Man Without a Face:: The Autobiography of Communism's Greatest Spymaster

Ok, ok, here's more. Wolf was the son of a renowned German playwrite, Fredrich Wolf, so he learned to communicate exceptionally well. His autobiography reflects that. The translator was also exceptionally good; nothing jarred me out of the tale by an obvious mistranslation. Wolf wrote quite frankly about how he was raised a committed Communist, how Communism failed him and his country, how his country failed Communism, and how his country failed, period. He's rather humorous about how the HVA was established and its early, amateur days. (Note to several reviewers--Wolf was head of the East German foreign intelligence service, not the internal Stasi.) He wrote about unintended consequences, which are quite enlightening, considering how the West blamed the HVA for a number of incidents in which it had no direct involvement. The sections on HVA attempts to influence emerging African nations and on terrorism are very interesting, indeed. He wrote the book after he was tried by the West German government and the German Supreme Court threw out the conviction, so he was more open than one would have suspected, given all the mystery and myth surrounding him (he was quite amused about that). He did not give away any HVA sources, except several who were already blown before he began writing. When the wall fell, several of us CI types chatted about what a good idea it would be to have Markus Wolf present briefings on how the HVA cleaned NATO's clock, without asking him to give away sources. What we didn't know was that CIA had approached Wolf about debriefing him, maybe giving him sanctuary in the US (Wolf was about to be indicted by West Germany), and paying him a lot of money. How and why Wolf refused is exactly how and why I thought he would have responded to such an approach. The book reads almost like a novel, albiet a tad dry in places. I highly recommend it to any CI professional. I was always impressed with Wolf's professionalism. His autobiography only deepened my respect for an honorable enemy. This book will always be a permanent part of my library.

Mr. Wolf wrote a good book. He didn't apologize for his past, while providing detailing information (the most interesting thing, IMHO) about the "mood" of the times. Wolf was - in several ways - a man between two intelligence era, ss his opinion about security and computer shows: he claims having had no security leakage while handling agent files "by hand". But when information technology comes ... This is a dramatic forseeing of what intelligence and information gathering would become in the very next future: a technology-controlled activity, able to collect a huge quantity of information, without anybody out there able to understand it. Conclusion: as all the book of this genre, information cannot be taken as "holy spell", nevertheless the reading is really a good experience.

Many of the reviews on this book seem driven by "How could he?" and "The dreadful Stasi" which having read this book, seems to me to miss the key points and the value of this book. Yes, the book is inevitably light on some personal failings but given the heavy volume of many Western Intelligence chiefs self serving tomes along the lines of "I fought on the side of right", this one does read much better as a warts and all history. Given his limited access to old records (for reasons well stated in the story), his overall coverage of what he did (both good and bad) is not unstinting and the collpase of the later Western German legal case against him shows how misplaced many of those perspectives are. What is very clear is Wolf is a unique product of his time. As a result of his parents left wing political leanings he was forced as a teenager into pre-WW II exile in Stalinist Moscow, which gave him great understanding in dealing with the Russians post 1945. As a committed socialist he does see the faults in Eastern Germany and accepts his personal responsibility for much of what happened but is also clear on what he did not do or could not eaily influence e.g. the harbouring of terrorists and the wide domestic repression the Stasi was hated for. Finally as a Jew in post war Germany under the control of Mielke, the East German equivalent of Beria, one is left amazed at what successes he did achieve in foreign espionage with very limited resources. The book is not the mea culpa that many feel it should be, but it does provide focus in a way many Western Intelligence books do not as to what was the real value of all they achieved and how intelligence is used plus a very honest analysis of why the Stasi for all their reputation was only ever successful against Western Germany and NATO (in exploiting that German connection). One is in fact left feeling at the end that the real failing was the Western intelligence organisations (esp. Western Germany) inability to understand how weak Eastern Germany was economically and that different policies could have worked in bringing about its early downfall. One side point is that nowhere in the book is the best known reason for Wolf being infamous stated - as the basis for the Karla character in John Le Carre's Smiley novels!

This is an entertaining, enlightening, and lively written book. Wolf's Teutonic humor makes it a joy to read. I unreservedly recommend it.(I had written a more comprehensive review, but my browser failed, so I've summarized why I enjoyed the book above)

As any John le Carre fan knows, the master spy, code-named "Karla", who runs the East German Intelligence Service, is the nemesis of George Smiley's Circus. After all he turned the Circus' former head, Bill Hayward, into a mole and it is up to Smiley to pick up the pieces and continue the espionage duel and save the Free World. Karla was modeled on Markus Wolf who was the former chief of the East German Foreign Intelligence Service, part of the Ministry of State Security, known as the Stasi. Wolf was arguably the greatest spymaster of the 20th Century. Certainly, he made East Germany, which was a puppet of the Soviet Union, into an intelligence super-power on the level of Britain, France and West Germany, if not the United States, the Soviet Union or China. Now Wolf has written his own memoirs. Naturally, like all such memoirs one has to read it with corrective lens and, where possible, cross-check from other sources but the book gives a fascinating insight into the heart of the Cold War from the other side. There are several themes in Wolf's book that bear paying particular attention to. One is the hiring of ex- and not so ex-Nazis by the CIA and the West German Intelligence Service after World War II. This is well documented from other sources on the Western side. Operation Paperclip, The Belarus Project and the Klaus Barbie Affair have been exhaustively researched and material published over the last 20 years. Another matter of vital concern is Wolf's insight into the infiltration of Western intelligence agencies. The Blount, Philby, Burgess and Maclean cases in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s and the unmasking of Aldrich Ames and others in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s are the fruits of this infiltration. We now know that Wolf had completely penetrated West German intelligence and political agencies and his account of the Gunter Guillaume case (the aide to Willy Brandt, the former Mayor of West Berlin) is particularly revealing. On a profounder and more philosophical level, Wolf's book deals with many of the political and moral issues of the 20th Century as explored by such writers as Andre Malraux and Albert Camus. Wolf, of course, is basically a bureaucrat and nowhere near as deep a thinker as these writers. He is an unrependent Communist and Marxist yet he touches the philosophical roots of political action. His story is at the heart of 20th Century politics from Hitler to Stalin to contemporary Consumer Capitalism and should be read by anyone interested in the history of the second half of the 20th Century. Victor De Mattei July 13, 1997