viiAlthough a relative latecomer to the world of intelligence activity, Ger-
many has managed to engage in more of it than most other countries.
This is partly because, under some regimes, it evinced a particularly
suspicious nature (although the same could certainly be said of the So-
viet Union). But the main cause is that, during certain periods, Germany
not only spied on its enemies but was probably busier spying on its own
citizens. There is no question that the Nazi regime (like the Soviet re-
gime, especially under Stalin) was almost as worried about the enemies
within as those without, although it was too busy fighting a war to do
much about it. But following World War II, the German Democratic
Republic, created in the eastern sector of a divided Germany, was the
world record holder. While spying on its own, it was also amazingly
active in spying on the Federal Republic of Germany, in the western
sector, as well as spying on the United States and other members of
the “free world”—on its own behalf and for the Soviet Union. To keep
an eye on one another, East Germany, in the course of its 40-year ex-
istence, recruited almost 1 percent of its rather small population into a
vast and segmented espionage apparatus. This degree of thoroughness
certainly generates a lot of activity, which forms a major portion of this
book, but it also helps show just how diversified and sometimes para-
noid this field of endeavor can become.
This sort of complexity, as well as the fact that the German intel-
ligence apparatus has been more thoroughly investigated and dissected
than most, makes the Historical Dictionary of German Intelligence a
particularly interesting volume in a series that is attracting a scholarly
and also popular public. Like the others, it starts with a list of acronyms,
a rather substantial one, given the many players, and without which
it would be hard to follow the literature on the topic. Next comes the
chronology, not covering as long a time span as some, but uncommonly