The Case of Espionage of Siegfried and Margarette Preiss: The Collaboration of Counterintelligence Services in the Polish People’s Republic and in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1970s

Abstract

At the end of World War Two Europe was divided into two opposed political and military factions which spent several decades in severe conflict on almost all available fronts. One important element of the politics pursued by the world powers of the era - the United States of America and the Soviet Union - was an increased reliance on intelligence and counterintelligence services. Secret services were an important tool in gathering information about the enemy and in destroying ideological opponents on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

One example of such a battle on the Cold War espionage front was the case of Siegfried and Margaretta Preiss, two West German spies arrested by the PRL secret service in April 1977. Polish intelligence services established that the married couple had undertaken espionage missions not only in Poland but also in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Polish military counterintelligence service (Internal Military Service, Polish: Wojskowa Służba Wewnętrzna, WSW) and the Yugoslavian Security Directorate (Croatian: Kontraobaveštajna služba, KOS) decided to cooperate on the Preiss case and exchanged information about the West German intelligence services. They also engaged in some, limited, joint operations. This relatively unknown episode of confidential cooperation between the Polish and Yugoslavian secret services is noticeable in some of the charges pressed against the Preiss couple, particularly those charges that concern their actions in SFRY.