StB provocations directed against illegal Third Resistance groups using the example of Operation Kühnel
Abstract
This case study focuses on Operation Kühnel, a well prepared and in terms of results extraordinarily successful provocative operation carried out by the security forces in the initial phase of the Communist regime. Although most likely the most significant intervention by the State Security (StB) against staff and functionaries at the headquarters of the National Socialist Party (NSP), the operation is not widely known; in view of its scale and significance it is surprising that experts have not hitherto devoted due attention to it.
As early as in the post-February 1948 period, the organizational secretary of the Czechoslovak Socialist Party headquarters, Josef Kühnel (1900-1962), oversaw illegal groups, mainly focused on intelligence, preparing the way for a "new" NSP that was to be ready once a political coup had taken place. Kühnel was under orders from Petr Zenkl, the former chairman of the NSP.
In early April 1949 Kühnel witnessed a number of arrests among his collaborators, began to fear for his own safety and started planning to flee the country. The State Security was informed about his intentions and decided to use him in an extensive sting operation.
In this way, the StB successfully infiltrated illegal organizations connected with the former NSP, monitored them for a long time (even conducting their activities) and in the end gradually wiped them out once their activities ceased to be in the StB's interest. The operation was based on so-called "separation", which in reality entailed the secret kidnapping of Kühnel by StB officers posing as members of the illegal resistance movement.
Kühnel was later used as a source of information for intelligence purposes. The operation culminated with a ruse today known under the name False Frontier Stone.
This centred on a fake border crossing created by the State Security prior to the arrest and conviction of Kühnel. Operation Kühnel, which is closely connected with other sting operations Scout and Svetlana, highlights the existence of an active anti-Communist resistance and proves the existence of a well-developed organizational structure of resistance within the NSP.
It is also indisputable and verifiable proof of the ruthlessness of the StB, who in their endeavours to control and manage existing illegal groups commonly resorted to sophisticated intelligence ruses and unlawful provocative methods. In the context of international developments in this period it also shows how deeply members of the Third Resistance were convinced that the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia would collapse.