Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence

(Kiana) #1
who prosecuted the case in Erfurt was given a 10-month suspended
sentence and ordered to pay 10,000 DM to the Smolka family as
compensation.

SNIGOWSKI, BRUNO (1921– ). A double agent working in the
Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) for Polish intelligence, Bruno
(Bronislaus) Snigowski was born in Dortmund of Polish parents. In
1948, he was willingly repatriated to Poland and recruited by Polish
intelligence. Assigned to the FRG, he became a protégé of the Christ-
lich-Demokratische Union and gained a position in the Amt Blank,
the forerunner of the defense ministry. Snigowski’s intense spy activ-
ity ended with his arrest on 17 July 1953, and he was sentenced to a
five-year prison term 10 months later.


SOLDATENSENDER CALAIS. Disguised as a German radio station
in occupied France broadcasting to troops on the western front dur-
ing World War II, Soldatensender Calais was in reality transmitting
skillfully prepared gray propaganda from Woburn, England. Its dusk-
to-dawn programming began on 24 October 1943 and ended on 30
April 1945. It was renamed Soldatensender West after the Normandy
landings. The station’s aim was to lower fighting morale and create
dissension on the home front. Despite repeated warnings by the Ger-
man Armed Forces High Command about these broadcasts, postwar
interrogations revealed that soldiers along with many civilians had been
regular listeners. Much of the effectiveness of the propaganda can be
accredited to Sefton Delmer, a Berlin-born journalist recruited by the
British Secret Intelligence Service, who gave the broadcasts—a mixture
of music, news, interviews, and political commentaries—a remarkably
authentic flavor. The Deutsche Volkssender (German People’s Radio)
in Moscow, also pretending to be broadcast from within Germany and
calling on Germans to rise up against Hitler, was specifically modeled
after Soldatensender Calais. See also CAPRICORN.


SOLIDARITY. An object of intense concern for the Hauptverwal-
tung Aufklärung (HVA), Solidarity was the independent anticom-
munist resistance movement in Poland led by Lech Walesa. Further
heightening the fear in East Berlin that unrest could spill across the
border was the election of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, a Pole, as Pope


SOLIDARITY • 425
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