Collection by Germany of reconnaissance against the USSR

To implement the strategic plans for an armed attack on neighboring countries, Hitler told his entourage about them as early as November 5, 1937 - fascist Germany, naturally, needed extensive and reliable information that would reveal all aspects of the life of future victims of aggression, and especially information on the basis of which it would be to draw a conclusion about their defense potential. By supplying government bodies and the high command of the Wehrmacht with such information, the "total espionage" services actively contributed to the preparation of the country for war. Intelligence information was obtained in different ways, using a variety of methods and means.

The Second World War, unleashed by Nazi Germany on September 1, 1939, began with the invasion of German troops into Poland. But Hitler considered the defeat of the Soviet Union, the conquest of a new "living space" in the East up to the Urals, to the achievement of which all state bodies of the country, and primarily the Wehrmacht and intelligence, were oriented. The Soviet-German non-aggression treaty signed on August 23, 1939, as well as the Friendship and Border Treaty concluded on September 28 of the same year, were supposed to serve as camouflage. Moreover, the opportunities opened up as a result of this were used to increase activity in the intelligence work against the USSR that was carried out throughout the entire pre-war period. Hitler constantly demanded from Canaris and Heydrich new information about the measures taken by the Soviet authorities to organize a rebuff to armed aggression.

As already noted, in the first years after the establishment of the fascist dictatorship in Germany, the Soviet Union was viewed primarily as a political enemy. Therefore, everything that related to him was within the competence of the security service. But this arrangement did not last long. Soon, in accordance with the criminal plans of the Nazi elite and the German military command, all the services of "total espionage" were involved in a secret war against the world's first country of socialism. Speaking about the direction of the espionage and sabotage activities of Nazi Germany at that time, Schellenberg wrote in his memoirs: “The decisive and decisive actions of all secret services against Russia were considered the primary and most important task.”

The intensity of these actions increased markedly from the autumn of 1939, especially after the victory over France, when the Abwehr and SD were able to release their significant forces occupied in this region and use them in the eastern direction. The secret services, as is clear from archival documents, were then given a specific task: to clarify and supplement the available information about the economic and political situation of the Soviet Union, to ensure the regular flow of information about its defense capability and future theaters of military operations. They were also instructed to develop a detailed plan for organizing sabotage and terrorist actions on the territory of the USSR, timed to coincide with the time of the first offensive operations of the Nazi troops. In addition, they were called upon, as has already been said in detail, to guarantee the secrecy of the invasion and to launch a wide campaign of misinformation of world public opinion. This was how the program of actions of Hitler's intelligence against the USSR was determined, in which the leading place, for obvious reasons, was given to espionage.

Archival materials and other quite reliable sources contain a lot of evidence that an intense secret war against the Soviet Union began long before June 1941.

Zally Headquarters

By the time of the attack on the USSR, the activity of the Abwehr - this leader among the Nazi secret services in the field of espionage and sabotage - had reached its climax. In June 1941, the "Zalli Headquarters" was created, designed to provide leadership in all types of espionage and sabotage directed against the Soviet Union. The Valley Headquarters directly coordinated the actions of teams and groups assigned to army groups for reconnaissance and sabotage operations. It was then located near Warsaw, in the town of Sulejuwek, and was led by an experienced scout Schmalschleger.

Here is some evidence of how events unfolded.

One of the prominent employees of German military intelligence, Stolze, during interrogation on December 25, 1945, testified that the head of the Abwehr II, Colonel Lahousen, having informed him in April 1941 of the date of the German attack on the USSR, demanded to urgently study all the materials at the disposal of the Abwehr regarding Soviet Union. It was necessary to find out the possibility of inflicting a powerful blow on the most important Soviet military-industrial facilities in order to completely or partially disable them. At the same time, a top-secret division was created within the framework of the Abwehr II, headed by Stolze. For reasons of secrecy, it had the running name "Group A". His duties included the planning and preparation of large-scale sabotage operations. They were undertaken, as Lahousen emphasized, in the hope that they would be able to disorganize the rear of the Red Army, sow panic among the local population, and thereby facilitate the advance of the Nazi troops.

Lahousen acquainted Stolze with the order of the headquarters of the operational leadership, signed by Field Marshal Keitel, which outlined in general terms the directive of the Wehrmacht Supreme High Command to deploy sabotage activities on Soviet territory after the start of the Barbarossa plan. The Abwehr was supposed to start carrying out actions aimed at inciting national hatred between the peoples of the USSR, to which the Nazi elite attached particular importance. Guided by the directive of the supreme command, Stolze conspired with the leaders of the Ukrainian nationalists Melnik and Bendera that they would immediately begin organizing in Ukraine the actions of nationalist elements hostile to Soviet power, timing them to coincide with the moment of the invasion of the Nazi troops. At the same time, the Abwehr II began to send its agents from among the Ukrainian nationalists to the territory of Ukraine, some of whom had the task of compiling or clarifying lists of local party and Soviet assets to be destroyed. Subversive actions involving nationalists of all stripes were also carried out in other regions of the USSR.

Actions of ABWER against the USSR

Abwehr II, according to Stolze's testimony, formed and armed "special detachments" for operations (in violation of international rules of warfare) in the Soviet Baltic states, tested back in the initial period of World War II. One of these detachments, whose soldiers and officers were dressed in Soviet military uniforms, had the task of seizing the railway tunnel and bridges near Vilnius. Until May 1941, 75 intelligence groups of the Abwehr and SD were neutralized on the territory of Lithuania, which, as documented, launched active espionage and sabotage activities here on the eve of the attack of fascist Germany on the USSR.

How great was the attention of the high command of the Wehrmacht to the deployment of sabotage operations in the rear of the Soviet troops, shows the fact that the "special detachments" and "special teams" of the Abwehr were in all army groups and armies concentrated on the eastern borders of Germany.

According to Stolze's testimony, the Abwehr branches in Koenigsberg, Warsaw and Krakow had a directive from Canaris in connection with the preparation of an attack on the USSR to intensify espionage and sabotage activities to the maximum. The task was to provide the Supreme High Command of the Wehrmacht with detailed and most accurate data on the system of targets on the territory of the USSR, primarily on roads and railways, bridges, power plants and other objects, the destruction of which could lead to a serious disorganization of the Soviet rear and in in the end would have paralyzed his forces and broken the resistance of the Red Army. The Abwehr was supposed to stretch its tentacles to the most important communications, military-industrial facilities, as well as large administrative and political centers of the USSR - in any case, it was planned.

Summing up some of the work carried out by the Abwehr by the time the German invasion of the USSR began, Canaris wrote in a memorandum that numerous groups of agents from the indigenous population, that is, from Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Balts, Finns, etc., were sent to the headquarters of the German armies. n. Each group consisted of 25 (or more) people. These groups were led by German officers. They were supposed to penetrate into the Soviet rear to a depth of 50,300 kilometers behind the front line in order to report by radio the results of their observations, paying special attention to collecting information about Soviet reserves, the state of railways and other roads, as well as about all activities carried out by the enemy. .

In the prewar years, the German embassy in Moscow and the German consulates in Leningrad, Kharkov, Tbilisi, Kyiv, Odessa, Novosibirsk and Vladivostok served as the center for organizing espionage, the main base for the strongholds of Hitler's intelligence. In those years, a large group of career German intelligence officers, the most experienced professionals, representing all parts of the Nazi “total espionage” system, and especially the Abwehr and the SD, worked in the diplomatic field in the USSR in those years. Despite the obstacles put up by the Chekist authorities, they, shamelessly using their diplomatic immunity, developed a high activity here, striving, first of all, as archival materials of those years indicate, to test the defense power of our country.

Erich Köstring

The Abwehr residency in Moscow was headed at that time by General Erich Köstring, who until 1941 was known in German intelligence circles as "the most knowledgeable specialist on the Soviet Union." He was born and lived for some time in Moscow, so he was fluent in Russian and was familiar with the way of life in Russia. During the First World War, he fought against the tsarist army, then in the 1920s he worked in a special center that studied the Red Army. From 1931 to 1933, in the final period of Soviet-German military cooperation, he acted as an observer from the Reichswehr in the USSR. He again ended up in Moscow in October 1935 as a military and aviation attache in Germany and stayed until 1941. He had a wide circle of acquaintances in the Soviet Union, whom he sought to use to obtain information of interest to him.

However, of the many questions that Köstring received from Germany six months after his arrival in Moscow, he was able to answer only a few. In his letter to the head of the intelligence department for the armies of the East, he explained this as follows: “The experience of several months of work here has shown that there can be no question of the possibility of obtaining military intelligence information, even remotely related to the military industry, even on the most harmless issues. . Visits to military units have been suspended. One gets the impression that the Russians are supplying all attachés with a set of false information.” The letter ended with an assurance that he nevertheless hoped that he would be able to draw up "a mosaic picture reflecting the further development and organizational structure of the Red Army."

After the German consulates were closed in 1938, the military attaches of other countries were deprived of the opportunity to attend military parades for two years, and, in addition, restrictions were placed on foreigners establishing contacts with Soviet citizens. Köstring, in his words, was forced to return to using three "meager sources of information": traveling around the territory of the USSR and traveling by car to various regions of the Moscow region, using the open Soviet press, and, finally, exchanging information with military attaches of other countries.

In one of his reports, he draws the following conclusion about the state of affairs in the Red Army: “As a result of the liquidation of the main part of the senior officer corps, who mastered the military art quite well in the process of ten years of practical training and theoretical training, the operational capabilities of the Red Army have decreased. The lack of military order and the lack of experienced commanders will have a negative effect for some time on the training and education of troops. The irresponsibility that is already manifesting itself in military affairs will lead to even more serious negative consequences in the future. The army is deprived of commanders of the highest qualification. Nevertheless, there are no grounds for concluding that the offensive capabilities of the mass of soldiers have declined to such an extent as not to recognize the Red Army as a very important factor in the event of a military conflict.

In a message to Berlin by Lieutenant Colonel Hans Krebs, who replaced the ill Köstring, dated April 22, 1941, it was said: “The Soviet ground forces, of course, have not yet reached the maximum number according to the combat schedule for wartime, determined by us at 200 infantry rifle divisions. This information was recently confirmed by the military attachés of Finland and Japan in a conversation with me.

A few weeks later, Köstring and Krebs made a special trip to Berlin to personally inform Hitler that there were no significant changes for the better in the Red Army.

The employees of the Abwehr and the SD, who used diplomatic and other official cover in the USSR, were tasked, along with strictly oriented information, to collect information on a wide range of military-economic problems. This information had a very specific purpose - it was supposed to enable the strategic planning bodies of the Wehrmacht to get an idea of ​​​​the conditions in which the Nazi troops would have to operate on the territory of the USSR, and in particular during the capture of Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv and other large cities. The coordinates of the objects of future bombardments were clarified. Even then, a network of underground radio stations was being created to transmit the collected information, caches were set up in public and other suitable places where instructions from Nazi intelligence centers and items of sabotage equipment could be stored so that agents sent and located on the territory of the USSR could use them at the right time.

Using trade relations between Germany and the USSR for intelligence

For the purpose of espionage, cadres, secret agents and proxies of the Abwehr and the SD were systematically sent to the Soviet Union, for the penetration of which into our country the intensively developing economic, trade, economic and cultural ties between the USSR and Germany in those years were used. With their help, such important tasks were solved as collecting information about the military and economic potential of the USSR, in particular about the defense industry (capacity, zoning, bottlenecks), about the industry as a whole, its individual large centers, energy systems, communication routes, sources of industrial raw materials, etc. Representatives of business circles were especially active, who often, along with the collection of intelligence information, carried out instructions to establish communications on Soviet territory with agents whom German intelligence managed to recruit during the period of active functioning of German concerns and firms in our country.

Attaching great importance to the use of legal opportunities in intelligence work against the USSR and in every possible way seeking to expand them, both the Abwehr and the SD, at the same time, proceeded from the fact that the information obtained in this way, in its predominant part, is not capable of serving as a sufficient basis for the development of specific plans, the adoption of correct decisions in the military-political field. And besides, based only on such information, they believed, it is difficult to form a reliable and somewhat complete picture of tomorrow's military enemy, his forces and reserves. To fill the gap, the Abwehr and the SD, as confirmed by many documents, are making attempts to intensify work against our country by illegal means, seeking to acquire secret sources within the country or send secret agents from beyond the cordon, counting on their settling in the USSR. This, in particular, is evidenced by the following fact: the head of the Abwehr intelligence group in the United States, officer G. Rumrich, at the beginning of 1938, had instructions from his center to obtain blank forms of American passports for agents thrown into Russia.

“Can you get at least fifty of them?” Rumrich was asked in a cipher telegram from Berlin. Abwehr was ready to pay a thousand dollars for each blank American passport - they were so necessary.

Long before the start of the war against the USSR, documentary specialists from the secret services of Nazi Germany scrupulously followed all the changes in the procedure for issuing and issuing personal documents of Soviet citizens. They showed an increased interest in clarifying the system for protecting military documents from forgery, trying to establish the procedure for the use of conditional secret signs.

In addition to agents illegally sent to the Soviet Union, the Abwehr and the SD used their official employees, embedded in the commission to determine the line of the German-Soviet border and the resettlement of Germans living in the western regions of Ukraine, Belarus, as well as the Baltic states, to obtain information of interest to them. territory of Germany.

Already at the end of 1939, Hitler's intelligence began to systematically send agents to the USSR from the territory of occupied Poland to conduct military espionage. They were usually professionals. It is known, for example, that one of these agents, who underwent 15 months of training in the Berlin Abwehr school in 1938-1939, managed to illegally enter the USSR three times in 1940. Having made several long one-and-a-half to two-month trips to the regions of the Central Urals, Moscow and the North Caucasus, the agent returned safely to Germany.

Starting around April 1941, the Abwehr shifted mainly to dropping agents in groups led by experienced officers. All of them had the necessary espionage and sabotage equipment, including radio stations for receiving direct radio broadcasts from Berlin. They had to send response messages to a fictitious address in cryptography.

In the Minsk, Leningrad and Kiev directions, the depth of undercover intelligence reached 300-400 kilometers or more. Part of the agents, having reached certain points, had to settle there for some time and immediately begin to carry out the task received. Most of the agents (usually they did not have radio stations) had to return to the intelligence center no later than June 15-18, 1941, so that the information they obtained could be quickly used by the command.

What primarily interested the Abwehr and SD? The tasks for either group of agents, as a rule, differed little and boiled down to finding out the concentration of Soviet troops in the border areas, the deployment of headquarters, formations and units of the Red Army, points and areas where radio stations were located, the presence of ground and underground airfields, the number and types of aircraft based on them, the location of ammunition depots, explosives, fuel.

Some agents sent to the USSR were instructed by the intelligence center to refrain from specific practical actions until the start of the war. The goal is clear - the leaders of the Abwehr hoped in this way to keep their agent cells until the moment when the need for them would be especially great.

Sending German agents to the USSR in 1941

The activity of preparing agents for being sent to the Soviet Union is evidenced by such data, gleaned from the archives of the Abwehr. In mid-May 1941, about 100 people who were destined for deportation to the USSR were trained in the intelligence school of Admiral Kanris' department near Koenigsberg (in the town of Grossmichel).

Who was betting on? They come from the families of Russian emigrants who settled in Berlin after the October Revolution, the sons of former officers of the tsarist army who fought against Soviet Russia, and after the defeat they fled abroad, members of the nationalist organizations of Western Ukraine, the Baltic states, Poland, the Balkan countries, as a rule, who spoke Russian language.

Among the means used by Hitler's intelligence in violation of the generally accepted norms of international law was also aerial espionage, which was put at the service of the latest technical achievements. In the system of the Ministry of the Air Force of Nazi Germany, there was even a special unit - a special-purpose squadron, which, together with the secret service of this department, carried out reconnaissance work against the countries of interest to the Abwehr. During the flights, all structures important for the conduct of the war were photographed: ports, bridges, airfields, military facilities, industrial enterprises, etc. Thus, the Wehrmacht military cartographic service received in advance from the Abwehr the information necessary to compile good maps. Everything related to these flights was kept in the strictest confidence, and only the direct executors and those from a very limited circle of employees of the Abwehr I air group, whose duties included processing and analyzing data obtained through aerial reconnaissance, knew about them. Aerial photography materials were presented in the form of photographs, as a rule, to Canaris himself, in rare cases - to one of his deputies, and then transferred to the destination. It is known that the command of the special squadron of the Rovel Air Force, stationed in Staaken, already in 1937 began reconnaissance of the territory of the USSR using Hein-Kel-111 disguised as transport aircraft.

Air reconnaissance of Germany before the start of the war

An idea of ​​the intensity of aerial reconnaissance is given by the following generalized data: from October 1939 to June 22, 1941, German aircraft invaded the airspace of the Soviet Union more than 500 times. Many cases are known when civil aviation aircraft flying along the Berlin-Moscow route on the basis of agreements between Aeroflot and Lufthansa often deliberately strayed off course and ended up over military installations. Two weeks before the start of the war, the Germans also flew around the areas where the Soviet troops were located. Every day they photographed the location of our divisions, corps, armies, pinpointed the location of military radio transmitters that were not camouflaged.

A few months before the attack of fascist Germany on the USSR, aerial photographs of the Soviet territory were carried out at full speed. According to information received by our intelligence through agents from the referent of the German aviation headquarters, German aircraft flew to the Soviet side from airfields in Bucharest, Koenigsberg and Kirkenes (Northern Norway) and photographed from a height of 6 thousand meters. In the period from April 1 to April 19, 1941 alone, German planes violated the state border 43 times, making reconnaissance flights over our territory to a depth of 200 kilometers.

As established by the Nuremberg trials of the main war criminals, the materials obtained with the help of aerial photographic reconnaissance, carried out in 1939, even before the start of the invasion of Nazi troops in Poland, were used as a guide in the subsequent planning of military and sabotage operations against the USSR. Reconnaissance flights, which were carried out first over the territory of Poland, then the Soviet Union (to Chernigov) and the countries of South-Eastern Europe, some time later were transferred to Leningrad, to which, as an object of air espionage, the main attention was riveted. It is known from archival documents that on February 13, 1940, Canaris' report “On new results of aerial reconnaissance against the SSSL received by the Rovel special squadron” was heard from General Jodl at the headquarters of the operational leadership of the Wehrmacht Supreme High Command. Since that time, the scale of air espionage has increased dramatically. His main task was to obtain information necessary for compiling geographical maps of the USSR. At the same time, special attention was paid to naval military bases and other strategically important objects (for example, the Shostka gunpowder plant) and, especially, oil production centers, oil refineries, and oil pipelines. Future objects for bombing were also determined.

An important channel for obtaining espionage information about the USSR and its armed forces was the regular exchange of information with the intelligence agencies of the countries allied to Nazi Germany - Japan, Italy, Finland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. In addition, the Abwehr maintained working contacts with the military intelligence services of the countries neighboring the Soviet Union - Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Schellenberg even set himself the task of developing the secret services of countries friendly to Germany and rallying them into a kind of “intelligence community” that would work for one common center and supply the countries included in it with the necessary information (a goal that was generally achieved after war in NATO in the form of informal cooperation between various secret services under the auspices of the CIA).

Denmark, for example, in whose secret service Schellenberg, with the support of the leadership of the local National Socialist Party, managed to take a leading position and where there was already a good “operational reserve”, was “used as a“ base ”in intelligence work against England and Russia. According to Schellenberg, he managed to infiltrate the Soviet intelligence network. As a result, he writes, after some time a well-established connection with Russia was established, and we began to receive important information of a political nature.

The wider the preparations for the invasion of the USSR, the more vigorously Canaris tried to include his allies and satellites of Nazi Germany in intelligence activities, to put their agents into action. Through the Abwehr, the centers of Nazi military intelligence in the countries of South-Eastern Europe were ordered to intensify their work against the Soviet Union. The Abwehr has long maintained the closest contacts with the intelligence service of Horthy Hungary. According to P. Leverkün, the results of the actions of the Hungarian intelligence service in the Balkans were a valuable addition to the work of the Abwehr. An Abwehr liaison officer was constantly in Budapest, who exchanged information obtained. There was also a representative office of the SD, consisting of six people, headed by Hoettl. Their duty was to maintain contact with the Hungarian secret service and the German national minority, which served as a source of recruiting agents. The representative office had practically unlimited funds in stamps to pay for the services of agents. At first it was focused on solving political problems, but with the outbreak of war, its activities increasingly acquired a military orientation. In January 1940, Canaris set about organizing a powerful Abwehr center in Sofia in order to turn Bulgaria into one of the strongholds of his agent network. Contacts with Romanian intelligence were just as close. With the consent of the chief of Romanian intelligence, Morutsov, and with the assistance of oil firms that were dependent on German capital, Abwehr people were sent to the territory of Romania in the oil regions. The scouts acted under the guise of employees of firms - "mountain masters", and the soldiers of the sabotage regiment "Brandenburg" - local guards. Thus, the Abwehr managed to establish itself in the oil heart of Romania, and from here it began to spread its spy networks further to the east.

The Nazi services of "total espionage" in the struggle against the USSR even in the years preceding the war, had an ally in the face of the intelligence of militaristic Japan, whose ruling circles also made far-reaching plans for our country, the practical implementation of which they associated with the capture of Moscow by the Germans. And although there were never joint military plans between Germany and Japan, each of them pursued its own policy of aggression, sometimes trying to benefit at the expense of the other, nevertheless, both countries were interested in partnership and cooperation between themselves and therefore acted as a united front in the intelligence field . This, in particular, is eloquently evidenced by the activities in those years of the Japanese military attaché in Berlin, General Oshima. It is known that he coordinated the actions of the Japanese intelligence residencies in European countries, where he established fairly close ties in political and business circles and maintained contacts with the leaders of the SD and the Abwehr. Through it, a regular exchange of intelligence data about the USSR was carried out. Oshima kept his ally informed about the concrete measures of Japanese intelligence in relation to our country and, in turn, was aware of the covert operations launched against it by fascist Germany. If necessary, he provided the undercover and other operational capabilities at his disposal and, on a mutual basis, willingly supplied intelligence information. Another key figure in Japanese intelligence in Europe was the Japanese envoy in Stockholm, Onodera.

In the plans of the Abwehr and the SD directed against the Soviet Union, an important place, for obvious reasons, was assigned to its neighboring states - the Baltic States, Finland, Poland.

The Nazis showed particular interest in Estonia, considering it as a purely “neutral” country, the territory of which could serve as a convenient springboard for deploying intelligence operations against the USSR. This was decisively facilitated by the fact that already in the second half of 1935, after a group of pro-fascist officers led by Colonel Maazing, head of the intelligence department of the General Staff, gained the upper hand at the headquarters of the Estonian army, there was a complete reorientation of the country's military command to Nazi Germany . In the spring of 1936, Maasing, and after him the chief of staff of the army, General Reek, willingly accepted the invitation of the leaders of the Wehrmacht to visit Berlin. During their time there, they struck up a business relationship with Canaris and his closest aides. An agreement was reached on mutual information on the intelligence line. The Germans undertook to equip Estonian intelligence with operational and technical means. As it turned out later, it was then that the Abwehr secured the official consent of Reek and Maazing to use the territory of Estonia to work against the USSR. At the disposal of Estonian intelligence were provided photographic equipment for the production of photographs of warships from the lighthouses of the Gulf of Finland, as well as radio interception devices, which were then installed along the entire Soviet-Estonian border. To provide technical assistance, specialists from the decryption department of the Wehrmacht high command were sent to Tallinn.

General Laidoner, commander-in-chief of the Estonian bourgeois army, assessed the results of these negotiations as follows: “We were mainly interested in information about the deployment of Soviet military forces in the region of our border and about the movements taking place there. All this information, insofar as they had it, the Germans willingly communicated to us. As for our intelligence department, it supplied the Germans with all the data we had on the Soviet rear and the internal situation in the SSSL.

General Pickenbrock, one of Canaris's closest aides, during interrogation on February 25, 1946, in particular, testified: “Estonian intelligence maintained very close ties with us. We constantly provided her with financial and technical support. Its activities were directed exclusively against the Soviet Union. The head of intelligence, Colonel Maazing, visited Berlin every year, and our representatives, as necessary, traveled to Estonia themselves. Captain Cellarius often visited there, who was entrusted with the task of monitoring the Red Banner Baltic Fleet, its position and maneuvers. An employee of Estonian intelligence, Captain Pigert, constantly cooperated with him. Before the Soviet troops entered Estonia, we left numerous agents there in advance, with whom we maintained regular contact and through which we received information of interest to us. When Soviet power arose there, our agents intensified their activities and, until the very moment of the occupation of the country, supplied us with the necessary information, thereby contributing to a significant extent to the success of the German troops. For some time, Estonia and Finland were the main sources of intelligence information about the Soviet armed forces.

In April 1939, General Reek was again invited to Germany, which was widely celebrating Hitler's birthday, whose visit, as expected in Berlin, was supposed to deepen interaction between the German and Estonian military intelligence services. With the assistance of the latter, the Abwehr managed to carry out in 1939 and 1940 the transfer of several groups of spies and saboteurs to the USSR. All this time, four radio stations were functioning along the Soviet-Estonian border, intercepting radiograms, and simultaneously monitoring the work of radio stations on the territory of the USSR was carried out from different points. The information obtained in this way was passed on to the Abwehr, from which the Estonian intelligence had no secrets, especially with regard to the Soviet Union.

The Baltic countries in intelligence against the USSR

Abwehr leaders regularly traveled to Estonia once a year to exchange information. The heads of the intelligence services of these countries, in turn, visited Berlin every year. Thus, the exchange of accumulated secret information took place every six months. In addition, special couriers were periodically sent from both sides when it was necessary to urgently deliver the necessary information to the center; sometimes military attachés at the Estonian and German embassies were authorized for this purpose. The information transmitted by Estonian intelligence mainly contained data on the state of the armed forces and the military-industrial potential of the Soviet Union.

The archives of the Abwehr preserved materials about the stay of Canaris and Pikenbrock in Estonia in 1937, 1938 and June 1939. In all cases, these trips were caused by the need to improve the coordination of actions against the USSR and the exchange of intelligence information. Here is what General Laidoner, already mentioned above, writes: “The head of German intelligence, Kanaris, visited Estonia for the first time in 1936. After that, he visited here twice or thrice. I took it personally. Negotiations on intelligence work were conducted with him by the head of the army headquarters and the head of the 2nd department. Then it was established more specifically what information was required for both countries and what we could give each other. The last time Canaris visited Estonia was in June 1939. It was mainly about intelligence activities. I spoke with Canaris in some detail about our position in the event of a clash between Germany and England and between Germany and the USSR. He was interested in the question of how long it would take the Soviet Union to fully mobilize its armed forces and what was the condition of its means of transport (railway, road and road). On this visit, together with Canaris and Pikenbrock, there was the head of the Abwehr III department, Frans Bentivegni, whose trip was connected with checking the work of a group subordinate to him, which carried out extra-cordon counterintelligence activities in Tallinn. In order to avoid the “inept interference” of the Gestapo in the affairs of the counterintelligence of the Abwehr, at the insistence of Canaris, an agreement was reached between him and Heydrich that in all cases when the security police would carry out any activities on Estonian territory, the Abwehr must first be informed . For his part, Heydrich put forward a demand - the SD should have an independent residency in Estonia. Realizing that in the event of an open quarrel with the influential chief of the imperial security service, it would be difficult for the Abwehr to count on Hitler's support, Canaris agreed to "make room" and accepted Heydrich's demand. At the same time, they agreed that all the activities of the SD in the field of recruiting agents in Estonia and transferring them to the Soviet Union would be coordinated with the Abwehr. The Abwehr retained the right to concentrate in their hands and evaluate all intelligence information regarding the Red Army and Navy, which the Nazis received through Estonia, as, indeed, through other Baltic countries and Finland. Canaris strongly objected to the attempts of the SD employees to act together with the Estonian fascists, bypassing the Abwehr and sending unverified information to Berlin, which often came to Hitler through Himmler.

According to Laidoner's report to Estonian President Päts, the last time Canaris was in Tallinn was in the autumn of 1939 under a false name. In this regard, his meeting with Laidoner and Päts was arranged according to all the rules of conspiracy.

In the report of the Schellenberg department, preserved in the archives of the RSHA, it was reported that the operational situation for intelligence work through the SD in the pre-war period in both Estonia and Latvia was similar. At the head of the residency in each of these countries was an official employee of the SD, who was in an illegal position. All the information collected by the residency flowed to him, which he forwarded to the center by mail using cryptography, through couriers on German ships or through embassy channels. The practical activities of the SD intelligence residencies in the Baltic states were assessed positively by Berlin, especially in terms of acquiring sources of information in political circles. The SD was greatly assisted by immigrants from Germany who lived here. But, as noted in the above-mentioned report of the VI Department of the RSHA, “after the entry of the Russians, the operational capabilities of the SD underwent serious changes. The leading figures of the country left the political arena, and maintaining contact with them became more difficult. There was an urgent need to find new channels for transmitting intelligence information to the center. It became impossible to send it on ships, since the ships were carefully searched by the authorities, and the members of the crews who went ashore were constantly monitored. I also had to refuse to send information through the free port of Memel (now Klaipeda, Lithuanian SSR. - Ed.) via overland communication. It was also risky to use sympathetic ink. I had to resolutely take up the laying of new communication channels, as well as the search for fresh sources of information. The SD resident in Estonia, who spoke in official correspondence under the code number 6513, nevertheless managed to make contact with newly recruited agents and use old sources of information. Maintaining regular contact with his agents was a very dangerous business, requiring exceptional caution and dexterity. Resident 6513, however, was able to very quickly understand the situation and, despite all the difficulties, obtain the necessary information. In January 1940, he received a diplomatic passport and began working under the guise of an assistant at the German embassy in Tallinn.

As for Finland, according to the archival materials of the Wehrmacht, a “Military Organization” was actively operating on its territory, conditionally called the “Cellarius Bureau” (after its leader, the German military intelligence officer Cellarius). It was created by the Abwehr with the consent of the Finnish military authorities in mid-1939. Since 1936, Canaris and his closest assistants Pikenbrock and Bentivegni have repeatedly met in Finland and Germany with the head of Finnish intelligence, Colonel Swenson, and then with Colonel Melander, who replaced him. At these meetings, they exchanged intelligence information and worked out plans for joint action against the Soviet Union. The Cellarius Bureau constantly kept in view the Baltic Fleet, the troops of the Leningrad Military District, as well as units stationed in Estonia. His active assistants in Helsinki were Dobrovolsky, a former general of the tsarist army, and former tsarist officers Pushkarev, Alekseev, Sokolov, Batuev, Baltic Germans Meisner, Mansdorf, Estonian bourgeois nationalists Weller, Kurg, Horn, Kristyan and others. On the territory of Finland, Cellarius had a fairly wide network of agents among various segments of the country's population, recruited spies and saboteurs among the Russian White émigrés who had settled there, the nationalists who fled from Estonia, and the Baltic Germans.

Pickenbrock, during interrogation on February 25, 1946, gave detailed testimony about the activities of the Cellarius Bureau, saying that Captain First Rank Cellarius carried out intelligence work against the Soviet Union under the cover of the German embassy in Finland. “We have had close cooperation with Finnish intelligence for a long time, even before I joined the Abwehr in 1936. In order to exchange intelligence data, we systematically received information from the Finns about the deployment and strength of the Red Army.

As follows from Pickenbrock's testimony, he first visited Helsinki with Canaris and Major Stolz, head of the Abwehr department I of the Ost ground forces headquarters, in June 1937. Together with representatives of Finnish intelligence, they compared and exchanged intelligence information about the Soviet Union. At the same time, a questionnaire was handed over to the Finns, which they were to be guided in the future when collecting intelligence information. The Abwehr was primarily interested in the deployment of Red Army units, military industry facilities, especially in the Leningrad region. During this visit, they had business meetings and conversations with the German ambassador to Finland, von Blucher, and the military attaché, Major General Rossing. In June 1938, Canaris and Pickenbrock again visited Finland. On this visit, they were received by the Finnish Minister of War, who expressed satisfaction with the way Canaris's cooperation with the head of Finnish intelligence, Colonel Swenson, was developing. The third time they were in Finland was in June 1939. The head of Finnish intelligence at that time was Melander. The negotiations proceeded within the same framework as the previous ones. Informed in advance by the leaders of the Abwehr about the upcoming attack on the Soviet Union, Finnish military intelligence in early June 1941 put at their disposal the information it had in relation to the Soviet Union. At the same time, with the knowledge of the local authorities, the Abwehr began to carry out Operation Erna, which involved the transfer of Estonian counter-revolutionaries from Finland to the Baltic region as spies, radio agents and saboteurs.

The last time Canaris and Pickenbrock visited Finland was in the winter of 1941/42. Together with them was the chief of counterintelligence (Abwehr III) Bentivegni, who traveled to inspect and provide practical assistance to the "military organization", as well as to resolve issues of cooperation between this organization and Finnish intelligence. Together with Melander, they determined the boundaries of Cellarius' activities: he received the right to independently recruit agents on Finnish territory and transfer them across the front line. After the negotiations, Canaris and Pikenbrock, accompanied by Melander, went to the city of Mikkeli, to the headquarters of Marshal Mannerheim, who expressed a desire to personally meet with the chief of the German Abwehr. They were joined by the head of the German military mission in Finland, General Erfurt.

Cooperation with the intelligence services of the allied and occupied countries in the fight against the USSR undoubtedly brought certain results, but the Nazis expected more from him.

The results of the activities of German intelligence on the eve of the Great Patriotic War

“On the eve of the war, the Abwehr,” writes O. Reile, “was unable to cover the Soviet Union with a well-functioning intelligence network from well-located secret strongholds in other countries - Turkey, Afghanistan, Japan or Finland.” Established in peacetime strongholds in neutral countries - "military organizations" were either disguised as economic firms or included in German missions abroad. When the war began, Germany was cut off from many sources of information, and the importance of "military organizations" greatly increased. Until the middle of 1941, the Abwehr carried out systematic work on the border with the USSR in order to create its own strongholds and plant agents. Along the German-Soviet border, a wide network of technical reconnaissance equipment was deployed, with the help of which interception of radio communications was carried out.

In connection with Hitler's installation on the all-out deployment of the activities of all German secret services against the Soviet Union, the question of coordination became acute, especially after an agreement was concluded between the RSHA and the General Staff of the German Ground Forces to give each army special detachments of the SD, called "Einsatzgruppen" and "Einsatzkommando".

In the first half of June 1941, Heydrich and Canaris convened a meeting of Abwehr officers and commanders of police and SD units (Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommando). In addition to separate special reports, reports were made at it, in general terms, covering the operational plans for the upcoming invasion of the USSR. The ground forces were represented at this meeting by the quartermaster general, who, regarding the technical side of cooperation between the secret services, relied on a draft order worked out in agreement with the chief of the SD. Canaris and Heydrich, in their speeches, touched upon the issues of interaction, "feeling of the elbow" between parts of the security police, the SD and the Abwehr. A few days after this meeting, both of them were received by the Reichsführer SS Himmler to discuss their proposed plan of action to counter Soviet intelligence.

Evidence of the scope that the activities of the "total espionage" services against the USSR on the eve of the war can serve as such generalizing data: only in 1940 and the first quarter of 1941 in the western regions of our country were discovered 66 residencies of Nazi intelligence and neutralized more than 1300 of its agents .

As a result of the activation of the “total espionage” services, the volume of information they collected about the Soviet Union, which required analysis and appropriate processing, constantly increased, and intelligence, as the Nazis wanted, became more and more comprehensive. There was a need to involve relevant research organizations in the process of studying and evaluating intelligence materials. One of these institutes, widely used by intelligence, located in Wanjie, was the largest collection of various Soviet literature, including reference books. The special value of this unique collection was that it contained an extensive selection of specialized literature on all branches of science and economics, published in the original language. The staff, which included well-known scientists from various universities, including immigrants from Russia, was headed by one Sovietologist professor, Georgian by origin. The impersonal secret information obtained by intelligence was transferred to the Institute, which he had to subject to careful study and generalization using the available reference literature, and return to Schellenberg's apparatus with his own expert assessment and comments.

Another research organization that also worked closely with intelligence was the Institute of Geopolitics. He carefully analyzed the collected information and, together with the Abwehr and the Department of Economics and Armaments of the Headquarters of the Wehrmacht High Command, compiled various reviews and reference materials on their basis. The nature of his interests can be judged at least from such documents prepared by him before the attack on the Soviet Union: “Military-geographical data on the European part of Russia”, “Geographical and ethnographic information about Belarus”, “Industry of Soviet Russia”, “Railway transport of the SSSL, "Baltic countries (with city plans)".

In the Reich, in total, there were about 400 research organizations dealing with socio-political, economic, scientific, technical, geographical and other problems of foreign states; all of them, as a rule, were staffed by highly qualified specialists who knew all aspects of the relevant problems, and were subsidized by the state according to a free budget. There was a procedure according to which all requests from Hitler - when he, for example, demanded information on any particular issue - were sent to several different organizations for execution. However, the reports and certificates prepared by them often did not satisfy the Fuhrer due to their academic nature. In response to the task received, the institutions issued "a set of general provisions, perhaps correct, but untimely and not clear enough."

In order to eliminate fragmentation and inconsistency in the work of research organizations, to increase their competence, and most importantly, their return, and also to ensure proper control over the quality of their conclusions and expert assessments based on intelligence materials, Schellenberg would later come to the conclusion that it was necessary to create an autonomous groups of specialists with higher education. Based on the materials placed at their disposal, in particular on the Soviet Union, and with the involvement of relevant research organizations, this group will organize the study of complex problems and, on this basis, develop in-depth recommendations and forecasts for the political and military leadership of the country.

The "Department of Foreign Armies of the East" of the General Staff of the Ground Forces was engaged in similar work. He concentrated materials coming from all intelligence and other sources and periodically compiled "reviews" for the highest military authorities, in which special attention was paid to the strength of the Red Army, the morale of the troops, the level of command personnel, the nature of combat training, etc.

Such is the place of the Nazi secret services as a whole in the military machine of Nazi Germany and the scope of their participation in the preparation of aggression against the USSR, in intelligence support for future offensive operations.

Federal Intelligence Service (BND) of Germany(German. Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND) is the foreign intelligence service of Germany, which is under the control of Offices of the Federal Chancellor of Germany. The headquarters is in Pullach near Munich. In 2010, the construction of a new complex of buildings for this department in the Berlin district of Mitte was completed, it is planned to move the BND to Berlin by 2014). BND has about 300 official branches around the world. The department has about seven thousand professional employees, of which 2,000 are engaged in intelligence gathering abroad. The annual budget (2009) was 460 million euros.

In June 2013, the German magazine "Spiegel" published data that BND and carried out surveillance of their citizens in the interests of the United States with the assistance and direct participation of the NSA.

At the moment of destruction Nazi regime in Germany Reinhard Gehlen(German. Reinhard Gehlen) managed to save their collected and archived materials and documents in the Bavarian mountains. Shortly before the USSR gathered forces to encircle Berlin, Gehlen and a group of General Staff officers were already on their way to the so-called Alpine Fortress. Beyond the Schliersee lake in Upper Bavaria, the trip ends near the Spitzingsee lake. The officers of the "Foreign armies of the East" decide to wait here for the passage of the front line and wait for the arrival of the Americans. Only 12 days after the surrender of the Wehrmacht, on Sunday, May 20, 1945, the US military police team gets to Alma. About a month and a half later, Reinhard Gehlen manages to speak with the head of intelligence in the American zone of occupation, Brigadier General Edwin Siebert.

After the Americans got their first impression of Gehlen's knowledge, they took him by plane in 1945 to Washington, and in 1946 to the Fort Hunt interrogation center in Virginia. In July 1946, Reinhard Gehlen was transported from Virginia back to Germany, and there, near Oberursel, officers of the former department of the "Foreign Armies of the East" were assembled. At the end of the year, an agreement was reached between Gehlen and American military intelligence to accept Reinhard Gehlen and his former employees for service. The details of this agreement are believed to have been as follows:

1. The created German intelligence organization will be engaged in intelligence in the East.
2. The organization will work alongside American staff.
3. The organization will operate under German leadership, which receives assignments from the United States, as long as there is no government in Germany.
4. The organization is funded by the United States. For this, the organization transfers all received intelligence information to the Americans.
5. As soon as a sovereign German government is established, that government must decide whether the work will continue or not.
6. If the organization ever finds itself in a situation where the interests of Germany and the United States diverge, the organization has the right to represent German interests.

Americans paid $3.4 million for 50 employees in the first year. In April 1953, the transfer of the Gehlen Organization to the jurisdiction of the German government began. April 1, 1956 the organization was transformed into German Federal Intelligence Service.

1955-1968

Reinhard Gehlen

Based on the resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of July 11, 1955, April 1, 1956 The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) is founded as the German Foreign Intelligence Service. In December 1956, Reinhard Gehlen was appointed the first president of the BND. AT 1957 Gehlen adopts Saint George as the coat of arms of the organization. AT October 1963 The Cabinet Committee on Secret Information and Security (Kabinettsausschuss für Fragen de geheimen Nachrichtenwesens und Sicherheit) was founded under the leadership of the Federal Minister for Special Assignments, Dr. Heinrich Krone.

1968-1979

AT 1968 Gerhard Wessel becomes receiver Reinhard Gehlen. In December the chapter departments of the federal chancellor issues a decree on "General Working Instructions for the BND". With 1969, despite repeated thoughts of moving headquarters closer to federal government, many investments are being made to expand the headquarters in Pullach. New buildings are under construction for the library, modern office space and technical industries. Kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes at the 20th Olympic Summer Games in Munich in 1972 had a profound effect on the work of the organization. The prevention of the actions of terrorist groups is becoming one of its main directions. AT 1974 for the first time BND employees elect a "Personnel Council". AT 1978 The Federal Act on Parliamentary Control of Intelligence Activities (Gesetz über die parlamentarische Kontrolle nachrichtendienstlicher Tätigkeit des Bundes) comes into force. It regulates the oversight of federal intelligence services through Parliament.

1980-1990

AT 1979 Dr. Klaus Kinkel becomes President of the BND. AT 1981 The organization is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Among those invited to the celebrations were Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and the Prime Minister of Bavaria Franz Josef Strauss. In his speech, the federal chancellor described the BND as "the silent assistant to the federal government."

AT 1982 Eberhard Bloom succeeded Dr. Kinkel as president of the BND.

Heribert Hellenbroich assumed the presidency of 1985 .

A few months later, Dr. Hans-Georg Wieck succeeded him. AT 1986 The BND celebrates its 30th anniversary together with Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl. AT 1988 a new building for the Evaluation and Analysis Departments is being erected in Pullach. This was seen as an investment in a modern data center with global communications systems and 24/7 operation.

1990-2000

AT 1990 Konrad Porzner becomes the seventh president of the BND. The German Bundestag passes the Federal Intelligence Law (Gesetz über den Bundesnachrichtendienst). It governs tasks and powers, with particular attention to data protection requirements. With the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Germany, there is a restructuring in terms of the main areas of activity and organizational structure. Organized crime, arms proliferation and international terrorism have become areas of special interest.

AT 1996 BND ceases to be an anonymous organization under the President Hansjörge Geiger. The place in Pullach becomes officially known as the headquarters of the BND. AT 1997 The BND is holding its first "Open House" for family members of employees who have been admitted to headquarters. Up to this point, such visits were prohibited.

October 28, 1999 For the first time, an international symposium is being held at the BND. Politicians, academics, experts and journalists from all over the world meet to discuss a topic related to foreign and security policy.

2000 - present

AT August 2001, BND establishes independent intelligence unit international terrorism. AT April 2003 Federal Security Government will decide to merge the headquarters in Pullach and various other branches of the BND and move them to a new headquarters in Berlin. AT September 2003, more than a thousand employees moved to a temporary office on the site of the former barracks of the guard battalion in Lichterfeld. An additional position of vice-president for military affairs is being appointed to the employees of the BND department.

AT 2005 Ernst Urlau becomes president of the BND. The location of the new headquarters has been chosen, which will be in close proximity to Federal Chancellor and the German Bundestag at Chausseestraße in Berlin-Mitte. AT May 2006, BND celebrates its 50th anniversary together with Chancellor Angela Merkel. AT 2007 the organization gradually solves the problem of central processing of situations for Federal Ministry of Defense and federal armed forces. AT 2008 The BND is beginning to implement the most significant reforms to its organizational and operational structure in its history. The new structure came into effect on January 1, 2009.

Military counterintelligence service(German. Amt fur den militarischen Abschirmdienst , MAD, the abbreviation is also used in Russian-language literature MAD), until 1984 - - one of the three federal intelligence services of Germany, a division of the Bundeswehrresponsible for military counterintelligence.

MAD is headquartered in Cologne. MAD has 12 territorial divisions throughout Germany and 40 mobile divisions. The organization has approximately 1,300 military and civilian employees and an annual budget of 73 million euros in 2009 (70 million in 2008).

After the formation of the Bundeswehr in 1955, MAD was created in January 1956 as a division of the Bundeswehr and existed until 1984 under the name Amt für Sicherheit der Bundeswehr (ASBw)("Security Service of the Bundeswehr"). In September 1984, it was reorganized, positions for civil servants were introduced into its staffing table. Until 1990, MAD had 28 regional branches. After unification of Germany and absorption by the Bundeswehr National People's Army of the GDR, as well as completing the output parts of the Russian army from the territory of the former GDR in 1994, the total number of the Bundeswehr was reduced and the number of territorial divisions of the MAD was reduced to 12.

Throughout the history of MAD, scandals have repeatedly arisen around her. In particular, at a time when MAD headed Gerd-Helmut Komossa, the service secretly monitored the house of the secretary of the German Foreign Minister Georg Leber, suspected of spying for the GDR, without the knowledge of the minister himself. Leber was informed of the illegal surveillance in early 1978, after which he resigned against the wishes of the then Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. At the same time, G. Leber did not report the fact of surveillance to the Bundestag, and this story received publicity after publication in the Quick magazine on October 26, 1978.

Another MAD-related scandal is the so-called "Kiessling Affair" of 1983, when, as a result of MAD investigations, General Günther Kiessling, Deputy Commander of the Allied Forces of NATO in Europe, was considered "unreliable" on the basis of allegations of homosexuality received from dubious sources. from a NATO security point of view and retired ahead of schedule. Subsequently, G. Kissling was rehabilitated.

In order to improve its image, MAD resorted to publishing comics in the magazine Y, published by the Bundeswehr. The black-and-white 1970s-styled comics called “Good Agents of MAD” describe typical situations from the service (a German soldier is seduced by a Russian spy, MAD employees save a Bundeswehr camp in Afghanistan from Islamist militants, etc.).

In September 2012, another scandal erupted: it turned out that MAD hid from the Bundestag commission materials on surveillance of an active member of the neo-Nazi gang NSU Uwe Mundlos, in connection with which the head of MAD, Ulrich Birkenheier, was summoned to the parliamentary commission to give explanations. In connection with this scandal, there were statements by representatives of the Federal Ministry of Defense that MAD would be transformed as part of the upcoming major reform of the German security forces.

Federal Service for the Protection of the German Constitution(German. Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz listen)) is an internal intelligence service in Germany, subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior. Established in 1950. Controlled by the Parliamentary Control Committee ( Parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium). In 2005, the service had 2,448 employees. The budget in 2005 was 137 million euros. Carries out in Germany counterintelligence activities.

The main task is to monitor organizations that threaten, from the point of view of the authorities, the "free and democratic basic legal order" of Germany. The secret service publishes annual annual reports. The service focuses on ultra-right, including neo-Nazi parties, ultra-left, Islamist and other extremist organizations of foreign citizens, intelligence agencies of foreign states and scientology; the competence of the service also includes protection against sabotage and prevention of access to confidential information.

In October 2007, there were reports that co-chairman of the Left Party, Oscar Lafontaine, may be under secret surveillance by the secret service.

In June 2013, the German magazine "Spiegel" published evidence that the BND and the Federal Service for the Protection of the German Constitution carried out surveillance of their citizens in the interests of the United States with the assistance and direct participation of the NSA. According to Spiegel, the Americans have developed the X-Keyscore program. This program allowed the American side to receive monthly data on five hundred million contacts of German citizens, including correspondence in Internet chats, email as well as phone calls and SMS messages.

The three German secret services are the Federal Intelligence Service of the BND (operating abroad), the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution of the BFF (operating at home) and the Military Counterintelligence Service of the MAD (operating in the Bundeswehr). In addition to them, there are other institutions that partially use reconnaissance means and methods. The police are among them. Intelligence activities, to be effective, must be hidden from the public. But to avoid abuse, the legislature uses wide-ranging control mechanisms.

The commandment of the division of competencies is the achievement of the Germans.

In Germany, there is a precept for the division of competences between the secret services and the police authorities (especially the state security departments of the federal and state police services). In contrast to the German intelligence services, the German police, in order to carry out their tasks, investigate crimes and prevent risks, has the so-called coercive powers. She can arrest a person, search, summon for interrogation, interrogate, identify, search a home, confiscate objects. The German secret services do not have such powers. The commandment of separation prohibits the connection of members of the secret services to the police authorities and does not give them powers of coercion. Unlike the police, which act as a law enforcement agency on the principle of legality, that is, they are obliged to monitor, investigate, disclose and prevent offenses, the German intelligence services operate on the principle of expediency. This means that the intelligence agencies are not required to solve every crime and can have ample room for maneuver in the subsequent transfer of data on important offenses to the police services.

But the trend towards the transformation of the German police into an organization increasingly using the methods of the secret services is already evident. The commandment of separation of competencies is partly eroded by the legalization of intelligence methods for the police and the increased exchange of information between the police and intelligence agencies. The key concept in this case is “preventive fight against crime”, in which the police combine both the disclosure of offenses and protection from possible danger. What is behind this? In the "preventive fight against crime" for the actions of law enforcement agencies, neither the suspicion of a crime, nor the danger to the police is necessary. But with the possible "investigations prior to a possible crime" on this basis, a problem arises: how can one determine in advance for sure whether there is a reason for police intervention or not?

With the expansion of the scope of surveillance, the use of covert investigative techniques by the police also increased. The police today already use quite a large set of tools from the intelligence field. This includes not only undercover detectives, unofficially investigating police officers and agents, but also the use of technical means for eavesdropping and surveillance inside and outside homes, interception of telephone conversations, mobile phones and e-mails, direction finding of electronic transmitters, the use of video surveillance and even requirements for surveillance from the air or from satellites as part of "interagency assistance".

The essence of the separation commandment is now being criticized more and more sharply in Germany in connection with the new dangers to internal security. Germany's European and international partners do not know such a commandment.

Three German secret services

Federal Intelligence Service (BND).

The task of the BND is foreign intelligence abroad. There are two broad areas of activity:

Obtaining political and economic information about foreign states (actors, structures, processes, developments, "know-how") that are of political or economic importance for Germany.

Analysis and evaluation of this received information in order to provide decision makers with the final results with information about the processes taking place abroad.

The BND keeps the government up to date on developments in other countries. Where are the conflicts? How is German export used? Is it being used for possibly "improper purposes"? Is there any reason for concern? Whom are international terrorism, money laundering, illegal trade in arms or drugs aimed at? The answers to these questions are important to policy makers, as the Federal Republic exports its goods all over the world, has many global contacts, and can therefore be vulnerable in the event of conflict or tension.

Eight departments report to the President of the BND, among them:

Department 1 - Operational Intelligence - is engaged in obtaining secret information from "human sources" - that is, from agents (HUMINT). We are talking about the knowledge of informants who have good contacts and access opportunities in the country of interest. In the recruitment of such agents, the foreign representations of the BND - residencies - play an important role. Obtaining information by technical methods rarely gives a voluminous complete picture. With the help of informants, information about crisis processes and dangers, such as ethnic and religious conflicts, instability, social and environmental problems, as well as, for example, new advances in technology, medicine, etc., can be obtained in a timely manner.

Department 2 - Technical intelligence - is engaged in obtaining information using technical means. At the same time, in particular, purposeful filtering of international communication flows is carried out.

Department 3 - Analysis - is both the initial and the final link in the chain of intelligence work. The needs of the Federal Government are transformed here into intelligence missions. Materials obtained openly or secretly in the same department are brought together and analyzed. This creates a situation report that is shared with the Federal Government and other government agencies.

Division 5 - Operational intelligence/analysis of organized crime and international terrorism. This department of the BND is a response to the increased need for information on organized crime and international terrorism. Section 5 works in close international cooperation with other intelligence, security agencies and academic institutions.

Department 6 - Technical Support - provides all departments of the BND with a wide range of technical services. To cope with this task, the department must follow the latest technical developments and innovations around the world, for example, in such areas as "communication technology", "data processing", "telecommunications" or "chemical and physical research". Numerous computer programs for use in the BND, for example, are largely developed by this department and have become part of the intradepartmental programs for research and development of intelligence equipment.

Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BFF)

The BFF is Germany's internal intelligence agency. Its tasks, among other things, include the collection and analysis of information about actions and intentions directed against the constitutional order of Germany. This also includes ensuring the security of federal institutions and preventing activities that threaten the security of the country, including intelligence activities in favor of "foreign powers." These may be, for example, the extremist actions of parties and groups, both German and foreign. In addition, the BFF is trying to expose foreign spies operating in Germany.

A new phenomenon was the expansion of the powers of the BFF to the alleged terrorist associations within the so-called. the second security package, after September 11, 2001. This package included new laws that gave the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) as the federal police and the German secret services additional rights to obtain information to better monitor terrorist groups and repel their possible attacks .

The BFF consists of a central administrative department (Department Z) and six specialized departments:.

Division I Basic Constitutional Protection, Accountability, Data Protection, Surveillance and Intelligence Technology.

Section II Right-wing extremism and terrorism.

Section III Left extremism and terrorism.

Section IV Counterintelligence, protection of state secrets, protection against acts of sabotage.

Section V Threatening security and extremist actions and intentions of foreigners living in Germany, as well as the same aspirations emanating from abroad.

Section VI Islamic extremism / Islamic terrorism.

The BFF uses the full range of reconnaissance means and methods. The areas of supervision correspond to the tasks of the specialized departments. Additionally, the sect of "Scientologists" ("Hubbardists") is also being monitored. The BFF closely cooperates with the departments for the protection of the constitution of the federal states (LFF), since extremists pay little attention to whether the goal of their actions falls within federal or state competence.

Military counterintelligence service (MAD).

MAD is part of the armed forces. This is an internal secret service operating within the Bundeswehr and performing the same tasks that are performed in the civilian sphere by the civilian internal intelligence services (BFF and LFF). It has the same powers and is subject to the same restrictions and controls as they do. Everything that the departments for the protection of the constitution at the federal and state levels are doing is handled by the MAD, but only in the Bundeswehr.

The MAD, among other things, collects information (information, messages and documents) about extremist actions and aspirations that threaten the country's security, as well as intelligence activities in favor of "foreign powers" emanating from the Bundeswehr military personnel and directed against it. It assesses information about extremist and security-threatening aspirations and espionage against the Bundeswehr and reports this to the political and military leadership.

The competence of the MAD in the future, in connection with the use of German troops abroad, will no longer be limited to the territory of Germany. In the future, in certain cases, she will have to act in foreign places of deployment of the Bundeswehr. In mid-September 2003, the federal government passed an amendment to the law, as a result of which the MAD is allowed to collect information abroad in those places "where military units and installations of troops are located." So, there she can now also engage in her intelligence activities. Information tasks also include, for example, checking the safety of the local workforce working in the places of deployment of parts of the Bundeswehr. Outside the Bundeswehr camps, the BND will continue to collect information. But even in this case, the MAD receives extended rights to use and analyze the information collected by the BND. The analysis can also be extended to individuals or groups who may pose a threat to German soldiers stationed in foreign countries.

The MAD obtains its information from open sources, through open investigations and polls, from reports coming from the troops, and also by obtaining information from other security agencies. When countering espionage and extremism, it also uses intelligence means, but does not have an intelligence network in the Bundeswehr.

6 departments are subordinated to the President of the MAD:.

Division of Central Tasks (ZA) general questions of military service and administration.

Department I Central Special Tasks.

Section II Combating extremism.

Section III Counterintelligence.

Section IV Protection of personnel / material protection.

Department V Technical support.

In addition, 14 MAD branches are deployed throughout Germany in the cities of Kiel, Hannover, Wilhelmshaven, Dusseldorf, Munster, Mainz, Koblenz, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Munich, Amberg, Leipzig, Geltow and Rostock.

The three special services, although they are independent institutions, each of them is subordinate to its own government body. The BND reports to the Office of the Federal Chancellor, the BFF - to the Federal Minister of the Interior. In some federal states, the state departments for the protection of the constitution are also departments of the respective state ministries of the interior. BFF and LFF are bodies of the same level. Employees of the Federal Office cannot give instructions to employees of land LFFs, but are required by law to cooperate with them. In principle, regional extremist aspirations are under the supervision of the departments for the protection of the constitution of the respective federal states. If the actions of suspicious organizations are not limited to the territory of one land, the BFF may intervene. The BFF is responsible for counterintelligence. The MAD is subordinate to the Federal Minister of Defense and is part of the central military administration of the Bundeswehr. The Minister of State or the Secretary of State of the Federal Chancellery assumes the responsibility of being in charge of the work of the secret services in order to coordinate it.

In addition to these three services, there are other institutions and authorities in Germany, which, although they are not intelligence services in the narrow sense of the word, nevertheless, partially use intelligence methods. We are talking in particular about the Intelligence Center of the Bundeswehr (CNBv) and the Federal Office for the Security of Information Technology (BSI). (For more on them, see the appendix "A Concise Dictionary of the Secret Services.")

What are the rights of the German secret services?

The collection of information from open and publicly available sources does not require any legal permissions. But where it is necessary to use "reconnaissance means" to obtain information, the situation is different. The tasks and areas of activity of the German secret services are primarily defined and limited by the relevant laws (Law on the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Law on the BND, Law on the MAD). But in principle, they have at their disposal the whole palette of reconnaissance capabilities.

GENERAL RIGHTS.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution may collect, process and use all information necessary for the performance of its tasks, including personal data. It can use methods, means and tools to secretly collect information, including agents (proxys), surveillance, sound and video recording, secret writing, false documents and “camouflage” license plates. Where are these BFF-granted rights subject to restriction? The BFF, for example, is required to correct personal data if it is incorrect and delete it if it is no longer needed. The Länder constitutional protection authorities collect information in accordance with similar laws on Länder constitutional protection authorities, evaluate it and transmit it to the BFF or other Länder authorities, if the latter need it to fulfill their tasks. The BND and MAD also have similar common law powers to obtain intelligence information. In "their" laws there are references to the Law on the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

SPECIAL RIGHTS.

BFF and BND are authorized in isolated cases to demand information from financial and credit institutions, banks, financial enterprises, i.e. information about bank accounts, their owners and other authorized persons in matters of investment and money transfers. Thus, they get the opportunity to assess the financial resources and the danger, for example, of terrorist groups. In addition, knowledge about money transfers can be evidence of the preparation and planning of terrorist attacks.

The BFF has the right to receive from postal services (German Federal Post, UPS, German Parcel, DHL) information about the names and addresses of postal items. Postal services are required to provide such information only if there are strong grounds for suspecting that a crime is being prepared, planned or has already been committed.

Timely collected and comprehensive information on the movement of suspicious persons should enable the BFF to analyze in time the location and movements of international terrorist groups and other persons caught in the BFF's field of observation, identify their places of rest, preparation and planning, as well as possible targets for terrorist attacks. Therefore, the BFF has the right to receive information from airlines about the names and directions of passengers' flights. Additional data obtained from telecommunications and the use of telephone services provide important information about a person's social circle. Who did the suspect call? Data on the connection time and numbers of subscribers allows you to identify participants in terrorist networks and more accurately conduct investigations. Data on calls from mobile phones allows you to establish the location of the caller at a specified time without external surveillance. In addition, the location of the device and the profile of communications from a particular mobile phone provide important information about the nature of the observed person or organization. Therefore, the BFF has the right to demand such data. MAD and BND also have similar rights.

Some of the data on telecommunications connections and services of telephone services that are subject to mandatory reporting, if required, are:

Data on the status of telephone accounts, card numbers, determining the location or called number of the subscriber, or identifying numbers from and to which they called, or the end device.

The date and time of the start and end of the connection.

Data about the client who used the services of telecommunications and telephone services.

End points of permanent connections, date and time of their beginning and end.

To request a phone tap, you need to provide a phone number. But recently, members of terrorist groups are increasingly using mobile phones, the origin of which is unknown to the special services. Therefore, the numbers of such telephones cannot be established even with the help of the owner of the telephone network. But if you know the card number, then, as a rule, it is not difficult to find out the corresponding phone number. Therefore, the BFF received permission in principle to use a device called IMSI-Catcher to find out card and phone numbers and, based on this information, to find out the location of the device. IMSI-Catcher allows you to find out the identification (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) of the included mobile phone in the network coverage area. The IMSI identification is fixed on the SIM card module (Subscriber Identity Module), which the mobile subscriber receives when concluding a contract for communication services. With the help of IMSI, you can not only identify the subscriber, but also determine his mobile phone number. In order to find out the IMSI, the IMSI-Catcher simulates the base station of a "radio cell" cell of a mobile communication network. Enabled mobile phones within the scope of this simulated base station with the SIM of the simulated network owner are automatically self-registered on the IMSI-Catcher.

According to Article 10 of the Basic Law (Constitution), the secrecy of postal correspondence, as well as telephone conversations and other communications is inviolable. Restrictions on this immunity can, of course, only be imposed by law. This happened with the help of the so-called. Law G-10 (named after the article number of the Basic Law). It states for what purposes the secret services have the right to conduct eavesdropping activities. If an action is directed against an individual suspect and involves the circle of his contacts, it is defined as "restriction in an individual case" or "individual control". Restriction of the fundamental rights of an individual provides for the existence of strong suspicions that this person is planning, committing or has already committed one of the crimes specified in the "catalogue of crimes" contained in the law G-10.

In addition, "strategic restrictions" on the secrecy of postal and telephone communications are possible. Strategic control means that not the mail and telephone conversations of an individual are controlled, but communication lines in general. From a huge number of intercepted conversations, individual ones are caught on the basis of specific features, such as keywords, and analyzed. In his "regulation" the Federal Minister of the Interior determines in which areas monitoring can take place and to which areas of telephone and other long-distance communications it is limited. This regulation must be approved by the control commission of the Bundestag. Within the limits permitted by this commission, the federal minister may order an interception. The decision on the necessity and permissibility of this order, including the use of search criteria, is made by the G-10 committee of the Parliament.

Consider the legal status and procedure for such a fictitious example. German intelligence services suggest that al-Qaeda extremists, trained and ready to use violence, have been staying in Germany for a long time.

For disguise, they use a suitable social circle similar to them in culture and lifestyle, but people from this circle (for example, mosques and cultural institutions in areas of the city with a large proportion of Muslim immigrants) themselves have nothing to do with the preparation of acts of violence. Perhaps the local mosque is funded by Saudi Arabia And Saudi Arabia is known for its reactionary fundamentalist version of Islam - Wahhabism. Around such centers, local structures similar to the commune along Marienstrasse 11 in Hamburg, where the future participants in the September 11 attacks were engaged in their preparation and planning, may arise.

Through a trusted person in the Muslim cultural club, the German secret services received a "tip" on "Ibrahim" from Frankfurt. He made speeches full of hatred against "Jews and Christians" and wrote essays of similar content, posting them on his Internet page. The BFF and the LFF of the Land of Hesse decide to put Ibrahim under surveillance. This is done not only by trusted persons in the circle of the mosque, which he regularly visits. In addition, control of his mail, phone calls and movements begins. IMSI-Catcher is used to intercept calls from his foreign mobile phone of unknown origin. As a result of observation, it turns out that "Ibrahim" regularly receives letters calling for Jihad, presumably from Pakistani sources, and exchanges thoughts among his associates about the need for a "Holy War in Germany". Among his friends there are certain "Abdallah" and "Mohammed". Both had already come to the attention of the authorities because one after the other in February 2001 claimed to have lost their passports, raising suspicion that both had done so to cover up their stay at an al-Qaeda terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. "Ibrahim" and his acquaintances often traveled abroad. When checking their flights, it turned out that they flew to Istanbul and Tehran (which is known as a transfer point on the way to Pakistan), as well as to southern France, where they maintain contacts with "brothers in faith." The BFF is now monitoring Abdullah and Mohammed as well, and is introducing strategic telecommunications controls and keyword filtering that provides information on other members of the Jihadist movement in Germany. The BFF forwards the collected data to the police (Federal Criminal Police Office - BKA), who carry out law enforcement activities (search of apartments, arrests). General results of observation of mail, telephone communications and movements: it was established that "Abdallah" and "Mohammed" are fighters of Al-Qaeda. Weapons and plans for an attack on the banking district of Frankfurt am Main were found in their apartments. They were supported by "Ayman" from Berlin and "Khalid" from Munich. A check of the bank accounts of these people shows that they regularly received money from a single source in Kuwait, then withdrew large amounts of cash from their accounts and handed it over to Abdullah. All four were firmly integrated into the structures of al-Qaeda.

COUNTERINTELLIGENCE.

The German secret services not only receive information themselves, but also try to prevent espionage operations of foreign intelligence services on German territory. Offices for the protection of the constitution at the federal and Länder levels have received legal powers to collect and evaluate information about the security threats and intelligence (espionage) activities of foreign intelligence services. This includes the proliferation of (nuclear) weapons (proliferation). In addition, they must reveal the structures, methods of work and goals of the secret services of foreign states active in Germany. Due to the geographical location and great economic potential of Germany, German organizations, government bodies, enterprises and research institutions are under the constant sight of foreign spy organizations. But the objects of foreign espionage are the German secret services themselves, which was proved by the elicitation of information from one of the BND employees during his conversations with a Bulgarian agent during 1999-2003. The internal counterintelligence of the BND exposed this betrayal of secrets.

The espionage activities of foreign intelligence services are perceived differently by the official authorities. In the reports of the departments for the protection of the constitution, as before, they mainly emphasize the activities of the Russian special services - in full accordance with the old "image of the enemy", as well as some exotic intelligence services. If such reports are to be believed, the "partner services" in Germany do not spy at all. This, of course, is not true. "Espionage by friends" makes up a large share of intelligence activities on German soil, in the field of both technical and operational (undercover) intelligence. A high-profile example, among many, was the NSA spying against a North German wind farm manufacturer.

The German intelligence services, despite the official information policy, are quite familiar with this problem. Therefore, the German counterintelligence operates, avoiding high-profile scandals, usually through diplomatic channels. As a rule, the German intelligence services are well informed about the residencies and agents of foreign intelligence services. If they are being too cheeky, you can put them in their place, avoiding diplomatic complications, with the help of trusted journalists. These journalists publish James Bond-style stories in major newspapers, such as "Infiltration of 12 CIA agents with a license to kill." "Friendly" intelligence agencies, analyzing open sources, then understand: "we need to slightly reduce our activity in the near future." But, nevertheless, it seems that the German counterintelligence really sees much better with the “Eastern” eye than with the “Western”.

Control over intelligence agencies

In order to, if not completely avoid, then at least hinder the emergence of abuses on the part of the German secret services, the latter are subject to strict and extensive control. There are four levels of control:

Supervision by the competent minister, the Court of Auditors and the data protection officer.

Parliamentary oversight by the Parliamentary Control Commission (PCC).

Judicial control (only partially possible due to the specifics of the activities of the special services) as well.

Control of the public, for example, by critical journalists and citizens, reports, reports, articles and books.

CONTROL OF THE PARLIAMENTARY CONTROL COMMISSION (PCCG).

The Parliamentary Control Commission, made up of deputies of the federal parliament (Bundestag), has the widest possible control. She is always ready to critically evaluate the activities of the special services. The law formulates its meaning in the following way: "The federal government is subject to control by the Parliamentary Control Commission in matters of the activities of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the Military Counterintelligence Service and the Federal Intelligence Service." Control includes the right to receive comprehensive information on specific cases, the right to interview intelligence officers, access to dossiers and file cabinets, and the ability to conduct focused investigations.

As a rule, deputies elected to the PCG are experienced members of all factions of the Bundestag (depending on the size of the faction, without an overwhelming majority of members of one faction), versed in parliamentary procedures and competent in matters of internal and external security.

CONTROL OF THE COMMISSION G-10

The restriction of the right to secrecy of postal correspondence, telephone and other communications in accordance with the G-10 law is controlled by a special commission of the Bundestag - the G-10 Commission, which has the right to follow-up inspections. This commission does not consist of parliamentarians, but of persons who enjoy the confidence of the Bundestag factions. Members of the Parliamentary Control Commission retain their powers for the current elective term.

The G-10 Commission has the right to receive answers to all its questions and the right to access all documents and data stored in computers in connection with interference with fundamental civil rights. Members of the commission have the right of unhindered access to all office premises of the special services. Members of the commission not only decide before the start of the action whether eavesdropping is allowed and necessary in a particular case, but they can also stop an operation already underway, for example, on the basis of a filed complaint.

CONTROL OF THE TRUST COMMISSION.

Intelligence needs a lot of money. But the government cannot dispose of finances without the consent of parliament, since only the Bundestag has the right to adopt a budget. The draft budget for all phases is available to every citizen. But the public budget gives only the total amount allocated for the needs of the secret services. Details are signed in secret applications. But the Bundestag at three levels ensures its right to decide on budgetary issues:

Firstly, the use of funds is monitored by a department of the Federal Accounts Chamber, which is obliged to keep secrets.

Secondly, the Parliamentary Control Commission submits its proposals for the formation of the budget based on the experience gained and sends a representative to discuss the details.

Thirdly, the budget committee of the Bundestag creates a Trust Commission responsible for the financial affairs of the secret services, which ensures the supremacy of the parliament in matters of these expenses, down to the details. In order to be fully informed in the affairs of the special services, members of the Trust Commission may take part in the meetings of the Parliamentary Control Commission. These meetings are secret and only take place in eavesdropped rooms.

CONTROL OF AUTHORIZED DATA PROTECTION.

The doors of the secret services are also open to scrutiny by data protection officers. The Bundestag appoints the Federal Data Protection Commissioner every 5 years, who, together with the state data protection commissioners (appointed by the state parliaments - Landtags), examines whether the rights of citizens to the so-called. information self-determination. This right of the individual was expanded by a ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1983 and extended to new possibilities for electronic data processing. The Constitutional Court has established clear boundaries where, on the basis of various data banks, it is possible to create an increasingly voluminous picture of a person's life in all aspects, imperceptibly to himself. At the same time, this person cannot sufficiently control the correctness of these data and the legality of their use. Thus, data protection here collides with the basis of the activities of the secret services - the collection of personalized data important for intelligence. But the right to informational self-determination is not unlimited, as was also established by the Constitutional Court. There are cases where the public interest is more important. But according to court orders, in this case, it is necessary to clearly define and indicate the purpose of obtaining data and prove the direct connection of the collected data with this purpose ... Therefore, the data protection commissioner monitors the intelligence services so that they do not collect data “just like that” and that, for example, the collected information not related to the purpose of the operation being performed was erased.

The Bundestag reinforced the importance of data protection for the BND, BFF and MAD by granting data protection officers the right to receive information and access, among other things, to those documents that are subject to special secrecy. The Commissioner can file a formal complaint about a breach of data protection and request an audit from the relevant ministry. He can also include all cases of violations in his official report, which he submits every 2 years to the Bundestag.

Intelligence services are required to provide a person with a certificate free of charge about the data they have collected about him. As a basis, this person must point to specific material and prove his special interest in obtaining this information. But intelligence agencies may refuse to issue a certificate if such information would harm the performance of their mission, endanger the life of the source, or help the enemy to learn the state of knowledge and methods of intelligence work, harm public safety, damage the Federation and states, or violate the rights of third parties. But, having refused the certificate, the intelligence agencies should advise the person to contact the Federal Data Protection Commissioner. Intelligence can give him all the information that it refused to give to the affected person.

Joint Intelligence Storage System NADIS

To store data in the event of a request, the internal secret services use the "Unified Intelligence Storage System", abbreviated as NADIS. NADIS is a link between the databases of the BFF, the Land LFF and the Department of State Security of the Federal Criminal Police of the BKA. This system allows all connected participants to directly maintain and search for data on-line. BND and MAD also participate in the use of the NADIS system. The database includes persons with "aspirations directed against the foundations of a free democratic social order", or - in the case of MAD - personalized data of those liable for military service.

NADIS is a case file link system, the heart of the system is a central personal data file (PDC) that collects personal data and links to relevant files. NADIS is not a system that contains important information on the cases themselves, but an automated aid for finding the right cases (link file). It shows the case number of the relevant dossiers that are available and for better orientation contains personalized data of the person for whom the request is given - name, surname, date and place of birth, citizenship and address. Although this makes it easier to find information, if one of the NADIS participants needs the information from the dossier itself, which goes beyond the personal data entered into computers, he will have to go in the most common way - to submit a written request through official channels to the institution that maintains and stores the file. Therefore, the system only helps in a limited way in investigations. It cannot help in evaluating the collected data.

If a person's data is stored in the NADIS system, this does not mean at all that he is an extremist, a terrorist or an enemy spy. Most of the data is about people who have been threatened by violent organizations that may be of particular interest to foreign intelligence agencies and individuals who have passed security checks to obtain any kind of security clearance. The unpleasant feelings that the existence of this information system causes in the public can be understood to some extent, but they are largely unjustified. NADIS is not a file of suspicious persons. If a person is entered into its database, this does not entail any discriminatory consequences. In fact, by its very concept and composition, NADIS can neither make a person “transparent” nor guarantee “control over citizens”.

At the beginning of 2003, NADIs held 942,350 personal data. Of these, 520,390 files entered (52.2%) were data on persons who passed security checks for admission to state institutions at the federal and state levels related to security issues. At the beginning of 2002, the system held data on 925,650 people.

Notes:

"Confidant" (Vertrauensperson, V-Person) - the traditionally accepted name in Germany for an agent of the special services who is not their staff member. It was first used in Kaiser Germany, then it was used in the Third Reich in the Ausland / Abwehr system. At present, the term "trustee" is used almost exclusively by the Länder and federal constitutional protection authorities, and not by the BND or MAD. (hereinafter - approx. transl.)

It must be said that the structure of the BND given here by the author differs somewhat, for example, from that described by Dr. Udo Ulfkotte in the book Top Secret: BND (1997) or from the Encyclopedia of the Secret Services of the 20th Century by Helmut Röver, Stefan Schafer and Mattias Ulya (2003). In both of these books, in particular, only six, and not eight departments are named. By the way, Department 4, not mentioned by Hirschmann, is administrative and deals with all supply issues, financial, personnel, construction, transport and others. And the 5th department has always been entrusted with issues of security and internal security, including internal counterintelligence of the Service. It is possible that the tasks of combating organized crime and terrorism were entrusted to this department relatively recently, so this was not reflected in the above-mentioned books.

The already mentioned “Encyclopedia of the Secret Services of the 20th Century”, describing the structure of the BFF, does not say anything about the Sixth (“Islamic”) Department. Apparently, this is also a very recent innovation; before that, the Fifth Department dealt with issues of countering Islamic terrorism.

A position corresponding to a deputy federal minister.

From the German word Grundgesetz - Basic law, constitution, Article 10.

German: Parlamentarisches Kontrollgremium, PKGr.

NADIS - Nachrichtendienstliches Informationssystem.

The BND is the only German intelligence agency operating abroad.

German Federal Intelligence Service(Bundesnachrichtendienst - BND) - one of the three special services operating in the country (there are also the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and military counterintelligence). The BND is the only German intelligence service operating abroad, therefore, foreign intelligence activities of the military are also in its competence. The BND is prohibited from conducting intelligence activities within its own country. At the same time, it is not forbidden to collect intelligence information about foreign states on its territory.

According to the "BND Law" of December 20, 1990, her duties include the collection and analysis of data on foreign countries necessary for the federal government to make decisions in the field of foreign policy and security policy.

The secret service began its work on April 1, 1956 as an integral part of the department of the Federal Chancellor. Its first leader was Reinhard Gehlen. He headed it until May 1, 1968. The BND was created on the basis of the so-called "Organization Helena". Since 1946, this organization, the backbone of which was made up of former employees of the Wehrmacht's Office of the Land Forces of the East, worked for the American intelligence services in the eastern direction. At the end of 1947, the Gehlen Organization was transferred to Pullach, near Munich, where Until today, its legal successor, the BND, is located, including the central office.

BND structure

The BND is headed by the president. Currently they are August Hannig. There are five departments in the structure of the special services. 1st department - headquarters, 2nd - technical support, 3rd - analysis, 4th - law, central services and educational institutions, 6th - technical support. The special service has a commissioner for the quality of the activities of the BND. Its task includes auditing the quality of activities, conducting internal audits, inspections, as well as controlling costs. There is also a commissioner for own security of the BND. It is within its competence to check the reliability of both employees of the service and candidates for admission to the BND. He is responsible for the safety of information, its storage and transmission. In total, about 6 thousand people work in the special service on a full-time basis. They represent almost all professional groups of the population and operate both on the territory of the country and abroad as officials, military personnel, employees and workers.

The fundamental requirement for a candidate for the position of an intelligence officer, along with the presence of a fundamental education, is an interest in foreign policy issues, cultures of foreign countries. The candidate is also required to have knowledge of foreign languages ​​and mobility.

Tasks of the BND and its intelligence activities

The German government demands from the BND as accurate, reliable and comprehensive information as possible on the development of the situation in the states of the world. This is primarily about information from the field of politics and security policy. According to the German leadership, nothing has changed in this area since the end of the Cold War, and the national interests of states, which in the past were often subordinate to the interests of the respective bloc, are increasingly coming to the fore in the current multipolar world. For this reason, the world has become less transparent, less predictable, and this, in turn, causes the need for additional information flows. This is also required by Germany's current status as a unified German state.

The goals and objectives of the intelligence activities of the BND are determined by the federal government. His greatest attention, in terms of the possible participation of German military personnel in international peacekeeping missions, is focused on regions prone to conflict situations. For example, the Near and Middle East, as well as North Africa. Other areas of intelligence focus are the illegal export of technology, international terrorism, international organized crime, the international arms trade, and illegal migration. The BND as a whole and its employees are prohibited from exercising political influence on the territory of foreign states, conducting disinformation campaigns, organizing acts of sabotage and sabotage.

Recently, the BND has been establishing contacts with its counterparts in Russia. In particular, the President's visit to Chechnya in April this year was a sensation. It was reported that German agents were there to collect and transfer information to the Russian side about the connections and sources of funding for the militants. Official fact of the trip Hanning to Chechnya was not confirmed, but the BND representatives were forced to explain that German intelligence did not take any action in support of the military campaign of the Russian federal troops in Chechnya, but only collected information for their government in the interests of ensuring Germany's internal and external security. BND Coordinator Ernst Urlau admitted at the time that Russian and German intelligence services exchanged information in the field of international terrorism, organized crime and "money laundering."

Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution

The federal agency performs the functions of protecting the state system of the country. Organizationally, it is part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Its headquarters is located in Cologne. Each of the federal states (administrative-territorial formations of Germany) have their own bodies of this kind, but they are not subordinate to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Here, the Germans strictly follow the letter of the Basic Law, which regulates that the protection of the state system is the task of the federal authorities, which is implemented jointly with the state institutions of power. The federal agency is guided in its actions by the provisions of a special federal law on the protection of the Constitution.

In organizational terms, it includes six departments, including department "Z", which is in charge of personnel, financial and legal issues. This is followed by the department for the development of major problems, the preparation of reports and the protection of information; department of right-wing extremism and terrorism; department of left-wing extremism and terrorism; department for combating espionage, protecting state secrets and combating sabotage; department for the study of sentiments that threaten the security of the country among foreign citizens. The head of the department is the president. At present it is Heinz Fromm.

The tasks of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution include the collection of information about extremist sentiments among citizens, which may pose a threat to the security of the country. We are talking about politically motivated sentiments, as well as actions directed against the existing legal order or threatening the security of the federation or the security of any of the states, including terrorism.

The competence of the department also includes the suppression of intelligence activities in the interests of foreign states, the adoption of measures, including preventive ones, to preserve state secrets. In the latter case, we are talking about secret materials and materials of a confidential nature, which also affect economic interests.

Most of the information employees of the department draw from open and accessible sources. For example, from newspapers, from various kinds of leaflets, programs. They attend public events, interview individuals who can provide useful information on a voluntary basis. The department, of course, does not renounce intelligence methods in their actions. This includes the infiltration of its employees into extremist circles, and in certain cases, with the approval of parliament, also the perusal of mail correspondence and wiretapping of telephone conversations.

Military counterintelligence(Militaerischer Abschirmdienst - MAD)

MAD - works on the territory of its country in the interests of the armed forces of Germany - the Bundeswehr. It has the same powers as the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Its headquarters is in Cologne. MAD has its offices in 14 cities of the country (Cologne, Dusseldorf, Hannover, Wilhelmshaven, Münster, Mainz, Koblenz, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Munich, Amberg, Leipzig, Geltow, Rostock). The total number of employees is about 1.3 thousand people, both military personnel and civilians.

In its work, the MAD is guided by the provisions of the "Law on military counterintelligence" of December 20, 1990. Most of them are a repetition of the provisions of the "Law on the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution". The MAD is forbidden to have a network of informers in the Bundeswehr, it has no right to use coercive measures that other power structures can resort to.

The materials of InoSMI contain only assessments of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the editors of InoSMI.

German intelligence

The main intelligence center responsible for collecting information about the Soviet Union was the department of the High Command of the Ground Forces (OKH), called "Foreign Armies - East" (FHO). Established in 1938, the FHO was responsible for military information on Poland, the Scandinavian countries, some Balkan countries, the USSR, China, and Japan. But, beginning on July 31, 1940, when Hitler gave the OKH the order to prepare to move to the East, the FHO focused on the Soviet Union.

The head of the Foreign Armies - East department, Colonel Kinzel, gave a generalized assessment of the Red Army at the end of 1939: “In numerical terms, a powerful military tool. - The main emphasis falls on the "mass of troops." - Organization, equipment and controls are insufficient. - The principles of leadership are unsatisfactory, the leadership itself is too young and inexperienced ... - The quality of the troops in a difficult combat situation is doubtful. The Russian "mass" does not reach the level of an army equipped with modern weapons and higher-class leadership.

In the process of creating the Barbarossa plan, the participants were largely influenced by the strategic assessments of the USSR (Rusland-bild) periodically produced by the General Staff. According to them, the Soviet Union, like the former tsarist Russia, was a "colossus with feet of clay." An unexpected quick blow should knock him off his feet. According to the leading German generals, the Red Army in 1940-1941 was a clumsy accumulation of military units, incapable of operational initiative at all command levels, adapted only to a mechanical form of planning and operational behavior, and most importantly, not ready to wage a modern war. This assessment was particularly influenced by the actions of the Red Army in Poland and against Finland. These two campaigns were recognized as the most obvious evidence that the Red Army, firstly, had not recovered from the almost complete destruction of the officer corps during the "great purges", and secondly, had not mastered the new military equipment, had not joined the process mastering modern technology.

It is quite obvious that the quick victory of the Wehrmacht over the French army, which in the 1920s and 1930s seemed to many the most powerful military force in Europe, played a perverse role. Faith in the military-technical superiority of Germany was no longer questioned at any level. The German leadership, even in the event of a war with the USSR, expected quick decisive results. Henceforth, the problem of "Barbarossa" was considered as a problem of smoothly coordinated plans, correct operational preparation.

The above organization "Foreign Armies - East" (FHO), as mentioned, was instructed to analyze the capabilities of the Red Army after the end of the Polish campaign. Starting in the autumn of 1939, the FHO identified five channels of information: 1) radio intelligence; 2) reports of Abwehr agents and emigrants from the Baltics; 3) reports of the German military attaches; 4) allied intelligence reports; 5) testimonies of deserters from the Red Army. The Germans showed great skill in radio interception, in radio intelligence, but this source, limited in terms of space and function, did not give grounds for strategic assessments, did not allow judging the deployment of Red Army units, especially those located beyond the Urals. The Germans knew absolutely nothing about the military recruitment system.

The work of the FHO ended with the creation of an extensive memorandum “The military power of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Regulations on 01/01/1941. Two thousand copies of this document were printed by January 15, 1941. It spoke about the presence in the USSR of sixteen military districts and two military commissariats, led by the People's Commissariat of Defense. Radio reconnaissance and aerial photography enabled the FHO to identify eleven Soviet armies in the European part of the USSR. According to the memorandum, the USSR could mobilize from eleven to twelve million people. But the authors of the memorandum doubted the possibility of mobilizing such a mass of troops, since the country did not have enough officers, uniforms and equipment, and the factories needed labor.

The memorandum defined the volume of human masses that make up the Red Army: 20 armies, 20 infantry corps (150 infantry divisions), 9 cavalry corps (32-36 cavalry divisions), 6 mechanized corps, 36 motorized-mechanized brigades. The number of infantry divisions at the end of 1940 was determined at 121. From the memorandum, in essence, it followed that the FHO did not know the exact number of divisions of the Red Army and their location. The FHO made a big mistake by deciding that all Soviet tanks were obsolete models. German experts did not know about the existence of the T-34 tanks, although they showed themselves most conspicuously at Khalkhin Gol.

As for the balance of power between Germany and Russia, Hitler personally said that the armored forces of the USSR were "numerically the largest in the world." The number of Soviet tanks was determined at ten thousand units. Germany had three and a half thousand tanks. And this did not cause Hitler any fears. The Germans considered most of the Soviet tanks hopelessly outdated. Curiosity aroused only the heaviest tank in the world - the KV-1 (43.5 tons), which first appeared (according to German information) in service in 1940.

German intelligence made a mistake two and a half times. The Red Army had 24,000 tanks. And among them is a tank, the creators of which we all owe. This is an ingenious model "T-34". A major miscalculation of German intelligence was that she did not pay attention to this tank, although hundreds of "thirty-fours" participated in battles with the Japanese in the late 30s. The frontal armor of the T-34 in 1941 reflected the fire of German guns of almost any caliber.

The assessment of the German Luftwaffe of the Soviet Air Force is in line with the same trend. On February 1, 1941, Berlin counted 10,500 Soviet aircraft, 7,500 of which were stationed in the European part of the USSR. The OKH headquarters thought it was better: 5655 aircraft in the European part of the Union. Of these, only 60 percent are ready for combat, and only 100-200 aircraft have a modern design. In fact, at the time of the German attack, the Red Army had 18 thousand aircraft of all types, and Halder later bitterly had to write in his diary: "The Luftwaffe significantly underestimated the number of enemy aircraft."

The key issue was the balance of ground forces. In January 1941, the FHO determined the size of the Red Army in peacetime at 2 million soldiers, the military - at 4 million. In fact, on January 1, 1941, there were 4 million soldiers in the ranks of the Red Army, and by June - 5 million.

In August 1940, General Marx counted 171 divisions in the Red Army (117 infantry, 24 cavalry, 30 mechanized brigades); On March 29, 1941, General Halder noted that the Russians "have 15 divisions more than we previously believed." Already in recent days, the Germans have established that there are 226 divisions in the European part of the USSR - this is a rather sharp increase that caused discomfort among the Germans. But they, these new realities, no longer influenced the fatal march of Nazi Germany. The Germans discovered the terrible truth for themselves in the second month of what they saw as a blitzkrieg.

The FHO memorandum made two important conclusions that directly related to the planning of Barbarossa.

First. The bulk of the Soviet troops will be located to the south and north of the Pripyat marshes in order to close the places of the breakthrough of the German troops and for counterattacks on the flanks of the German armies. Doubts were immediately expressed about the ability of the Red Army to carry out such operations, given the general level of military leadership and training of troops, the general level of organization, as well as the state of Soviet railways and highways.

Second. The strength of the Red Army lies in its numbers, as well as the stoicism, firmness and courage of a single soldier. These qualities should especially manifest themselves in defense. If in the Finnish campaign the Soviet soldier fought without enthusiasm, then in the event of a German invasion, he will be more steadfast. In general, German analysts did not see much difference between the Russian soldier of the First and Second World Wars. “The Soviet Union today retains only the external form, and not the true essence of the Marxist doctrine ... The state is controlled by the bureaucratic methods of persons blindly loyal to Stalin, the economy is controlled by engineers and managers who owe everything to the new regime and are truly devoted to it.” It was emphasized that "the Russian character - heavy, mechanical, withdrawing from decisions and responsibility - has not changed."

The general assessment of the Red Army is as follows: “Clumsiness, schematism, the desire to avoid decision-making and responsibility ... The weakness of the Red Army lies in the clumsiness of officers of all ranks, their attachment to formulas, insufficient training, as required by modern standards, the desire to avoid responsibility and the obvious inefficiency of the organization in all aspects." There was a lack of a competent, highly professional military leadership capable of replacing the generals who died in the purges, the backwardness of the troop training system, and insufficient military supplies to equip them.

The last assessment of the Red Army, carried out by the organization "Foreign armies - East", dates back to May 20, 1941. Number in the European part: 130 infantry divisions, 21 cavalry, 5 armored, 36 motorized-mechanized brigades. The arrival of reinforcements from Asia is unlikely for political reasons. In essence, the FHO called for neglecting the divisions located in the Far East.

The following is very important: the FHO believed that in the event of an attack from the West, the withdrawal of the bulk of Soviet troops into the depths of Russia - following the example of 1812 - was impossible. It was predicted that defensive battles would be fought in a strip about thirty kilometers deep using fortifications created in advance. The same fortifications will serve as starting bases for counterattacks. The Red Army will try to stop the German offensive near the border and transfer combat operations to enemy territory. Consequently, the fate of the war will be decided at the border. Large-scale troop movements should not be expected. Hitler fully shared this illusion, and it cost Germany dearly. (In just a few weeks, the OKH would receive information similar to the report of the 41st Panzer Corps: "The materials presented give only a very superficial picture of the alleged resistance of the enemy.")

One of the reasons for the inefficiency of the German intelligence service was, as already mentioned, the fact that the German codebreakers never managed to read the ciphers of the Red Army command and Soviet intelligence. In this regard, she had no achievements, like the British and Americans. The Germans were able to infiltrate a few agents into the Red Army headquarters at the divisional and army levels, as well as in the rear, but they never succeeded in infiltrating the Soviet General Staff, the Ministry of Defense, or any institution above the army level. Attempts to get into the upper echelon of the GRU, NKVD, and then SMERSH were unsuccessful. Moreover, as it turned out after the war, the German lost unconditionally in the competition between the two intelligence services: the most valuable agents of the Abwehr transmitted information containing disinformation. This, above all, concerns the three leading agents of the Abwehr, whose reports and assessments of the USSR directly influenced military planning in Germany. This refers to "Max", located in Sofia, "Stex" in Stockholm and Ivar Lissner in Harbin. They have been working with Moscow's knowledge from the very beginning and have been spreading strategic disinformation. As the American researcher D. Thomas writes, “The FHO was vulnerable to Soviet disinformation, especially at the strategic level, not only because of the lack of reliable basic information about Soviet plans, but also because of a specifically German way of thinking. Namely: there was a sense of superiority that led to an underestimation of Soviet military capabilities; the emphasis on Soviet military shortcomings, which does not allow for a correct assessment of Soviet operational capabilities; a tendency to "mirror-image" Soviet intentions; over-centralization of the evaluation process in the hands of a small group of analysts. (However, even observing the outcome of the aggression, not all German authorities stigmatized the FHO. For example, General Jodl during interrogations in 1945 stated: “In general, I was satisfied with the work of our intelligence services. Their best result was the exact identification of the location of Russian troops in early 1941 years in Western Belarus and Ukraine").

adventurous planning

How, according to the Germans, should the Red Army have acted? According to German intelligence, the bulk of the troops were moved to the western border of the country. The Germans came to the conclusion that these troops were focused on tenacious and stubborn defense of the territory, prepared lines, and not on a mobile form of defense. (In the same way, the deployment of the Red Army completely convinced the OKH that a preventive offensive from the USSR was out of the question. According to the OKH assessment of May 20, 1941, the danger of a preventive war from the USSR was recognized as zero.) The German High Command of the Land Forces came to an important conclusion : Soviet troops will stubbornly defend their positions, not thinking about retreating back. It was necessary to use this chance and destroy the main forces of the Red Army in the border battles.

This strategy determined the tactics. A short but intense discussion led to the following option: tank groups would take over the task of quickly penetrating the bulk of Soviet troops behind the lines; rifle divisions operating at a much slower speed will turn to destroying encircled enemy groupings. The German command understood that there was a significant gap between the tank units rushing forward and the infantry marching behind, but the general optimistic mood in Berlin was such that they began to see this as a kind of valor. None of the theorists saw in such a gap a danger to the entire strategic plan. Close interaction between infantry and tanks was envisaged only for the very first period - the days of the breakthrough of the Soviet front. To this end, each grouping of tank troops was assigned an infantry corps to storm Soviet fortifications and form breakthrough zones. After completing the assigned task, the infantry corps should have returned to the bulk of the troops, and the tank groupings should have rushed forward without looking back.

Much more than the mutual action of infantry and tanks, the concern of the German officers was the problem of supplying the troops rushing to the east. For many hours, staff officers studied the dense forests facing the Center group that was being formed. Initially, most of the specialists involved leaned towards the massive use of airborne assault forces. But over time, the understanding grew that the forests stretched too far from the border to the east and separate enclaves captured by paratroopers did not solve the problem. Moreover, there was a danger that the landing units would not wait for help and would be surrounded. In addition, the best airborne forces were involved in Crete, suffered quite heavy losses and needed a period of recuperation. Ultimately, the OKH abandoned the idea of ​​a massive use of airborne forces.

The supply of the tanks that had gone forward was, according to the idea that prevailed for a while, to be carried out along the captured railways - it was necessary to "narrow" the gauge to the standard German one as soon as possible. But it took time to transfer the wide gauge to the narrow gauge, but there was none. The appeal to the possibilities of air transport did not give anything either, transport aircraft were not enough. And where to find ready-made airfields for their landing? All reflections boiled down to the fact that the German military machine had no choice: it should concentrate on road transport, using suitable captured vehicles.

We see adventurous planning in its essence. The Germans did not have a sufficient number of vehicles, and they confidently relied on the enemy's vehicle fleet. For a short time, the issue of winter uniforms for the troops arose, but this issue was resolved with surprising ease. The campaign will be completed by autumn, and there is no particular need for warm clothing. As a result, winter clothing was provided for only a third of the German troops.

The most important miscalculation of the German military leaders was that they did not imagine the industrial and military capabilities of Central Russia, the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia. This was the case even from the topographic point of view, from the point of view of familiarity with the landscape. Much has been said about the Germans as excellent cartographers. Many small-scale maps of European Russia would like Soviet commanders to have on their tablets. But despite the insultingly high cartographic culture, the Germans knew surprisingly little about the powerful demographic processes that took place in Russia in the 1920s and 1930s. For the German leadership - from Hitler and below - it was a surprise to find huge industrial centers where provincial outbacks appeared on German maps. For example, a small circle on German maps turned out to be a powerful industrial Kherson. In the area designated as a remote steppe, the German troops encountered numerous towns and villages. Two circumstances - insufficient intelligence work and self-confidence that has become second nature - prepared unpleasant surprises for the Wehrmacht.

So, "Barbarossa" was the greatest defeat of Germany already at the stage of what the Germans love so much - planning. The forces of the opposing side were estimated to be half the real level. The military command was in no way prepared for combat operations in the winter. The Germans did not expect to meet the superior Soviet tanks. The German army had winter uniforms for only one third of the needs. The German military industry was not ready for a long-term conflict on a continental scale. The advancing armies were supplied with only a three-month supply of fuel. Arrogance, blind self-confidence, disregard for facts, as always in history, have borne fruit. A sense of national superiority blinded Germany as she rushed towards her destiny. The Germans were convinced that the Red Army would quickly lay down its arms, that the Soviet government would collapse immediately.

In a cold-blooded analysis, Hitler and his entourage should have understood that Germany, with all its colossal power, could not conquer a country of such magnitude, such a population, such a rigid political system, indestructible patriotism and martyr stoicism. Even if the German tanks entered Moscow and Leningrad, even if they crossed the Volga at Stalingrad.

The German leadership did not attach due importance to the national efforts of the USSR. Two years before the start of the war, a transition was made from a seven-hour to an eight-hour working day. Transfer from one enterprise to another was prohibited. Housing construction stopped completely, while colossal factories were being built. Young designers tested new weapons. The country has tensed to the limit.

Ultimately, the Germans entered the road of war with Russia, poorly prepared for a meeting with the enemy. They didn't even wonder if they could win. By the time the question came to them, it was already too late.