Spies welcome - and that was a Cold War?

Born out of the Cold War, the OSCE started an interesting process and is still around today, as you can see on its web site, and read in the news.

If you are old enough to remember some of the Cold War, or if you know how to do a web search*, you have come across reports of military observers. News anchors of old never failed to mention NATO military observers traveling to the East to observe Warsaw Pact exercises, and vice versa. Sounds straight forward, right?

How, then, did it work?

Personnel selected to go and see what the other guys were up to was not selected willy-nilly. This was a bit more important than, say, getting together with the Germans to discuss the issue of fighting a war with inches and centimeters: Can you order some wood from the Germans and put 2x4 on the requisition form?

Access to information was a much bigger prize, and details seem to be few and far between in the public record.

So, for the record: there was vodka for those who went East, and great beer for those who came West (as well as the shopping trips).

And they did what at any other time of the year would have been called spying.

We did sneak a brief reference to "the camera under the clipboard" into a previous post, but left out a other bits of information. One being that the camera under the clipboard was tolerated, short of adding "and don't forget to smile for the camera" to the briefing telling you about the presence of observers.

Russian translators were provided to help the guests understand whatever NATO language they were not comfortable in, mostly English.

Feedback by the Eastern friends was encouraged and given freely. NATO did not set up a 1-800-How's-My-Explanation hotline but did the feedback thing up close and personal.

Imagine the face of a NATO newbie, when, after a presentation involving lots of fat arrows on maps, a fellow NATO man would come around to tell him that Soviet officers had been unhappy with this and that aspect of the presentation. Knowing that the presentation would be given again the following day, NATO Man would insist these mistakes be avoided the next day.

What you make of such criticism?

You have a wide range of options, from telling yourself they are were concerned about starting a war nobody** wanted to the old soldier's "underneath that uniform they are all the same".

* [two mutually exclusive things according to internet hype]
** [almost nobody]

Note: This is another post for fun loving historians, contact welcome, but encrypted emails only, please.