Secret American Commandos Hid Out in Cold War Berlin

Special troops would have spied on the Soviets

by JOSEPH TREVITHICK

For almost three decades during the Cold War, a detachment of American Special Force hid inside the main U.S. Army contingent in Berlin. The specialized troops would have helped keep tabs on the Soviets in the event the Red Army overran the then-divided city.

In January, a small group of Army veterans gathered at Fort Bragg in North Carolina to commemorate the unit’s secret work.

The “detachment in Berlin was highly classified,” military historian and former Special Forces soldier Gordon Rottman told War Is Boring. The element’s mission was “mainly to collect and report [intelligence] info.”

After World War II, the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had divided Germany into separate occupation zones. They also divvied up Berlin, which otherwise lay deep inside the main Soviet zone. Germany split into two countries—East and West, aligned with the Soviets and NATO, respectively.

American commanders worried about what would happen to the western half of Berlin if the Cold War ever turned hot.

So in 1956, the Army sent six Special Forces teams from Bad Tölz in West Germany—home of the 10th Special Forces Group—to the divided city. At the time, the detachments were supposed to have 15 men each, according to an official unit organization document War Is Boring obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

The troops were supposed to get an impressive array of gear including sniper rifles, rocket launchers, demolition kits and radios. But in practice, the Berlin element’s actual size and equipment probably differed significantly from the official structure.

The force “was a unique and diversified, unconventional classified unit,” an official Army news story notes. The first soldiers even traveled across the Communist East secretly, in private cars.