First Class Comrades

Born in London, J. Boulter has spent many years living and working in continental Europe. Boulter’s articles on espionage history and literature have been published in the Journal for Intelligence, Propaganda and Security Studies, the American Intelligence Journal, and Crime Time magazine, among others.

Contents
Abbreviations
Prologue
Introduction
Part I Death to Spies: The Descent of Eastern Germany
1. Stunde Null
2. Circles of Hell: Postwar Germany
3. SMERSH
4. Anti-fascist Unity: The New Politics
5. The Police Reborn
6. Ordering the Occupation Zone
7. Denazification
8. The German Administration of the Interior
9. New Cloaks and Daggers
10. Germany’ s New Political Police: K5
11. Order No. 201
12. Developments in the Zone
13. The Cold War Hits New Depths
14. Clean and Dirty Spying
15. The Murder that Wasn’ t
16. The Final Steps towards the Stasi

Part II United at birth: The GDR and the Stasi
17. The Firm
18. Party, Partners, and the Law
19. A New European Country

Interlude: The DNA of the Stasi
20. Conspiracy
21. Chekists: the OGPU and NKVD
22. RU
23. The Comintern and the OMS
24. Stasi Creation Myths
25. First Class Comrades: the Stasi’ s early leaders


Part III Stalinism in Action
26. Rostock, 1950
27. Cleansing the SED
28. Neutering the National Front
29. Enemies
30. Re-ordering the Stasi
31. Ulbricht’ s Acceleration of Socialism
32. Spy Wars
33. Gehlen
34. Sabotage and Kidnappings
35. The Institute: The Birth of East German Foreign Intelligence
36. ‘ A Fascist Putsch’ : The Uprising of 1953
37. Main Department XV: Foreign Intelligence Joins the Stasi

Part IV Grossaktionen: Spy-catching with the Stasi
38. A Crisis of Spies
39. ‘ Concentrated Blows’
40. The First Grossaktion: Feuerwerk, October-December 1953
41. An Outbreak of Kidnapping
42. The Second Grossaktion: Pfeil, August 1954
43. New Friends: The KGB
44. The Third Grossaktion: Blitz, December 1954-April 1955
45. The Holes and Corners of Blitz
46. Wrath
47. Liquidating the Mü ller Network in Aktion Frü hling
48. Treacherous Trials
49. ‘ His Trench Coat Was Splattered with blood’
50. The Stasi of the Grossaktionen Years
51. Investigations, Observations, Arrests
52. Reflections on the Grossaktionen

Part V Up to the Wall
53. Spies, Again
54. Special Tasks
55. Changing Times
56. Mielke Wins
57. More Dirty Operations
58. The Informer Age: The 1958 Guideline on Collaborators and Stasi Reporting
59. Enlightenment: The Growth of East German Foreign Intelligence
60. Tradecraft and Technologies
61. Love Rats
62. A Torrent of Spies
63. Exposing Nazis
64. Securing the Border
65. The Western Powers Prepare
66. A Decision is Made
67. Old Tricks
68. ‘ The Anti-fascist Protective Barrier’
69. Spies, Still
Conclusions
Appendices
Selected bibliography
Notes
Index