States, memoirs by former employees are a rarity, and access to official
documents has been virtually impossible for historians.
Likewise the debate about the proper role of the BfV after nearly a
half-century shows few signs of resolution. Although the arguments
advanced by both sides tend to echo those voiced in other democratic
societies, the German case possesses a particular historical poignancy.
Should extremist political parties be subjected to government surveil-
lance? All too aware of how the democratic structure of the Weimar Re-
public was subverted from within by the Nazi Party and then destroyed
entirely—what Hitler proclaimed as a “legal revolution”—proponents
of strong governmental security measures stress the ever changing
threats that the country faces and the need for undiminished vigilance.
Their liberal critics maintain that the fledging democracy of the 1950s
has developed strong roots, having weathered a number of major
storms, and that parties of the extreme right and left should be free to
compete in the political arena as long as their behavior violates no ex-
isting laws. Moreover, the fear of domestic abuse by security agencies
with police powers runs far deeper in German society than elsewhere in
the West—a clear result of the searing experience of the Gestapo in the
Third Reich and the Stasi in the GDR.
New conditions since the end of the Cold War have created a quite
different set of priorities for the BND and the BfV. No longer having to
grapple with the seemingly ubiquitous agents dispatched by the GDR
and the deadly left-wing terrorism of the 1970s and 1980s, the FRG
turned its attention first to the right-wing violence that accompanied
reunification and more recently to the upsurge of Islamic radicalism.
Still, just as the record of the intelligence community during the past
half-century has yet to find a historical consensus, so, too, the debate
regarding individual rights versus national security will undoubtedly
persist for many years to come.
NOTES
- Quoted by Christopher Andrew, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: The
Making of the British Intelligence Community (New York: Penguin Viking,
1986), 73.
xxxiv • INTRODUCTION