East German Foreign Intelligence, 1945–89

Abstract

Even before the Revolution of 1989 East German intelligence had achieved international notoriety because of the operations of its foreign wing, the Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung (Main Department Reconnaissance) or the HVA, as it was usually referred to for short. This organization, rather than the rank and file of the MfS received the bulk of Western media coverage of the Stasi. This was ironic since the HVA had only 4,000 officers in comparison with 100,000 MfS regulars occupied on internal duties, whose number was not at that time suspected. Yet after the Wende a great deal was written on the Stasi as an agency of internal repression, but very little on the HVA’s work outside West Germany. East German foreign intelligence has remained legendary.