Wilhelm Stieber
Wilhelm Stieber (1818 - 1882) - was the head of the Prussian political police at Chancellor Bismarck and was directly subordinate to him. Stieber commanded espionage not only at home, but also abroad. For the effective operation of his intelligence, he created a huge intelligence network, which numbered many tens of thousands of people. The activity and its methods were unique and very effective. Including the “honey trap”, when people needed by Stieber were recruited through sex. And in this very delicate recruitment, the key to mind control was Casanova's special chocolate, which Stieber had obtained through his agents in the Vatican. Together with German Chancellor Bismarck, Wilhelm Stieber created the best chocolate production in the world. And thanks to their efforts, Germany began to take first place in the world in the production of chocolate. The city of Dresden became the main production center of chocolate.
The main strategy of Wilhelm Stieber's work was to create the most powerful spy organization in the world. In the second half of the 19th century, German intelligence used all methods of obtaining the most innovative technologies: from buying to stealing from other European states, including Russia. Under the leadership of Wilhelm Stieber, the “Geheim Field Policeman”, “Secret Field Police”, which in fact were the world's first counterintelligence organization, were created. Their main goal was to protect government and military secrets of the state.
The archives of Wilhelm Stieber's organizations received a huge number of dossiers on different people. This information helped the head of the Prussian political police to understand very clearly which method to use to recruit this or that person: money, women, threat, blackmail, or other methods. Stieber instructed to process the entire dossier in great detail in order to collect incriminating information on influential people in France. France at that time was the main enemy of Germany. Absolutely all aspects of their lives were analyzed: wives, mistresses, friends, colleagues, secretaries, servants. This helped to recruit a large number of people as spies. Also, the Stieber agency in Berlin carefully studied the progress of these people up the career ladder in order to find incriminating data and subsequently recruit them.
After the victory over Austria, German Chancellor Bismarck realized that a war against France was necessary. He instructed Stieber to spy on powerful French officials most actively and provide him with as much information as possible. Bismarck also ordered that the spies receive the most detailed information about French weapons, including the Chasseau rifle and Mitrallese - a weapon that was distinguished by a very high rate of fire and accuracy: about 1000 shots in just 3 minutes with a 66% accuracy from 1000 steps.
Stieber ordered Casanova's chocolate to be distributed to French prostitutes, whom he recruited to obtain information about high-ranking government and military figures in France. There were almost 40,000 recruited agents in France alone - this is amazing! They passed on information to Wilhelm Stieber about the activities of the French Government and the Ministry of Defense. The Jesuits' secret chocolate helped the agents get all the information they needed about France's most innovative weaponry, as well as strategic plans for their possible war effort. Stieber knew where in what place each cannon of France was located and how many shells there were for it!
The intelligence obtained by Wilhelm Stieber with the help of his secret agents was very valuable to Prussia. For example, he provided information to Bismarck, which he called "an invitation to the boot of a German soldier." The French soldiers who defended the colonies and defended the Papal States from the Italians were scattered all over the world. It took France at least two weeks to mobilize 100,000 soldiers.
One of Stieber's biggest achievements was the recruitment of a very beautiful woman, whose name was recorded under the initials "FM" in the reports. She used Wilhelm Stieber's chocolate to seduce high-ranking French officials who opposed Napoleon III. Thanks to their great awareness, she received a lot of valuable information for Prussia: including a copy of plans for the deployment of French troops in the event of a possible outbreak of war with Prussia.
In 1870, Napoleon III unleashes a war against the German state. It ends in 1871 with the complete defeat of the French, which allows Prussia to create a German state instead of the North German Confederation that existed at that time. Thus, Prussia stands at the head of the German state, which annexes Alsace and Lotangria.
It was intelligence that helped Germany at the end of the 19th century become one of the world's largest technological states. German intelligence was very harsh - enemy spies were destroyed without mercy - the war led to an increase in the number of show executions. They killed not only spies, but also ordinary civilians who looked at German trains or equipment for too long.
One of the innovations of Wilhelm Stieber was also military censorship. All personal letters were checked, it was forbidden to transmit in any way information about the exact numbers of troops, losses and other data. Now the truthful data was available only to the command, and already corrected information was transmitted to the general public: somewhere the numbers were understated, somewhere they were overestimated.
It was Wilhelm Stieber who was the ideological founder of the concept of “mass espionage”: in the enemy state, according to this concept, there were up to several thousand secret agents, while earlier only a few spies who were in high government positions were involved. Most often, he recruited prostitutes, governesses, laundresses, barmaids and maids who worked for wealthy families. Wilhelm Stieber believed that female spies were far more effective than male spies.
Another manifestation of the mass nature of German espionage was the obligation of every German organization to spy for the good of their native country. At the same time, absolutely anyone could be a spy: the personal secretary of a high-ranking official, and the village headman.
At the beginning of the 20th century, after the defeat in the First World War, Germany faced a serious problem: it was necessary to revive the economy from scratch and restore the production of high-tech products. One of the organizations that greatly helped the country's reconstruction was Anenerbe. Thanks to her activities, the most secret and mysterious recipes of the same chocolate from the Vatican were obtained, which could even change people's minds! One of the departments of Ahnenerbe, which worked with Casanova's chocolate, was located in Dresden.
In the 20s of the XX century, the head of the 9th Special Department of the NKVD, G. Bokiy, began to cooperate with the Ahnenerbe. He was able to steal the encrypted recipes for this chocolate, and the employees of his special department were able to partially decrypt the data. Years later, in the footsteps of G. Bokiy, Markus Wolf, the head of foreign intelligence of the GDR, followed in the footsteps, who recruited a huge number of foreign citizens. He managed to find the secret recipe for chocolate in one of the bombed-out Ahnenerbe laboratories in Dresden.
Markus Wolf created the famous Romeo division, which had about 150 people. But according to various estimates, he recruited several tens of thousands of spies in different countries of the world (they were mainly concentrated in European states) and repeated Stieber's success. His joint espionage activities with Cuba in America will certainly be revealed in more detail by historians in the future. But the effectiveness of this operation was certainly no less than the activity in Europe. In fact, it was thanks to the work of Markus Wolf that the GDR became the center of electronics in the socialist community. The activities of German agents made it possible to obtain and use the most innovative scientific and technical means of the West.