What the Gauck Agency has made possible is an historical breakthrough. By rule of thumb, official government documents of western countries remain sealed for thirty years. This also applies to documents kept in the Nato archive that was set up in 1999.

Historian Christian Nünlist tells us that until now nothing had been learned from this quarter about prevailing notions or military plans initiated during the Cold War. "This is why the publication of the Stasi reports on Nato is so exceptional," he says (1).

Stasi archives "talk"

"It is due to the German Gauck Agency that we now know much more about these plans and procedures. . This agency was set up in 1992 to archive and evaluate the Stasi documents," says historian Bernd Schäfer. Although most documents from the former GDR intelligence were legally destroyed or sealed after Germany's reunification in 1990, there are nevertheless between 6000 and 10,000 pages of documents in the Gauck archives on GDR's military espionage. These have now been made accessible for research purposes. As an expert in this area within the Parallel History Project (2), Schäfer, Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington DC, evaluated the content of the archive.

As early as the 1960s the Stasi agency responsible for foreign espionage, the "Head Administration Reconnaissance" (HVA), succeeded in tapping into a first source of information at Nato headquarters in Brussels. Reports of the master spy "Topas" and other agents contain details of the discussion and the situation on stationing nuclear Pershing-II medium range missiles in western Europe at the beginning of the 1980s as well as of Nato's perception of its adversary, the Warsaw Pact. At that time the so-called "plan fulfilment reports" of certain Nato member states must have been of great interest to the East, as they contained detailed information on the actual military strength of the enemy.

How Nato and the Warsaw Pact perceived each other large

"Pre-emptive strike out of the question"

Although the HVA and the agents of the military intelligence service of the former GDR , who were largely under its control, never succeeded in obtaining information on Nato's intentions concerning precise targets for a nuclear strike and although Nato's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), based in Mons/Belgium, was apparently at no point infiltrated by GDR military spies, GDR agents managed to draw an incredibly comprehensive picture of the plans of the western military alliance. Schäfer assumes that the information, which reached Moscow via the GDR , slowed down adventurous Soviet war plans in the period between 1981 and 1983. Indeed, material delivered by agent "Topas" verified that the East's fear, that the West would launch a pre-emptive strike against the Warsaw Pact members, was unfounded.

Soviet "war fears" from 1981 to 1983

Christian Nünlist explains the historical context of the explosive documents. Following a fairly long period of détente, relations between east and west deteriorated again in the early 1980s. Essentially, the so-called "Second Cold War" from 1981 to 1985 was a war of words. In June 1982 US President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire ", whereupon the Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, called the American President "insane" and a "liar".

In 1981, due to advances in western weapon technology, the Kremlin began to believe that they were losing the Cold War, and feared a US nuclear surprise attack.

This document from the German Ministry for State Security describes American war plans for Nato in January 1981 of the United States 5th Army Corps stationed in the FRG. large

In 1981 Andropov, then still head of the KGB, initiated a massive secret service action to put into place an early warning system as protection against a US or Nato attack. The action was code-named "RYaN" (Russian acronym for "nuclear missile attack").

Soviet fears of a nuclear attack reached their height in 1983 when the western alliance discussed the stationing of American Pershing II-missiles on west German soil . This was followed by Reagan's announcement of a strategic defence initiative (SDI), a space-based missile shield – which came to be known as "Star Wars Initiative" in the media - , and the Soviet shooting down of a Korean Airlines Boeing 747 (KAL 007). In this charged atmosphere Nato carried out the military exercise "Able Archer 83", a practise drill encompassing procedures for a comprehensive atomic strike. On 8/9 November 1983 KGB Headquarters alerted all its agents active in western Europe in order to find out whether Nato’s exercise could be the prelude to a real nuclear attack. At this point, according to KGB agent Oleg Gordievsky, who later defected to the West, the world came “dangerously close" to a nuclear exchange, “certainly closer than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962" (3). The KGB warned neither the Politburo nor top officials in the Soviet Ministry of Defence of its actions. As Vojtech Mastny from Washington, head of PHP, says, these unknown KGB analysts probably prevented a tragedy which, had Soviet leaders received such explosive information, could have resulted from a hectic Politburo meeting.

US war plans for Nato

Among the documents PHP published last week, one key document, says Christian Nünlist, concerns the American war plan for Nato - dated January 1981 - for the 5th Army Corps of the US Forces in the FRG. There are also special documents listing the nuclear and chemical potential of the most important fast-developing nations, such as Israel, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Argentina or Brazil, all dated 1989 (4).

The military plans of the USA and Nato on the role of the 5th Army Corps are dealt with in the General Defence Plan (GDP) 33001. This plan was worked out by the staff of US Territorial Forces in Europe,confirmed by the US Ministry of Defense and, after consultations in Nato, eventually subsumed into Nato's own planning. According to the original report of the Ministry for State Security this top-secret plan is divided into two parts: the "OPLAN" (basic plan) and a contingency plan. "In addition to general information on the intentions, OPLAN contains the objectives and operative set-up of the defence of Nato’s Central Army Group (CENTAG), detailed orders for the 5th Army Corps and troops and units put under its command to carry out defence operations as well as basic regulations on co-operation and measures on the leadership and communication of the corps. Amongst other things, the contingency plan stipulates the operative management of the corps, the demarcation of the corps’ and divisions’ defence lines, the leadership of the operation and measures for its protection, including guidelines for the use of nuclear and chemical weapons as well as contingencies for the deployment of external defence forces within the framework of the 5th Army Corps. [... enthält unter anderem Anlagen über die operative Gliederung des Korps, die Begrenzung der Korps- und Divisionsverteidigungsstreifen, die Idee zur Führung der Operation und Massnahmen zu deren Sicherstellung, einschliesslich der Grundsätze zum Einsatz von Kernwaffen und chemischen Kampfstoffen sowie Anlagen über den geplanten Einsatz auswärtiger Verstärkungskräfte im Rahmen des V. Armeekorps/USA (5).]"

It is difficult to assess the exact contribution of East German spies to preventing a nuclear war between East and West. According to Vojtech Mastny information on Nato that Moscow received via the HVA agents in Brussels and Bonn was less important than the facts they sought for in vain – because it simply did not exist – namely the suspected and feared nuclear first strike. Nato’s military strategy, which thanks to the spies was an open book for Moscow, was clearly defence-oriented.