NVA Officer Passport: Berlin Wall & Prague Uprising
The documents and story shared here are outstanding and most significant for German (passport) history. An account from the inside.
The future lieutenant colonel Klaus Nodes, later married to the GDR actress Irmgard Düren, was a graduate of the Moscow tank academy and a key figure in the planning for the construction of the wall and in the planning of the secret operation “Böhmerwald” to suppress the Prague spring uprising with tanks.
An officer remembers
Klaus Nodes was not surprised by the two “blows against the class enemy”. He was in the loop.
The Wall had already called him in January 1961: The young graduate of the Moscow Tank Academy, a Captain of the National People’s Army (NVA), had been transferred from his base in Eggesin to the Operative Administration of the Main Staff in the GDR Ministry of Defense because “major tasks to secure the state border” had to be prepared in Berlin.
He also knew what was coming in June 1968, when the “brother armies” held the “Sumava” (“Bohemian Forest”) maneuver on the territory of the CSSR, the GDR, Poland and the USSR. As a lieutenant colonel, he was entrusted with staff plans for military exercises, which now became more than that.
NVA on CSSR territory?
Rumors were out that two combat divisions were operating on CSSR territory during the Prague Spring. “That’s a legend,” Nodes says. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. NVA Officer Passport
But this much is true: if Walter Ulbricht and his defense minister Heinz Hoffmann had had their way at the time and not a last-minute decision by the Soviet High Command, two combat units would have left their camps in Thuringia and Saxony and crossed the border into the CSSR.
Military career NVA Officer Passport
Node readily admits that he would not become a professional soldier again in a second life. He did not really volunteer in 1952 after leaving school in Weimar. Furthermore, he did what was expected of him “as a working-class boy” and enlisted in the “Kasernierte Volkspolizei”, as the nascent East German army called itself in disguise.
Of course there was conviction. “After all, as a child I still knew what war was. ” His career was steep: years as a soldier and officer training in Erfurt, brief service in Großenhain and Naumburg, and then it was off to “big brother” – in civilian clothes, the KVP uniforms had to stay at home.
Dressed in a Soviet uniform without rank insignia, Nodes heard in Moscow that the NVA had been founded at home. The choice of uniforms in “national traditions”, as it was officially called, alienated him. “We said to ourselves, ‘Gosh, we can’t walk around here in this uniform that looks so much like the Wehrmacht. . “.
Nodes speaks with respect of a Russian instructor, a legendary general who advanced across the Dnieper to form a bridgehead against the Germans. From him, who never spoke about his heroic deeds, he heard: “Never again such a war!” and “You Germans should never shoot at Germans”.
Military exercise NVA Officer Passport
In May 1961, he had to prepare a command staff exercise of the “brother armies”. Such a possible war was played out. A war in which nuclear weapons destroyed all life, turning landscapes into uninhabitable deserts. It was the preparation for a major military exercise, and it is my thesis that it was to take place around Berlin at the time when they wanted to close the borders. ” Only the relaxed attitude of the Western Allies, which had been announced at the meeting between Khrushchev and Kennedy in Vienna, had prevented this action.
August 1968
Seven years later, it was serious. On the afternoon of August 20, 1968, Lieutenant Colonel Nodes was ordered to see Colonel General Fritz Streletz. “He informed me that Warsaw Treaty troops would be invading the CSSR the following night. Units of the Soviet Army, the Hungarian People’s Army and the 7th Armored Division from the GDR would be involved. I was ordered to go to the 11th motorized rifle division as a liaison officer. It was to remain on standby in the Hermsdorf area for possible deployment. ” Nodes were not caught unprepared. His position knew why both units had not returned to their garrisons from the field camps of the June maneuvers.
Klaus Nodes reached the staff of the 11th Rifle Division in the Hermsdorf area shortly before midnight. “Early in the morning, the loudspeakers were switched on, and the radio broadcast the news that the Warsaw Treaty troops had entered the country at the request of Czechoslovak patriots. “Klaus Nodes remembers well that voices could be heard among the soldiers saying “at last the wait is over” and “now order is returning to the CSSR”. And there was even “a certain disappointment to be felt” when it was announced that the division was to remain in the occupied area. NVA Officer Klaus Nodes
And how did he feel himself?
“Split feelings,” he says laconically. “On the one hand, what an NVA officer could only talk about with good friends: Sympathy for the Prague reform socialists who wanted to break up the dogmatically rigid system. On the other hand, as a trained officer, you had to follow orders and suppress critical thoughts. They allowed themselves to be persuaded of the possibility of the violent elimination of socialism from outside and said to themselves: better a bad socialism than no socialism at all. But the idea of German soldiers marching into Prague again 30 years after 1938 was terrifying.”
On those August nights in Hermsdorf, Klaus Nodes was no longer as sure of his mission as he had been in previous years. Today he sees things more clearly than back then: “1968 was a turning point. After August 13, 1961, many citizens of the GDR, not just SED members, had hoped that it would now be possible to create a better society undisturbed. But by 1968, this hope was gone. “High expectations of a more efficient national economy through the “New Economic System of Planning and Management” promoted by Ulbricht had not been fulfilled.
The talk of the “socialist community of people” was in stark contrast to the undemocratic everyday life.
Successful course of the invasion
So Nodes was not surprised to hear at 8 o’clock on the morning of August 21, 1968, via radio relay from Strausberg: General Streletz announced the “successful course” of the invasion, but was extremely unhappy that the 7th Armored Division of the NVA had not been deployed. “Streletz explained to me that Walter Ulbricht did not agree with this and demanded that the High Command in Moscow review this decision. ” As Nodes goes on to report, Ulbricht and his military men persisted in their attempts to persuade the Soviets to allow the 11th Division to march into the Pilsen area.
To this end, the division’s units were ordered to move forward to the Plauen area near the CSSR border, and reconnaissance forces were to be deployed to explore the marching routes and operational areas on CSSR territory. ” Again, it was the Soviets who did not want to go to extremes. Klaus Nodes talks about the overpowering indoctrination of the officers.
Dubcek was an inexperienced puppet
“In the political training of the National People’s Army, the situation was described as follows: The new First Secretary of the CC of the CPC, Alexander Dubcek, was an inexperienced puppet of the real masterminds, the reform socialists Smrkovsky and Ota Sik, who were both agents of the West. Military action by NATO was to be expected; US and German army officers, disguised as tourists, were already in the CSSR; the activities were also directed against the GDR.
New Civil/World War
Under the conditions of the Cold War, much of this was believed. We feared that it could lead to a civil war, if not a new world war. ” The crushing of the attempt to create “socialism with a human face” disturbed Klaus Nodes. When he was ordered back to Strausberg in October 1968, something inside him was torn apart.
Reflections NVA Officer Passport
The retired lieutenant colonel knows today what he would never have admitted or even dared to say at the time: “It was bad that we were lied to and let ourselves be lied to; it was much worse that we were brought up to lie to ourselves. ” A technical officer from his Strausberg administration, who had studied in Brno, had been brave enough to condemn the occupation. The criminal courts that hit him ruined his livelihood. Several hundred NVA soldiers suffered the same fate as him. Klaus Nodes remembers these professional colleagues not without moral scruples: “Yes, they were cowards and kept their mouths shut. ” After more than 25 years in the army, Lieutenant Colonel Nodes resigned from military service.
Berlin Wall
Both were there when, on the night of November 9, 1989, General Streletz was determined to close the Wall again by military force, says Nodes. Both had implored Streletz not to do it, as there would be great bloodshed. Like Streletz, both were tried and convicted in Wall trials.
Pensioner Klaus Nodes is not doing too badly today (2001). He has just been back to Moscow. Sometimes he meets up with his old comrades from the tank academy. Former generals Manfred Grätz and Joachim Goldbach are among them.
The Documents (Selection) NVA Officer Passport
I still can’t believe that these documents are now in my East German passport collection! They are unique and definitely museum pieces!
Passport issued at the Swiss embassy in East Berlin
Tom Topol | Passport History Expert & Author.
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