The Cold War Wilderness of Mirrors

Counterintelligence and the U.S. and Soviet Military Liaison Missions 1947–1990

Aden Magee

• Publisher: Casemate
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781612009940
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Geheimdienst & Spionage

This book details the Soviet Military Liaison Mission (SMLM) in West Germany and the U.S. Military Liaison Mission (USMLM) in East Germany as microcosms of the Cold War strategic intelligence and counterintelligence landscape. Thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet and U.S. Military Liaison Missions are all but forgotten. Their operation was established by a post-WWII Allied occupation forces' agreement, and missions had relative freedom to travel and collect intelligence throughout East and West Germany from 1947 until 1990. This book addresses Cold War intelligence and counterintelligence in a manner that provides a broad historical perspective and then brings the reader to a never-before documented artifact of Cold War history. The book details the intelligence/counterintelligence dynamic that was among the most emblematic of the Cold War. Ultimately, the book addresses a saga that remains one of the true Cold War enigmas.

PART I

MILITARY LIAISON MISSION HISTORY AND EVOLUTION

CHAPTER 1

The History of the Military Liaison Missions

The Formative Years

In November 1944, several months before the conclusion of the war in Germany, the U.S., Britain, and Soviet Union signed the Agreement on Control Machinery in Germany, which detailed how the Allies would administer Germany after its unconditional surrender. Article 2 of the agreement specified that “Each Commander-in-Chief (CINC) in his zone of occupation will have attached to him military, naval and air representatives of the other two CINCs for liaison duties.” After its liberation, France was viewed as a fourth Allied power.

The first gathering of the Allied powers’ leadership in the wake of Germany’s defeat occurred in July 1945 at Potsdam, Germany. The Western leaders agreed that the best protection against a revival of German aggression was to enable the nation to rebuild and restore the German people to a prominent place in the political and economic systems in Europe. The Potsdam Declaration, which was executed as a communiqué and was therefore not a peace treaty according to international law, declared that Germany should be viewed as a single political and economic unit, but would be temporarily divided into zones to be administered by an army of occupation. The four powers divided “Germany as a whole” into four occupation zones for administrative purposes, creating what became collectively known as Allied-occupied Germany. The Allies agreed to a joint occupation, with each country taking charge of a zone and a sector of Berlin. The Soviet leadership vocally supported the talk of democracy and self-determination, but in parallel, the Soviets were employing their vast security and espionage apparatus to actively spread Communism throughout war-torn Europe.

Following the partition of Germany, cooperation between the Soviet Union and what then became known as the “Allied” powers (U.S., Britain, France) soon faded. The Allies partnered in the occupation by merging their three zones of West Germany and West Berlin, while the Soviet Union managed the affairs of its zones in eastern Germany and Berlin. In contrast to the spirit of the Potsdam Declaration, the Soviets rapidly reconstituted the Communist Party in the eastern sector of Germany, which took its orders from Moscow, and placed its members in every key position of political and administrative authority. This dynamic was the beginning of the East/West divide.

Allied Occupied Germany. (Wikimedia Commons)

The rapid decline in political cooperation and the high degree of uncertainty regarding the Allies’ and Soviets’ intentions in central Europe prompted the occupying military forces to establish reliable channels of communications between the sides to manage the increased risks between the Soviets and the Western alliance. The powers agreed that it was in their best interests to recognize Article 2 of the Agreement on Control Machinery in Germany and establish liaison mechanisms. As a result, the U.S. and Soviet MLMs were established to maintain interzonal “liaison”—or communication—between the CINCs of the U.S. European Command and the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSFG). After several exchanges of views during 1946, the American and Soviet sides reached an accord—the Agreement on Military Liaison Missions Accredited to the Soviet and United States Commanders in Chief of the Zones of Occupation in Germany—which was signed on 5 April 1947 by Lieutenant General Clarence Huebner, Deputy CINC, U.S. European Command (USEUCOM), and Colonel-General Mikhail Malinin, Deputy CINC, GSFG. This agreement establishing the U.S. and Soviet MLMs became commonly referred to as the Huebner–Malinin Agreement. Per the agreement, the U.S. established the U.S. Military Liaison Mission (USMLM) in Potsdam, near the GSFG headquarters, and the Soviets established the Soviet Military Liaison Mission, Frankfurt (SMLM-F), in Frankfurt where the USEUCOM headquarters was located at the time. Over time, the abbreviation SMLM was coined “smell ’em,” USMLM was “U smell ’em,” and SMLM-F was “smell ’em F.”

The GSFG concluded similar accords with the British and French military commanders, establishing the other two Allied MLMs in Potsdam and a Soviet MLM near the French headquarters in Baden-Baden, and the third Soviet MLM near the British headquarters in Bunde. The Soviet MLM in the British sector was named the Soviet Exchange Mission (SOXMIS) and the Soviet mission in the French sector was named the Mission Militaire Sovietique (MMS). The British MLM in the Soviet zone was named the British Exchange Mission (BRIXMIS), and the French mission was named the French MLM (FMLM). Although authorized under Article 2 of the Agreement on Control Machinery in Germany, the Allies did not have a need to establish MLMs in each other’s zones.

The staffing of the MLMs was based on specific agreements. The U.S. and Soviets agreed to 14 personnel per side. The British and Soviets agreed to missions of 37 personnel per side, and the French and Soviets agreed to missions of 18 personnel. The relatively small size of the U.S. MLM and its Soviet counterpart was primarily the result of vocal opposition from U.S. counterintelligence agencies to the prospect of Soviet operatives roaming freely in the U.S. sector of Germany.

In addition to the staff size, the only other difference between the U.S. agreement with the Soviets and that of the French and British was the provision which included a clause excluding “political representatives.” This exclusion was unique to the U.S./Soviet agreement and reflected that U.S. military leadership did not want to be influenced by the State Department, which at the time was taking a very hardline approach to diplomacy with the Soviets. By ensuring that the agreement applied only to military matters, any requirements for U.S. Senate ratification were successfully avoided. The U.S. Constitution requires that all treaties be ratified by the U.S. Senate, but since the Huebner–Malinin Agreement was enacted under the provisions of the previously ratified Agreement on Control Machinery in Germany, it was viewed as having the standing of a legally binding international treaty/agreement.

There were 17 specific provisions (“regulations”) in the Huebner–Malinin Agreement which established a relatively flexible framework for the MLMs. The agreement specified that the mission would be accredited to the respective U.S. and Soviet CINCs, with their primary tasks being to maintain liaison between both CINCs and their staffs. It will never be known what the actual crafters of the agreement intended, but there was one pivotal provision of the agreement that enabled the MLMs to operate as they did for the following 43 years. This open-ended provision specified that “each member of the missions would be given identical travel facilities to include identical permanent passes in Russian and English languages permitting complete freedom of travel wherever and whenever it will be desired over territory and roads in both zones, except places of disposition of military units, without escort or supervision.”

From the point of the Huebner–Malinin Agreement through the duration of the Cold War, military members of the competing alliances were stationed within each other’s sectors, with significant freedom of movement. The MLMs exercised a quasi-diplomatic status that was assumed by the two field commanders in that they negotiated directly on issues of concern between the two headquarters, first as occupiers of the two zones of occupation and subsequently as guarantors of the two Germanys. Almost immediately, however, the emphasis was narrowly focused on relations between the occupying armies, with broader diplomatic issues being handled in traditional diplomatic channels. As a result, what should have been a coordinated effort by the victorious Allies to first control and then revive a unified Germany, turned into an East/West contest of wills over what the geopolitical map of Europe would become in the postwar years.

The original intent and need for the MLMs based on the Agreement on Control Machinery in Germany was to foster communication and cooperation. The MLMs were initially intended to be established for purely liaison purposes—to provide a face-to-face communications channel between the U.S., British, and French leadership and their GSFG counterparts. However, the wording in the Huebner–Malinin Agreement (and British and French agreements) citing “except places of disposition of military units” demonstrated an adversarial and non-transparent relationship from the beginning. Due to the nearly immediate mistrust and lack of understanding regarding the other’s military intentions, liaison and cooperation rapidly became a much lower priority than the compelling need to anticipate each other’s military intentions. The inadequacy of intelligence on both sides engendered a mutual paranoia about the risk of surprise attack which increased the probabilities of war as a result of misunderstanding. The scenario most feared by Cold War policymakers was the outbreak of a major superpower conflict in Germany, and tensions regarding this central issue remained consistently high through the ensuing 43 years of the standoff. From the outset, the U.S. and the Soviets realized that the MLMs provided unparalleled access, and the most direct and accurate information regarding combat force dispositions in the opposing zones.

By the fall of 1947, the focal point of the East/West conflict was Germany, with particular interest on the struggle for control of Berlin. With the closing of Czechoslovakia by the Communist coup in February 1948, the “Iron Curtain” was dropping into place, and the Soviet and Allied MLMs were focused less on liaison and nation-building, and more on East/West competition. The complete breakdown of East/West cooperation and joint administration in Germany was marked by the imposition of the Berlin Blockade—the Soviet attempt to limit the ability of the Allies to travel to their sectors of Berlin, from June 1948 to May 1949. To demonstrate unity in the face of Soviet belligerence, the Allies merged their three Western zones to form the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in May 1949. The Soviets followed suit in October 1949 with the establishment of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). By this time, the East/West divide was formalized. The FRG was commonly referred to as West Germany and the GDR as East Germany.

In 1949, the Allied occupying powers turned over sovereignty to West Germany for the area comprising the three sectors of the Allied forces. Later that year, the West German government signed its constitution, referred to as the “Basic Law.” The law was explicit in the West German intent to ultimately reunify the separated parts of Germany—which was a reference to East Germany—under “Germany as a whole.” The law expressed that West Germany was constitutionally bound to pursue reunification with peoples living outside the territory under the control of West Germany. To achieve the objective of the Basic Law, the West German leadership understood that although the occupying forces were a wartime punishment and a national humiliation, their maintaining some semblance of a postwar reconstruction effort was the best possible path to the reunification of Germany. This meant that as long as the occupying forces remained in the Germanys, the international community, or at least the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), would view the two Germanys as “Germany as a whole” with the objective that they would one day be reunified. Although many of the articles agreed to in the Agreement on Control Machinery in Germany were no longer in practice among the Allies and Soviets by 1949, the West Germans believed that as long as the Article 2 provision for MLMs remained in practice, the spirit of the agreement would remain intact and that reunification would remain the ultimate objective of all concerned.

Whereas the Allies allowed West Germany to develop based on open and democratic principles, East Germany developed a government and security system that was among the most controlling and repressive ever. In February 1950, the East Germans established the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS)—the State Security Service commonly known as the Stasi. The Stasi was one of, if not the most, effective and oppressive intelligence and secret police agencies ever.

Shortly after the U.S. and Soviet MLMs were established, GSFG consolidated its headquarters (HQ) in Wunsdorf, East Germany, which was 30 miles from Potsdam. In 1952, USEUCOM transferred all of its responsibilities to U.S. Army Europe (USAREUR) in Heidelberg, over 50 miles from Frankfurt. So, by 1952, neither of the MLMs was collocated with the HQ they were accredited to and intended to be direct liaison channels to.

After East Germany was recognized as a sovereign country in 1955, both the West and East German governments recognized that there was only a fragile legal standing for the MLMs under international law, and both regularly repeated this contention. Although the two Germanys played a vital role for their respective occupiers, the absence of a peace treaty ending World War II limited their sovereignty in respect to the occupying forces. East Germany was most adamant that with the cessation of major parts of the Potsdam Declaration, and the formation of two German states, that the basis for the existence of the Allied missions on their territories had been voided. The West Germans generally held the same position, but were more tolerant of the MLMs for pragmatic purposes; in addition to their Basic Law reunification aspirations, West Germany, as a member of NATO, recognized that the MLMs did, at a practical level, serve a purpose in preventing its country from once again becoming the largest battleground in the history of the world, or worse yet, a nuclear wasteland.

Alternatively, as West and East Germany steadily grew more ideologically divergent, the East Germans realized that if reunification were to eventually occur on their terms, it would only happen with the strong support of the Soviets. Therefore, while the reunification of Germany was viewed by the Allies and their West German host as an ultimate objective, the Soviets and East Germans were content with the widening schism, and continually took actions to increase the divide. The only issue, however, that the Soviets and their most loyal Soviet Bloc partner did not see eye to eye on was the MLMs. East Germany’s political leaders, and by extension its police forces, denied the legitimacy of the Allied MLMs, so the GSFG forces stationed throughout the country continually had to work with the East Germans to ensure compliance with the Huebner–Malinin Agreement. Against their strongest desires, East Germany acquiesced to its Communist Bloc master by allowing the missions to operate.

Despite the fact that the missions were obviously viewed as a penalty for wartime wrongs and antagonized their respective German allies, the U.S. and Soviets denied attempts by the East and West German governments to force the MLMs to deal directly with the local German authorities. As a testament to the enduring value of the MLMs to the postwar powers, the MLMs were always given priority over relations with their German proxies. Although the MLMs continued to operate in accordance with the agreements signed when they were still allies, the Soviet Union and the Western Allies had significantly divergent objectives for the former German territories.

The Evolution of Military Liaison Mission Cooperative Norms

The Huebner–Malinin Agreement included a provision stating the agreement could be changed or amplified by mutual consent to cover new subjects if the sides agreed it was necessary. The agreement was never modified from its original form, but there were a number of governing protocols that were mutually agreed to and followed although not officially documented. One protocol that was not delineated in the accord but agreed to by both sides was that MLM personnel would wear uniforms anytime outside the MLM compound. Another was that MLM vehicles would have distinctive license plates to make them readily distinguishable. Although these rules served a counterintelligence purpose, they also served to ensure that the hosting German governments and their citizens recognized and respected the MLMs’ special status. Also, by mutual agreement, the U.S. and Soviet Union accredited ten vehicle passes in each other’s sector of operation.

With the exception of a few agreed-upon but undocumented side accords, the MLMs established some ground rules, largely through trial and error, that were accepted by both sides within the broad guidelines of the Huebner–Malinin Agreement. Within the first five years of MLM operations, the sides established standards of operations—“cooperative norms”—that were practiced throughout the duration of the MLMs’ existence. Corresponding “competitive norms” among the MLMs and their respective hosts evolved along differing trajectories based on how the cooperative norms were complied with and enforced.

The cooperative norms which developed over time were characterized by the MLMs’ operational practices. These were mutually agreed-upon practices and were considered norms because both sides practiced these without objection, when remaining within certain boundaries. The gray areas residing within the relatively vague provisions of the Huebner–Malinin Agreement facilitated the establishment of cooperative and competitive norms which basically represented the “rules of the game.” Within the context of the Huebner–Malinin Agreement, which was open to some interpretation, the U.S. and Soviet MLMs effectively established cooperative norms that enabled the MLMs to endure the entirety of the Cold War. The liaison function among the MLMs developed into a standard process, but it was the additional norms that put the day-to-day competition into motion. Both sides played by “unwritten rules of the game.”

SMLM-F license plate. (Author)

A treaty is a formal written agreement entered into by actors in international law, usually sovereign states and international organizations, that is binding under international law. The Huebner–Malinin Agreement had the standing as a treaty between the U.S. and Soviet Union, and was therefore binding under international law. When two countries enter into a treaty, all actions taken under the provisions of the treaty are legitimized if they are allowed to continue without becoming cause to break the treaty. Therefore, all of the “unwritten rules of the game” become legitimized through precedent and repetition, if allowed to continue under the provisions of the treaty.

The key provision ...