Published: 10 November 2006

The legendary East German foreign intelligence chief who inspired the creation of the inscrutable Communist spymaster "Karla" in John le Carré's Cold War novels died at his home in Berlin yesterday - exactly 17 years after the fall of the city's wall.

Markus "Mischa" Wolf died in his sleep at the age of 83 after completing a spying career that made him one of the most influential figures in the Cold War and forced the former West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, to resign in 1974.

Yet although he headed a retinue of some 4,000 East German Stasi secret agents across the globe, he was for decades nicknamed "the man without a face" because Western intelligence could not even procure a photograph of him.

Wolf, born to a Jewish doctor's family in Germany, emigrated to the former Soviet Union after the Nazi's rise to power in 1933. A confirmed Communist, he moved to what was to become East Germany in 1945.

He worked as a journalist for East Germany's state-run media during the Nuremburg trials and last year admitted that witnessing the evidence of the Nazi's crimes had wholly influenced his later life because anti-fascism became his raison d'être.

"I hoped that after Nuremberg there would be a time without war, aggression or crimes without humanity," he said at the time.

In 1956, Wolf became head of East Germany's foreign intelligence service ­ a post he held until 1986, by which time he was also deputy to Erich Mielke, the feared chief of the country's notorious Stasi.

His most significant achievement was to force the resignation of Willy Brandt, the popular West German Social Democrat Chancellor, in 1974. Brandt was shadowed by the East German agent Guenter Guillaume, who was given a job in the Chancellor's office. When Guillaume was unmasked, Brandt had no option but to leave office. Yet Wolf later described the resignation as an " own goal" because of Brandt's commitment to détente with East Germany.

Wolf was booed and shouted down when he tried to side with East Germans demanding democratic elections in the days that immediately preceded the fall of the Berlin Wall. He fled to Moscow but returned to reunified Germany, where in May 1997 he was found guilty of treason and kidnapping. He was given a two year suspended sentence.

He said that in the final days of the divided Germany, the CIA had asked him to defect to America with the offer of a home in California and a large salary. Wolf said he refused because he would never betray his agents. One may wonder what he thought about Carré's novel Smiley's People, when Karla was unmasked by the British spy George Smiley and crossed the Wall to defect to the West.

A spymaster with an acute sense of history, it is unlikely that the irony of the timing of his death, on yesterday's anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, would have been lost on him.

The legendary East German foreign intelligence chief who inspired the creation of the inscrutable Communist spymaster "Karla" in John le Carré's Cold War novels died at his home in Berlin yesterday - exactly 17 years after the fall of the city's wall.

Markus "Mischa" Wolf died in his sleep at the age of 83 after completing a spying career that made him one of the most influential figures in the Cold War and forced the former West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt, to resign in 1974.

Yet although he headed a retinue of some 4,000 East German Stasi secret agents across the globe, he was for decades nicknamed "the man without a face" because Western intelligence could not even procure a photograph of him.

They should have gone after the Nazis just as hard as they went after Honecker.

By the same toke, Honecker should NEVER have issued the shoot-to-kill order for people trying to leave.

But the order was against ANYBODY trying to leave.

And it was issued in 1971.

I agree that we should have honored the East German, Soviet and Israeli requests to extradite Nazis, however.

My sympathies in 1989 were with the left-wing anti-Honecker protesters. Those who led the mass protests against the Stalinist regime that year were radicals, not Christian Democrat wannabees. It wasn't until after the Wall went down that the right-wing media, advertisers and financiers distorted the situation.

[ 10 November 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

And I agree with you about the right-wing despots.

And all I've posted on this whole subject has been in the service of preventing the clock being turned back.

In this day in age, there's no reason for any of us to defend much of anything in Stalin's heritage. What was good in it didn't come close to justifying what was bad.

Communism might well have prevailed if only Stalin had allowed it to be BETTER than capitalism.

Nonetheless, you and I really don't need to have this whole discussion again, fidel.

[ 10 November 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

I'm with you on the war criminals thing.
Very eloquently put, btw.
(still, couldn't we throw SOME of them to the piranhas?)

[ 10 November 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

[ 10 November 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

Because of this, I feel that JFK's hardline policy in the Missile Crisis was a horrible mistake in the long-term, as it undermined Kruschev and led to the Brezhnev takeover, which is what sent everything sliding permanently downhill.

It is far less likely, for example, that Kruschev, being sensitive to the backlash the USSR got over the Hungarian invasion of '56(an event which caused mass resignations in every western Communist Party)would have been stupid enough to send the tanks into Prague in 1968, a choice the USSR never recovered from in international terms.

[ 10 November 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
It is far less likely, for example, that Kruschev, being sensitive to the backlash the USSR got over the Hungarian invasion of '56(an event which caused mass resignations in every western Communist Party)would have been stupid enough to send the tanks into Prague in 1968, a choice the USSR never recovered from in international terms.

[ 10 November 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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Well, Khruscheov is not at all apologetic about that in the slightest, and also supportive of the supression of Dubcek, though he wasn't directly involved.

He memoirs are interesting in many respects, because they do betray a deep humanistic instinct, he is also, even post-facto, 100% a party man, defending the general direction of Soviet policy, in particular its more controversal decisions. So, phrases like "Don't get me wrong, I am all for arresting people!" really pop out at you.

I'll have to read the memoirs now. I never actually have.

There is a kind of politics practiced in heavily closeted bureaucracies, that we see in Washington, and a "leak" can often be part of the plan of a minority position to bring its issues into the wider realm of debate.

So for instance, in the case of the "Secret Speech," it served as a basis for shaking up the parties throughout the Eastern block, but at the same time did not have official status. So in a sense, the party could move to reject much of Stalin's legacy without officially having to admit "errors" were made and consequently also bringing into question their own role in the Stalanist period.

I know it is all over the internet, but it smacks of a P.R. story to me.

One reason is that it doesn't make much sense as it is commonly told. The idea that the Chief of Police in Los Angeles "vetoed" the trip because he couldn't provide security does not convince me.
Local police are never responsible for the security of international visitors.

Secondly, I was very alive in 1959 when this supposedly happened. I remember Khrushchev's trip very well, because my dad was a newspaper reporter chosen to accompany Khruschev, as part of the "press pool". This story seems like exactly what he'd tell his thirteen year old boy, since it is colourful, and involves Disneyland, which I highly approved of at the time.

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Originally posted by Jeff House:
Local police are never responsible for the security of international visitors.

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That's right, Jeff. According to what I've read, it was always protocol to have hundreds of federal agents in the streets guarding any and all visiting foreign leaders, including national leaders. The motorcade in Dallas, 1963 was an exception.

None of the CIA, FBI or local law enforcement agencies thought security was an issue for monsters like Emil Augsburg, Klaus Barbie, the Marcos', Orlando Bosch etc. The red menace was always on their one-track minds. Here in Canada, too. The one's who weren't recruited by the CIA and School of the Americas lied about their former professions before and during the second world war and recorded in ships manifests and border crossing records, which should have been enough of a breach of immigration laws to have them deported to the countries pointing out their real identities to feds in the States and Canada.

[ 10 November 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by blake 3:17:
One may wonder what he thought about Carré's novel Smiley's People, when Karla was unmasked by the British spy George Smiley and crossed the Wall to defect to the West.

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I wonder what he thought about Philby and the Cambridge five. Anthony Blunt was a shocker. Of course, fleeing the U.S. feds was a breeze for Burgess. All he had to do was have himself picked up by the cops for DWB (driving with a gay black man) and subsequently deported.

Philby's Russian postage stamp

[ 10 November 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
From what I've read, Kruschev DID have to smuggle his memoirs out of the USSR.

I'd agree with Cueball's analysis of the "secret speech", however.

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Well, yes, but then it would seem that Khruscheov had friends, who were capable of doing the smuggling, and so, it seems reasonable to assume that among those friends were the guards themselves, and also people in the party aparatus as a whole.

That said, your original contention is that he had to doctor his words to make them acceptable. So, that doesn't really work with the idea that his memoirs were smuggled out secretly. One would think that if they were smuggled out, that they would be a full bodied expression of what Khruscheov thought.

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"He said that in the final days of the divided Germany, the CIA had asked him to defect to America with the offer of a home in California and a large salary. Wolf said he refused because he would never betray his agents."

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