Secret Intelligence in the European States System, 1918-1989 - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804783594 ISBN 13: 9780804783590

Verlag: Stanford University Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

The history of secret intelligence, like secret intelligence itself, is fraught with difficulties surrounding both the reliability and completeness of the sources, and the motivations behind their release-which can be the product of ongoing propaganda efforts as well as competition among agencies. Indeed, these difficulties lead to the Scylla and Charybdis of overestimating the importance of secret intelligence for foreign policy and statecraft and also underestimating its importance in these same areas-problems that generally beset the actual use of secret intelligence in modern states. But in recent decades, traditional perspectives have given ground and judgments have been revised in light of new evidence.

This volume brings together a collection of essays avoiding the traditional pitfalls while carrying out the essential task of analyzing the recent evidence concerning the history of the European state system of the last century. The essays offer an array of insight across countries and across time. Together they highlight the critical importance of the prevailing domestic circumstances-technological, governmental, ideological, cultural, financial-in which intelligence operates. A keen interdisciplinary eye focused on these developments leaves us with a far more complete understanding of secret intelligence in Europe than we've had before.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jonathan Haslam is Professor of the History of International Relations at Cambridge University.Karina Urbach is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London.

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SECRET INTELLIGENCE IN THE EUROPEAN STATES SYSTEM, 1918–1989

By Jonathan Haslam, Karina Urbach

Stanford University Press

Copyright © 2014 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8047-8359-0

Contents

Contributors...............................................................
vii
Introduction: The Role of Secret Intelligence in the International 
Relations of Europe in the Twentieth Century Jonathan Haslam and Karina 
Urbach.....................................................................
1
1 "Humint" by Default and the Problem of Trust: Soviet Intelligence, 
1917–1941 Jonathan Haslam.................................................
12
2 Barbarossa and the Bomb: Two Cases of Soviet Intelligence in World War 
II David Holloway.........................................................
36
3 Seeking a Scapegoat: Intelligence and Grand Strategy in France, 
1919–1940 Stephen A. Schuker..............................................
81
4 French Intelligence About the East, 1945–1968 Georges-Henri Soutou......
128
5 British Intelligence During the Cold War Richard J. Aldrich.............
149
6 The Stasi Confronts Western Strategies for Transformation, 1966–1975 
Oliver Bange...............................................................
170
7 The West German Secret Services During the Cold War Holger Afflerbach...
209
Index......................................................................
231

CHAPTER 1

"Humint" by Defaultand the Problem of Trust

Soviet Intelligence, 1917–1941

Jonathan Haslam

As far as I am concerned, reliance upon secret intelligence also carries littleconviction.

—People's Commissarfor Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov, 11 April 1939

The Bolsheviks who seized power in Russia under Lenin on 7November 1917 believed they had no need of a foreign intelligencenetwork for the world socialist revolution to triumph, because hostile capitaliststates would by definition disappear.

Indeed, the Bolsheviks expected the focus of world revolution to movefrom backward Russia to advanced, industrialized Germany. The revolutionwas thus at this early stage deeply internationalist in outlook: hence thecreation of the Communist International (Comintern) in March 1919. "Fromprovincial Moscow, from half-Asiatic Russia, we will embark on the expansiveroute of European revolution," Trotsky boasted. "It will lead us to a worldrevolution. Remember the millions of the German petite bourgeoisie, awaitingthe moment for revenge. In them we will find a reserve army and bringup our cavalry with this army to the Rhine to advance further in the formof a revolutionary proletarian war. We will repeat the French revolution, butin the reverse geographical direction: the revolutionary armies will advancenot from the West to the East, but from the East to the West. The decisivemoment has come. You can almost literally hear the steps of history." Eventhe dour, skeptical Stalin crowed about moving "the centre of revolution fromMoscow to Berlin." Yet uprisings in Germany collapsed ignominiously, andthe Bolsheviks hesitated to risk all on one throw of the die.

Since the Bolsheviks expected a Europe-wide revolution within years, ifnot months, of defeating counterrevolutionary armies on Russian soil, theSoviet regime was taken by surprise and forced to improvise foreign intelligenceat short notice when its plans faltered and fell through after the Polishdefeat of the Red Army outside Warsaw in 1920 and the failures first ofthe Communist Märzaktion (March action) in Germany in 1921 and then ofthe "German October" in November 1923. The climate thus oscillated wildlybetween revolutionary optimism and deep despondency. Throughout, thecounterrevolutionary emigration and its allies within Russia—a fifth column—remaineda much feared (and exaggerated) focus of attention. Theentire situation was regarded as fluid. There was no sense of permanence.This provides a critical clue as to the nature of the Soviet Union that emergedunder Stalin from 1929 and to the story that unfolds: matters domestic necessarilyoverrode matters foreign. The Great Terror (1937–1939) that cost the RedArmy over half its officer corps and much more besides proved the dreadfulapotheosis of this perverse order of priorities.

After Lenin's death on 21 January 1924, this deterioration, which hadbecome the focus of anxiety in his last letters, became ever more pronounced:hence the irresistible rise of Stalin, who, although Georgian, personified Russianprovincialism. Hard though it may be to believe, as late as 1930 the Politburostill underscored its first priority as "exposing and penetrating centresof pernicious émigrés, independently of their location." The kidnapping ofthe counterrevolutionary leader General Evgenii Miller from Paris seven yearslater, at a time when the Soviet Union was in alliance with France, underlinedStalin's continued preoccupation, regardless of the cost in trust with thePopular Front régime. With war looming, on 10 May 1939, Pavel Sudoplatovwas appointed deputy head of foreign intelligence within the GUGB/NKVD.He was astounded to be briefed by the new Commissar Lavrentii Beria andStalin himself to the effect that the most important task that lay ahead was theliquidation of arch-rival in exile, Leon Trotsky.

* * *

Having ejected the forces of General Anton Denikin from the Ukraine andthrown back Józef Pilsudski's offensive from Poland in the summer of 1920,the Bolsheviks switched from counting on spontaneous uprisings abroad toaiding revolutions at the point of the bayonet. Poland was always crucial.It bridged Bolshevik Russia with the long-hoped for revolution in WeimarGermany. "We decided to use our armed forces," Lenin told a conferenceof the Russian Communist Party, "in order to help sovietise Poland. Out ofthat arose the policy for the future as a whole." This was not done throughParty resolutions, but "we said to ourselves that we must make contact bymeans of bayonets—has the social revolution of the proletariat in Poland notmatured?" It had not.

When Mikhail Tukhachevskii marched on Warsaw in July–August 1920,Lenin stubbornly persisted in the extravagantly misplaced belief that successled by the Red Army was just around the corner. This was no accident. Suchillusions were deeply embedded in this new regime. A fallacious confidence inthe power of Soviet arms combined with willful misperception of conditionsabroad was to continue, one way or another, throughout the life of the Sovietregime and at considerable cost to the efficient operation of its intelligence services.In 1947, Major-General Sir John Sinclair, who later headed MI6, wrote that"it was not generally realised that the controlling element in Russia had virtuallyno correct appreciation of developments in the outside world, and that theyrelied for their information on various channels who were successively bent onfeeding their superiors with such information as they thought would be mostacceptable. This inevitably led to the controlling element receiving a progressivelyexaggerated form of information on foreign affairs."

Faced with Lenin's obstinate disregard for the reality za kordonom—abroad—KarlRadek,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0804783594
• ISBN 13: 9780804783590
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Herausgeber: Haslam Jonathan, Urbach Karina
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande