Then-Major Michael Ennis (left) was part of the U.S. Military Liaison Mission in East Germany following WWII. "Our job was to collect intelligence," Ennis recalls. "The proximity to Soviet forces allowed U.S. observers to assess their military in the field.
Prior to the end of World War II, the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union signed an agreement for the administration of Berlin and the establishment of four occupation zones in Germany. The three Allied powers—France, Britain, and the United States—independently negotiated an agreement with the Soviets in 1947 to establish liaison missions. The U.S.-Soviet agreement stated, “Each member of the missions will be given
. . . permanent passes . . . permitting complete freedom of travel, whenever and wherever it will be desired over territory and roads in both places, except places of disposition of military units, without escort or supervision.”
The French, British, and Americans established their missions in Potsdam, East Germany, near the headquarters of the Group of Soviet Forces Germany (GSFG), while the Soviet mission located a headquarters in each of the Allied sectors. Each country negotiated the number of personnel from its mission who would be allowed to travel freely in each other’s sector. The British Liaison Mission saw the intelligence value of its officers keeping tabs on Soviet activity and negotiated the highest number of officers at about 32. The French Military Liaison Mission, slightly less aggressive, negotiated 19 officers. The U.S. Military Liaison Mission (USMLM) was more concerned about Soviets in its sector and negotiated the lowest number at 14 officers—a decision it later came to regret. “It was a very shortsighted decision,” according to retired Marine Major General Michael E. Ennis, a member of the USMLM from 1986 to 1989. “The number of liaison personnel negotiated in 1947 was never changed.”
Initially the missions concentrated on cooperation and coordination; however, as the Cold War turned frosty, intelligence collection became their primary focus. In essence, the missions became legal “spy platforms” to serve as an early warning of Soviet mobilization. Ennis noted, “East Germany at that time was the most militarized place in the world, 20 Soviet armored and mechanized divisions and 23 air wings, all in an area the size of Ohio. They could mobilize very quickly.” It was the only organization where U.S. military observers could observe, photograph, and assess a combat-ready Soviet military in the field.
Each mission Mercedes G wagon was fitted with an obvious yellow license plate and sported enlarged fuel tanks, infrared lights, all-terrain tires, and other modifications.
U.S. Military Liaison Mission
The USMLM was organized into two divisions, administrative and operations. The mission comprised 14 officers representing the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps—11 Marines, most often Russian foreign area officers or officers with similar backgrounds, were assigned during 1962–1990—under the command of the chief of the mission, who reported directly to the G-2, U.S. Army Europe. “We went out on two-man patrols with a target list that was given us by the Army G-2, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency,” Ennis reported. “Our job was to go out and collect intelligence. In the almost four years that I was there, I put over 100,000 miles on my vehicle.”
The USMLM was accredited to the commander-in-chief of the GSFG, with its headquarters (Potsdam House) at Neue Fahrland, a suburb of Potsdam in the Soviet sector of East Germany. The compound was the only place in that Communist country where the U.S. flag flew 24 hours a day. The operations area of USMLM was limited to the Soviet Zone in the German Democratic Republic.
Military liaison mission members had near-diplomatic immunity; however, if they stayed within the letter of the agreement, they could not always gain access to the targets they were tasked with collecting. If they bent the rules, immunity was suspended, and they could be (and were) detained, threatened, beaten up, or shot, which is what happened on 23 March 1985. Army Major Arthur D. Nicholson, a USMLM tour officer, was shot and killed by a Soviet sentry while trying to photograph the new T62B Soviet tank. Nicholson was considered to be the last American casualty of the Cold War and the only USMLM officer to die in the line of duty, although a French tour driver was killed in a Soviet ramming incident.
The missions were always on the lookout for equipment, documents, or anything else of intelligence value that became lost or was left behind by the Soviet forces, in training areas, in frequently used but occasionally empty underground bunker complexes, or even in East German municipal dumps. The Soviets constantly violated operational security, and this lack of discipline gave the missions an opportunity to exploit.
In 1987, a new Soviet jet (the MiG-29) was introduced into the GSFG, and one subsequently crashed on landing. USMLM personnel observed the Soviets for several days as they cleaned up the wreckage, even going so far as to bulldoze the site to bury the remains. Then USMLM personnel entered the area, where they recovered nearly 400 pounds of avionics, metal, and other aircraft parts. Analysis of the material indicated the Soviets were ten years further advanced in their metallurgy progress than the United States had believed. Another USMLM team was able to obtain a reactive armor box from a tank that had been left temporarily unguarded. Analysis of the box revealed the reactive armor was far more effective against U.S. antitank weapons than had been realized.
The USMLM also was tasked to take photographs and video, when possible, to exploit the movement of new Soviet equipment into East Germany. Ennis recalled:
We’d go into Soviet training areas and break into buildings—without leaving any trace of our entry—to take photographs of their equipment and documents. That’s a scary thing in the middle of the night, going into a Soviet bunker with just a flashlight. Much of the Soviet equipment would come in by train covered by tarps. We’d follow the train until it stopped and then climb on the flatcar, cut through the tarp, and photograph the equipment.
One of my predecessors came across a column of Soviet vehicles traveling after midnight with no identifying tactical numbers, which was very unusual. He was able to photograph the equipment, which turned out to be associated with the Soviet SS-12 medium-range tactical nuclear missile. This was the first confirmation that the missiles had been moved into Germany and may have played a role in the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force [INF] Treaty three years later.
Naval Rep to GSFG
Then-Major Ennis was finishing a three-year tour as a translator on the Moscow-Washington hotline when he was asked to “volunteer” for a three-year assignment as the naval representative to the GSFG. He was slated to arrive in the summer of 1986, but shortly after the death of Nicholson, his assignment was moved up six months. Ennis was fluent in Russian, having been a Soviet Union foreign area officer, and had attended both the Defense Language Institute for Russian and the U.S. Army Russian Institute in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, where he learned
the nuances of the language, Russian history and culture, and their propaganda methods.
He jumped at the opportunity. “I absolutely volunteered,” Ennis said. “The duty sounded really interesting and appealed to me because it wasn’t so much an intelligence assignment but rather a reconnaissance assignment to penetrate Soviet training areas to gather intelligence.”
Tradecraft
Upon acceptance for the assignment, Ennis was sent to England for training at the British reconnaissance school in Kent. The primary focus of the curriculum was clandestine reconnaissance. “The Brits taught us to do surreptitious entry with a vehicle into active training areas or zones the Soviets had designated as ‘restricted,’” Ennis recalled.
The restricted designation raised the risk factor for mission officers as the Soviets instructed their military personnel to detain any foreign mission personnel found in the restricted zones. Because nearly 80 percent of East Germany had been declared either permanently restricted areas or restricted areas—Allied commands in West Germany declared an equal percentage of territory as permanently restricted—the techniques taught by the British enabled the missions to continue their clandestine reconnaissance despite the Soviet restrictions.
The reconnaissance school also immersed the students in “rather mundane things like identification of Soviet equipment,” Ennis said. The mission assignment required expert knowledge of the Soviet and East German order of battle, as well as an ability to recognize specific military vehicles and equipment. “We were also trained to use photographic equipment,” he noted. “I used a Nikon F3 manual camera, loaded with different types of film, black and white and color, with an assortment of lenses—85-mm, 180-mm, 500-mm, and 1,000-mm mirror lenses. I also had night vision equipment so I could take photos and video at night.”
The Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, often tried to intercept and block mission vehicles and detain the occupants. There were some informal rules that generally were followed. For example, vehicles were considered to be “safe areas” and would not be broken into. However, if the doors were open, the vehicle was considered fair game. One U.S. team was dragged out of their vehicle and roughed up. In another instance, an Air Force team’s vehicle was shot up—eight bullet holes—and the driver was slightly wounded. “The officer stopped the car, which took guts,” Ennis said, “and demanded to have a doctor to treat his driver and a Soviet officer to lodge a protest. The Soviets stonewalled, and the Americans left the scene. There is a school of thought that this incident, which occurred in September 1987, may have been orchestrated to ‘tank’ the INF treaty discussions that were taking place.”
“I was detained three times,” Ennis remembered, adding:
On one occasion we were on a sensitive mission to obtain photographs of a patrol boat being built for the East German Navy but equipped with a sophisticated Soviet surface-to-surface cruise missile with a range of 85 km. Once deployed, it would pose a serious threat to Western navies operating in the Baltic Sea. The shipyard was far from any Soviet military presence, so the threat to us was from the Stasi and East German Army personnel.
I was taking photographs down by a river bank and spent a little too much time taking them. Suddenly my driver started the vehicle—always a bad sign! I quickly packed up but, just as I got in the car, a Soviet UAZ 469 [jeep] came blasting out to block us in. We were in a Mercedes with a bar in front so the driver just rammed the East German’s vehicle “POW!” and crushed it like a can. Just as we backed off, a second vehicle came out of the woods. We put that one out of commission as well and got about 75 yards into an open area before our vehicle just stopped. All four tires were flat from spikes that had been strung across the road.
Stasi, dressed in East German uniforms, quickly surrounded us. They took river clay and sealed all the seams in our vehicle—doors, windows, etc. It was hotter than blazes, and we were there from 0730 until 1530—a long time in the August heat. The Soviet Military Police commander for the area didn’t show up until late afternoon to take over the situation from the Stasi. They finally allowed me to go to town after an unsuccessful interrogation attempt. Fortunately no one was injured when we smashed their two vehicles, so they were respectful.
Ennis’s vehicle was a Mercedes-Benz four-wheel drive 280 GE that had been modified to meet mission requirements. “We added a few things,” Ennis explained, including:
a 3/8th-inch steel underside to protect the transmission and oil pan, heavy duty springs, improved shock-absorbers. Fuel tanks were enlarged to give us almost a 900-kilometer range. Infrared lights were tucked under the grill so we could go “lights out,” using just our night vision goggles to navigate. The original tires were replaced with all-terrain radial tires; electrical switches were modified to permit the horn, headlights, parking and signal lights to be turned off individually or all with a flip of one switch. Curtains were installed that could be drawn to keep Stasi from seeing in. Finally, the car was painted a flat olive drab to help prevent unwanted glare from giving our position away.
Each mission Mercedes “G wagon” was fitted with official and very obvious license plates front and back that clearly identified the car as a USMLM vehicle. They were yellow and included the vehicle’s two-digit accredited mission number, a large U.S. flag (in color), and the words “American Military Liaison Mission” in Russian.
It’s a Dirty Business
Ennis knew the assignment was dangerous but noted, “I wasn’t aware of all the dirty things I’d have to do.” He recalled:
We learned that the Soviets didn’t issue troops toilet paper so they used whatever came to hand, letters from home, message forms, and sometimes secret military documents. We searched Soviet bivouac sites to locate their [latrines], and then daintily picked up the “used” paper, placed the mess in a basket, and took it to headquarters where it was dried out. Specialists then scraped the “crap” off and analyzed the “documents” for anything of intelligence value. We got amazing information.
He added, “We always followed the Russian trash trucks to their dump because they were careless with classified information. We looked for the standard Soviet officer’s notebook, which they sometimes threw away when it was full.” The trash pickup actually was given a name: Operation Sand Dune.
“In one case, there was a dump in the middle of a sensitive area that required me to walk about a mile to reach it,” Ennis remembered. “I walked in using a compass and came into the rear of the Dresden municipal dump where all I could see was this vast trash moonscape that stunk to high heaven. Flies were everywhere, and I thought to myself, ‘What the heck am I doing here?’ I thought like a Soviet . . . and figured they’d dump their trash as close to the front gate as possible. Sure enough, I found the Soviet trash piles but unfortunately nothing of value.”
Patrolling
Colonel Roland Lajoie, chief of mission during Ennis’s tour, commented, “On every single day throughout the Cold War, eight or more Allied tours were roaming the countryside of East Germany. Every day, all night, each tour looking exactly for signs of imminence of hostilities or gathering intelligence.”
Ennis did a “tremendous amount of preparation” before each mission: “I studied each [mission] folder for one or two days, concentrating on location and identification of the target, routes of ingress and egress to the site, guards and how they reacted to our patrols in the past.”
One night Ennis and his driver unexpectedly came upon a Soviet bivouac area in the middle of a woods. “We turned on the lights [they had been using night vision goggles] and three or four hundred heads came up—we turned on the bright lights and got the hell out of there! Wrong place.”
Another time Ennis did not realize the Spetsnaz, Russian Special Forces, were having a major field exercise. “We thought we were going into a benign area. The Air Force signal intelligence station in Berlin warned our headquarters, which sent out another team to warn us just as we were about to enter the training area. It would have been big time trouble!”
The team packed their G wagon with enough food and equipment—tarps, sleeping bags, foul weather gear, water, and C-rations—to last several days, in case a patrol was extended or they were unlucky to get boxed in. “We were literally on our own when we were on patrol,” Ennis explained. The patrols did not carry radios, “so there would not be any hint that we were conducting clandestine or espionage operations. It bothered me in the sense that if anything happened, I’d like to get the word back to headquarters.”
The team left Potsdam House when surveillance was low and crossed the Glienicke Bridge—known as the Bridge of Spies, because it was used several times during the Cold War to exchange captured spies—to reach their target. “We crossed it every day to go into Potsdam,” Ennis recalled, “and that’s where we were picked up by East German surveillance. If we couldn’t shake the pursuit, we’d break off. There’s always another day.”
Wear and Tear
Ennis commented that the assignment was the “toughest time” of his marriage. He had two small children, one 18 months and the other three years old, when he was assigned in January 1986.
We lived in a German area with German neighbors, and my wife had a hard time getting around. When I was on patrol, she didn’t know how long I would be gone or where I was. She was also subjected to compromise. She’d receive a telephone call asking, “Would you like to meet,” which would be an opening gambit to gain
a cooperative spouse.
I was told that if I felt myself getting a little too cocky, that I should take myself off the road. Toward the end of my three-and-a-half years, I reached that point. I finally went in and said “It’s time for me to get off the road—my replacement was already coming in—I’m not safe anymore.” I had exactly 150 patrols (missions) and that was enough. Pitting myself against the Soviets and East Germans—sometimes scared to death—was the most exciting and
rewarding tour I’ve ever had.
Dutiful to the end, mission members monitored the withdrawal of Soviet forces out of Germany and across the Polish border. They remained at their posts until the day the two sides of Germany reunited, on 3 October 1990, at which time the U.S. Military Liaison Mission declared: mission accomplished.
Major General Ennis went on to serve a distinguished career in the intelligence field: Command of the Joint Intelligence Center, U.S. Pacific Command, Director, USMC Intelligence Command, and Deputy Director of Community HUMIT of the Central Intelligence Agency’s National Clandestine Service. He retired from the Marine Corps in 2007.
⎯ Colonel Camp served 26 years in the U.S. Marine Corps, retiring in 1988. He then served as deputy director, U.S. Marine Corps History Division, and vice president for museum operations at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. His books include Last Man Standing: The First Marine Regiment on Peleliu, September 15–21, 1944 (Zenith Press, 2011) and Assault from the Sky: U.S. Marine Corps Helicopter Operations in Vietnam (Casemate, 2013). He is a frequent contributor to the Naval Institute’s Naval History magazine.