Introduction
The Cold War was an intelligence w ar/ a war o f mental agility rather than brute force. An account of Cold War history must, therefore, attempt to explain events in terms of the intelligence activities which were taking place at the time. Just as military historians aim to explore, analyse and describe battles that were fought on the ground, at sea and in the air, so it is the aim of an historian dealing with intelligence matters to examine the tactics and strategies of those who directed the intelligence war. The latter, however, is usually
handicapped by the fact that the aim of an intelligence operation is to leave as little evidence as possible of the event. As Frances Stoner Saunders has noted in connection with the activities of the CIA, activities such as covert operations and propaganda must be 'so planned and executed that any U.S. government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorised persons, and that if uncovered the U.S. government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them'.^ That which was recorded at the time is usually withheld from the public gaze. A peculiarity of the Cold War, however, is that, when it came to an end, the state archives of one of the front-line participants, the GDR, were made available to
researchers, including, to a certain extent, the archives o f the GDR intelligence service, the
Stasi.
The chief limitation o f this archival source relates to the Stasi's foreign espionage service, a limitation which applies in equal measure to the British equivalent, MI6.
However, written and oral evidence does exist and is available relating to the non-domestic activities of the intelligence services of both countries during the first half o f the 1960s. The material is patchy and scattered. On its own, each piece is fairly meaningless. But when the pieces are slotted together a picture emerges, a picture o f intelligence services at work. When this is placed alongside the relatively public knowledge o f political and diplomatic
activities taking place concurrently, it is possible to illuminate some of the dark comers which hinder the historian's interpretation of events. As Anthony Glees has remarked in his study o f the impact of intelligence on British foreign policy between 1939 and 1951, '...it is
an understanding of intelligence, its successes and its failures that provides ... the "missing dimension" to why what happened actually did happen'.^
This chapter will deal with conspiracies and subversion. If talk of such matters appears to bear too much resemblance to popular spy fiction, it must be remembered that this aversion to believing in the reality o f intelligence activities is a peculiarly British phenomenon. This oddity was noted by the one-time communist Arthur Koestler who was disturbed by the difference in attitude between the British and their Continental neighbours.
"There [on the Continent] conspiratorial cunning and underhand methods were in keeping with the political atmosphere created by Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Metaxas. By force of contrast, England appeared an island of innocence, where plotting was confined to memories of Guy Fawkes and to Victorian melodrama, and where fair play was taken for granted even by members of the ridiculously small and provincial Communist Party."'*
This attitude has continued. In general, conspiracy theorists are denigrated while the British media reserves its excitement for occasional stories of'spies' who 'sell their country's secrets' rather than the behind the scenes manipulation which is the bread and butter of intelligence services.
Glees has described the way in which, during the Second World War, the Soviet Union used informal networks with which to infiltrate British society, '...the informal networks were the most devastating route that Communist subversion took', he wrote. ^ It should, therefore, not be too surprising that the British and their American cousins decided to use similar tactics when faced with the problems of combating what they perceived to be the evils of communism during the Cold War era, particularly after the debâcle of the overt insurrections which took place in East Berlin in 1953 and more particularly in Budapest in 1956. They had the Soviet pattern from which to work. Describing the manner in which the Soviet Union planned to subvert Britain during the 1940s, Glees wrote;
"The means adopted consisted of the laying-down of moles whose labours would
increasingly bear finit over the years ahead, by their gaining access to the leadership éhtes of British society in the political parties, the high offices of State, the press, the BBC, and above all the secret services."
As this chapter will describe, this has all the appearances o f a blueprint for the scheme devised by Western intelligence services to infiltrate, subvert and tame the GDR and its Soviet bloc neighbours during the 1960s. A Stasi report of a conversation between one of its undercover agents and an unnamed Western conspirator quotes the instructions given for setting up just such an underground network. The agent concerned was Hans-Joachim Seidowsky.
"Your [Seidowsky's] place is in the university. To begin with a group must be got together consisting of a three to four-man subgroup, which is so created that not everyone knows everyone else. Everybody must be pledged to bring in a new person within a specific period of time so that, skilfully hidden, the university is covered with a fidl-blown net. The thing is risky but has advantages. The university is one o f the most significant powers in East Berlin. I undertake to guarantee that in the West such a development will be carefully observed and that untimely Western contacts which could be the death of the group will not happen."^
Seidowsky was the Stasi agent at the centre o f the conspiratorial web which enfolded the Coventry/Dresden project, together with its associate organisation SUhnezeichen,
allied bodies and their leaders. He was the linchpin at the time, and remains so in terms of this thesis, because it is from an examination of his activities that it is possible to reconstruct the intelligence jigsaw and create coherence out o f chaos. Archival references to the
Coventry/Dresden project are thin on the ground and it must be assumed that the bulk of relevant material is contained within the files of the HVA and MI6. The most that can be determined is that the Stasi, through Seidowsky, was behind the project in the GDR and that it was assumed, according to Seidowsky, that MI6 was fulfilling a similar role in relation to the project in Britain. In passing, it must be said that it would be hard to imagine that in the atmosphere of the Cold War either intelligence service would have been disinterested in the fact that a group of British people intended to cross through the Iron Curtain and live for several months among the citizens of communist East Germany. However, the thrust of the Coventry/Dresden project, as this thesis will argue, was political. The main purpose of both Ulbricht and the British government was to use the project in order to preserve the stability o f the GDR. It became an intelligence operation purely in the sense that the participants were not aware of the role that they were playing. They were being steered by the
intelligence services but they did not know that that was so. The not knowing was essential to their credibility.
However, an examination of the Seidowsky Stasi files reveals that running concurrently with the Coventry/Dresden project was a second conspiracy, much more in keeping with the popular concept of an intelligence operation. Superficially this conspiracy seemed to be at odds with the purpose of the Coventry/Dresden project in that it was an operation, steered by Western intelligence, designed to undermine the regimes o f the GDR and other Soviet bloc countries and replace them with governments of a more liberal nature. The apparent contradiction on the part of the West can be seen not to be so if the two
operations are viewed within the different time scales to which they belonged. The Coventry/Dresden project was designed to maintain stability in the short term. The larger subversive operation was envisaged as a long-term goal, not expected to reach fruition for up to 20 years. The West, having been rocked by the events in Budapest in 1956 when an uprising had been quelled by Soviet tanks, had switched to the tactic of working for gradual and controlled change within the Soviet bloc. Revolution was not on the agenda.
In order to achieve this goal, a number o f organisations with credible bona fide were used to infiltrate Soviet bloc countries and build up underground networks. Two of these organisations were the West Berlin Evangelische Akademie and Aktion SUhnezeichen, both of which were involved either actively or through personal links with the operation of the Coventry/Dresden project. Many of the same people were associated with both operations, chief among them being Erich Müller-Gangloff, the head o f the West Berlin Evangelische Akademie and member of the leadership circle o f the West German branch of Aktion SUhnezeichen. Müller-Gangloff was a close friend of Lothar Kreyssig, head of the East German branch of Aktion SUhnezeichen and nominal organiser o f the project in East Germany. The GDR was aware of this operation, which I will refer to as the Müller- Gangloff conspiracy, because it had been infiltrated by Seidowsky. Posing as a disaffected young Marxist student, Seidowsky had become acquainted with Müller-Gangloff in around
1957 and Müller-Gangloff had accepted him as a protégé, a potential valuable recruit to the underground movement. Thus Seidowsky stood at the centre of the interconnecting web which encompassed the Coventry/Dresden project and the Müller-Gangloff conspiracy.^
In the absence of detailed archival references to the Coventry/Dresden project, analysis o f its significance in the broader political context hinges to a great extent on an understanding of Seidowsky's activities and his role within the GDR power structure. That Seidowsky was a Stasi agent is recorded in the archives of the BStU.^ He was the most powerful German figure known to have been involved in the operation of the project in that it was he, according to the written testimony of Kreyssig, who gave permission for the project to proceed. It is this fact which places the project squarely in the intelligence arena. One of the questions which has to be asked is from whom was Seidowsky taking his orders? In Kreyssig's opinion, Seidowsky was acting on the instructions of'the highest state
leadership, or at the very least an office or person very close to that leadership'. Was Kreyssig correct? According to Seidowsky's post-unification comments, he was. All
decisions were made by Ulbricht, Seidowsky has said recently. But he has put great stress on the fact that the Coventry/Dresden project was not purely an intelligence operation. He claims that a major role was also played by Willi Barth, the leader of the Arbeitsgruppe Kirchenfragen, a political figure. This may well be so, but there is no documentary evidence to substantiate the claim other than a resolution emanating from the Arbeitsgruppe
Kirchenfragen in May 1965 which recommended that the project be terminated and all British participants to be expelled. The order was not carried out, indicating that the
Arbeitsgruppe Kirchenfragen was over-ruled by a higher authority. No further documentary evidence about Arbeitsgruppe Kirchenfragen involvement has surfaced. Nevertheless, it is accepted that intelligence involvement in the project was mounted for political purposes, the aim of this analysis o f intelligence participation being to assist in determining the nature of the political purpose.
Seidowsky is the only senior intelligence figure on either side. East or West, for whom documentary evidence of participation in the project exists. He is not prepared to elaborate on his role. On the other hand, he does not contradict the hypotheses contained within this thesis, reserving his criticisms for the fact that, in his view, the analysis is one sided.
"You cannot say it was a war but only talk about one side. There are officers and weapons on both sides. If you write a sports report and only explain what one team was doing, their
strategy and the way they played the game, everyone will want to know about the other side. Or wonder why the first team was on the field at all."^^
While this is a valid criticism, it is one which cannot be totally rectified in the absence o f access to British intelligence sources. However, through an examination of the evidence relating to Seidowsky's activities it is possible to part the curtains o f secrecy in order to provide glimpses of the activities of the opposing intelligence services. This technique is not without its difficulties. There are problems relating to documentary evidence and problems relating to oral evidence.
In the case of documentary evidence, as has been noted, the East German files are incomplete. It can be assumed that much relevant material is contained within the files of the HVA. There are three reasons for this assumption. Firstly, as this chapter will show,
Seidowsky operated on an international basis and his activities would have come within the HYA's area of responsibility. Seidowksy himself has suggested the HVA as a source. Secondly, Seidowsky's chief British contact, Paul Oestreicher, has claimed that he most definitely had two Stasi files and that accounts of his most interesting activities are contained within the files of the HVA. In addition, BStU archivists have been unable to trace any files belonging to any other major British player in the Coventry/Dresden project. There are no files relating to the Provost of Coventry Cathedral, Richard Crossman MP or the leader of the project in Dresden, Martin Turner, in the archives of the BStU. These three people were all regular visitors to the GDR over many years, in Turner's case up until the demise o f the state. They were in contact with leading political and Church figures within the GDR. The total absence of any material about them suggests most strongly, not that they did not have files but that these files were housed with the HVA, if only because they related to British people.
None of the major participants who are still alive have been able to answer any o f the more complex questions relating to the Coventry/Dresden project. Almost without exception they have universally poor memories. For example, Paul Holmer, who represented the British Foreign Office in West Berlin during the Coventry/Dresden negotiations and had several meetings with the Provost of Coventry Cathedral both in Germany and in London,
had no memory of ever having met him or known him. Nor did he have any memory o f the Coventry/Dresden project.O estreicher also claims that his memory is poor. He has said that he remembers very little about the Coventry/Dresden project, did not know that Seidowsky was involved and does not know why the project was allowed to take place. Referring to Seidowsky he said: 'He won't give away anything he does not want to and, if he
does not want to talk about any of it, he can say he cannot remember...and it may be true'. Having acknowledged poor memory to be a useful ploy, when asked about his own role in the Coventry/Dresden project, Oestreicher said that he could not remember the degree of his involvement almost half a century ago and without written records. He has no recollection, he says, of being present at the reception given for the British group when it first arrived in East Berlin. 'It is fascinating to be reminded of these things', he says disingenuously. Seidowsky, on the other hand, said of Oestreicher in the context o f the Coventry/Dresden project negotiations that he was the man 'who did if, that is to say it was Oestreicher who handled the behind the scenes negotiations.^^
There would appear to be little doubt that Oestreicher was deeply involved with the project. One of the project's volunteers, writing about his experience in an article in a
Christian newsletter, spoke o f Oestreicher meeting the group as it entered East Berlin for the first time. The article quoted Oestreicher as saying: 'Just thought I'd like to meet you' - a remarkably nonchalant comment for any British citizen to make when greeting compatriots on the Eastern side of the Berlin Wall in 1965.^^ Towards the end of the 1965 stage o f the project, Oestreicher is reported to have commented:
"...I was immensely impressed and deeply moved by the spirit of everything I saw there [Dresden]. Martin Turner could not possibly have done his job better. His openness and fiiendly directness has impressed everybody, in a situation where, even among Christians, unfortunately reserve that borders on distrust is the more common thing. Martin has clearly been backed up by a splendid group of young people, and the impression they have left behind wiU be o f great importance for fixture inter-church relations.
These are the words o f a man who obviously had close contact with, and took a great interest in the affairs o f the Coventry/Dresden project and who felt able to comment on its success or otherwise with authority.
Oestreicher and Seidowsky are still in contact. Oestreicher has been accused of having worked for British intelligence during the many years in which he was active as an unofficial Cold War envoy, but he denies these charges.^^ He has said that he was suspected by both East and West of working for the other side. He has acknowledged that he worked closely and in co-operation with the British diplomatic service. But, at the end of the day, Oestreicher has insisted that: 'I was no one's agenf .^^ Seidowsky, on the other hand, argues that only one side of the story is to be found in the archive of the BStU. 'I am only one side.