The GDR in the Warsaw Pact
The history of East German armed forces between 1945 and 1989 is comparatively well researched. Over the course of time, the armed forces of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) included about 400,000 people: The NVA (Nationale Volksarmee/National People’s Army), border guard units (Grenztruppen), armed regiments of the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit/Ministry for State Security), armed workers’ militias (Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse), militarily organized units assigned with civil defense tasks, and a large uniformed police force (Volkspolizei/People’s Police). Of these, only the NVA was incorporated in the Warsaw Pact and consisted of army, air force/air defense (Luftstreitkräfte/Luftverteidigung), and the People’s Navy (Volksmarine). At its peak in 1987, the three NVA services had about 156,000 men under arms altogether. Between 1956 and 1990, about 2.5 million male GDR citizens performed army duty.[1]
The archival laws of the reunified Germany have made a broad range of sources available.[2] The praiseworthy efforts by the Defense Ministry’s Research Institute for Military History (MGFA) in Potsdam have resulted in many encyclopedic works[3] and monographs.[4] Some former high-ranking GDR officers and military historians have provided their own and sometimes peculiar perspectives.[5] Yet our knowledge so far extends mostly to earlier periods of East German history[6] and to domestic rather than to international contexts.[7] The history of the Soviet forces on East German territory between 1945 and 1994 is still under-researched due to lack of access to Soviet sources and the secrecy in which the “Group of the Soviet Forces in Germany” (GSSD) shrouded itself during the Cold War.[8]
The Soviet Union, East Germany and Armed Forces 1945–1956
From the German surrender in May 1945 until well into the mid-1950s, Moscow’s inconsistent policy towards “Germany as a whole” determined the history of the Soviet-occupied part (“Sowjetische Besetzte Zone”, Soviet Occupied Zone; SBZ) of the former “German Reich”. Following the Allied agreements at the Potsdam Conference of July and August 1945, the SBZ represented the largest occupation zone in Germany and consisted of a territory that was contingent with the Soviet sector in the East of the divided city of Berlin. As it was entitled to do under allied agreements, the USSR took from the SBZ economic reparations for German destruction during World War II and pursued extensive uranium mining in the southeast of its zone for the nascent Soviet nuclear program.[9]
After the launch of a currency reform in the Western zones of Germany and in West Berlin, the Soviet Union blockaded land and water access to Berlin between June 1948 and May 1949. The Western allies responded by establishing an airlift to support their besieged Western sectors. As early as 24 March 1948, the USSR had departed from the last joint meeting of the quadripartite Allied Control Council for Germany in Berlin for good. In fact, Germany was now divided into a Western and an Eastern state, and the former capital city was separated into Eastern and Western halves. Subsequently, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was founded in the West on 23 May 1949, and the GDR followed suit on 7 October 1949.
The SBZ became the GDR with the Eastern part of Berlin as its seat of government and later capital. Between 1945 and 1949, the Soviet Union exercised immediate rule over the East German territory through a “Soviet Military Administration in Germany” (SMAD).[10] From its proclamation in 1949 until 1955, the GDR was under limited sovereignty and subject to supervision by a “Soviet Control Commission” (SKK) under a High Commissioner residing in East Berlin.
Soviet policy on Germany under Stalin’s absolute rule was at times fleeting and inconsistent since 1945. This became particularly apparent after the death of the “Vozhd” in March 1953. For a while, Stalin’s successors disagreed on whether to maintain a separate East German Communist state at all. During his lifetime, Stalin had neither loosened his control over the GDR nor had he abandoned his aspirations for a Socialist, or at least neutral, united Germany. He sincerely believed that the GDR would exert a positive attraction for the FRG as the ultimately superior German model. Undoubtedly, the SBZ/GDR was a special case in Communist Central and Eastern Europe between 1945 and 1955. In contrast to “People’s Democracies” emerging elsewhere, the GDR featured a mix of elements of dictatorial party rule. Forced “construction of Socialism” was viewed as inopportune during most of the period between 1945 and 1955.
When it was eventually propagated, it ended in disaster. Following West Germany’s signature of the treaties for a later abandoned European Defense Community (EVG), in May 1952 Stalin suddenly instructed the GDR leadership to begin with “planned construction of Socialism”. A party conference of the Communist SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands/Socialist Unity Party of Germany) imposed a variety of measures in July 1952 that resembled the elements of “Stalinization” implemented in Central and Eastern Europe during the years before.
In summer 1952, Stalin also decreed the build-up of East German armed forces under the guise of a police force. He unrealistically assumed a size of no less than 300,000 men. Since 1947, the SBZ had featured a permanent police force armed by the Soviet Union. Whereas those units were still mostly assigned with policing, from 1952 on, a nascent East German army based on Soviet templates was created for the contingency of war in Europe. Garrisoned and barely concealing its actual purpose, the KVP (Kasernierte Volkspolizei/“Garrisoned People’s Police”) developed within four years into an army of 100,000 men organized along the three traditional military services. Formally under command of GDR Interior Ministry Willi Stoph, it was in fact a Soviet-trained and equipped auxiliary force to the GSSD.
Repressive measures implemented on the “road to Socialism” since summer 1952 had led to massive emigration of East Germans through the open borders in Berlin. To terminate this flow, Stalin’s successors in June 1953 summoned the SED leadership to Moscow and imposed a “New Course”. They instructed them to conduct a more flexible and softened approach towards “bourgeois forces”. In the Soviet leadership, these views were championed mainly by KGB Chief Lavrentiy Beria and Prime Minister Georgy Malenkov, placing the GDR’s future somewhat in limbo.
However, those Soviet instructions came too late. Popular discontent in the GDR loomed so large that, during the perceived Moscow power vacuum after Stalin’s death, a massive rebellion against the SED erupted between 16 and 18 June 1953 all over the GDR. It started in the factories and spilled over into the streets, with symbols of Communist power being attacked and destroyed.[11] The SED leadership in Berlin fled into Soviet military headquarters and asked the Red Army to move into the cities to crush the rebellion. Faced by Soviet tanks and arms, the uprising swiftly broke down. About 60 people were killed, and up to 6,000 were arrested in the weeks to come.
The Soviet military crackdown not only saved the GDR and preserved the power of SED leader Walter Ulbricht. This commitment also chained the Soviet Union to “its Germany”. Beria lost his power and life in Moscow, and Malenkov’s political career was over. When the allied Foreign Minister’s Conference on Germany’s future ended in January and February 1954 in Berlin without tangible results, the Soviet Union granted the GDR formal sovereignty on 24 March 1954. In October 1954, the FRG ratified the “Paris Treaties” that resulted in its integration into the “Western European Union” (WEU) and NATO with its own armed forces as of May 1955.
In the same month, the GDR participated in the formation of the Eastern military alliance in Warsaw. After the last quadripartite allied attempt at achieving a consensus on “Germany as a whole” broke down at the Geneva Summit in July 1955, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev for the first time raised the “two-state-theory” on his way back to Moscow during a stop in East Berlin. On 20 September 1955, the USSR and the GDR signed a “Treaty on Sovereignty” and dissolved the Soviet High Commissioner’s Office in Berlin. Soviet forces were to remain stationed in East Germany on a permanent basis at strengths varying over the years between 500,000 and 350,000 men. No other European state had as much foreign military forces on its territory in proportion to its size and population as the GDR.
The GDR in the Warsaw Pact, 1956–1961
On 18 January 1956, the GDR parliament established the NVA as a volunteer army and created political oversight through a Ministry of National Defense (MfNV/Ministerium für Nationale Verteidigung). The SED politburo and its leader retained control and responsibility via the instrument of a National Defense Council (NVR/Nationaler Verteidigungsrat).[12] KVP units, converted into NVA forces, grew into an army of about 100,000 men over the course of 1956. The NVA was the only Warsaw Pact army without a “Generalstab” (General Staff); the institutional structure in question had to be called “Hauptstab” (Main Staff). In 1958, the NVA was integrated into the United Forces of the Warsaw Pact and scheduled to fight under the command of the USSR, i.e. the GSSD, in wartime. Soviet forces enjoyed free rein on GDR territory and exploited it for military purposes as they wished – for instance, for a brief deployment of short-range nuclear missiles during 1959.[13] During the late 1950s, the Cold War between FRG and GDR peaked, with West Germany’s Defense Minister Franz-Josef Strauss aspiring to turn the FRG into a nuclear-armed power and East Germany feeling besieged by alleged West German attack plans of dubious authenticity.[14]
Like the other Warsaw Pact armies, the NVA had to sign a “protocol” with the Unified Forces on a regular basis. It contained short-term agreements on the development of armed forces, arms trade, defense production, and contingency preparations. The first protocol dated from 1957. Subsequent agreements were initially issued annually, then from 1960 onwards for two, later for three, and ultimately from 1970 on for five years.[15] “Protocol” negotiations were always held bilaterally and became an increasingly tough enterprise, determined by hard financial bargaining; yet the negotiations between Soviet Union and GDR were a comparatively easy exercise.[16]
Former GDR Interior Minister Willi Stoph served as the first minister of national defense between 1956 and 1960. He was followed by Heinz Hoffmann, who was to serve in this capacity until his death in 1985. From its inception, the NVA became an army where professional officers were also expected to be SED cadres. Political officers charged with instruction of the troops on ideological, military, and global affairs formed an essential part of NVA daily routine (Politische Hauptverwaltung/Political Main Administration). By definition, the East German army served “the Party and the people” (“Parteiarmee”), and almost every active officer was a member of the SED.[17] NVA structures took on a repressive and vindictive character against those in uniform who dared to dissent on matters deemed “political”.[18] Recruitment problems to create a class-based “workers’ and peasants’ army”[19] and the selective individual use of a few former Nazi Wehrmacht officers were also features of early NVA history.[20] Eventually, those problems were superseded by the introduction of compulsory military service in 1962.
In November 1958, Soviet leader Khrushchev demanded a revision of the Potsdam Agreement and announced his intention to transfer control over the access routes to West Berlin to the GDR. He proposed a de-militarization of Berlin within six months and to turn it into a “free city” and “autonomous political unit”. In case of non-compliance with his ultimatum, he indicated the prospect of a unilateral transfer of Soviet rights in Berlin to the GDR. After the Western powers rejected the ultimatum, Khrushchev eventually gave in temporarily. Tensions and the “Berlin crisis” continued, however, since the GDR now descended into a crisis.
After purging intra-party opponents, SED leader Walter Ulbricht had launched the second attempt after 1952/53 to “build Socialism” in the GDR by late 1957. A tightening of political screws in several fields, in particular the collectivization of agriculture in 1959 and 1960, resulted in increasing emigration of experts and specialists to West Germany through the open borders in Berlin. Ulbricht ultimately realized the extent to which the economic viability, if not the very existence of the GDR depended on closed borders to the West. Accordingly, he pressured the Soviet Union to sign a separate peace treaty with the GDR and to hand over full control over access to West Berlin.[21] After a contentious meeting with US President John F. Kennedy in Vienna in June 1961, Khrushchev threatened again to undertake unilateral moves. However, in late July, the USSR only approved the closure of Berlin borders. In early August 1961, the members of the Warsaw Pact gave green light to the GDR to build barriers, fences, and other devices around the Western sectors of Berlin. Beginning on 13 August 1961, East German paramilitary units and construction workers sealed the borders completely. Special armed border guard units took up positions. From now on, attempts to escape from the GDR could easily turn deadly.[22] Tensions around Berlin simmered until October 1961, with both superpowers dangerously close to the nuclear trigger and the Soviet Union deluded in wishful thinking.[23] Ultimately, however, John F. Kennedy’s spontaneous private dictum prevailed in practice: “A wall is the hell of a lot better than a war.”[24]
The GDR and its International Relations, 1961–1989
Only the construction of the wall with its tight closure of loopholes for emigration and the deadly enforcement of shoot-to-kill-orders gave the GDR’s civilian and military leaders enough confidence to turn the NVA from a volunteer into a conscript army. West Germany had already undertaken such a step in 1956. The East German draft went into effect on 24 January 1962 and required all young males to serve a minimum tour of duty of 18 months. By 1963, the NVA reached its maximum strength of about 150,000 men in all three services combined. This figure remained constant with variations until 1989. Between 1961 and 1973, border guard units were under formal NVA command before being designated as an autonomous service (in order not to count for negotiations on Mutual Balanced Forced Reductions/MBFR during the 1970s and 1980s). Soviet GSSD forces, on the other hand, were relieved by the mid-1960s from involvement in contingency planning to quell popular revolts in the GDR (labeled “counter-revolutionary actions” in official terminology).[25]
The NVA’s mandatory military oath created concerns with the still comparatively strong Christian churches in East Germany and gave rise to a small, but visible number of conscientious objectors willing to serve prison terms instead of military service. As a concession, and in an attempt to draw the churches closer to the Socialist system, Walter Ulbricht staged a public meeting with the Protestant Bishop of Thuringia, “Red” Moritz Mitzenheim, in October 1964. On this occasion, they jointly announced the introduction of unarmed but uniformed and garrisoned construction units within the military, the so-called “Bausoldaten”.[26] Until 1989, between 12,000 and 15,000 young men, many of them with religious backgrounds, seized on this opportunity of unarmed service. Some later suffered educational and professional discrimination due to their decision. The GDR armed forces were the only military in the entire Warsaw Pact that allowed for this limited version of conscientious objection to the draft.
Internationally, after 1961, the GDR fought to be awarded diplomatic recognition as a sovereign state beyond the Socialist camp. This proved to be an arduous task. In 1966, at a Warsaw Pact conference in Bucharest, the new Soviet leadership launched a joint proposal of all its member states to convene a European Security Conference.[27] At that time, the Eastern pact aimed at splitting the transatlantic Western alliance. Not least, it also focused on the goal of formal recognition of all post-1945 European borders, i.e., an international guarantee respecting the GDR and the Soviet sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe.
The “Prague Spring” in Czechoslovakia plunged the Warsaw Pact into a serious internal crisis that ended with a “fraternal military invasion”. GDR forces did not actively participate in the crushing of the “Prague Spring” in August 1968. Except for a liaison team of reconnaissance and transport units in the Warsaw Pact headquarters in Czechoslovakia, no East German troops took part in military action.[28] Two GDR divisions, a motorized rifle division (“MotSchützen”) and a tank division, were deployed and on alert in the southern part of East Germany. However, ultimately they were never requested to intervene. There are strong indications that the GDR’s political and military leaders were keen to have the NVA divisions enter the CSSR, but the Soviet Union refrained from endorsing such a move. One might go so far as to credit the Soviet Union with farsightedness for saving the GDR from a major propaganda disaster that would have been caused by East German tanks in Czech cities, which would inevitably have invited comparisons with the German invasion of 1939.[29]
At a meeting with Soviet Marshals Grechko, Yakubovsky, and Koshevoi on 14 August 1968 at the MfNV in Berlin after their return from an inspection tour of Soviet troops in the south of the GDR, Defense Minister Heinz Hoffmann voiced his disappointment that Grechko had failed to inspect the GDR divisions as well. If given the order to invade the CSSR, their soldiers, Hoffmann said, would ensure that “everything will be over there in 24 hours.” Instead of welcoming this offer, Grechko quipped that 24 hours would amount to “bad planning”. If necessary, the invasion must be like a blitz and completed in just a few hours.[30] Although eventually, no East German invasion occurred, both the Soviet Union and the GDR secretively opted for limited and vague public information. After Minister Hoffmann’s guarded remarks to a committee of GDR parliamentary deputies on 30 August 1968,[31] he became irritated by follow-up questions. The minister refused to reveal the location of NVA units and pointed to secrecy as demanded by the Soviets.[32] GDR leaders continued to maintain public ambiguity, as they did not want to admit to the existence of any inhibitions for reasons related to German history. This stance left room for continuing speculation among contemporaries that lasted well beyond the end of the Cold War.
After the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the USSR felt threatened by the “Chinese menace” in the Far East. The “Budapest Appeal” by the states of the Eastern military alliance to begin talks about a European Security Conference was prepared well in advance of the March 1969 Warsaw Pact meeting[33] in the Hungarian capital. It coincided, however, with fierce border clashes between Soviets and Chinese troops on the Ussuri/Wusuli River. Now Moscow became more receptive to détente in Europe and established contacts with Willy Brandt’s government that had come to power in West Germany in October 1969. Bonn’s new chancellor was willing to recognize the GDR and seek bilateral contacts, but he also envisioned the long-term peaceful reunification of Germany and Europe. The coincidence of Soviet Western policy (Westpolitik) and West German Eastern policy (Ostpolitik) created a dynamic situation during the first half of the 1970s[34] that caught the GDR initially by surprise. Its leaders had no choice but to work as closely as possible with the Soviet leadership in order not to allow West Germany to drive a wedge between Moscow and East Berlin.
On 19 March and 21 May 1970, Willy Brandt met with GDR Prime Minister Willi Stoph to negotiate German-German “normalization”. However, a “detour” of three other agreements was required before the FRG and GDR were ready to come to a formal rapprochement. Bonn signed treaties with the USSR and Poland in August and December 1970 and helped to facilitate a quadripartite Allied agreement on the status of Berlin in September 1971. West Berlin was not recognized as “constitutive part” of the FRG, but its access routes and ties to West Germany, as well as its diplomatic representation by Bonn, were guaranteed. One of the former Cold War hotspots had been defused. In the course of these processes and due his increasing authoritarian idiosyncrasies, SED General Secretary Walter Ulbricht was forced to resign by a majority in the Politburo with Brezhnev’s assistance. He was replaced in June 1971 by Erich Honecker and became an “unperson” until his death in 1973. Like Brezhnev, Honecker expected Brandt’s Ostpolitik to bring about the ratification of the status quo in Europe and thought the GDR could deal with increasing contacts across the border through intensified ideological and propagandistic delimitation.
After narrowly surviving a vote of no confidence in the Bonn Bundestag, Brandt’s government achieved ratification of the “Eastern Treaties” in May of 1972 and easily won re-election in November that year. The GDR and the FRG concluded their negotiations, and on 21 December 1972, the “Basic Treaty” on relations between the two German states was signed. It asserted the goal of “normal good-neighborly mutual relations on the basis of equality”. Despite ups and downs and temporary crises, both states intensified their bilateral ties over the years and concluded further agreements on practical matters like trade and traffic routes. Between December 1972 and 1978, a total of 123 states worldwide recognized the GDR diplomatically. On 18 September 1973, both the GDR and the FRG were admitted to the United Nations. Now the GDR increasingly defined itself as a “Socialist nation” in contrast to the “imperialist” nation of the FRG. In a demonstrative fashion, Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev signed a mutual friendship and cooperation treaty for the next 25 years on 7 October 1974 at the 25th Anniversary of the GDR. After the consultation period in Dipoli and Helsinki and extended negotiations in Geneva, the GDR on 1 August 1975 became one of the proudest signatories of the Helsinki Final Act capping the “Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe” (CSCE).[35]
Following the border closure of 1961, both the East German civilian and military intelligence services had developed a high degree of professionalism, in particular in the sector of Human Intelligence (Humint). The foreign intelligence branch of the Stasi (Staatssicherheit), the HVA (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung) under General Markus Wolf, achieved deep penetration of Western institutions, including NATO Headquarters in Brussels, the West German Ministry of Defense in Bonn, and the FRG intelligence services. The secretive GDR military intelligence (“Bereich Aufklärung”) with over 1,000 employees and specialists was hardly known in the West, but provided the military and civilian leadership in Berlin with hard-hitting and first-rate military analyses. The Stasi secretly controlled the latter and its sources without sharing its own. Both intelligence services had excellent agents in the FRG’s military institutions and defense industry.[36]
During the 1970s, and increasingly in the 1980s, the NVA achieved new standards of mobilization times and combat readiness (Gefechtsbereitschaft) to counter the increasing technological advance of NATO forces. NATO’s submarine-based missiles were seen as its most potent weapon and the hardest to defend against. Ultimately, 85 per cent of all NVA units were on constant alert and trained to depart within 25 to 30 minutes from their bases to designated areas about five to seven kilometers apart. Mobilization of reserves would have been completed within two days. These unprecedented levels of combat readiness were considered the major asset of GDR military deterrence. Needless to say, such preparedness levels placed a huge strain on military professionals and conscripts alike.[37] In case of war, the NVA would have tripled its numbers through reservists and been integrated into the central and southern fronts of the Warsaw Pact under Soviet command. The GDR Navy would have acted in the Baltic Sea under its own command in concert with the Soviet and Polish fleets. According to planning and strategic doctrine until 1987, GDR forces were to respond to Western attacks by advancing into West Germany and the Benelux countries by land and invading Denmark by sea. Special NVA forces, in conjunction with border and police units, were assigned to take over West Berlin and deal with the American, British, and French contingents stationed in the city.
The Polish crisis of 1980/81, with the dual rule of Solidarnosc and a battered Communist party, brought the Polish army to the forefront of political affairs like never before. Despite all posturing by Moscow, Berlin, and others, and psychological warfare that nurtured the fear of a Soviet-led military invasion, the Joint Command of the United Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact was clear in its intentions that the crisis had to be resolved by either the Polish party or the Polish army. Relations between the Polish army and the NVA leadership had been close since the 1960s and remained so through the crises of the 1970s and 1980s. GDR military officials who maintained friendly relations with their Polish counterparts admired their standard and qualities and advised against Warsaw Pact action in Poland: Its army would put up a vigorous fight against foreign invaders, completely unlike the Czechoslovak army in 1968.[38] In contrast to the case of the CSSR, this time, the East German military did not push for intervention, but advocated heeding the advice of the Polish army and taking action only in accordance with its requests.
On 20 January 1981, General Florian Siwicki, deputy Polish minister of defense and chief of the Polish army’s General Staff, gave a talk to the top GDR military brass at the MfNV in Berlin. He provided a detailed and frank description of the situation in Poland, where, he stated, “every Polish Communist feels embarrassed” by the situation in his country and has a “red face”. He described the Polish party as “sick” And predicted that “anti-Socialist elements” would “crawl out of their caves like snakes”. Siwicki expected a confrontation in Poland soon and hoped for a non-violent solution. Otherwise, the Polish army would remain united and ready to uphold Socialism. The General Staff would constantly update contingency plans on how to act against “counter-revolutionary” forces.[39] During this period, the GDR military leadership was in close touch with its Soviet counterparts, as illustrated by a June 1981 visit by Marshall Viktor Kulikov, supreme commander of the United Armed Forces of the Warsaw Pact, to Dresden. Anything but free from stereotypes, Kulikov revealed in excruciating detail his deep-seated frustration and disdain for the situation in Poland.[40] Nevertheless, in the end, he and the NVA leadership were relieved to endorse the “internal solution” of the Polish crisis, i.e., the imposition of martial law by the Polish army on 13 December 1981. Although the Soviet leadership had concluded internally not to intervene militarily, the USSR was nonetheless eager to convey other impressions for psychological reasons. It handed the Polish army a justification to act for the “salvation of the fatherland” from external and internal danger.
During the Soviet leadership agony following Leonid Brezhnev’s death on 10 November 1982, with the ailing General Secretaries Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko and a vigorous Reagan administration in Washington, GDR leader Erich Honecker temporarily assumed profile as a “reasonable voice” and “protagonist for disarmament and peace” in the Communist camp. In August of 1984, Soviet leaders took the unprecedented step of reprimanding him for his German-German policy and preventing his planned state visit to West Germany in an unusually blunt manner.[41] Nonetheless, for a period that lasted until new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s first CPSU Congress in February 1986, it was Erich Honecker who filled the leadership vacuum in the Communist bloc. With Gorbachev in power, both German states continued to maintain their bilateral relations. The SED established contacts with the Social Democratic opposition party in the FRG and discussed various proposals for nuclear-free zones and disarmament in the heart of Europe.[42]
In 1987, the GDR’s political and military leadership endorsed the new defensive doctrine of the Warsaw Pact and went along with Soviet disarmament proposals. This strategy shift represented a major watershed through its abandonment of the massive offensive counter-attack scenario that, following the experiences of the “Great Patriotic War” (World War II), had dominated Soviet military doctrine and Warsaw Pact strategy for a long period. GDR experts maintain that a change of doctrine had been discussed in Moscow and East Berlin and been in the making long before Gorbachev. The 1977 Soviet-GDR “Zapad” maneuver and especially the 1980 “Sojuz-80” exercise were considered crucial steps in this process. Gorbachev wholeheartedly endorsed the defense strategy, but was said to have neither inspired nor developed it. For the GDR with its frontline position in case of conflict, this came as a tangible relief and entailed compelling prospects that destruction could be minimized. Overall, it enhanced the Warsaw Pact’s political credibility, but was hard to swallow for those who had always considered the Socialist camp as being in the offensive and who harbored those dreams through wishful thinking in military docitrine.[43]
Except for the field of armament issues, the GDR leadership developed an increasingly critical attitude towards Gorbachev’s policies and ideas. It feared for the cohesion of the Socialist camp and for the stability in its own country. Together with Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria, the GDR openly criticized developments in the USSR, Hungary, and Poland. For Erich Honecker, who in September 1987 officially visited the FRG and believed he had cemented the GDR’s statehood forever, the shifts in Soviet policy proved especially bitter. However, neither the political nor the military leadership of the GDR foresaw in early 1989 what would happen in the fall of that year. They were convinced that “their people” would not revolt and that existing dissident groups would remain under control. In January 1989, Erich Honecker declared that the Berlin Wall would have to remain for another 100 years if the conditions that had led to its construction in 1961 continued.
However, when reformed Hungary opened its borders to the West, scores of GDR citizens streamed into that country in the summer of 1989 to force their way from there to West Germany. After the SED leadership had imposed a visa requirement for visits to Hungary, the same scenario occurred with still visa-free Czechoslovakia. With the GDR politburo closing the borders to that country on 4 October 1989 as well, the steaming pot boiled over. With no country left where GDR citizens could travel without visa, massive and peaceful street demonstrations broke out first in Dresden, then in Leipzig, Berlin, and other cities. On 18 October 1989, Erich Honecker was removed from all his posts and replaced by Egon Krenz. The latter’s unpopularity surpassed that of his predecessors, as many people remembered the vocal support Krenz had offered for the Chinese crackdown on Tiananmen Square in June of the same year. After further emigration waves into West Germany via the re-opened borders with Czechoslovakia, GDR leaders inadvertently opened on 9 November 1989 the borders in Berlin and between the two German states through an error of communication. This measure proved irreversible and sealed the fate of the GDR in relatively short time. With open borders and a newly free press, the SED gradually lost its power, which now shifted to a round table of all political forces. By as early as 1 February 1990, all political movements in the GDR, including the reconstructed SED, advocated reunification with the FRG. In free elections on 6 March 1990, those parties emerged victorious that promised fastest unification. The impending economic collapse of the GDR resulted in the formation of a united Germany by 3 October 1990, much earlier than even optimists had envisioned.
The events of fall 1989 had taken the NVA leadership by complete surprise and left it mostly stunned. During demonstrations, GDR troops mostly remained in their barracks, except for smaller assignments to secure buildings (and an early, and soon retracted, action during demonstrations in Dresden in the first week of October). Defense Minister Heinz Keßler was ambivalent on the idea of an NVA role, but was overruled by Politburo members and his deputy Fritz Streletz. The latter claims to have achieved, with Honecker’s consent, that the East German Army and the GSSD stayed in their barracks and did not leave them for exercises during autumn 1989.[44] Heinz Keßler was forced to resign in November 1989 and replaced by the People’s Navy highest-ranking officer, Admiral Theodor Hoffmann. The latter served for less than a year as GDR Minister of National Defense and then as chief of the NVA. Strikes in garrisons, reforms, and major cadre upheaval changed the former “party’s army” considerably in 1990. For the brief period between March and October 1990, the Ministry of National Defense was renamed into “Ministry for Disarmament and Defense” with the former dissident and Protestant pastor Rainer Eppelmann at its helm.[45]
On 12 September 1990, the four Allied powers, i.e., the victors of World War II, signed the “2+4-Treaty” with the two German states in Moscow. It granted full sovereignty to a united Germany and acknowledged its right to become a member of NATO. Mikhail Gorbachev had made those essential concessions in his bilateral talks with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl of July 1990.[46] The FRG and the Soviet Union signed an agreement on the complete withdrawal of the GSSD from East Germany and Berlin by August 1994. In turn and after much negotiation, for its military withdrawal, the nearly bankrupt Soviet Union received financial and material compensation from the Bonn government and credits from major West German banks to the amount of DM15 billion (about US$8 billion at the time). These decisions led to the subsequent removal of the NVA from the Warsaw Pact on 24 September 1990 and its dissolution and incorporation into the West German army one day before German unification on 3 October 1990.[47] With few exceptions, the entire NVA officer corps either resigned or was dismissed. The GDR became the only former Warsaw Pact state in Eastern and Central Europe that disappeared from history.
Rise and Fall of a Symbiosis: The NVA and the Soviet Union
Between 1969 and 1989, the GDR had constantly provided two generals and 20 officers to the Staff of the Unified Forces of the Warsaw Pact. Unlike countries such as Poland or Romania, the GDR was resigned to the dominance of the Soviets in this staff, which never became a truly collaborative endeavor.[48] NVA representatives adapted to such a degree that they rated the Unified Forces as a secondary matter and focused on the Soviet General Staff, where the real decisions were made. Contacts with the GSSD in the GDR and numerous personal ties were quite helpful in this regard. Over 13,000 NVA officers studied in the Soviet Union until 1989. Each NVA division commander and army chief of staff was a graduate of the USSR general staff academy in Moscow. No other Warsaw Pact army had this ratio, not even the Soviet army itself. Later, the Soviet Union even sent some of its own officers to study at the GDR Military Academy in Dresden.[49]
During the entire period of the Cold War, the GDR and the Soviet Union, as well as their respective armies, had shared a close symbiotic relationship that was at times ambivalent, but also lopsided and unequal. When the NVA finally thought it had become indispensable to the Soviet Union as its perennial junior partner, it suddenly became irrelevant to Moscow’s leaders when political winds changed. There had been internal arguments between the two armies before, but 1989/90 represented a deep shock to stunned NVA leaders, in terms what happened both in the GDR and in Moscow.
The East German political and military leaders had never come to terms with the arrangement from the 1950s of an army without a General Staff (Generalstab) but a Main Staff instead (Hauptstab). With international recognition in the 1970s, the GDR expected to be treated like the other national Warsaw Pact armies and to be granted a Generalstab. Even the Soviet Union had imported this traditional German term into Russian language as a designation for its own army’s General Staff. Twice the GDR leadership approached the USSR in this respect, and twice it was rebuffed with the Soviet argument that the West German army also lacked a Generalstab.[50] After all, in the exes of the Soviets, the NVA was still a “German” army and, due to its nationality, regarded as being different from other Warsaw Pact armies. After the experiences of World War II, the connotations of a “German Army” still struck a special chord with Russian generals.[51] The NVA was unable to change these Soviet opinions, but did not find them convincing either.
The question of how to deal with direct confrontations between East and West German troops in case of military conflict was present in both GDR and Soviet thinking. East German military officials considered this scenario as something to be avoided at almost all costs. They prevailed with this position over their skeptical and surprised Soviet counterparts. However, their agreement came at a price: In addition to the enormous logistical support that the GDR had to provide to the GSSD in war times, NVA forces were designated to confront three US army corps instead of the more lightweight FRG divisions, as well as the Western Allied forces in West Berlin. On the other hand, in this way, the NVA reduced its degree of subordination under Soviet command in wartime. Only one NVA tank division in the north as well as the East German navy and air force would have become involved in direct confrontation with FRG forces. Otherwise, the GSSD was designated as the prime opponent for West Germany’s armies.
In this way, the NVA became a bridgehead for the GSSD. The reverse also applied: Both armies formed the closest military symbiosis of the entire Warsaw Pact. The NVA benefited from the best Soviet-made technological equipment and was essentially always a “coalition army” (Koalitionsarmee).[52] The GSSD comprised the best-equipped and trained forces of the Red Army. Some of their commanders viewed NVA leaders as purely subordinate and made no effort to conceal this assessment, while others displayed a more cooperative attitude. Overall, the Soviet forces in the GDR wrapped themselves in secrecy and treated their East German natural environment harshly (in a way that cannot be described to those who have not seen it with their own eyes after GSSD facilities became accessible in 1990). Except for higher-ranking officers, Soviet soldiers were not allowed to leave their garrisons, visit places in East Germany, or interact with GDR citizens. This was due to Soviet fears of giving away military secrets, but also to avoid potential desertions of conscripts.[53]
There were constant bilateral problems, but GDR representatives had to address GSSD commanders in one-way communication from the position of a supplicant, bringing up issues and attempting to resolve them in commissions.[54] During a meeting with GSSD commander General Zaitsev on 19 January 1981, for instance, Defense Minister Hoffmann reviewed military cooperation and suggested that the main GSSD airport (Gross-Dölln) be moved and a new one be built because of unbearable conditions. Further, he complained about illicit hunting by Soviet officers in the SED politburo “Schorfheide” hunting ground, and he discussed traffic accidents caused by Soviet forces. In 1980 alone, about 15,000 GSSD vehicles moved on GDR streets daily, which caused accidents that killed 49 East German citizens and 37 Soviet soldiers altogether.[55] Zaitsev, who was the GSSD commander between 1980 and 1985, was also said to have confused East Germany with Belarus from time to time, for instance sending out his forces to log in GDR forests for many kilometers of lengths to “clear” them for military use.[56]
A constant source of disagreement, if not tension, between the Soviet and GDR military leadership was the extent to which the GDR was to develop a substantial defense industry of its own and provide relief to the economically overextended Soviet Union. Much research remains to be done as to why the build-up of a substantial GDR defense industry beyond vehicles, guns, ammunitions, and minor technology failed to materialize.[57] Soviet military leaders, especially Defense Minister Marshal Ustinov, who had known the German arms industry from the time before 21 June 1941, when Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR had shared a brief alliance, repeatedly expected the GDR to build upon the “German tradition” of “heavy” aircraft, tank, and ship construction. Ustinov frequently admonished Erich Honecker and NVA leaders. The latter usually retorted by referring to high GDR expenditures for GSSD forces, their barracks and residences, and to the unique GDR costs for maintaining border units of 45,000 men.[58]
One example of these discussions was the visit by a high-ranking GDR military delegation to the USSR in June 1979 for an inspection of modern arms technology. The delegates met with Marshal Ustinov, who during the Brezhnev agony was almost in an “armament fever”. In light of the US challenge, “our missiles and our tanks must be superior”, he stated. In this context, he expected significant increases in GDR arms production between 1981 and 1985. Defense Minister Hoffmann pointed to all kinds of East German shortcomings in terms of energy, raw material, and technology to explain that the Soviet proposals were very difficult to realize.[59] This is according to a written account of the meeting, but an East German participant remembers it more dramatic. Dimitri Ustinov implored Heinz Hoffmann, pointing out the Soviet production overstretch, that the GDR had to be capable of producing “at least one” major weapons system: It was not sufficient for East Germany to simply engage in manufacturing “automatic rifles”. But Hoffmann responded that the GDR was not in a position to do more: When East German citizens looked into the stores, they were simultaneously aware of what was on offer in West German stores. This gap must not widen: “Please understand this mission of the GDR!”[60]
Ustinov and other Soviet leaders never wanted to “understand”. The Soviet Union noted with relief that Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and even Hungary had developed nascent defense industries. The GDR’s refusal to build up significant arms production capabilities was received with disbelief.[61] To simplify it, the GDR was expected to produce both butter and guns instead of butter only. Much to the Soviets’ chagrin, GDR leaders held their ground and stuck with butter. They made the argument that East Germany and East Berlin were the designated “showcase” of the Socialist camp on the Western front: It had to compete with the strong West German economy and therefore invest in consumer goods rather than military production to keep the East German population content.[62] As a consequence, the NVA became highly dependent on Soviet military hardware supplies and suffered from its increasing deficiencies during the 1980s. During the same decade, the GDR also lagged behind in its designated small arms production and deliveries.
In essence, the GDR always enjoyed a much higher standard of living than the Soviet Union. Moscow’s representatives enjoyed shopping in East Germany during official visits, but also voiced the bitter resentments of a victor surpassed by the defeated. The phrase “Remind me please – who won World War II?” gained notoriety whenever USSR and GDR had internal disputes.[63] Defiance of the Soviet Union over questions related to the defense industry did not serve the GDR well. The matter came to the fore when the USSR refocused its foreign policy toward a more self-serving “USSR first” and Western-oriented attitude during the Gorbachev years. Other major and minor factors added to the picture of Soviet discontent, like East Germany’s special relationship with West Germany and increasing indebtedness, Honecker’s defiance in seeking early rapprochement with China against Soviet advice, or perceived GDR arrogance over the alleged Soviet “need” for perestroika and the absence of such a need in “perfect” East Germany. After Poland and Hungary broke out of the Socialist camp in 1988 and were basically gone by mid-1989, Gorbachev’s Soviet Union followed its previous instincts and implicitly pulled out the rug from underneath the GDR. It remained passive in the wake of the massive popular revolt and unification drive in East Germany in 1989/90. Without the Soviet rug, the GDR could not remain standing, and fell over like a domino.
Bernd Schaefer, Woodrow Wilson International Center, Washington, D.C
Notes
[1] Cf. Heiner Bröckermann, “German Democratic Republic, Armed Forces”, in The Encyclopedia of the Cold War: A Political, Social, and Military History, Volume II, ed. Spencer C. Tucker (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2008), p. 504f. See also my own entries on former GDR Defense Ministers Heinz Hoffmann (1960-1985) and Heinz Keßler (1985–1989) at pp. 579 and 712f.
[2] See finding aids for Warsaw Pact records in the German Military Archive in Freiburg at: http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=15705.
[3] Genosse General! Die Militärelite der DDR in biografischen Skizzen, eds. Hans Ehlert/Armin Wagner (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2003); Die Generale und Admirale der NVA: Ein biographisches Handbuch, eds. Klaus Froh/Rüdiger Wenzke (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2000); Im Dienste der Partei: Handbuch der bewaffneten Organe der DDR, eds. Torsten Diedrich/Hans Ehlert/Rüdiger Wenzke (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1998).
[4] See in particular: Heiner Bröckermann/Torsten Diedrich/Winfried Heinemann/Matthias Rogg/Rüdiger Wenzke, “Die Zukunft der DDR-Militärgeschichte: Gedanken zu Stand und Perspektiven der Forschung”, Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 66 (2007), No. 1, pp. 71–99. For an earlier survey: Militär, Staat und Gesellschaft in der DDR: Forschungsfelder, Ergebnisse, Perspektiven, eds. Hans Ehlert/Matthias Rogg (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2004).
[5] Im Gleichschritt? Zur Geschichte der NVA, eds. Walther Jablonsky/Wolfgang Wünsche (Berlin: edition ost, 2001); Rührt Euch! Zur Geschichte der Nationalen Volksarmee, ed. Wolfgang Wünsche (Berlin: edition ost, 1998). See autobiographies by the two last GDR Ministers of National Defense: Theodor Hoffmann, Kommando Ostsee: Vom Matrosen zum Admiral (Berlin: Mittler, 1995); Heinz Keßler, Zur Sache und zur Person: Erinnerungen (Berlin: edition ost, 1997).
[6] Torsten Diedrich/Rüdiger Wenzke, Die getarnte Armee: Geschichte der Kasernierten Volkspolizei der DDR 1952–1956 (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2001); Volksarmee schaffen – ohne Geschrei! Studien zu den Anfängen einer “verdeckten Aufrüstung” in der SBZ/DDR, 1947–1952, ed. Bruno Thoß (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1994).
[7] See an overview of Warsaw Pact history based on sources: A Cardboard Castle? An Inside History of the Warsaw Pact, 1955–1991, eds. Vojtech Mastny/Malcolm Byrne (New York/Budapest: Central European University Press, 2005). Based on publications: Frank Umbach. Das rote Bündnis: Entwicklung und Zerfall des Warschauer Paktes 1955-1991 (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2005).
[8] See a rather popular account: Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk/StefanWolle, Roter Stern über Deutschland: Sowjetische Truppen in der DDR (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2001).
[9] Rainer Karlsch, Uran für Moskau: Die Wismut – eine populäre Geschichte (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2007).
[10] Norman Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1969 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
[11] Uprising in East Germany 1953: The Cold War, the German Question, and the first Major Upheaval behind the Iron Curtain, eds. Christian Ostermann/Malcolm Byrne (New York/Budapest: Central European University Press, 2001).
[12] Armin Wagner, Walter Ulbricht und die geheime Sicherheitspolitik der SED: Der Nationale Verteidigungsrat der DDR und seine Vorgeschichte, 1953–1971 (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2002).
[13] Matthias Uhl, Stalins V-2: Der Technologietransfer der deutschen Fernlenkwaffentechnik in die UdSSR und der Aufbau der sowjetischen Raketenindustrie 1945–1959 (Bonn: Bernard & Graefe, 2001).
[14] See for instance: http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=20927&navinfo=15697.
[15] Torsten Diedrich, “The GDR at the Interface of Two Blocs: The Impact of the Warsaw Pact”, Conference Paper “The Warsaw Pact: From its Founding to its Collapse, 1955–1991”, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington D.C., 26 and 27 May 2005.
[16] PHP Archive, Unpublished Interview with Admiral Theodor Hoffmann, Berlin, 24 October 2002.
[17] Frank Hagemann, Parteiherrschaft in der NVA: Zur Rolle der SED bei der inneren Entwicklung der DDR-Streitkräfte, 1956–1971 (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2002); Daniel Giese, Die SED und ihre Armee: Die NVA zwischen Politisierung und Professionalismus 1956–1965 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2002).
[18] Staatsfeinde in Uniform? Widerständiges Verhalten und politische Verfolgung in der NVA, ed. Rüdiger Wenzke (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2005).
[19] Stephan Fingerle, Waffen in Arbeiterhand? Die Rekrutierung des Offizierskorps der Nationalen Volksarmee und ihrer Vorläufer (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2001).
[20] Daniel Niemetz, Das feldgraue Erbe: Die Wehrmachtseinflüsse im Militär der SBZ/DDR (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2006).
[21] Hope Harrison, Driving the Soviets up the Wall: Soviet-East German Relations, 1953–1961 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); Ulbricht, Chruschtschow und die Mauer: eine Dokumentation, eds. Matthias Uhl/Armin Wagner (Munich: Oldenbourg 2003).
[22] Roman Grafe, Die Grenze durch Deutschland: Eine Chronik von 1945 bis 1990 (Berlin: Siedler, 2002).
[23] See documents about the Warsaw Pact “Buria” exercise: A Cardboard Castle?, Mastny/Byrne eds., p. 131–6 and and in Uhl's PHP collection, The 1961 Berlin Crisis and Soviet Preparations for War in Europe [http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=16161].
[24] Michael Beschloss, The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchen, 1960–1963 (New York: Burlingame Books, 1991).
[25] PHP Archive, unpublished interview with General Fritz Streletz, Strausberg, 27 January 2003.
[26] Pazifisten in Uniform: Die Bausoldaten im Spannungsfeld der SED-Politik 1964–1989, ed. Thomas Widera (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck, 2004).
[27] See records of the Warsaw Pact's PCC meeting at http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=17123&navinfo=14465.
[28] Rüdiger Wenzke, Die NVA und der Prager Frühling 1968: Die Rolle Ulbrichts und der DDR-Streitkräfte bei der Niederschlagung der tschechoslowakischen Reformbewegung (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1995). See a letter by GDR Deputy Defense Minister Heinz Kessler to Erich Honecker from 31 August 1968: http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=21086&navinfo=15697.
[29] Private Archive BS, unpublished author’s interview with Major General Hans-Werner Deim in Washington on 28 May 2005.
[30] Die Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatsicherheitsdienstes (BStU), Zentralarchiv (ZA), Archivierter Inoffizieller Mitarbeiter (AIM) 17164/81, Part II - vol. 1, p. 138–41.
[31] See Heinz Hoffmann’s prepared written statement at: http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=21088&navinfo=15697.
[32] BStU, ZA, AIM 17164/81, Part II - volume 1, p. 145f.
[33] http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=17125&navinfo=14465.
[34] Ostpolitik and the World, 1969–1974, Carole Fink/Bernd Schaefer eds. (New York/London: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
[35] At the Roots of the European Security System: The Early CSCE Process Revisited, 1965–75, eds. Andreas Wenger/Vojtech Mastny/Christian Nuenlist (London: Routledge, 2008).
[36] See the respective collections on the PHP website, which also cite further literature on the subject: http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=15296 and http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=15703.
[37] Private Archive BS, unpublished author’s interview with Major General Hans-Werner Deim in Washington on 28 May 2005. PHP Archive, unpublished interview with Admiral Theodor Hoffmann, Berlin, 24 October 2002.
[38] PHP Archive, unpublished interview with General Fritz Streletz, Strausberg, 27 January 2003.
[39] BStU, ZA, AIM 17164/81, part II - volume 2, p. 74–8. See also a 7 March 2000 interview with General Florian Siwicki in Polish at: http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=20670&navinfo=15708
[40] BStU, ZA, AIM 17164/81, Part II-Volume 2, p. 79–88. See the full document at: http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=21293&navinfo=1569.
[41] See the transcript of the meeting between CPSU General Secretary Konstantin Chernenko and SED General Secretary Erich Honecker on 17 August 1984 in Moscow:
http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=21284&navinfo=1569.
[42] See a related East German memorandum from 23 May 1986: http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=21273&navinfo=15697.
[43] Private Archive BS, unpublished author’s interview with Major General Hans-Werner Deim in Washington on 28 May 2005. PHP Archive, Unpublished Interview with General Fritz Streletz, Strausberg, 27 January 2003.
[44] PHP Archive, unpublished interview with General Fritz Streletz, Strausberg, 27 January 2003.
[45] On sources for the Eppelmann period, see the German Military Archives' Finding Aids "Minister for Disarmament and Defense" and a sample document at http://www.php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?lng=en&id=17100&navinfo=15705
[46] Hanns Jürgen Kuesters, “The Kohl-Gorbachev Meetings in Moscow and in the Caucasus, 1990”, Cold War History, January 2002, pp. 195–235.
[47] Dale Herspring, Requiem for an Army: The Demise of the East Germany Army (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998); Armee ohne Zukunft: Das Ende der NVA und die deutsche Einheit, ed. Hans Ehlert (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2002). See memoirs by the last GDR Minister of Defense: Theodor Hoffmann, Das letzte Kommando: Ein Minister erinnert sich (Berlin: Mittler, 1993).
[48] PHP Archive, unpublished interview with Admiral Theodor Hoffmann, Berlin, 24 October 2002.
[49] PHP Archive, unpublished interview with General Fritz Streletz, Strausberg, 27 January 2003.
[50] PHP Archive, unpublished interview with General Fritz Streletz, Strausberg, 27 January 2003.
[51] PHP Archive, unpublished interview with General Fritz Streletz, Strausberg, 27 January 2003.
[52] Private Archive BS, unpublished author’s interview with Major General Hans-Werner Deim in Washington on 28 May 2005. PHP Archive, unpublished interview with General Fritz Streletz, Strausberg, 27 January 2003.
[53] These fears were not without merit. See: Matthias Uhl/Armin Wagner, BND contra Sowjetarmee: Westdeutsche Militärspionage in der DDR (Berlin: Ch. Links, 2007).
[54] PHP Archive, unpublished interview with General Fritz Streletz, Strausberg, 27 January 2003.
[55] BStU, ZA, AIM 17164/81, part II - vol. 2, pp. 69–73.
[56] PHP Archive, unpublished interview with General Fritz Streletz, Strausberg, 27 January 2003.
[57] Heiner Bröckermann/Torsten Diedrich/Winfried Heinemann/Matthias Rogg/Rüdiger Wenzke, “Die Zukunft der DDR-Militärgeschichte: Gedanken zu Stand und Perspektiven der Forschung”, Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 66 (2007), no. 1, p. 89. See also: Torsten Diedrich, “The GDR at the Interface of Two Blocs: The Impact of the Warsaw Pact”, Conference Paper “The Warsaw Pact: From its Founding to its Collapse, 1955–1991”, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington D.C., 26 and 27 May 2005.
[58] PHP Archive, Unpublished Interview with General Fritz Streletz, Strausberg, 27 January 2003. Private Archive BS, unpublished author’s interview with Major General Hans-Werner Deim in Washington on 28 May 2005.
[59] BStU, ZA, AIM 17164/81, part II - volume 2, pp. 59–64.
[60] Private Archive BS, unpublished author’s interview with Major General Hans-Werner Deim in Washington on 28 May 2005.
[61] Private Archive BS, unpublished author’s interview with Major General Hans-Werner Deim in Washington on 28 May 2005.
[62] PHP Archive, unpublished interview with General Fritz Streletz, Strausberg, 27 January 2003. Private Archive BS, unpublished author’s interview with Major General Hans-Werner Deim in Washington on 28 May 2005.
[63] PHP Archive, unpublished interview with Admiral Theodor Hoffmann, Berlin, 24 October 2002.
