sent in under the guise of defectors. There was definitely a Frenchman who went to East Germany twice with different names and different hair colors, but was unfortunately recognized the second time by another deserter from the first time they met. The Stasi with its professional paranoia of course suspected any of the defectors to be a Western spy at the drop of a hat, which is why they were trying so hard to recruit informers among them - not unnoticed by the rest, which didn't contribute to them feeling at home, along with being prohibited to leave the district of Bautzen where the Stasi ran a reception camp for them, given lowly occupations, and the general low standard of living. The Stasi officer in charge reported that even enlisted personnel was used to better material conditions than could be provided in the East.

In the end, about half of the deserters couldn't adapt to life in the East, mostly those who had basically expected a free ride. They didn't want to learn German, about Marxism or in fact much of anything else. There was discontent, alcohol, violence and crime which put some of them in East German prisons. Relations with the local German population were strained because of the perceived pampering of the foreigners, because of their low work morale when sent into the factories and shops of Bautzen and, of course, over women. Most of the black US soldiers did in fact live happily ever after in East Germany - though not necessarily with the women they had come with, enjoying an even greater exotic attraction among local girls than the other Westerners.

One American who had tried to avoid deployment to Korea ironically died after a drunken pub fight with locals and still returned home in a tin casket at the request of his wife. Two others committed suicide, including one of the black US soldiers who seemed depressed about having turned informer for the Stasi among other things. These deaths raised suspicion and fear among the other deserters who thought they might have been arranged by their handlers, and they might eventually meet the same fate. Even some of those who had gone over for ideological reasons eventually became homesick or missed their families. Quite a lot finally escaped back to the West, often after several attempts, being caught and punished by the East Germans, or were eventually deported after making themselves a nuisance, even if it meant legal consequences at home.

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:

Finally, there were the probable Western agents sent in under the guise of defectors. There was definitely a Frenchman who went to East Germany twice with different names and different hair colors, but was unfortunately recognized the second time by another deserter from the first time they met. The Stasi with its professional paranoia of course suspected any of the defectors to be a Western spy at the drop of a hat, which is why they were trying so hard to recruit informers among them - not unnoticed by the rest, which didn't contribute to them feeling at home, along with being prohibited to leave the district of Bautzen where the Stasi ran a reception camp for them, given lowly occupations, and the general low standard of living. The Stasi officer in charge reported that even enlisted personnel was used to better material conditions than could be provided in the East.

There was a little known CIA operation that ran agents from West Germany into East Germany(and perhaps even other Soviet Block countries) or used the agents that were already in place in East Germany. The latter were from Gehlen’s network, which was a part of the intelligence “treasure” that Gehlen promised to reactivate if the Army went along with his plan to establish a German intelligence service; with the proviso, of course, that Gehlen himself would head it! (I write about this here: https://www.militaryhistoryonl.../operationrusty.aspx

This CIA operation initially was run out of Pullach(again, refer to my article or this wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...ullach,_West_Germany The whole point of this operation was of course to gather intel about Soviet military capabilities in their Zone(this was before the U2 overflights and satellites).

Problem was, all of the agents sent into the Soviet Zone were rolled up, some right after they arrived. And we’ll never know how many of Gehlen’s agents in place were turned, became double agents(or were always so).

Years later, based on information that the Soviet defector Golitsyn provided about a supposed mole within the CIA , James Jesus Angleton zeroed in a CIA officer who worked in Pullach during the early 50s-a man with the unlikely name Peter Karlov. Karlov was kicked out of
the CIA but was fully rehabilitated, given an apology, a medal, and his pension in 1988(a year after Angleton died)after the CIA admitted they had made a terrible mistake. Karlov wasn’t the mole, but someone else surely must have been.

Below cover and photos from a 1954 Der Spiegel:

Sometimes it was hard to say whether agents were of the single, double or triple type. There was an US Army lieutenant named Adkins among the defectors to East Germany who professed to be a convinced socialist. He went via the Soviet sector of Austria after losing the love of his life supposedly broke the camel's back, wanted to be sent to the USSR or even join the Vietminh, at any rate not stay in East Germany where he feared to be abducted back by Western agents. Wrote long detailed reports about the US armed forces, also informed on other deserters for the Stasi and even developed a detailed plan how they could be forced to adapt better. Yet some years later, he approached a Swiss national who helped Easterners escape to West Berlin; and even though a woman with him turned out to be an informer for Soviet intelligence and the helper was subsequently arrested, Adkins himself crossed into the West and just vanished from both Eastern and Western files, the putative love of his life seems to have never existed, and an acquaintance suggested he had once been working for the CIC.

The guy who was smuggled out of West Germany by the Soviet mission to the French zone was Reiner Fülle, originally from Thuringia but living in the West, who was recruited by the Stasi while visiting relatives back home. He reported on nuclear recycling technology from his administrative job at the Karlsruhe Research Center, until arrested in 1979 when exposed by a Stasi defector, Werner Stiller, who went over to the West with numerous secret documents in one of the most spectacular events of Cold War intelligence. Fülle escaped custody when he was transfered for interrogation in a rather suspicious incident - he hadn't been handcuffed and was escorted by a single officer, who promptly slipped on ice as his charge made off. After being whisked away to East Germany he promptly turned and delivered information on the DDR security apparatus to West German domestic intelligence. In 1981 the latter organized his return to the West, where he was sentenced to six years prison time for treason, allowing for his later work.

Gehlen's organisation was a mixed bag. I have his 1971 autobiography "Der Dienst", which naturally is more detailed on his WW II than post-war service, being mostly political commentary on events in the latter period. The "yesterday's Nazi officers are today's anti-communists" approach had its flaws though. Due to the demand for intelligence on the East, Gehlen also recruited some officers from the SS side of the German wartime effort. Who happily started in pulling old comrades to give them a respectable and safe job, even if their WW II service had nothing to do with intelligence, and sometimes had been firmly on the war crimes side. Which on top of all else made them easy targets for blackmail to turn them for Eastern intelligence. In 1960, there were about 200 former SS, SD and Gestapo personnel out of 2,450 BND officers.

In 1961 Gehlen tasked a young BND analyst, Hans-Henning Crome, to lead a small force of similarly post-war generation personnel for internal investigations, "Organisation Unit 85", which led to the uncovering and sentencing of some of those turned by the East. This included Heinz Felfe, who had been known as "the Tiger of Como" when he worked for the SD in Italy. They eventually investigated a total of 146 personnel, 71 of which were let go for involvement with WW II atrocities like having led death squads, run KZs, etc.; though the scope didn't extend to former Waffen-SS personnel.

quote:

Originally posted by JD83:
The whole point of this operation was of course to gather intel about Soviet military capabilities in their Zone(this was before the U2 overflights and satellites).

I'm coming back to this because it relates to one of my favorite topics in the field. There were in fact also conventional aircraft overflights of East Germany in the period it was done over the USSR. Arguably it was more dangerous, since radar and fighter coverage was much better than over the long coasts and wide spaces of the Soviet hinterland. It's not always clear whether Western intrusions were purposeful or errors of navigation, as was usually claimed.

The Brits supposedly used Gloster Meteor PR 10 and modified De Havilland Venom fighters for quick reconnaissance dashes across the border. In 1953 an RAF Avro Lincoln probably drifted out of the northern Berlin air corridor due to wind conditions and was shot down by MiG-15s, all seven crew killed. In 1961, one month after the Berlin Wall went up, two Luftwaffe F-84 ended up in West Berlin after getting lost during an exercise (the wing commander was relieved over this). In 1962 a West German Navy Hawker Sea Hawk out of Gibraltar kept going into East Germany near Eisenach, was shot at but managed to escape to the West.

Two US aircraft were shot down by Soviet MiG-19s in 1964, a T-39 Sabreliner out of Wiesbaden in January north of Weimar (all three crew killed), and an RB-66B out of Toul-Rosières, France in March after overflying the Gardelegen exercise area at the onset of a Soviet drill (the crew ejected and was returned to the West four weeks later). The latter was blamed on a faulty compass indicating a 90 degree deviation, which had apparently led to the loss of another RB-66 over the Atlantic enroute to the Azores before.

Most overflights happened within the Berlin corridors though, which was technically legal though the Soviets insisted only supply flights for the allied garrisons in West Berlin were allowed. The US originally used 7499th Support Squadron (later Group), operating the RB-17, modified A-26s and C-47s out of Fürstenfeldbruck, then Wiesbaden all over Europe. After the Soviets unilaterally banned combat aircraft from the corridors, the bomber types were phased out in the 50s; the RB-17 was replaced by the C-54, the C-47 by the CT-29A (Convair CV-240 variant).

From 1962, mostly the C-97 was used; from 1975, there was just a single, later two squadrons operating C-130s from Frankfurt Rhein-Main Airbase until 1991. Aircraft now had retractable ELINT antennae and camera windows that could be covered up in flight to look like normal transport variants. Flights were still conspicious since they didn't stick to the center lines like everyone else, but went to the edges and flew turns in the corridors for better shots.

The Brits operated mostly Avro Anson with 2 Tactical Air Force Communications Squadron from Bückeburg, moved to RAF Wildenrath in 1954, transiting to the Percival Pembroke in 1956, renamed Royal Air Force Germany Communications Squadron in 1959 and 60 Squadron in 1969. When Gary Powers was shot in 1961, all flights were stopped and only resumed the next year at lower volume. Overall British flights were much less frequent than American, and they did very little ELINT, but shared extensively with the US. Right before the Wall came down in 1989, the Avro Andover replaced the Pembroke.

OTOH, the French concentrated on electronic intelligence, starting in 1957 with Escadrille de Liaison Aérienne 55 out of Lahr, using modified C-47s in variants progressively designated Gabriel I through IV. From 1963 the Escadrille Électronique 54 operated three Nord Noratlas Gabriel V; by 1964, a total of thousand corridor missions had been logged, rising to 2,000 by 1968. After France withdrew from NATO's integrated military structure in 1966, the unit moved to Metz on the French side. By 1989 it had seen several name changes to Escadre Électronique Tactique 54 and introduced the C-160 Gabriel VI, which also had better photographic reconnaissance capabilities.

Even in the age of satellites, overflights yielded images with much higher resolution, and didn't follow predictable orbits. The Soviets tried identifying and harassing them by close fly-bies, luring them into landing on their bases with fake radio messages, and lodged regular protests. No other action was taken though, and it's possible there was a quid-pro-quo since Soviet aircraft sometimes deviated from Western airways to fly over NATO bases, too. From 1945 to 1990, about 10,000 US missions alone were flown in the Berlin corridors and control zone; total East German overflights have been estimated at 25,000.

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Then there were the black US soldiers who found that they were not just treated better by Germans than either at home in the US South or in the still-segregated army, but could even date and propose to white women - however they would eventually have to return home, where mixed-race marriages would not be accepted.

I experienced some of that racism crap when I was in the army waaaaay back in the early '60s. While stationed at Ft. Meade 4 of us went out the back gate to a diner for a cup of coffee. 3 whites and a black. Sat at the counter, ordered coffee and donuts. Waitress served we 3 whites but not the black. When I asked her why he didn't get his order filled, she very rudely informed me that they "did not serve niggers here!" All 4 of us got up and walked out, leaving coffee and donuts on the counter.

I re-enlisted and transferred to ft. Carson. We had quite a number of black/white families there. Seems the army "policy" was that the so-called salt & pepper marriages had to be assigned to northern bases.

As noted, the black GIs were the ones most likely to settle into East German conditions, probably because it was an actual improvement of their personal situation in some respects; their particular propaganda value and resulting treatment might have helped, too. Otherwise you had to be a pretty hardcore communist to embrace the austerity of socialism with all links to home severed in the long run. Even some of those who had gone over for ideological reasons eventually became homesick or missed their families. Quite a lot finally escaped back to the West, often after several attempts, being caught and punished by the East Germans, or were eventually deported after making themselves a nuisance, even if it meant legal consequences at home; obviously many tried to avoid that and just vanished.

There was a Brit from the Parachute Regiment, good-looking by all accounts, who was paraded as a propaganda case at events and on magazine covers, enjoyed great success with the ladies, was nicely quartered with a local couple for free, and apparently thought he was on a perpetual free ride as he ran up massive bar tabs he graciously left for his host to pay. In return, he eventually killed the latter's wife and made off with various valuable items to West Berlin. Somewhat later he approached a prominent East German actress and lady friend of his to negotiate a return to the East, but was promptly arrested behind the East Berlin theater and sentenced to 15 years while his victim's husband was told to shut up about the case. Yet sometime later, some of the Brit's fans including aforementioned actress started lobbying for a pardon and even approached the husband to state that his dear deceased wife had always been a lose woman and things probably went wrong when she tried to seduce their friend. At which point the husband finally snapped and fled to the West himself, making the story public.

The only of the deserters I'm aware of to still live in (formerly East) Berlin is Stephen Wechsler, AKA Victor Grossman. A member of the CPUSA since 1945 at age 17, Harvard degree in economics, drafted in 1950, also deserted into the Soviet sector of Austria in 1952 after being cited before a military court for neglecting to state his party membership during induction. Worked in the Bautzen railway factory, trained as a machinist, informed on the other deserters for the Stasi; unlike most of the latter who were disliked by East Germans for their low work morale, this guy was disliked because his high work morale made the Germans look bad. He later studied journalism at Karl Marx University in Leipzig, worked for the English-language "German Democratic Report", then the North American office of Radio Berlin International, finally as a freelance journalist, interpreter and English teacher. Returned to the US for the first time in 1994, officially discharged from the US Army after a hearing.

The Stasi officer in charge of the program eventually stated that the approach of integrating the deserters into East German society so far had largely failed, but was found to have done good work considering the circumstances, and promoted on. He later became an alcoholic, ended his career administering a Stasi in-house bookshop and was invalided out shortly before the fall of the DDR government.

Addendum on the air reconnaissance topic. As noted earlier, all four powers could fly in the Berlin Control Zone extending to 20 statute miles around the seat of the joint Berlin Air Safety Center, though they were supposed to keep to their own sectors if possible and the Soviets usually wouldn't guarantee the safety of Western flights on their side. The zone fully or partially covered the bases of several Soviet and East German army divisions, Werneuchen fighter and Oranienburg helicopter base of the Soviet forces, and the East German Border Guard Command Center among other things.

The Brits were first to make use of this for recon purposes as part of their military liaison mission's tasks from 1956, using a single light DHC-1 Chipmunk trainer which had been based with RAF Station Berlin Flight at Gatow airfield two years earlier to keep deployed RAF personnel current and exercise sovereignty rights. Missions were codenamed "Nylon", later "Oberon", and usually went clockwise around the BCZ for up to two-and-a-half hours, with the backseater taking images with a handheld 35 mm camera out of the open canopy. For evaluation, BRIXMIS simply bought photo negative viewers directly from Carl Zeiss Jena for Western currency.

Early on the zone limits were not always adhered to; at one point Finow Airbase halfway to the Polish border was photographed. By the 80s, the limits were considered pretty much sacrosanct. Missions still yielded valuable intelligence, like confirming construction of an SA-2 missile base at Trebbin just outside the BCZ in 1959; the first-ever Western images of the T-64 tank were taken near Bernau in the 70s. Like the British corridor missions, Berlin recon flights were temporarily suspended after the shootdown of Gary Powers over the USSR in 1960.

This changed after the Wall went up in 1961; links to Western intelligence sources in East Berlin were cut off, and at the same time rumors were circulating about Soviet forces massing outside the city and East German troops being present within, in violation of Berlin's four-power status. The RAF Chipmunk was sent on a visual recon flight so urgent that the pilot allegedly drove to the airfield in his payamas. While the flight indeed reported East German troops in the city, subsequent photo missions found they had withdrawn if they were ever there, and no Soviet forces were massing, so the tense situation eased. From 1968, a second Chipmunk was deployed to Berlin.

French flights started in 1960 with a Cessna Bird Dog of Aviation Liaison Platoon, Commander French Forces in Germany, operating from Tegel airport. From 1968 it was also reinforced by a second aircraft, later backed up by a bigger Max Holste Broussard that was replaced by a DHC-6 Otter in 1988. American missions started in 1968 from Tempelhof, also with a Bird Dog that was soon replaced by a DHC-2 Beaver. From 1980, flights were performed by two UV-20A Chiricahua (military Pilatus Porter variant). Like the liaison missions on the ground, the three Western powers coordinated their flights and shared results, though this was sometimes hindered by the fact that the French and US aircraft were not assigned directly to the missions and had other tasks, too.

As noted earlier, the Soviets sometimes flew through the Western side of the BCZ for demonstration purposes, too, having fighters go supersonic over meetings of West German members of parliament at the Reichstag building, etc. In 1964, a Yak-28 crashed into the Stößensee lake in the British sector. During recovery, British divers dismantled some sensitive parts under water, some of them being flown to the UK for evaluation before being put back on the bottom to be "found".

There were other flights ending up in the wrong place of the cramped airspace, too, including civilian - sometimes by accident, sometimes intentionally. At least 13 Eastern flights were hijacked into Tempelhof between 1963 and 1983, including an LOT Tu-134 out of Gdansk taken over by an East German passenger with a blank gun in 1978 en route to Schönefeld airport in East Berlin. For a time, LOT was translated to German as "Landet oft in Tempelhof" - often lands at Tempelhof. The first case involved a Polish air force officer who made a low-level flight through East German airspace with his wife and two kids in a PZL TS-8 trainer in 1963.

I'm digging up this thread because I just attended the screening of a TV documentation about Ramstein at Berlin's Allied Museum yesterday. Obviously it's largely in German - most English speakers get dubbed over, though some is intelligible - but it has interesting footage.



Since I worked for the member of parliament for the area for ten years, I went to the event in the full expectation of getting worked up over inaccuracies and slanted depiction, but had really only nitpicks. I actually met Michael Geib who runs the Ramstein Docu Center and shows up in the film as an expert in my old job, when we tried to get him some public funding.

It does a good job of covering Ramstein's history from back in the 50s when airbases were stomped from the ground all over the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, because it was farthest from the inner-German border on the central threat axis vis-a-vis the Warsaw Pact. The 50s and 60s are considered the golden age of German-American relationships in the area, when the US forces made a conscious effort to reach out to the locals and promote the image of America. Not only did they bring jobs and money for construction, quartering etc. to the traditonally poor and largely agricultural region, but also a new and exciting culture, music, food, etc.

Of course on the flip side, with the population increase, demand for off-base entertainment and cultural differences there was also a rise in drunken brawls, prostitution and general crime. There was a growing distance from the late 60s due to political divisions and security concerns, starting with the protests against the Vietnam War, the peace movement and terrorist threat of the 70s and 80s, controversy about nuclear and chemical weapons stored in the region, aircraft noise etc., causing the Americans to restrict the previously rather open access to base and withdraw more.

One chapter I wasn't aware of relates to the previously-mentioned issue of race relations in the US. While some claim the American civil rights movement was in part informed by black GIs from the South experiencing the comparatively greater freedom in Germany/Europe, it seems there was also some export of radicals in the opposite direction. Halfway through the docu is footage of Black Panther activists at an event with fellow African-Americans and German sympathizers. Apparently armed BP activists also tried gaining access to the base, which resulted in a shootout and a wounded guard. Two activists were later tried in German courts, while a third was aided by leftist students in escaping to East Berlin, from where he eventually went on to Algeria.

The 1988 Ramstein air show disaster unfortunately meant the end for that last major public event on base, and after 9/11 there was a general clampdown. The director of the docu noted at the event what a bureaucratic nightmare and CYA gridlock it was to gain access for the shot, and having been involved with organizing public tours, I can feel her. It's not like there's no longer any interaction between Germans and Americans; the US forces remain the third-largest civilian employee in the state of RLP after the German public service and chemical corporation BASF, and of the 50,000 Americans (troops, civilian employees, dependents, retirees), a lot still live off-base.

But Michael Geib notes it's more living alongside rather than with each other, in part because the mutual curiosity and attraction of the early decades is gone; German culture has become more American - or maybe both have become more aligned with common global culture which is heavily, but not exclusively American-influenced - and electronic media including the internet means you don't have to actually meet other nationalities to get a look at their life, music etc. Still, Geib also related there is an unofficial "grassroots" program in the US forces aimed at fighting loneliness, social isolation and psychological problems up to suicide among single troops in today's all-volunteer force by getting them in touch with locals. Supposedly this is meant to recreate conditions of the early times when off-base quartering often meant renting a room of and living with a German family, naturally going out for joint activities with your "host siblings", etc.