BRIXMIS and the Secret Cold War: Intelligence Collection Operations Behind Enemy Lines in East Germany
Cold War historian Andrew Long has delivered, with BRIXMIS and the Secret Cold War, a fascinatingly thorough volume on British efforts to conduct intelligence reconnaissance missions throughout East Germany from 1946 through Germany’s 1990 reunification and even beyond. The fulcrum of this effort was the British Commanders’-in-Chief Mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany (BRIXMIS), which operated on the basis on the Robertson-Malinin Agreement. Said accord, concluded among the Allied Powers in September 1946, permitted the reciprocal establishment of military missions in each country’s German occupied zone. All four occupying powers exploited the nebulous description of “maintaining liaison” to conduct increasingly sophisticated intelligence-collection operations that continued even past the conclusion of the Cold War.