“Agents” of the West
Members of the “Kampfbund Deutscher Jugend” protest against People’s Police’s shooting order in front of Berlin-Schöneberg town hall, April 1952.
“Agents” of the West
During the Cold War, Western intelligence services attached particular importance to information from the GDR and specifically recruited German informants. Out of protest against the SED regime, adventurism, financial interests or simple naivety, many people cooperated with Western intelligence services.
In addition to the secret services, the KgU was also interested in information from the GDR. Its charitable activities were increasingly financed by the US secret service, the CIA. In return, the CIA received military information from the KgU’s network of informants.
Both Eastern and Western secret services attempted to infiltrate the other side. Double agents also became entangled in this network. The MfS did not arrest some Western “spies” in the GDR, but had them abducted from West Berlin by hired petty criminals.
In order not to endanger the couriers, the KgU began dropping leaflets over the GDR using balloons: A balloon launch near Görlitzer Bahnhof in West Berlin in 1956. / BStU, Berlin and Berlin Police History Collection
Family photos of Gerhard Ramlow
Headquarters of the British Military Government in Berlin-Wilmersdorf at Fehrbelliner Platz 4, August 1952 (building at the back right) / Landesarchiv Berlin / Horst Siegmann
Hans Erdler and Gerhardt Ramlow set up a spy ring for the British intelligence service in Brandenburg after the war. Since September 1950, more than 30 members of the group were arrested by the MGB/MfS.
In addition to Erdler and Ramlow, SMT No. 48240 sentenced 16 other people to death in the central Soviet military counterintelligence remand prison in what is now Leistikowstraße in Potsdam. They were shot in Moscow and rehabilitated in 1993.
British military police in front of the ruins of the Reichstag in Berlin on May 1, 1953 / Landesarchiv Berlin / Bert Sass
