Relations between East Germany and the United States formally began in 1974 until the former's collapse in 1990. The relationship between the two nations was among the most hostile during the Cold War as both sides were mutually suspicious of each other. Both sides conducted routine espionage against each other and conducted prisoner exchanges for their respective citizens which included spies for both the Americans and Soviets.
East Germany maintained extremely close relations with the Soviet Union, the main rival of the United States during this period, and was viewed as a proxy state of the Soviets. The US had better and close relations with West Germany, East Germany's closest rival, which was viewed by East Germany and the Soviets as a proxy state of the US.
History
East German refugees reading news accounts of President John F. Kennedy’s July 25, 1961, address to the American people about the growing conflict with the Soviet Union over the status of Berlin.
Following the end of World War II after Germany's surrender in 1945 on May 8, the U.S. had occupied Germany until 1949. The Soviet Union's occupied German Zone was what would become East Germany (GDR) being formally founded on October 7, 1949. The response by the U.S. was that it would not recognize the establishment of the East German state and that it was "without any legal validity," and that it would "continue to give full support to the Government of the German Federal Republic at Bonn in its efforts to restore a truly free and democratic Germany." Efforts to restore Germany under one nation collapsed which led to West Germany and the U.S. establishing formal relations on May 6, 1955.[1]
In 1972 after the signing of the Basic Treaty between East and West Germany, the United States began negotiations to establish formal relations with East Germany from July 15 to July 26.[2] Contact was only made possible after the Four Power Agreement on Berlin which was agreed upon by France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union which allowed both East and West Germany to maintain relations and reestablished ties between the two parts of Berlin, improved travel and communications between the two parts of the city and brought numerous improvements for the residents of the Western Sectors.
On September 4, 1974, East Germany and the United States signed and released a joint communiqué announcing the formal establishment of relations. In December 1974, both countries formalized relations and named ambassadors with the appointment of Rolf Sieber for East Germany and John Sherman Cooper for the U.S.[3] The United States was represented in then-East Berlin, and East Germany was represented with a diplomatic office as part of the then-West German embassy and now the current Embassy of Germany in Washington, D.C.[4]
Chancellor of Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) Helmut Schmidt, Chairman of the State Council of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) Erich Honecker, US President Gerald Ford and Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky on August 1, 1975, signing the Helsinki Accords.
From July 30 to August 1, 1975, U.S. President Gerald Ford met with Erich Honecker and had a brief conversation during the Helsinki summit which led to the passing of the Helsinki Accords. This marked the first time leaders of both countries met and spoke to each other.[5]
U.S. Ambassador John Sherman Cooper (left) meeting with Erich Honecker (right) on February 27, 1975, in East Berlin.
In September 1979, a consular treaty was signed, although no U.S. consulates were set up in any East German cities outside East Berlin.[6]
In January 1984, East Germany allowed six East Germans to leave the country that had been holding up in the American embassy waiting to be granted asylum as well as protection from being arrested by East German authorities in a letter they had sent to then-President Ronald Reagan. The group had threatened to go on a hunger strike until they would be allowed to leave by the GDR. Eventually, they were allowed to leave East Germany in three automobiles past a checkpoint at the Berlin Wall into West Berlin.[7]
On January 10, 1986, Erich Honecker met with a U.S. Congressional delegation led by Tom Lantos in Berlin marking the first time senior leaders from both countries met face-to-face in a formal manner and in each other's respective nation since the establishment of relations. Congressman Benjamin Gilman told the press that the delegation had shared their concerns about "travel, freedom of religion, the border of West Berlin, current world-political problems and questions concerning bilateral relations between the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the U.S.A." The meeting lasted for three-and-a-half hours and was the first Congressional delegation to visit East Germany since 1983. The 1983 delegation hadn't met with Honecker.[8]
Interessengemeinschaft Mandan-Indianer Leipzig 1970, the popular image of Native Americans made Indian living history quite popular in East Germany.
On October 4, 1989, eighteen East German citizens entered the U.S. Embassy seeking asylum prompting East German police officers to seal off access to the embassy from a crowd trying to make their way into the embassy as well. The eighteen citizens snuck their way inside through a side door and were later persuaded to leave on the assurance the GDR government would favorably view their emigrant visa applications.[9]
On December 12, 1989, then-United States Secretary of StateJames Baker visited East Germany marking the first time a Secretary of State visited the GDR. Baker met with Hans Modrow, the head of the government of East Germany at the time. Baker said of his visit, "I felt it was important that we have the opportunity to have the premier and the people of the German Democratic Republic East Germany know of our support for the reforms that are taking place in this country." Modrow stated, "We started a dialogue with each other today" and described Baker's visit as a "political sign". Baker met with East German church leaders about the impending collapse of the East German economy if aid wasn't given and had emphasized the U.S.'s commitment to a peaceful reformation of the East German government.[10] The visit came at a time when the Berlin Wall, and the inner German border fell in November, the Malta Summit from December 2 to 3 between the U.S. and the Soviet Union where the Cold War was declared over, and the following year's completion of German reunification. In November with the opening of the border between both Germany's, Egon Krenz, the last leader of the GDR, received a telegram from President George H. W. Bush congratulating Krenz for doing so.[11]
On June 11, 1990, Prime Minister Lothar de Maizière became the first and only leader of East Germany to visit the White House meeting with H.W. Bush. Bush discussed what was described "about his vision as to the postwar Europe, post-German unification Europe."[12] Maizière also spoke at Georgetown University.[13]
German reunification was allowed with the signing and implementation of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany which renounced France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States' control of Germany. The treaty was signed by the four powers with both East and West Germany in Moscow on September 12 with its full effect taking place on March 15, 1991. On September 25, President George H. W. Bush submitted the treaty to the United States Congress for ratification and was unanimously passed by the United States Senate. Afterward, the U.S. recognized the West German state as the legitimate successor to both German states as the five constituent federal states of the German Democratic Republic were absorbed by the Federal Republic of Germany. The U.S. wasn't compelled to recognize the reunified Germany as a new nation and subsequently closed its embassy to East Germany in Berlin on October 2, 1990, while maintaining the embassy to former West Germany in Bonn.[1]
The embassy in former East Berlin would later reopen as the official American embassy to Germany in 1998 while the chancery in Bonn was permanently closed in 1999.[14]
Prisoner exchanges and espionage
Over the years both the American and East German governments had been involved in routine espionage activities against one another. The more prominent of these have resulted in prisoner exchanges and criminal convictions.
Prisoner exchanges
In August 1977, Alan Van Norman, a twenty-year-old college student who had been arrested by East German authorities as he was trying to help a family escape to West Germany. East German lawyer, Wolfgang Vogel, help secure the release in negotiating for the counter release of Robert Thompson, a former U.S. Air Force clerk who confessed in 1965 to passing hundreds of photos of secret documents to the Soviet Union since 1957 while he was based in West Berlin, at the Office of Special Investigation at Tempelhof Air Base. He served there from December 1952 to December 1958. Congressman Benjamin Gilman and Israeli member of parliament, Shabtai Kalmanowitz, led the negotiations of the exchange and as a prelude to Thompson and Norman's, Miron Marcus, a 24‐year‐old Israeli businessman was released by People's Republic of Mozambique. Marcus had been held for nineteen months after his private plane was forced down on a flight from Rhodesia to his home in South Africa. Marcus was released in April.[15] On May 1, 1978, Norman was released by the East Germans as was Thompson. The exchange had taken place behind closed doors at the U.S. Embassy to East Germany.[16]
In February 1986, Congressman Benjamin Gilman and then-Secretary of State George Shultz were involved in negotiating the release of Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky who in 1977 was arrested for spying on behalf of the United States and sentenced to thirteen years of forced labor in 1978. Negotiations for his release was discussed between Gilman and Erich Honecker during the former's visit in January as part of a Congressional delegation.[17] Wolfgang Vogel help negotiate Sharansky's release on February 11 along with spies Czech citizen Jaroslav Javorský and West German citizens Wolf-Georg Frohn, and Dietrich Nistroy were exchanged for Czech spies Karl Koecher and Hana Koecher held in the United States, Soviet spy Yevgeni Zemlyakov, Polish spy Marian Zacharski, and East German spy Detlef Scharfenorth (the latter three held in West Germany). The men were released in two stages, with Sharansky freed first then whisked away, accompanied by the United States Ambassador to West Germany, Richard Burt.[18] The exchange took place on the Glienicke Bridge between West Berlin and East Germany, which had been used before for this purpose.[19][20]
Espionage
From 1983 to 1988, James Hall III, a United States Army warrant officer and signals intelligence analyst stationed in Germany sold eavesdropping and code secrets to both East Germany and the Soviet Union. Hall offered his services to the Soviets back in November 1981. He was employed in early 1982 and smuggled top-secret documents out of the station to the KGB. In 1983, Hall's activities diversified when he and Hüseyin Yıldırım, a Turkish-American auto mechanic, served as Hall's courier for transporting the sensitive materials to East German agents. Yıldırım was not aware of Hall's contact with the KGB. After some time, the KGB and the Stasi realized by the identical American documents that they were being serviced by the same agent. The KGB confronted Hall during a meeting in Vienna, Austria in June 1985, and demanded that he work only for them. However, Hall opted to work for the Stasi, becoming the sole agent for the East Germans. Hall was eventually arrested on December 21, 1988, in Savannah, Georgia, after telling an undercover FBI agent that over a period of six years, he had sold Top Secret intelligence data to East Germany and the Soviet Union. At the time, Hall believed that he was speaking to a Soviet contact, and during this conversation claimed that he had been motivated only by money. Hall was convicted of espionage on July 20, 1989; he was sentenced to 40 years imprisonment, fined $50,000, ordered to forfeit all proceeds from his activities, and given a dishonorable discharge. He served his sentence at the United States Disciplinary Barracks, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, from which he was released in September 2011 after 22 years.[21]
Yıldırım was arrested on December 21, 1988, by the FBI as a result of the Army's investigation into Hall.[22] Yıldırım was convicted on July 20, 1989, and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.[23] Yıldırım was released from Federal Correctional Institution, Lompoc on December 29, 2003, and was extradited back to his native Turkey within the scope of a bilateral treaty on prisoner exchange between Turkey and the United States.[24] Yıldırım arrived in Turkey on December 30 and was interrogated by the public prosecutor and put before a court in Bakırköy, Istanbul. The court sentenced him to 15 years in prison on charges of spying and two years for prison break according to the Turkish Penal Code. However, his sentence was reduced to one day in prison after deducting the years of his confinement in the United States. He spent one day at Metris Prison in Istanbul to comply with the law and was released on December 31, 2003.[25]
On April 22, 1991, Jeffrey Carney, a U.S. Air Force intelligence specialist was captured by agents of the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations after it had been revealed he had been working for the Stasi through declassified documents released after the fall of East Germany.[26] Carney was working for the Stasi after he had become alienated by the policies of Ronald Reagan and the Air Force's intelligence-gathering operations. Carney was transferring U.S. Military documents while working in West Berlin. Carney was feeling isolated, alienated, under psychological stress where he felt he had no one to talk to about his problems. He also had admitted that his homosexuality was the primary reason he had become a spy with the fear of having it be discovered.[27] Carney initially intended to defect to East Germany, but his Stasi counterparts wanted him to stay to continue to gather intelligence. After he was transferred to Goodfellow Air Force Base in 1984, Carney would travel across the world on assignments delivering documents to his Stasi handlers meeting his handlers in Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro in 1985. Feeling cut off from his supervisors in East Berlin and at increasing risk in what became known as "The Year of the Spy" he sought out the protection of the East German embassy in Mexico City. From there he was flown to Havana with the assistance of the Cuban government. Weeks later he returned to East Berlin via Prague.
Documents he handed over included intercepting and translating non-secure telephone communications of U.S. military commanders as well as the East German telephone lines dedicated to the American embassy in East Berlin. Around the same time after his transfer to Goodfellow, Carney applied for permanent asylum in East Germany and until 1990 his whereabouts had remained unknown and was carried on the rolls as a deserter. Carney had only become a person of interest after the collapse of the East German government and Stasi documents were released to the German public. Former Stasi officers turned informants help locate Carney near his apartment in Pintschstraße 12, in Friedrichshain, which was located in then-East Germany. After interrogation and being charged with espionage, conspiracy, and desertion, Carney pleaded guilty and was sentenced to thirty-eight years in prison in December 1991. Carney served the mandatory terms of his sentence at Quantico, Virginia, and later at the United States Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Carney was released in 2002, after serving 11 years, seven months, and twenty days on a twenty-year sentence in accordance with his pretrial agreement.[28]
The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the German Democratic Republic. Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government of the GDR on 13 August 1961. It included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area that contained anti-vehicle trenches, beds of nails and other defenses. The primary intention for the Wall's construction was to prevent East German citizens from fleeing to the West.
East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic, was a country in Central Europe from its formation on 7 October 1949 until its reunification with West Germany on 3 October 1990. Until 1989, it was generally viewed as a communist state and described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state". The economy of this country was centrally planned and state-owned. Although the GDR had to pay substantial war reparations to the Soviets, it became the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc.
The Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, an abbreviation of Staatssicherheit, was the state security service of East Germany from 1950 to 1990.
Erich Fritz Emil Mielke was a German communist official who served as head of the East German Ministry for State Security, better known as the Stasi, from 1957 until shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Hans Modrow was a German politician best known as the last communist premier of East Germany.
Markus Johannes Wolf, also known as Mischa, was head of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, the foreign intelligence division of East Germany's Ministry for State Security. He was the Stasi's number two for 34 years, which spanned most of the Cold War. He is often regarded as one of the best-known spymasters during the Cold War. In the West he was known as "the man without a face" due to his elusiveness.
The Peaceful Revolution, as a part of the Revolutions of 1989, was the process of sociopolitical change that led to the opening of East Germany's borders with the West, the end of the ruling of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the German Democratic Republic in 1989 and the transition to a parliamentary democracy, which later enabled the reunification of Germany in October 1990. This happened through non-violent initiatives and demonstrations. This period of change is referred to in German as Die Wende.
East German jokes, jibes popular in the former German Democratic Republic, reflected the concerns of East German citizens and residents between 1949 and 1990. Jokes frequently targeted political figures, such as Socialist Party General Secretary Erich Honecker or State Security Minister Erich Mielke, who headed the Stasi secret police. Elements of daily life, such as economic scarcity, relations between the GDR and the Soviet Union, or Cold War rival, the United States, were also common. There were also ethnic jokes, highlighting differences of language or culture between Saxony and Central Germany.
Margot Honecker was an East German politician and influential member of the country's Communist government until 1989. From 1963 until 1989, she was Minister of National Education of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). She was married to Erich Honecker, leader of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party from 1971 to 1989 and concurrently from 1976 to 1989 the country's head of state.
The German Democratic Republic (GDR), German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), often known in English as East Germany, existed from 1949 to 1990. It covered the area of the present-day German states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg, Berlin, Sachsen, Sachsen-Anhalt, and Thüringen. This area was occupied by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II excluding the former eastern lands annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union, with the remaining German territory to the west occupied by the British, American, and French armies. Following the economic and political unification of the three western occupation zones under a single administration and the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany in May 1949, the German Democratic Republic was founded on 7 October 1949 as a sovereign nation.
Jeffrey Martin Carney is a former United States Air Force intelligence specialist convicted of spying for East German Ministry for State Security. One of Stasi's most successful spies, code-named "Kid" or "Uwe", Carney became alienated and angry at the U.S. Air Force and U.S. policies under President Ronald Reagan. He began handing over U.S. military documents to the Stasi while working in West Berlin for the U.S. Air Force. After his transfer back to Goodfellow Air Force Base in 1984, Carney decided to once again request permanent asylum in East Germany. His whereabouts remained unknown until 1990 and he was carried on the rolls as a deserter.
James W. Hall III is a former United States Army warrant officer and signals intelligence analyst in Germany who sold eavesdropping and code secrets to East Germany and the Soviet Union from 1983 to 1988.
Germany–North Korea relations are the bilateral relations between Germany and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), commonly known as North Korea. During the Cold War, East Germany maintained diplomatic relations only with North Korea, while West Germany maintained diplomatic relations only with South Korea. East Germany ceased to exist upon German reunification, which meant that diplomatic relations no longer existed between Germany and North Korea. The two countries appointed protecting powers to represent their interests in the other country, Sweden being the protecting power for Germany, and China being the protecting power for North Korea.
John O. Koehler was a German-born American journalist and executive for the Associated Press, who also briefly served as the White House Communications Director in 1987 during the Reagan administration.
Hüseyin Yıldırım is a Turkish-American auto mechanic who was sentenced to life imprisonment in the United States for his courier role in the espionage activities of U.S. serviceman James Hall III during the Cold War era. Yıldırım was later pardoned and extradited to his homeland, where he was sentenced to 17 years in prison but served only one day.
Zersetzung was a psychological warfare technique used by the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) to repress political opponents in East Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. Zersetzung served to combat alleged and actual dissidents through covert means, using secret methods of abusive control and psychological manipulation to prevent anti-government activities. People were commonly targeted on a pre-emptive and preventive basis, to limit or stop activities of dissent that they may have gone on to perform, and not on the basis of crimes they had actually committed. Zersetzung methods were designed to break down, undermine, and paralyze people behind "a facade of social normality" in a form of "silent repression".
The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, marked the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtain. It was one of the series of events that started the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, preceded by the Solidarity Movement in Poland. The fall of the inner German border took place shortly afterward. An end to the Cold War was declared at the Malta Summit three weeks later and the German reunification took place in October the following year.
The Gera Demands were a set of demands made by the East German leader Erich Honecker on 13 October 1980. Directed at the West German government, they called for far-reaching foreign policy concessions.
The Foreign policy of East Germany was characterized by the close ties of East Germany to the Eastern Bloc. During its existence, the most important partner was the Soviet Union (USSR), which acted as a protecting power and most important trade and economic partner, which is why the GDR was called a satellite state. The GDR remained closely linked to the other socialist states through organizations such as the Warsaw Pact and Camecon. While the GDR was relatively isolated outside the communist world in the first two decades of its existence due to the Hallstein Doctrine of West Germany, a change took place in the 1970s with the rapprochement with West Germany under Chancellor Willy Brandt's new Ostpolitik. As a result, the GDR was able to gain international status and establish diplomatic relations with almost 130 countries. While the Marxist-Leninist state ideology played a major role in the foreign policy of the East German government, it was however also influenced by their own economic and political interests. From the 1970s onwards, the GDR increasingly emancipated itself from the Soviet Union and pursued an independent policy towards West Germany, as loans from the West had become vital for the GDR's survival. In the 1980s, Erich Honecker refused to implement liberalizing reforms, which alienated the GDR from the USSR under Mikhail Gorbachev. After the revolutions of 1989, the Eastern Bloc collapsed and Germany was reunified, ending the period of an independent East German foreign policy.
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