A high-level Soviet military journal was kept under TOP SECRET SEGREL wraps for decades, hiding the vulnerability of East German naval supply lines and a sensitive intelligence breach.
By Constance Bell ·
For decades, a 1979 memorandum remained hidden, detailing an intelligence windfall that had nothing to do with naval training and everything to do with a mole in Moscow
By Vera Kessler ·
East German citizens read falsified news and poison pen letters for years, unaware the ink was paid for by Langley after a 1952 dispute over secrecy.
By Theo Marchetti ·
Kept secret for over 40 years, a 1976 CIA report tracks the GDR's plan to seize the North German coast and the "extremely sensitive" source who stole the blueprint
By Harlan Pryce ·
West German imperialism was targeted for isolation as East Berlin used an offensive policy of peace to shift the balance of power in favor of socialism.
By Vera Kessler ·
Moscow worked to erode the Western pact system by buying off economic elites and splitting the SPD from its working-class base to force a NATO exit by 1969.
By Vera Kessler ·
Ruling party officials watched 66,000 members vanish as citizens demanded a no-confidence vote and diplomats pushed for a Polish-style round-table to replace the Politburo.
By Vera Kessler ·
Otto Winzer fought to be seen as a sovereign state rather than a Soviet satellite, seeking a pact to end "querelles allemandes" before both Germanies joined the United Nations.
By Roy Castellano ·
GDR diplomats secretly tracked the political vocabulary of their enemy to paint the Kiesinger government as neo-Nazi and bypass Bonn's hold on European security.
By Vera Kessler ·
East Germany's internal grip on power faced an existential threat from Western demands for the movement of people and ideas during 1972 talks for a new European security agreement.
By Vera Kessler ·
East Germans went two months without potatoes and faced a 2 billion mark goods deficit while Khrushchev secretly plotted to surround Berlin with a ring of Soviet tanks.
By Roy Castellano ·
Behind choreographed flatteries, Kim Il Sung confessed to Erich Honecker that his people lacked food and clothing while 1,000 nuclear warheads threatened to turn his country into complete rubble.
By Vera Kessler ·
East Berlin analysts watched Kim Il Sung shift from calls to forcefully liberate the south to a proposal for reducing armed forces to 100,000 men.
By Vera Kessler ·
Pyongyang hid its reliance on Soviet credits for steel mills and power plants behind a mask of total autonomy while shifting its political allegiance toward Beijing.
By Vera Kessler ·
Czechoslovakia and East Germany blocked students from accessing state secrets in nuclear physics after Pyongyang urgently offered to pay all costs for 95 trainees.
By Eleanor Voss ·
Diplomatic license plates and the liquidation of the GDR sparked a thirty-minute clash between Otto Winzer and Walter Scheel that ended in a stalemate hidden from the press.
By Vera Kessler ·