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 enlarge | Authors: Markus Wolf, Anne Mcelvoy, Marcus Wolf
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $21.50
Buy Used: $3.17
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Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 537987
Media: Paperback
Edition: 0
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 460
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 1891620126
Dewey Decimal Number: 327.12092
EAN: 9781891620126
ASIN: 1891620126
Publication Date: July 1, 1999
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 Into the mind of one who was there March 24, 2007
While Markus Wolf's style is understated and matter of fact, he reveals an extraordinary life and political workings. He is clear about what is not included and why -- some of which the reader would have been eager to see.
This is how he felt and thought and worked. A rare and wonderful glimpse into an honest and intelligent opponent of the US and its allies in the Cold War.
The Cold War Viewed from the Other Side November 18, 2006
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
History is written by the winners, or so the old saying goes. So, I decided to start reading some histories written by the losers. The fact that Markus Wolf, head of the East German Foreign Intelligence Service, was able to write his memoirs after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, East Germany, and the entire Warsaw Pact is a modern phenomenon. Prior to the end of the Cold War, most losers were not in a position to write their memoirs or anything else. Wolf was tried for treason by the now united Federal Republic of Germany. The case was dismissed by the German Constitutional Court on the argument that as a citizen of East Germany, he could not have committed treason against West Germany. He is lucky that his trial was not conducted under the legal system of his former masters.
In brief summary, Markus Wolf was the half Jewish son of German Communist parents who fled to Moscow when the Nazis came to power. Markus grew up as a good Soviet citizen and Communist. He spent WWII writing and broadcasting Soviet propaganda aimed at the German army. After the war, he transferred his citizenship from the Soviet Union to the new German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and rapidly advanced to become director of the Foreign Intelligence Service in 1953, at least in part because he was both fluent in Russian and trusted by the Soviet hierarchy. He remained in that position until his retirement in 1986, three years before the Wall came down. The title of his memoir, Man Without A Face, is based on the fact that the US Intelligence Community did not have a photo or description of Wolf's appearance until well into the 1970s. This added to his legend as the other side's greatest spymaster of the Cold War.
Herr Wolf repeatedly emphasizes the point that he was responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence and had no responsibility for or knowledge of internal repression. That fell under a different directorate which reported to Wolf's immediate boss, Erik Mielke, Minister of State Security. As Director of Foreign Intelligence, Wolf was primarily responsible to his East German and Soviet masters for collecting intelligence on West Germany, and through it, on NATO and the US. He had numerous successes, the most spectacular of which was planting a mole in the office of Willy Brandt, the Chancellor of West Germany and author of the policy of Ostpolitik, the opening of West German contact with the East. The discovery of the mole, Gunter Guillaume, resulted in the fall of Brandt's government in 1974, a result which Wolf sincerely regretted, since it partially curtailed Ostpolitik.
Throughout the book, Wolf presents himself as a reasonable and humane intelligence professional. He repeatedly stresses that his service did not participate in internal repression, practice torture, support terrorism, and was generally on the side of the angels. I think he is probably sincere in these statements and will even accept that there is probably some truth in them. He was apparently quite disillusioned with the brutality of Stalin and the utter stagnation of the entire Soviet Block that followed Stalin. Nonetheless, East Germany did practice all the darker arts of Stalin, even if Herr Wolf was not directly involved. Wolf also repeatedly says that he is not trying to apologize for or justify his service to East Germany. I find this harder to accept. The author of an autobiography is seldom in a position of offer an unbiased portrait of his subject. He has still not accepted that an all-powerful state founded on any ideology, whether National Socialist or Communist, is in a position to repress any dissent by the most brutal means and will justify doing so based on the controlling party's ideology.
Despite the somewhat self-serving nature of this book, it provided a useful insight to what the other side was thinking and doing during 40 years of the Cold War. I'd recommend it to any serious student of Cold War history.
The real Karla stands up (warts and all) October 1, 2006
Many of the reviews on this book seem driven by "How could he?" and "The dreadful Stasi" which having read this book, seems to me to miss the key points and the value of this book.
Yes, the book is inevitably light on some personal failings but given the heavy volume of many Western Intelligence chiefs self serving tomes along the lines of "I fought on the side of right", this one does read much better as a warts and all history. Given his limited access to old records (for reasons well stated in the story), his overall coverage of what he did (both good and bad) is not unstinting and the collpase of the later Western German legal case against him shows how misplaced many of those perspectives are.
What is very clear is Wolf is a unique product of his time. As a result of his parents left wing political leanings he was forced as a teenager into pre-WW II exile in Stalinist Moscow, which gave him great understanding in dealing with the Russians post 1945. As a committed socialist he does see the faults in Eastern Germany and accepts his personal responsibility for much of what happened but is also clear on what he did not do or could not eaily influence e.g. the harbouring of terrorists and the wide domestic repression the Stasi was hated for. Finally as a Jew in post war Germany under the control of Mielke, the East German equivalent of Beria, one is left amazed at what successes he did achieve in foreign espionage with very limited resources.
The book is not the mea culpa that many feel it should be, but it does provide focus in a way many Western Intelligence books do not as to what was the real value of all they achieved and how intelligence is used plus a very honest analysis of why the Stasi for all their reputation was only ever successful against Western Germany and NATO (in exploiting that German connection). One is in fact left feeling at the end that the real failing was the Western intelligence organisations (esp. Western Germany) inability to understand how weak Eastern Germany was economically and that different policies could have worked in bringing about its early downfall.
One side point is that nowhere in the book is the best known reason for Wolf being infamous stated - as the basis for the Karla character in John Le Carre's Smiley novels!
Straight from the monster's mouth January 6, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Nothing's more interesting or terrifying than the real thing. Personally, I couldn't put down the memoirs of Markus Wolf, the decidedly unrepentant East German spy chief. Not a nice fellow, but very good at his craft. Chilling.
A Master Of The Spy Game January 10, 2005
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
It is difficult to review this book, because it requires one to separate the merit of the book itself -- which is great -- from the behavior of the regime which the author served -- which was atrocious. The author, "The Man Without A Face" (so called because no Western intelligence agency had his picture) ran the Hauptverwaltung Aufklaerung (HVA), the foreign intelligence section of the feared East German "Ministerium fuer Staatssicherheit" or Stasi. The HVA was one of the most effective foreign intelligence services during the Cold War.
The book is a fascinating, insider's view of the HVA. The Stasi's main target was West Germany, and the frighteningly efficient HVA managed to place agents in many key positions in or near the seats of power of West Germany and NATO. We learn how the author used "Romeo" traps, taking advantage of the post-war gender imbalance in Germany to send male spies to woo lonely West German secretaries in key positions. It was extremely disconcerting for me, as an American, to learn that every single one of the CIA's agents who attempted to infiltrate East Germany was either an East German plant or a double agent.
Having said that, it is also important to say that Markus Wolf is and remains an unreconstructed Communist. He is the German version of a "red diaper baby"; his parents were Communists and his faith in communism was forged when his partially-Jewish family was given refuge by Stalin from the Nazi holocaust. He is a still true believer -- convinced that communism failed only because of the way it was implemented, not due to any flaws in the ideology itself. This view permeates the book.
Wolf also failed personally to speak up about the regime's behavior. There are far too many times we hear in the book that "that wasn't my department" -- the spying on East German citizens, the long sentences for those who attempted to escape. Indeed, Wolf tells us that he never visited an East German prison. He does own up, in part, to the GDR's support of terrorist groups, which led to calamities from which we are still reeling.
The book not only gives an inside view of how spying is done, but it raises a number of issues. For one thing, after two separate countries unify, what should be the status of individuals from one country who in the past spied on the other? The unified German government attempted to try Wolf for treason, but was stymied, as he only became a citizen of the "Federal Republic of Germany" after unification. Overall, a fascinating, well-written, worthwhile read -- but go elsewhere to find a description of the Stasi in its entirety or an unbiased view of East German policy.
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