Powers and Restrictions: The Useful Experience of the Activities of the Military Liaison Missions
[Published in Russian in Независимое Военное Обозрение, 15 Sep 2000, translated by Peter G. Williams]
Read the Russian original.
The very high level Russo-American negotiations and the prospects for Russia-NATO cooperation have raised a question about the development of the mechanism for relations in the military field. Once again the idea has emerged of setting up military liaison missions [MLMs] as reliable official channels for the exchange of information and for operational reactions to problems in the military sphere.
THE MANDATE FROM THE HIGH COMMAND
In post-war political relations MLMs have their own 40-year long history. They were created in connection with Article 2 of the Agreement ‘On the Control Machinery in Germany’ agreed by the USSR, USA, Great Britain and the French provisional government.
After its capitulation Germany was divided into four Zones of Occupation [ZO] (Soviet, American, British and French) and accredited to every commander-in-chief (CINC) in his own ZO were military, naval and air force representatives of the other three CINCs in order to carry out liaison functions.
Later on the CINCs and ZO staffs in Germany began to set up external relations branches and MLMs. Their main tasks were to support the permanent liaison between their respective CINCs and their staffs, to represent their own command in the groups of Allied forces and to take the first steps in resolving difficult problems between the Allies.
The legal status of the MLMs and their establishments were defined during the period 1945-47. On 16th September 1946 the first official agreement in this process was signed by Colonel General Malinin, Deputy CINC [DCINC] and Chief of Staff [COS] of the Group of Soviet Occupation Forces in Germany [GSFG], and Lieutenant General Robertson, Deputy Military Governor (the title of the DCINC of the British ZO).
The Soviet and British MLMs each were established to have 11 officers and 20 technicians, administrators and other specialists, including radio operators.
The Chief of the Soviet MLM [SOXMIS] was accredited in the British ZO to the CINC, Air Marshal [sic] Sholto Douglas, and the Chief of the British MLM [BRIXMIS] was accredited to the CINC GSFG, Marshal of the Soviet Union Sokolovsky.
Over the next seven months General Malinin signed similar agreements on exchanging MLMs with the DCINC of the European Group of US Forces, Lt Gen Huebner, and with the DCINC of the French Group in the Control Council, Lt Gen Noiret.
The MLM Chiefs were directly associated with the Deputy COS of the occupation forces or with senior staff officers, but they also had the chance to present themselves to and meet with the CINCs.
All the members of the MLMs had permanent passes in two languages , allowing them to move freely around the ZO territory. Excluded from this were the places of disposition [sic] of military units. In order to visit staffs, military administrative sections, formations, units, military schools, factories and enterprises, the MLM’s representative had to send a request to the COS or a senior staff officer at the ZO HQ to which he was accredited. Such requests and referrals were examined within 24-72 hours.
THE CIRCLE OF CONCERNS
Each MLM used its own radio station to communicate with its own CINC. When necessary the Chief MLM sent a courier or a despatch rider to his own CINC’s HQ with an urgent report or with valuable information. While they were doing this the couriers and despatch riders enjoyed immunity as diplomatic couriers. Apart from this, each MLM used the telephone, via the exchange of the HQ to which it was accredited. They could also make use of the local post, telephone and telegraph during their tours [поездки] around the ZO.
Each Allied ZO’s administration provided the MLMs with rations, fuel and office supplies which were paid for in Reichsmarks. Later, after the passage of a separate monetary reform in 1948 in the Western ZOs, this payment was made in West German marks. The MLMs were also provided with buildings and accommodation, which enjoyed the status of full immunity.
The British MLM arrived in Potsdam and started to work on 25th August 1946 even before the official agreement was signed . The first Chief BRIXMIS in the Soviet ZO was Brigadier General Hugh Pertis [sic] .
The American MLM [USMLM] started to work in Potsdam on 12th April 1947. Led by Brig Gen Walter Hess, its establishment was smaller than that of BRIXMIS. And then last of all chronologically, on 21st April 1947 the French MLM [FMLM] began its work in Potsdam, led by Colonel André Brinyasky [sic].
In each ZO the MLM members energetically participated in fulfilling the decisions taken at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. In Germany the process of demilitarisation and denazification was actively underway. The disarmament of Germany as an aggressor-country was realised. There was routine work to be carried out with former members of the Wehrmacht and Nazi criminals were arrested. Questions were resolved concerning repatriation and the despatch of valuable materials, such as military and civilian equipment. In order to give directions for all these activities the CINCs of the Allied ZOs cooperated constantly and had to provide each other with the appropriate information. The MLMs were put to the test by this considerable loading.
In the Allied ZOs the MLM members had the right to defend the interests of their compatriots. They also had the right to come to the assistance of citizens from their own country who were visiting an Allied ZO. In the displaced persons camps and in private housing there were thousands of Soviet citizens whose movement and repatriation took several years to complete.
Information about the situation in Germany not only came in to the commands of the Occupying Powers (USSR, US, UK and France). Also accredited to the Allied Control Council for Germany in West Berlin and working energetically were military missions from 11 states: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Greece, India, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa and Yugoslavia .
THE COLD WAR INTRODUCES AMENDMENTS
The Cold War and then the founding of NATO introduced some amendments in the activities of the MLMs. Their military work began to show a marked increase in interest in the groups of forces of their recent allies. In their reports back to their CINCs and ZO staffs the proportion of intelligence information increased.
The frequency of movements in cars by MLMs in ZOs near to HQs, military units and in training and range areas increased sharply. Bearing witness to this is the growth in the consumption of petrol that was allocated to mission vehicles. In 1952 the three MLMs (US, British and French) every month requested and received from HQ GSFG 7900 litres of petrol and 200 kilograms of technical oils.
Not only did four groups of allied forces meet in Germany, but it was also the location for the clash of two hostile ideologies, of two different worlds and of different ways of life. There was a substantial difference in their material and ration supplies. One example that demonstrates this is the difference in the ration norms for MLM members. For instance, each member of the Soviet MLM received 400 grams of bread (BRIXMIS 666 grams), flour 10 grams (105), meat 173.3 grams (meat and bacon 177, plus 71 of fish), butter 38.4 grams (butter 145, plus 29.3 of lard or margarine), tinned fruit 73 grams (fresh fruit 128, plus 18 of dried fruit), potatoes 300 grams (388). It is also true that a Soviet MLM member received 300 grams of fresh milk daily, while his British counterpart only received 110.8 grams of preserved milk . In the Soviet MLMs they used to joke that they received this fresh milk norm to compensate for the nastiness of their work in the Allied ZOs.
Naturally, there started to be opposition to the MLM tours with intelligence aims. Both in the western ZOs and in the Soviet ZO the breach of the immunity of MLM members became widespread. The military missionaries [sic] were being arrested [detained] everywhere by military installations and some distance from them.
INACCESSIBLE ZONES
In the reports to CINC GSFG it was noted that ’USMLM members, more than the members of the other missions, have been active with their reconnaissance and espionage. In the period from 1948 to 1949 inclusive there have been 38 detentions of USMLM members’.
In the Soviet ZO on all the territory under its authority, HQ GSFG significantly tightened up the control regime for the Allied MLMs. There was a personal record for every MLM member. For example, a file was opened on a new BRIXMIS member in 1950, giving the following information: surname, first name (Rouse, Richard Henry), year of birth (14 Feb 1927), place of birth (London), rank (Sgt), post (front-line commander), height (175 cm); hair colour (blond), eye colour (hazel).
In the western ZOs serious measures were also taken to restrict the activities of the Soviet MLMs. In the French ZO a request from the Soviet MLM to travel through the three ZOs would take from 3-4 days. Throughout the whole period of their tour the Soviet MLM members would be under surveillance. From 27th June 1952 all visitors to the Soviet mission in Frankfurt am Main had to be registered on the instructions of Bodeving [sic], chief of the 21st Police Detachment. In the US zone the Soviet mission lived under a 24-hour watch by the military police and its tours were escorted, photographed and their routes were recorded. Soviet MLM members were repeatedly detained and beaten up. (This also happened to the western MLM representatives in the Soviet ZO).
The US and British high commands repeatedly introduced an additional quantity of areas that were restricted for visits. In September 1952 the US authorities introduced for the Soviet MLM restricted areas that enclosed almost all of their ZO in Germany.
From the very start of the MLMs’ activities the US powers introduced temporarily restricted areas[TRAs] (for 10-25 days) during military manoeuvres. From 1952 all the western occupation powers brought in permanently restricted areas [PRAs].
From 1950 HQ GSFG introduced TRAs during exercise periods. Four PRAs were imposed in October 1951, as well as prohibiting access to a 10-kilometre border belt along the frontier of the German Democratic Republic [GDR].
Furthermore, at the beginning of December 1952 the CINC GSFG, Army General Chuikov ordered that the island of Ruegen was to count as a PRA. This decision was not announced to the western MLMs, but guard posts were set up by the Stralsund bridge and by the village of Tsudor [sic], barring the foreign MLMs from travelling onto Ruegen island.
IN SPITE OF THE INTIMIDATION
At the start of the 1950s leaflets and stones were constantly being thrown into the grounds of the Soviet MLMs, amounting to attempts at intimidation. One incident was especially curious. On 6th July 1953 in the US zone a live piglet was thrown, in addition to leaflets , into the grounds of the Soviet MLM; it bore the inscription ‘USSR’ and a depiction of a hammer and sickle. The Chief of the Soviet MLM, Stepanenko, demanded the arrest of the provocateurs, but the piglet was entered into the register and included as extra rations.
In the 1950s and 1960s the international situation was repeatedly exacerbated. In these periods there were moments of significant military-political tension when almost all contacts in the military field were severed and then only the MLMs were left carrying out their basic tasks. This was a well defined contribution to the staving off of a full-scale war between the former Allies.
In the history of the MLMs, along with the prolonged period of the Cold War and its brief thawing, there was a time of tough confrontation in the 1960s and then military-political détente in the 1970s with the signing of agreements in Helsinki, Vienna and Stockholm on the securing of military security in Europe.
The MLMs played their own significant role in contacts between the CINCs (Soviet, US, British and French) in Germany in the period of ‘perestroika’ in international relations during the second half of the 1980s. A clear example of the increasing openness at that time was the joint exercise undertaken by GSFG and the German National Army [sic] from 17th-20th April 1989. Observers were present from NATO and other western countries, from 25 media agencies and 46 western journalists from the USA, FRG, UK, Japan, Netherlands, France and Switzerland .
The MLMs ended their activities in 1990 after that significant event, the unification of Germany, which finally drew a line under the completion of the decisions taken by the Great Powers at the Potsdam Conference in 1945.
By the 1980s BRIXMIS received passes from the Soviet authorities only in one language: Russian.
The BRIXMIS history states that the members of the MLM arrived in Potsdam on 2nd September 1946, but that no Soviet passes were issued until 28th September.
BRIXMIS’ history suggests that the first Chief was Maj Gen Evans; his Deputy was Maj Gen Hilton.
By the 1980s most of the post-war Allied military missions (MMs) had either gone or had been transformed into quasi-diplomatic offices; Poland (PL) and Czechoslovakia (CZ) both still had MMs in Berlin in the 1980s and used them to ‘tour’ and operate in West Berlin, tasked by their Soviet colleagues. Furs’ list of 11 MMs is incomplete; there were 15 MMs during the period up to 1948 (Canada, Belgium, PL, Brazil, Luxembourg, CZ, Yugoslavia, Denmark, China, Norway, Australia, India, Greece, South Africa and the Netherlands); others, such as Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy and Romania were not classed as victorious belligerent nations; the absence of New Zealand is curious.
In the 1980s ‘Soviet rations’ were still delivered, albeit infrequently, to the BRIXMIS Mission House in Potsdam; normally only the BRIXMIS officers were willing to eat the un-branded, unidentified meat.
The MLMs did not attend (and were not invited to) these Stockholm Agreement exercises in the GDR; from outside the notified exercise areas the MLMs observed the equipment and troops moving by road and rail into the deployment areas and polygons and their subsequent return home.
The MLMs ceased to operate (‘tour’) at 2359 hours on 2nd October 1990, the eve of the Day of German Unification, not after the date of unification; admin closedown took several more months.
Maj Gen retd Aleksandr Vital'yevich Furs is a historian.
