Secret Berlin: locations of espionage history

The replica of Checkpoint Charlie located in Friedrichstraße can hardly be described as an insider tip; it is one of the city’s top sights. Today, a photograph taken at the location of the former border-crossing between West and East Berlin is a central part of every holiday to Berlin.

Whilst the checkpoint acquired its fame thanks to its role in famous spy films such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Octopussy, it was also the location of some of the most spectacular episodes of the Cold War. The Stasi agents disguised as border guards who controlled the passage between East and West were themselves surprised in 1982, when a young American soldier named Jeffrey Carney turned up at the checkpoint to offer his services to the DDR. As a member of the US signals communications unit working at the Marienfelde radar facility in West Berlin, he provided information to the DDR over many years. The intelligence loss of his treachery was estimated to have a financial impact of some 14.5 million US dollars.

Glienicke Bridge is one of the most iconic locations in Berlin’s rich history of espionage. Spanning the River Havel and thereby connecting Berlin and Potsdam, the geography of the Cold War made it into an important border crossing between East and West. This sensitive location made it the ideal site for three spectacular spy trades in 1962, 1985 and 1986. Film fans will be familiar with the bridge as the location of Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster Bridge of Spies. Media reporting of these tense Cold War events made the bridge known throughout the world.

As a freely-accessible traffic bridge open to pedestrians, visitors can see the line in the centre of the road marking the former inner-German border and recreate the step to freedom made by the agents of both powers.

Few intelligence agencies have such a fearsome reputation for the maintenance of blanket surveillance as the Ministry for State Security of the DDR, colloquially known as the Stasi. Situated in a large building complex on Normannenstraße, the former headquarters of this all-seeing and all-knowing organization is now open to visitors. A museum has been established in House 1, where visitors can view the former office of Erich Mielke, the long-serving head of the Stasi. This unique historical location is one of Berlin’s most extraordinary sights and is the only former secret service headquarters in the world open to the general public. Visitors can now explore what, until the 1990s, remained a blank space on all East German maps.

One of the most spectacular sights in Berlin for espionage fans is undoubtedly the ruins of the former listening post Field Station Berlin on Teufelsberg. Visible from afar at its exposed location perched atop of one of Berlin’s highest points, the former station is one of the symbols of the Capital of Spies. During the Cold War, British and American intelligence services deployed state-of-the-art technology to listen in to Warsaw Pact radio traffic.

Although there are no traces of the sensitive devices originally installed in this extraordinary place, the ruins of the striking buildings are open to the public and act as a physical reminder of the frenetic espionage war fought in Berlin. Serving regularly as film sets, they were seen in the Netflix series thriller Berlin Station.

Serving as one of Berlin’s principal air transport nodes from its opening in 1923 until its closure in 2008, Tempelhof airport played a vital role in the Berlin Airlift of 1948/49. In addition to civilian air traffic, it also hosted a US Air Force base. Deploying specialist radar and signals intelligence equipment, US military observers monitored Warsaw Pact air traffic, noting any suspicious developments in enemy airspace. The presence of the US military also meant that the East German Stasi sent agents to spy in the airport.

The US airbase on Tempelhof also provided the location from which agents released at the famous spy trades on Glienicke Bridge were flown into and out of Berlin.

Today, visitors can access the grounds of the former airport during the daytime and it is a popular destination for Berliners and tourists alike. A range of exhibitions and events are held in the buildings on the site.

Today one of the most important public transport hubs in Berlin, during the Cold War Friedrichstraße railway station acted as one of the closest points of contact between East and West.

After the building of the Berlin Wall, trains from East and West still stopped in Freidrichstraße. Travellers from the East had to pass through a customs post known popularly as the Palace of Tears (Tränenpalast), named for the emotional partings that took place there every day. For their part, Stasi and KGB agents used clandestine entrances to reach the platforms leading to the West. Friedrichstraße station was the most important gateway between East and West Berlin and was in daily use during the Cold War.

Although the secret passages have disappeared, the exhibition at the Tränenpalast recalls the history of this former site of tension and emotional drama.

A blank space on East German maps obscured the location of a Stasi installation into which entry was strictly forbidden. Housing the central remand prison of the Ministry for State Security, a labour camp, the technical department for the development of espionage technology, the weapons technology department and several Stasi archives, the area was top secret.

Today the former Stasi remand prison is preserved as a memorial site. The rest of the restricted zone is now a residential and commercial area.

The building complex today housing the Berlin-Karlshorst Museum has an eventful history. Formerly a training centre for Wehrmacht pioneers, after 1945 it housed the headquarters of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD). The surrender of the German Wehrmacht to the Red Army was signed here in 1945.

During the Cold War, the area developed into a restricted zone and became home to the Soviet military administration, units of the Red Army, an outpost of GRU military intelligence and the Berlin headquarters of the KGB. As the largest KGB base outside Moscow, the centre was dedicated to agent training and mission control.

The permanent exhibition on German-Russian history at Berlin-Karlshorst Museum focuses on the fighting on the Eastern Front during the Second World War.

Completed in 1969, the Berlin television tower is the nation’s tallest building. It was not just tourists who flocked to take in the spectacular view; the 1980s saw the Stasi make use of new technology to spy on their citizens.

East German agents deployed special telephoto lenses to photograph people and car number plates from their vantage point 241 metres above ground level. Passers-by could be recognised from a distance of 800 metres and car number plates could be read from 1200 metres. The operation required Stasi agents to be fit: the photographic equipment weighed 25 kilograms and had to be carried up a staircase to the observation point.

The German Federal Intelligence Agency (BND), state organization responsible for foreign espionage agency, moved from Pullach to Berlin in 2019 and established itself in a facility sprawling over 260,000 square metres, which is the largest headquarters of any intelligence agency in the world. Deploying state-of-the-art counterintelligence technology, the some 4,000 employees working here are even required to submit to a scan of their veins to get to their workstation.

The location of the new HQ makes clear that Berlin remains an espionage hotspot even after the Cold War. Moreover, its visible location shows that 21st century intelligence agencies can no longer skulk in the shadows. Facing the public not only fosters social acceptance for their role, but helps them compete on the employment market for highly sought-after IT and linguistics specialists.

Hikers on Schlehenberg in Marienfelde will find trails set in nature. They may not realize that they are standing on a central location of Berlin’s espionage history. During the Cold War, US Air Force intelligence operated the second largest listening station in Berlin at this location. It achieved fame only after news of the defection of one of its former employees, Jeffrey Carney, who betrayed many of its secrets to the Stasi.

Today, there is nothing left to see of the spy complex, which was demolished in 1990. The former espionage facility lives on only in the vocabulary of Berliners: the name Amiberg, meaning the “mountain of the Americans”, remains in use as a nickname for Schlehenberg today.

During the Second World War, the Keitel Villa housed the office of the High Command of the Wehrmacht and its chief Wilhelm Keitel, from whom the building took its name. During the Cold War, this extraordinary facility served as the headquarters of the US military liaison mission, from where special units conducted reconnaissance missions in East Germany. Although the location of the building was known to the Stasi, as members of the mission were permitted to range freely across East Germany, it was one of the most important instruments of western military espionage in the Berlin area.

The villa remained in the service of US and German espionage agencies even after the Cold War. The building was finally vacated in 2008; it is now used as a Waldorf school.

No sooner had the Second World War ended, than the Russian set to work establishing a secret service town, called Military Town No. 7, within the Potsdam suburb called Nauener Vorstadt. Shielded from the outside world, the Soviets established a number of facilities, including the headquarters of the 3rd Main Department of the KGB (military counterintelligence) and a remand prison, where inmates were detained unlawfully, interrogated and mistreated.

The events in the secret service city are still a subject of intense research. The memorial now located on the site gives visitors insights into the history of Military Town no. 7.

The building complex known as the Bendlerblock housed important departments of the German Wehrmacht and Amt Ausland/Abwehr – the German foreign military intelligence service – during the Third Reich. Under the leadership of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the Abwehr gathered valuable information for the German war effort. At the same time however, some members of the secret service were involved in the anti-Nazi resistance and were protected by their boss. Canaris was eventually discovered and executed by the Third Reich.

The bomb attack on Hitler on 20 July 1944 was planned by army officers in the Bendlerblock. Following its failure, its leadership group around Count von Stauffenberg were executed in the courtyard of the building. Today an exhibition from the German Resistance Memorial Centre tells the story of these brave individuals.

Reflecting the position of the city at the epicentre of twentieth century history, a number of Second World War and Cold War era bunkers nestle under the streets and buildings of Berlin. One especially secret example is the Stasi intelligence bunker close to the Kiessee lake near the Arkenberge.

Small but perfectly-formed, the bunker measures just 8.5 x 4.5 metres and was equipped with technology to receive and transmit secret communications from the DDR government and the Stasi. As the bunker was so secret, few knew of its existence and it remained untouched for a long time. After its rediscovery, the decision was taken to cover the bunker with earth and it is now inaccessible.