Nicht länger geheim: Entwicklung, System und Arbeitsweise des imperialistischen deutschen Geheimdienstes

What we have discovered about the Cold War is what we already knew: Julius Mader and the Western secret services during the Cold War

Paul Maddrell

Abstract
Throughout the Cold War East German propagandists churned out books and articles denouncing the West. One, Julius Mader by name, was particularly active in claiming to expose the aims, methods and organizers of Western espionage. More than five million copies of his books were sold, chiefly in Soviet Bloc countries. If his information were true, it had to come from East Germany's Ministry of State Security (MfS, or ‘Stasi’). To date, despite the scarcity of primary source material on espionage during the Cold War, Mader's status as a Communist propagandist has meant that his works have been little used by Western historians. However, by consulting the MfS' records it is now possible to find out whether or not his allegations were true. If they were, the MfS blew significant holes in the secrecy of Western espionage for decades, starting more than 40 years ago, and Western historians have been very neglectful in not referring much more to Mader's books. Many of his allegations were indeed true and his works, though very obviously products of an ideology, represent a valuable resource for the historians of today. Moreover, they show that during the Cold War the Communist regimes were talking more sense than we thought and were telling us much that our own governments did not want us to hear. The Cold War over, we surely have a right to know what secret activities the Western governments undertook during their struggle with the Communist Bloc and should make use of every reliable source.

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Acknowledgements
This article is an expanded version of a paper given to the conference on ‘Political Pressure and the Archival Record’ which was held at Liverpool University's Centre for Archive Studies on 22--25 July 2003. Another version of it I delivered as a lecture to the German Historical Institute, London, on 11 May 2004, under the title, ‘“Wächst zusammen, was zusammengehört?” Western and Eastern Sources for Western Espionage against East Germany during the Cold War’. I am grateful to both institutions for the invitation to speak.

Journal Cold War History