German Subversion Methods - Stieber Memoirs

Excerpt from the Grandfather of German Intelligence Wilhelm Stieber’s memoirs, describing German subversion of Austria and France in the late 1800s.

"I advise that, if they are not themselves newsmen, my resident spies should at least recruit newsmen to their cause, but without informing them as to what use the news they gather is put. Instead they should simply be told that their cooperation as journalists is required, and considering the fact that most news-writers suffer from a chronic lack of funds, the promise of fees as generous as we can make them should act as irresistible bait. One can create no more convincing mask for a secret investigatory service than a system of what purport to be newspaper reporters which extends across an entire country."

It has been interesting recently to watch the press regarding German political movements. Where it is fairly obvious to anybody who pays attention to what is actually happening, and the way Germany is slowly gaining control of Europe, there is a lot of propaganda in the British and American press. This propaganda, I suspect often comes from Press Releases, and continually sings German praises Vs the Greeks, the Irish, or whomever Germany is looking to remove some form of economic or political control from next...

What really concerns me though, is that this has been obvious for decades hasn't it?
Thatcher warned about it when Germany, and Kohl specifically, manipulated German reunification.
Nicholas Ridley whilst part of the British Government openly said that the Euro was "a German racket for Germany to gain control of Europe". This comment encouraged his resignation, with the PC brigade shouting "sack him, sack him"... But nobody seems to have actually looked at the idea that he may have been right.

How has Germany managed such penetration of foreign countries without alarm bells ringing?

Wilhelm Stieber, Prussian Intelligence genious can give us a clue. His methods have been used the last four times Germany marched around Europe, so why not now?

"The agents of the past, who worked alone, were in more danger because they had to rely on themselves. The longer they observed, the more numerous were the traps which were set for them, and the threat of these traps distressed them and caused them to make mistakes, and finally they were unmasked. The danger also existed that those who had unmasked them would conceal from them the fact that they had been unmasked, and would then feed them and their homeland false and misleading information. When hundreds or even thousands of spies are active at the same time, it takes more police to keep them under surveillance and moreover would necessitate that these police officers spend all their time in such surveillance, which naturally is impossible — and therefore my army of agents can never be stopped. If one of them gets caught, it is no great tragedy, for the individuals in this mass of agents know almost nothing about each other!"

Stieber successfully used these tactics to undermine and control before invasion; Austria (1866), then France (1870), Stieber's tactics were then used to subvert much of Europe (1914), and much of Europe again (1939).

Just taking the pre Austro-Prussian war years as an example, Stieber said;

"No fewer than five hundred and thirty high-ranking Austrians, all men who occupied posts of honour, had been recruited by my "resident agents" to commit treason in the interests of Prussia"

These were just the high-ranking Austrians, who would sabotage Austrian policy, military and the economy. The total number of spies including Prussians, low level snitches etc, is estimated at 30,000!

They had hollowed-out Austria so much by 1866, that when the war started Austria pretty much just fell over.

Going back to Press manipulation, combined with the huge number of spies busy undermining the country, Stieber makes a further interesting point;

"Later, Bismarck assigned me no less a task than the "stirring up of our competitor" by spreading false news reports to all the newspapers. It became my specialty and the specialty of my agents to invent news that might lure peaceful Austria into taking measures to disown its present policy, measures it would not have taken otherwise that would justify Prussia in taking steps against it. Above all, these false reports were designed to disrupt the relationship that had existed in the past between Austria's rulers and their subjects. We did this by inventing or exaggerating acts of despotism committed by the authorities, and alarmed people by broadcasting incidents in which the police had exceeded their authority, and reporting illegal arrests and cases of hair-raising corruption, and other things of this nature. It was the task of my press bureau to send these news reports to as many Prussian and foreign newspapers as possible, where they were always printed because of their sensational character; these tactics succeeded brilliantly in creating the desired effect."


Sound familiar?




To read Stieber's memoirs,  Stieber PDF 
or check the links on the left of the blog.