Sunday Times 2
“Shaken not stirred”: A German chancellor’s cold-war era resignation
View(s):By Shehan Ratnavale
Forty seconds of video reel uploaded online by Associated Press with the description ‘Synd 9 9 74 Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Arrives in Bonn’ (https://youtu.be/1PLaWo4jMcA ) captures the arrival of Mrs. Bandaranaike on an official visit to West Germany. It shows: a Lufthansa aircraft approaching the terminal building, those receiving Mrs. Bandaranaike and a motorcade departing from the tarmac. For myself, and several I know, the footage is of familial interest and also viewed with some sadness. Amongst some of us walking towards the approaching aircraft, my father is clearly visible keeping what appears to be an ambassadorial eye on proceedings. Many observe how well he looks, and that it is difficult to imagine he passed away just three months later from a sudden heart attack at a Bad Godesberg hospital.
Earlier in his career: Willy Brandt with JFK at the White House when he was Mayor of Berlin
For those with an interest in international affairs the same footage reminds of something very different. As Mrs. Bandaranaike descends the aircraft, the first person to greet her with a bouquet was the Chairperson of West Germany’s social democratic party SPD. A welcoming and fitting gesture by the West Germans given that both were chairpersons of political parties with social democratic traditions. But just months before, this SPD chairperson wouldn’t have had the time to receive a visiting head of Government at the airport. This is because prior to his resignation four months earlier, as Chancellor of West Germany, he held the most powerful political office in the country. His name is Willy Brandt.
These were interesting times. The cold war chill of a bi-polar world where the Soviet bloc lay in opposition to western nations, was near its worst in the early seventies. Pre-German reunification, West and East Germany (GDR) were at the very frontlines of this divide not only impacting global politics but even art and culture. I recollect my father suggesting that the cold war often provided backdrops for the Bond movies. On this I would give him a fifty percent score. While ‘Gold finger’, ‘From Russia with Love’, ‘You Only Live Twice’ and ‘Diamonds are Forever’ have in varying degrees aspects of the cold war woven into their plots, the other four up to that time had little or none. Still, being the focus of numerous authors including John Le Carre, Frederick Forsyth, Alistair Maclean and George Orwell; there is no doubting the cold war’s literary and cinematic influence. A classic example is Le Carre’s 2011 thriller movie ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ based on his 1974 novel. This was a fictional account about a KGB double agent at the top of British Intelligence. But in the world of international espionage the facts are sometimes as astounding as the fiction.
Despite strong bonds with the KGB, the organisation accredited with Chancellor Brandt’s resignation was different. It was East Germany’s Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit better known as the Stasi. Apart from being a notoriously repressive police organisation, the Stasi’s foreign intelligence wing, boosted by German efficiency and exceptional leadership, developed as the most effective intelligence organisation in the Soviet Bloc. According to one analyst ‘the Stasi made the CIA look pathetic and was in many ways superior to the KGB.’ The KGB maintained liaison officers in East Germany and interestingly current Russian President Vladimir Putin also served as a KGB liaison for the Stasi in Dresden East Germany.
The Stasi’s exceptional leadership came from Markus Wolf, head of its intelligence directorate. A dedicated communist, referred to as the ‘spy master of the century’ and ‘the man without a face;’ he built and ran a complex network positioning East German moles in places like Nato and the British and West German governments. Some readers believed that Le Carre’s fictional spymaster Karla appearing in several of his novels including ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ was modelled on Wolf. Le Carre denied this but Wolf appears as a character in Frederick Forsyth’s ‘The Deceiver’ and is referred to in his novel ‘The Fourth Protocol.’
Wolf’s most famous agent Gunter Guillaume was less of a fit into thriller fiction and the vodka martini ambience of Ian Flemming’s creation. Guillaume and his wife Christel were sent to West Germany as sleeper agents in 1956. Tasked with infiltrating the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Guillaume began by working for the party newspaper Der Sozialdemokrat. He later became a salaried SPD party secretary and city council member. Christel became a secretary to a Bundestag member subsequently appointed Secretary of State of the German State of Hesse. This enabled her access to documents on Nato exercises.
Gunter Guillaume’s impact was more significant. Valued for his ‘dependability’ he was offered an aide position in Chancellor Willy Brandt’s office. While some there were worried about him being placed so close to Brandt, Guillaume won the day. He began work in early 1970 and with his dedication was eventually appointed an official advisor. He was the perfect spy; living inconspicuously in small apartment with his wife and teenage son in Bad Godesberg but with an office one floor above the Chancellor.
It was said of Guillaume that: ‘he was nothing…..you’d find him there just like you’d find a chair in a room.’ This calculated insignificance enabled him to pilfer documents on the negotiating position of Germany and its allies. He became close to Brandt even travelling with him to Norway. The New York Times writes of Guillaume filling a brief case with secret documents including letters from President Nixon about Nato’s nuclear strategy and slipping it to a Stasi contact in Sweden. But a 1973 investigation into another agent strengthened suspicions around Guillaume. Deciphered radio messages coincided with key personal dates including birthdays of Guillaume and his family which the Stasi included in communications to boost the morale of their agents.
Chancellor Brandt was warned but told to act normal while surveillance continued. When arrested at his apartment exactly 51 years ago to last Thursday, Guillaume blurted out: ‘I am an officer of the GDR. I beseech you to respect that.’
Brandt resigned in May 1974 one month after the arrest of Guillaume and his wife. He sighted personal reasons but the Guillaume Affair had clearly dealt him a fatal blow. It was ironic that East Germany had inadvertently brought down a Nobel Peace Prize winning statesman famous for his ‘Ostpolitik’ favouring rapprochement with the Soviet bloc, particularly East Germany.
Guillaume and his wife were sentenced to prison for treason but reminiscent of numerous cold war spy movies the couple were exchanged for eight West German spies in 1981. My father’s Bond movie backdrops come again to mind since several after his death had cold war connections. Parts of ‘Octopussy’ were even set in East Germany and though filming there was denied, a scene was shot at West Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie and in the nearby no man’s land. The film crew scribbled graffiti on the Berlin Wall stating: ‘’007 was here.”
While the cold war crumbled with the Berlin wall, new tensions exist between the protagonists. But overall, like the new generation of Bond movies, intelligence focus has encompassed other issues such as: narcotics, organised crime, ISIS type terrorism and counter proliferation. West Germany was probably shaken but not stirred after Chancellor Brandt’s resignation and away from the cold war, new challenges like our horrific Easter Sunday bombings, and the Taylor swift concert in Vienna where timely intelligence saved the lives of thousands, underlines the importance of intelligence cooperation. Contextually, let’s hope our governments and responsible agencies ensure we are neither shaken nor stirred.
(The writer is a former
High Commissioner to
Singapore and South Africa)