Great Spies of the 20th Century

to recruit a large number of East German agents. On the other hand, Wolf and his agency also used more conventional means of blackmail: money and sex. Above all, Wolf was an innovator and in almost a Machiavellian fashion, ordered his department to search systematically for potential recruitment targets. Consequently, thanks to his contacts in West Germany and West Berlin, he was able to identify thousands of possible targets. The HVA also used wiretaps, with some experts estimating that Wolf and his agents were able to listen in on hundreds of thousands of telephone conversations in West Germany. In an even more subtle tactic, Wolf realised that it was often easier and more useful to recruit a subordinate rather than a manager. A good secretary often knows as much as their boss: they type their letters or forms and sometimes even know the combination to the safe. If the secretary or soldier works in an organisation where information is continuously circulating around, he or she would have easier access to these documents than a higher-ranking official. What is more, no one pays any attention to these people, which is how Wolf managed to recruit dozens, perhaps hundreds, of these people.

Geoffroy d’Aumale and Jean-Pierre Faure

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The HVA’s first big success occurred during the successful infiltration of the Socialist Party in West Germany, led by Willy Brandt, when an agent called Gunther Guillaume arrived at the State summit as one of Brandt’s key advisors. In 1968 Vice-Admiral Ludke, the deputy chief of logistics at NATO, and General Horst Wendland, the vice-president of the BND (German Federal Intelligence Service), both committed suicide when it was discovered that they had been recruited by the HVA.According to various estimates, the HVA maintained over 1000 spies in West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. Many of these were West Germans who had been forced to become HVA agents after being caught up in a variety of nets: blackmail over their Nazi past, blackmail over family secrets, being seduced by a Romeo, being placed in compromising positions based on an excellent knowledge of the individual in question etc.

By using the Romeo method, Wolf's system achieved perfection: it specifically tailored men to attract the attention of a female target and made sure that the women themselves fell in love. In the East, there was what could be called a ‘Romeo school', where young men received training not just in the art of espionage, but also seduction! Wolf strategically sent the men to Bonn, a small provincial town that had become the capital of West Germany, where the secretaries of various ministers were often not only single, but bored to death.

Taking into account his target's feelings, Wolf reinvented the methods used by his friends in the KGB. The Soviet honeytrap system was pretty rough: a pretty girl or boy was filmed having sex with a diplomat, who in order to avoid scandal, was then forced to become an agent, although some refused to be blackmailed. In summary, it was a brutal practice and based on the exploitation of the most basic instincts. When it had the opportunity, the HVA worked in the same way as the KGB. However, this technique had the serious drawback of producing agents who were forced to cooperate because they were being threatened. These diplomats - who were the usual targets - were thus forced to collaborate. On the other hand, Wolf sought to create spies who would work voluntarily and to achieve this, he had to resort to a much more pleasant feeling: love.

It was clearly not romanticism that persuaded Wolf to use this method. On the contrary, he was making a rather cynical calculation: a spy in love would work more effectively and for longer than a spy who was being blackmailed. This is why he attached great importance to the choice of targets, which generally corresponded to the following type: a woman in her thirties or forties, neither pretty nor ugly, single (of course), who was vulnerable due to a disappointment in love or a general lack of affection. The prey would succumb more easily to a clever seducer. The Romeo himself was generally a little older than his target, virile and confident, he would court her in the manner that best matched his objective. The day would come when he then had to throw off his mask and ask her to engage in espionage activities. Strange as it would seem, this was not as difficult as you might think. Wolf's Romeos were equipped with a whole series of arguments in favour of such work, with the most common one used that they were contributing to the continuing struggle for peace. They put into the target's minds that by stealing documents, they were, in fact, working for a peaceful cause. The warmongers were those in the West and somehow a balance had to be restored between the two camps.

The Romeo also had to use other arguments. If his Juliet was the subject of chauvinism by one of her male colleagues, it was easy to persuade her that by betraying them, she was gaining revenge. Another argument that was likely to win Juliet's support was by playing the politics card. If one Juliet had a nostalgia for the former Hitler regime, they were led to believe that they were secretly working for a former Nazi organisation. If another was resolutely pro-Western, then she was told she was forming a part of an Anglo-Saxon intelligence network. Wolf was therefore able to find spies who delivered documents to their lovers in good faith, in the belief that they were fighting against communism , even though these very files were immediately sent to the other side of the Iron Curtain. Whatever the case, this meant that before approaching any target, the Romeo had to have a very thorough knowledge of his Juliet.

A particularly good example of this manipulation is that of Elenore Sutterlin. Given the codename ‘Lola' by Wolf, she was the secretary to a head of