The KGB in Germany, a 3-part TV documentary
February 19, 2007
The 3-part TV documentary series "The KGB in Germany" sends the viewer right to the front lines of the secret "Hot War" that raged from 1945 past the Fall of the Berlin Wall. East and West Germany, two states, two ideologies, separated by an impenetrable wall, furnished the perfect battlefield for the armies of secret agents. For nearly 50 years, they fought out their secret war on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
The many faces of the KGB's operations in Germany are illuminated by individual cases dramatically recounted and complemented with archive footage, much of it never shown before, and authentic re-enactments.
Former high-ranking KGB officials outline their methods and the cases they applied them to. For the first time, recruited spies and KGB victims tell of their experiences. One of the KGB's master thieves tells about how he succeeded in making off with an entire missile. With obvious relish, one of the KGB's former officers relates the case of a German army defector and his tragic fate. We hear about the privileged life of a KGB officer in post-war Germany as w ell as the high price the KGB's predecessor, the NKVD, paid to extract uranium ore in the Erzgebirge mountains. And we hear of KGB operatives and their unseen activities ranging to thorough infiltration of the West German "Bonn Republic". The tale is told of the young victims of Stalinist terror in the "Special Camps", as well as of the surveillance and counter-surveillance between the Stasi and the KGB in East Germany.
The series covers the KGB's hit squads and its approach to rest and relaxation in East Germany. It looks at excerpts from KGB foreign espionage training films and investigates the mysterious activities of Vladimir Putin and his true superiors in Dresden. It considers the perils of West Germany's notorious Ostpolitik and the none too glorious actions of the KGB during the years of Perestroika. Writer and Director Matthias Unterburg and his crew scrutinized countless kilometers of film, pored over thousands of files and conducted hours of conversations with eye-witnesses.
The first part Assassins and Agents (March 6) details the persecution and liquidation of dissidents by the KGB's hired assassins from 1945 through the 1960s. The hired killers even followed their victims into the West – Lev Rebet is one example. A great effort was made to keep uranium mining in East Germany top secret. The aim was to keep the West in the dark as long as possible about just how close the Soviet Union was to developing an atomic bomb of its own.
The second part, Double Agents and Diplomats (March 13) opens with the Workers' Uprising in East Berlin on June 17, 1953. As one consequence, the KGB promoted the rapid development of the Stasi State Security Service in East Germany to control and contain any and all opposition. Simultaneously, the KGB stepped up its espionage activities in West Germany, espcially in the capital, Bonn. One of the most successful cases was the "Honey Trap".
The third part, Romeos and Residents (March 20) focuses on agents and their functions as "Romeos". Bonn, then the capital of West Germany, became the scene of many a covert operation. And even after the Fall the Berlin Wall, the KGB and its Russian successor organization, the FSB, continued its activities in espionage and covert operations.