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Raw Blame History

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Youth and Exile

Brandt became a member of the Sozialistische Arbeiterjugend in 1929 and a full member of the SPD in 1930, at the age of sixteen, although the minimum age was normally eighteen.³ The Reich government withdrew his German citizenship on September 5, 1938; Barbara Marshall writes that the authorities may have waited so long because the change of name concealed his identity and official documents still listed him as "Frahm."³ After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 he fled to Norway, where he was educated in Oslo, and in February 1937 he went to Spain as liaison between members of the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (SAP) and the POUM militia.¹³ The Communist press denounced him in turn as "an agent of Franco" and "a spy of the Gestapo," according to Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, who write that the earliest reference to Brandt in his KGB file is a description of 1936 listing him as a member of the Danzig Trotskyists.⁴

During the German occupation of Norway in 1940 he was captured but not identified. Released as a Norwegian, he fled to Sweden, and until 1945 he lived in Stockholm.¹ From autumn 1940 he was the Stockholm correspondent of the New York Overseas News Agency. On March 28, 1941 the Swedish authorities arrested him on suspicion of "Nachrichtentätigkeit für eine kriegführende Macht" ("intelligence activity for a belligerent power"); the Swedish security police (SÄPO) had followed him and opened his letters since his return from a trip to occupied Norway at the end of 1940.⁵

The editor of the Berliner Ausgabe of Brandt's works, Einhart Lorenz, records that Brandt's Stockholm circle, the International Group of Democratic Socialists, included Bruno Kreisky, Alva Myrdal and Gunnar Myrdal, and American trade unionists with close connections to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). His analyses of the German opposition reached the American intelligence service and the State Department in Washington by way of London, and the OSS rated them "very reliable"; his reports for the Overseas News Agency, which the British Secret Intelligence Service financed, contained nothing remarkable. Lorenz adds that Brandt also belonged to the informants of Toni Sender, who passed her findings to Western intelligence services.⁶ Kreisky later recalled that Brandt was also well liked by the English and Americans in Stockholm.³

In September 1944 the American legation in Stockholm reported to Washington that an article on British contacts with the executed German resister Adam von Trott zu Solz had been written by Brandt, whom the legation called a "young anti-Nazi German" and described as "obviously well informed concerning opposition organizations and views."⁷

The Soviet File, 1941 to 1962

The KGB file on Brandt, codenamed POLYARNIK ("Polar"), was among the material Mitrokhin copied. Andrew and Mitrokhin write that after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 the NKVD residency in Stockholm reported a split among "Norwegian Trotskyists" and named Brandt among those now willing to cooperate with the Soviet Union against Hitler. In autumn 1941 an operations officer of the residency, M. S. Okhunev (codenamed OLEG), called on Brandt, found him out and left his card; the next evening Brandt spent three hours at the Soviet embassy with Okhunev and the resident, Mikhail Sergeyevich Vetrov. According to the file, Brandt said he ran a news agency with American press clients, was ready to do anything to hasten the destruction of Nazism, and would send stories from "Soviet comrades" to the United States, disguising their source if necessary; Vetrov and Okhunev asked him instead for intelligence from his Norwegian friends on German forces in Norway. Over the following nine months he met officers of the residency about once a fortnight, and on one occasion was handed 500 kroner and gave a receipt. The file records information he passed on the battleship Tirpitz (which he told the NKVD he had also given to the British), on German pressure on Sweden to join the Anti-Comintern Pact, and on plans to ban the Swedish Communist Party. In the summer of 1942, after the Swedish police arrested two Czech agents of the residency, TERENTY and VANYA, Brandt refused further secret meetings despite pressure from the residency, while agreeing to come openly to the Soviet embassy.⁴

The same authors write that the Stockholm residency reported in 1943 that Brandt had also been in touch with British and American intelligence officers in Sweden and with Leon Trotsky's former Norwegian secretary, and that the original documents of Brandt's wartime operational file, among them the receipt for 500 kroner, had been destroyed in 1959.⁴ Lorenz writes that Brandt's contacts with the Soviet legation, which included intelligence officers, began after June 1941; that the friendship between Martin Tranmæl and the Soviet envoy Alexandra Kollontai suggests the initiative did not come from Brandt; and that whether Brandt actually supplied information to the legation, and what it contained, could be settled only by further sources. Lorenz notes that the information he is said to have supplied until summer 1942 had in all probability been agreed in advance with the Norwegian legation, to which he was closely tied. In a letter to Jacob Walcher of August 26, 1944, Brandt wrote that he missed no opportunity for direct contact with "the local Soviet people."⁶

A report on the file reached the German press in 1998. The magazine Focus of June 15, 1998 and The Times of June 16, 1998 reported that a defector had said Brandt was a Soviet spy during the Second World War. Yuri Kobaladze, head of the press bureau of the SVR, called the story "completely absurd" on June 19, 1998 and said its source could only be Mikhail Butkov, a former KGB major in the Oslo residency who had defected to Britain in 1991. Andrew and Mitrokhin write that Mitrokhin's notes show the KGB archives do contain a file on Brandt, that it records his passing information to the NKVD residency, that "none of this makes POLYARNIK a Soviet agent," and that Brandt's motive was to provide information to all three members of the Grand Alliance.⁸⁴

From the time Brandt became Governing Mayor of West Berlin in October 1957, the same authors write, the KGB and the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung (HV A) of the Stasi ran active measures against him. A joint operation of 1958 to 1959 used tendentious versions of his wartime record to portray him as an agent of British and American intelligence; the file records that it "did not produce the desired result." Markus Wolf then proposed reviving a claim that Brandt had been a Gestapo agent in Norway, and the East German leadership ordered the plan aborted for lack of credible evidence. On November 16, 1962 the KGB chairman Vladimir Semichastny approved a plan proposed by the head of the First Chief Directorate, Aleksandr Sakharovsky, under which a correspondent of Izvestia, Polyanov, accompanied by an undercover officer, would tell Brandt that "we have sufficient means to cause you unpleasantness" unless he resumed "confidential relations." Andrew and Mitrokhin write that the threat was largely bluff because Sakharovsky had found the original documents of the wartime file destroyed, that Mitrokhin did not see a report on any meeting, and that in January 1963 Nikita Khrushchev invited Brandt to a meeting in East Berlin, which Brandt declined.⁴

The Ministry for State Security's own campaign against Brandt in 1959 rested on a 54-page statement written under interrogation by Georg Angerer, a prisoner of the HV A. In mid-May 1959 the MfS's Hauptabteilung IX proposed a radio, television and press campaign built on the statement. The statement described Brandt as a Trotskyist who had fought with the POUM in Spain and said that during the war in Stockholm he had struck up relations with the Americans and supplied them with information. Daniela Münkel, writing for the BStU, states that the claims were embellished with plausible details from the emigration years and that the quotations attributed to Brandt cannot be verified.⁹

Alleged Western Intelligence Ties, 1948 to 1961

Der Spiegel reported on December 16, 2021, from research by the historian Thomas Boghardt in files of the US Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC), that Brandt supplied information to the CIC from 1948 to 1952 and was registered as informant O-35-VIII. Payment began with cigarettes, sugar and coffee, which served as black market currency, and from 1950 the CIC paid him 250 Deutsche Mark a month. The magazine reported that the CIC's own assessment rated him "normally reliable," that he met CIC contacts more than 200 times, and that his reports on the Socialist Unity Party (SED), the Free German Youth, political prisoners at Bautzen Prison and East German industry are missing. It wrote that the material probably came from the SPD's Ostbüro and that it is unclear whether the party leadership knew of it.¹⁰

On November 11, 1981, the syndicated columnist Jack Anderson wrote, with his associate Dale Van Atta, that four intelligence sources had told them Brandt was on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1950s, that agency payments continued until at least 1956, and that he may have sold information to the KGB. The column said the CIA's interest had been encouraged by Eleanor Dulles, the State Department's German expert, and placed Brandt's first contacts with American and Soviet intelligence in Stockholm, where "American embassy files of that period indicate that he was considered an astute, reliable source." A former CIA agent quoted in the column said, "We learned he was working for them," referring to the KGB. Brandt's aide Klaus-Henning Rosen denied that Brandt had taken money from either service.¹¹ A syndicated column by Drew Pearson of March 14, 1961, written during Brandt's visit to the United States, had said that Eleanor Dulles, who had entered the State Department's German desk in December 1952, had recommended building Brandt up as leader of the SPD.¹²

A second Anderson column, published on November 12, 1981, said that William Donovan, the former head of the OSS, arranged for two couriers to deliver German marks in a locked briefcase to Brandt in Berlin in February 1956, around a dinner of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) on February 27. The column said Donovan then headed a special IRC commission for defectors from Eastern Europe, and that the IRC had "always cooperated" with US and British intelligence. The same column said that an allegation of CIA payola to Brandt had been deleted from the 1974 book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, and that Jimmy Carter in February 1977 said or seemed to say that reports of such payments were "groundless" and "reckless."¹³

The State Department responded on November 12, 1981, that the allegations "have no basis in truth," that "they repeat rumors, hearsay and pure fabrication," and that the unnamed sources "do not have the courage" to present their claims openly.¹⁴

The historian Scott Krause reported findings from the Berlin state archives that the Americans paid Brandt 200,000 marks in the 1950s, at a time when the Berlin SPD's annual membership dues came to about 600,000 marks. The payment was disguised as an inflated price for two special inserts of twelve pages in all promoting the Marshall Plan in the Berliner Stadtblatt, which Brandt edited. Krause said further payments, for election campaigns, could not yet be proven but that there were indications of them. Krause argued that Brandt accepted the money because he shared a "common political project" with Washington, and that although US intelligence services considered Brandt an "asset," Brandt remained an independent actor.¹⁵

In 1961 the defense in the espionage trial of Robert Soblen, convicted in August of that year as an agent of the Soviet Union, identified Hans Hirschfeld as an aide to Mayor Brandt, the New York Times reported. Johanna Koenen Beker had named Hirschfeld at the trial as one of two German employees of the Office of Strategic Services who supplied material of interest to Soblen. The government had told the court it did not know where Hirschfeld lived, and the defense motion said the government had located him without difficulty on at least three occasions between 1957 and 1960.¹⁶

In May 1961 the East German newspaper Neues Deutschland compared Brandt's "counterrevolutionary ambitions" with those of Allen Dulles, whom it called the head of the American intelligence service. The editorial said Brandt had offered himself in the United States as a specialist in revolutions in the GDR.¹⁷ The paper had attacked Brandt earlier, in February 1950 and in May 1954, with the second headline reading "Willy Brandt. Geheimagent und Kriegshetzer" ("Willy Brandt: secret agent and warmonger").⁹

Ostpolitik and the Back Channels

Brandt's chancellorship (1969 to 1974) was defined by Ostpolitik, a policy of engaging with and normalizing relations with East Germany and the broader Eastern bloc. It reversed the West German policy of refusing to recognize the legitimacy of the GDR or of states that recognized it (the Hallstein Doctrine).³ Its instruments included the 1970 Treaty of Moscow, in which the two signatories declared the frontiers of all states in Europe inviolable, including the Oder-Neisse line, and West Germany undertook to conclude analogous treaties with Poland, Czechoslovakia and the GDR;³ the 1970 Treaty of Warsaw, normalizing relations with Poland; and the Basic Treaty between the two German states, signed in East Berlin by Egon Bahr and Michael Kohl on December 21, 1972.¹⁸

Ostpolitik represented a departure from the position of Konrad Adenauer that reunification must precede normalization with the East. The policy generated significant domestic opposition from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which argued that Brandt was legitimizing the GDR and abandoning reunification.

On October 13, 1969, Brandt's emissary Egon Bahr held a two-hour session with Henry Kissinger. Kissinger's memorandum to Richard Nixon of October 20, 1969, records that the two sides "agreed on a confidential channel of communications which, together with the direct line from you to the Chancellor, can be used for strictly private exchanges or contact in moments of crisis." Kissinger added that Bahr "has unfortunately not had a reputation for discretion."¹⁹

The historian Stephan Kieninger of the Wilson Center wrote in 2017 that Bahr met the Soviet journalist Valeri Lednev on December 24, 1969. Lednev, posing as a journalist for Sovetskaya Kultura, referred to a secret letter Brandt had sent to Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin in November 1969 and signaled Moscow's willingness to begin confidential talks.²⁰ Wolfgang Schmidt of the German Historical Institute Moscow gives the same date, writing that the channel had existed since Christmas Eve 1969, that the go-betweens were Bahr and the journalist Heinz Lathe on the West German side and Vyacheslav Kevorkov and Lednev on the Soviet side, and that Yuri Andropov was informed from the start because Kevorkov held the rank of colonel in the Soviet intelligence service, which Brandt and Bahr did not know.²¹

The Berlin meetings between Bahr and Soviet officials began in early June 1970. A memorandum from Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms to Kissinger of November 30, 1970, identified Valeriy Vadimovich Lednev, an "international observer" (editor) of Izvestiya who had been engaged in German affairs since he came to West Germany with Aleksei Adzhubei in 1964, as the regular Soviet participant, and recorded that "Lednev himself has reportedly represented the KGB in some form, although the connection is not clear." The same memorandum said that some of the Soviets with whom Bahr had met in Berlin in the 1960s were known KGB officers, that Valentin Falin had been named by Bahr as his discussion partner on November 13, and that "we still have no reason to believe that the meetings were anything other than a form of secret and personalized diplomatic exchange on behalf of Willy Brandt, or that the KGB has played more than a support role in them." The volume editors' note to the memorandum names Falin, Lednev and Kevorkov as the Soviet officials, citing pages 90 to 91 of Kevorkov's Der geheime Kanal.²²

A Kissinger memorandum of August 20, 1970, described Bahr as "the dynamo and, in most respects, the chief implementer of Brandt's Ostpolitik."²³ A memorandum by Peter Rodman of April 13, 1972 summarized a report of a conversation of March 30 between Bahr and "Valery Lednev, an editor of Izvestia and personal emissary of Brezhnev," in which Bahr briefed the Russian on his talks with Kissinger and on the prospects of treaty ratification.²⁴ A memorandum prepared for Kissinger on March 27, 1972, recorded West German press reports that Bahr had met secretly in Berlin about two weeks earlier with the Soviet ambassador to East Germany, Pyotr Yefremov.²⁵

Kieninger states that Bahr and Lednev remained back channel partners for thirteen years, until the coalition's collapse in October 1982, when Bahr handed the channel to Helmut Kohl and Horst Teltschik, that Andropov personally oversaw the work of Lednev and Kevorkov, and that from 1974, when Helmut Schmidt became Chancellor, Schmidt required written reports on the meetings, of which about 150 exist.²⁰ Kevorkov published his account of the channel in German as Der geheime Kanal: Moskau, der KGB und die Bonner Ostpolitik,²⁶ and Bahr wrote of it in his memoir Zu meiner Zeit (1996). After Brandt's resignation, according to Kevorkov as cited by Schmidt, Leonid Brezhnev expressed incomprehension that Brandt had resigned over rumors about love affairs rather than fighting for his office and said: "One sees at once that Brandt was never in a war." More than twenty letters passed between Brezhnev and Brandt through the channel after 1974.²¹

Charges about Bahr's eastern contacts had been examined before the chancellorship. In November 1968 Foreign Minister Brandt asked Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger to clear up reports in the Bayernkurier and Welt am Sonntag, which cited intelligence material, about Bahr's contacts in the East; Kiesinger charged the head of the Chancellery, Karl Carstens, with the inquiry, and the government spokesman, state secretary Günter Diehl, told the press on February 3, 1969 that the material examined had given no support to the allegation and that Bahr had informed the Chancellor of his contacts with Eastern personalities. The second Bundestag inquiry committee recorded that Carstens had testified that Bahr could not give a plausible explanation for one of his Eastern contacts, that Kiesinger testified Bahr had given him a plausible explanation, that the committee did not confirm Carstens's suspicion, and that records on a related matter had passed from the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) to outside third parties in a way that remained unexplained.²⁷ A CIA weekly special report of August 9, 1974, said that the Guillaume affair and Brandt's resignation came at a time when Bonn's Ostpolitik "was showing some signs of rejuvenation."²⁸

The 1972 Confidence Vote and the Bribery Allegations

On April 27, 1972, the CDU/CSU opposition led by Rainer Barzel moved a constructive vote of no confidence under Article 67 of the Basic Law to replace Brandt with Barzel. The motion received 247 votes, two short of the 249 required.²⁹ The vote came while the Bundestag was considering ratification of the Eastern treaties.

In June 1973 the magazine Quick published two articles by the CDU deputy Julius Steiner, who had abstained in the vote. The first was headlined "Die DDR hat mich gekauft" ("The GDR bought me") and the second "Ich Julius Steiner gestehe" ("I, Julius Steiner, confess"). The second accused Karl Wienand, the SPD parliamentary business manager, of paying him 50,000 DM for his conduct.³⁰

The first inquiry committee of the Bundestag reported on March 13, 1974. Its majority held that it had not been proven that Wienand had influenced Steiner improperly, including by a payment of 50,000 DM. The minority found an urgent suspicion that Wienand had paid at least 50,000 DM to keep Steiner from voting for the motion, and a suspicion that Horst Ehmke had helped procure the money. The minority also found it proven that Wienand had offered Steiner about 250,000 DM on March 29, 1972, in Schelklingen, to vote for the Eastern treaties.³⁰

Former East German intelligence chief Markus Wolf wrote in his memoirs that from the service's cash he had made 50,000 DM available to move Steiner to vote against the motion of no confidence.⁹ Andrew and Mitrokhin write that the HV A recruited Steiner shortly before the vote under the codename SIMSON, that Wolf paid him 50,000 marks to vote for Brandt, that in February 1973 Steiner agreed to a contract with the HV A at a retainer of 3,000 marks a month, and that Wolf later reported to Moscow that Steiner was in contact with the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV). They add that Quick published a photograph of a bank deposit slip showing 50,000 marks paid into Steiner's account the day after the vote, that Steiner acknowledged being recruited by the HV A but said he had worked as a double agent with the approval of the BfV and that the money came from Wienand, and that Wienand denied it. Wolf, they write, concluded that it was impossible to establish whether Steiner had been paid twice, by Wienand as well as directly by the HV A.⁴ According to Brigitte Seebacher, Brandt said when he heard the television report that Steiner had received 50,000 DM from the Stasi: "Then he collected twice."⁹

Münkel writes that Steiner had contacts with HV A staff from 1970 or 1971, and that eight deliveries of information from him are documented for the spring of 1973, mostly on internal matters of the CDU and CSU.⁹

Stasi files analyzed in 2006 list Leo Wagner, a CSU deputy, as an unofficial collaborator, which strengthened a long-standing suspicion, never proven, that he also received money for his vote.²⁹ Münkel dates the public disclosure of the Wagner case to 2000 and writes that no direct connection to the Ministry for State Security could be established. She states that Wagner was probably approached through an intermediary, the journalist Georg Fleissmann, who worked for the HV A as an informant (IM "Dürer").⁹ She notes that Wolf and Erich Honecker both later claimed credit for keeping the Brandt government in office; Honecker told Nicolae Ceausescu on May 11 or 12, 1972 that the GDR had taken measures "to support the Brandt government" shortly before the vote.⁹

In his memoirs Brandt wrote that the party treasurer, Alfred Nau, had told him in passing that he believed everything would turn out well, and that he had "no reason to attach a mysterious meaning to it."⁹ The Bundesbeauftragter für die Stasi-Unterlagen (BStU) states that the Stasi had bribed two Bundestag deputies in 1972 whose votes kept Brandt in office.³¹

Guillaume Affair, 1956 to 1981

Günter Guillaume and his wife Christel Guillaume emigrated to West Germany in 1956, posing as refugees, after training by the Stasi's foreign intelligence directorate, the HV A, to penetrate the SPD. For about ten years he was an SPD functionary in Hesse. He reached the Chancellery in 1970 and became Brandt's personal aide in 1972.³¹ He began work in the Chancellery in January 1970, first as a staff member for trade union questions and from 1972 as the Chancellor's aide for party affairs.³² Andrew and Mitrokhin give November 1969, three weeks after Brandt became Chancellor, say Guillaume was codenamed HANSEN and was an HV A officer, and write that Andropov personally forwarded his reports to the Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko.⁴

Security concerns were raised before he reached the Chancellor's office. The Chancellery asked the BND about Guillaume in December 1969, the BND answered on December 16, and the BND president, Gerhard Wessel, sent a telex on December 23, 1969 with four recommendations for clearing up the security risks, including a personal interview of Guillaume and a background check. The telex was shown to state secretary Bahr, who stood in for the head of the Chancellery, and on December 30, 1969 Bahr wrote by hand on the file: "Even if you have a positive impression, a certain security risk remains precisely here." Ehmke initialled the note on January 4, 1970 and the ministerial director Schlichter on January 5, and Schlichter prepared briefing notes of January 6 for a meeting with Guillaume on January 7. The second inquiry committee found that Ehmke followed Wessel's recommendations apart from the third, to consider employing Guillaume in another agency, and that Ehmke decided on January 27, 1970 to hire him. The committee also recorded BND card entries of 1951 on Guillaume's work for the Gesellschaft für Deutsch-Sowjetische Freundschaft in East Berlin and an alleged engagement, and held that the failure to enter the publishing house Volk und Wissen under the heading "legal residency" in the BfV card index rested on an organizational deficiency, finding it incomprehensible that the BfV had not assigned staff in 1962 to complete its card index.²⁷ In his notes of April 24, 1974 Brandt wrote that Bahr, who had not been told of the arrest, had, as Brandt only now learned, objected in writing to Guillaume's employment when he first heard of a possible security risk.³³

On May 29, 1973, at 10:30, the president of the BfV, Günther Nollau, briefed Interior Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, with the head of the minister's office, Klaus Kinkel, present, that the BfV had grounds to suspect Guillaume of working for the GDR. Nollau at first wished to refrain from informing the Chancellor and urged that Guillaume be left in his post so that the BfV's measures would not be endangered. Genscher and Kinkel insisted that the Chancellor could not be kept uninformed. Genscher informed Brandt on May 29 after a coalition meeting and again on May 30, 1973. The committee recorded that the testimony of Genscher and Nollau conflicted on whether Nollau was asked by telephone on May 30 about the planned Norway holiday and answered that nothing should change, which Nollau denied, saying he first learned of the trip at its start in early July, and that the conflict could not be resolved. A BfV note of July 4, 1973 states that Guillaume was on vacation with the Chancellor.²⁷ Brandt informed only his office head, Reinhard Wilke, and, following Nollau's urgent advice, left Guillaume in his post.³²

Guillaume was arrested on April 24, 1974.³⁴ Andrew and Mitrokhin write that he was arrested at 6:30 a.m. and declared himself "an officer of the National People's Army," and that according to Wolf the HV A had ordered both Guillaumes to suspend their intelligence work after the BfV surveillance began, an account the authors call not wholly reliable. They quote Wolf: the penetration was "equivalent to kicking a football into our own goal," and the HV A "unwittingly helped to destroy the career of the most farsighted of modern German statesmen."⁴

On May 1, 1974 Kinkel handed Brandt a dossier of the Bundeskriminalamt containing records of the questioning of his bodyguards about alleged women brought to him by Guillaume. Brandt discussed resigning on May 4 at Bad Münstereifel and informed the SPD leadership on the morning of May 5.³² His notes of May 6, 1974 record a conversation with the Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback about the inquiries into his private life, a closing talk at 19:00 with Helmut Schmidt, Herbert Wehner and Heinz Kühn, in which he said the conversation with Buback had not caused his decision, and a note, with Horst Grabert as the source, that there might be a second agent.³³

Brandt's letter of resignation to Federal President Gustav Heinemann is dated May 6, 1974; the editors of the Berliner Ausgabe note that Brandt had written it on the evening of May 5. It reads: "Ich übernehme die politische Verantwortung für Fahrlässigkeiten im Zusammenhang mit der Agentenaffaire Guillaume und erkläre meinen Rücktritt vom Amt des Bundeskanzlers" ("I take political responsibility for negligence in connection with the Guillaume agent affair and declare my resignation from the office of Chancellor"), and asks that the resignation take effect immediately and that Vice-Chancellor Walter Scheel be charged with carrying out the Chancellor's business until a successor is elected. Chancellery head Horst Grabert flew to Hamburg on the evening of May 6 to deliver the letter, together with a personal letter, to Heinemann.³³³² On May 7, 1974, Heinemann handed the dismissal certificates to the members of the Brandt government and asked Scheel to carry on the business until a successor was elected; Scheel was acting Chancellor from May 7 to May 16, 1974, when the Bundestag elected Schmidt.³⁵³² In his television statement of May 8 Brandt said he had told the Federal President on the evening of May 6 that he took political and personal responsibility for negligence in connection with the affair.³³ The Stasi's analysis of the affair, dated May 14, 1974, concluded that the Guillaume case "was only the external occasion" for Brandt's resignation.³¹

The second inquiry committee heard Ehmke on September 12, 1974, and Brandt, as SPD chairman, on September 20, 1974. Brandt also testified on October 1, 1974, at the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf in the treason trial of Guillaume.³⁴ The Guillaumes were sentenced in 1975 to thirteen and eight years in prison.³¹ In October 1981 West Germany released Guillaume in an exchange with East Germany, which the New York Times reported would allow about 3,000 East Germans to join relatives in West Germany.³⁶

Later Career

After returning to Germany following the war, Brandt rose through West Berlin municipal politics, serving as Governing Mayor of West Berlin from 1957 to 1966. In this role he was a central figure in the Berlin crises of the late 1950s and early 1960s, including the construction of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961.¹³ He became Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor in the Grand Coalition under Kiesinger in 1966. He was SPD chairman from 1964 to 1987 and honorary chairman from 1987 until his death.¹ He was elected to the European Parliament in 1979 and resigned his seat in 1983.¹ He was also a member of the Bundestag and remained one until shortly before his death.

In 1976 he became president of the Socialist International, a post he held until his death.¹ In 1977 he chaired the Independent Commission on International Development Issues, known as the Brandt Commission, whose report "North-South: A Programme for Survival" appeared in 1980.³⁷ He died of cancer in Unkel on October 8, 1992.²

Footnotes

Nobel Media AB, "Willy Brandt: Biographical," NobelPrize.org, Nobel Peace Prize 1971 (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1971/brandt/biographical/). Covers the Lübeck and Oslo education, the 1940 capture and flight to Sweden, the Stockholm years, the Berlin, SPD, Chancellor, Socialist International and Commission offices, the 1979 to 1983 European Parliament seat, and the death at Unkel on October 8, 1992. ↩︎
Nobel Media AB, "Willy Brandt: Facts," NobelPrize.org, Nobel Peace Prize 1971 (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1971/brandt/facts/): born December 18, 1913, Lübeck; died October 8, 1992, Unkel; prize motivation "for paving the way for a meaningful dialogue between East and West." ↩︎
Barbara Marshall, Willy Brandt: Eine politische Biographie (Schriftenreihe Extremismus & Demokratie, vol. 6, Bonn: Bouvier, 1993), pp. 3-4 (Sozialistische Arbeiterjugend 1929, SPD full membership 1930 at sixteen), pp. 18-19 (the change of name, the withdrawal of German citizenship by the Reich government on September 5, 1938, official documents still listing him as "Frahm"), p. 20 (the recollection of Bruno Kreisky), p. 49 (August 13, 1961), p. 82 (the Hallstein Doctrine), p. 106 (Moscow Treaty), pp. 157-159 (Guillaume affair and resignation). The English edition is Macmillan, 1997. ↩︎
Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), chapter "The Federal Republic of Germany," section on Brandt (endnotes 20 to 33, citing Mitrokhin's notes k-26, 88 and k-26, 86 on the file codenamed POLYARNIK, k-2, 52, and k-19, 248 and 250), and the discussion of Guillaume, HANSEN, Steiner and SIMSON that follows it (endnotes 34 to 50). The authors state that the codename is not evidence that Brandt was an agent and that Mitrokhin's notes on the file go only to 1962. ↩︎
Willy-Brandt-Biografie (Bundeskanzler-Willy-Brandt-Stiftung), "Demokratischer Sozialist und Journalist in Schweden 1940-1946," entries for autumn 1940 (Overseas News Agency correspondent, registration as a foreign journalist on December 11, 1940) and March 1941 (arrest on March 28, 1941 on suspicion of "Nachrichtentätigkeit für eine kriegführende Macht"; surveillance by the Swedish security police, the SÄPO) (https://www.willy-brandt-biografie.de/demokratischer-sozialist-und-journalist-in-schweden-1940-1946/). ↩︎
Einhart Lorenz (ed.), Willy Brandt, Zwei Vaterländer: Deutsch-Norweger im schwedischen Exil, Rückkehr nach Deutschland 1940-1947 (Berliner Ausgabe, vol. 2, Bonn: Dietz, 2000), editor's introduction, pp. 22-26 and notes 43, 52 to 56 (https://willy-brandt.de/wp-content/uploads/ba_02_gesamt.pdf). Note 55 cites Jürgen Heideking and Christof Mauch (eds.), USA und deutscher Widerstand (Göttingen, 1994), p. 154; note 56 cites the German edition of Andrew and Mitrokhin, Das Schwarzbuch des KGB (Berlin, 1999), pp. 541 f.; note 54 cites Brandt's letter to Jacob Walcher of August 26, 1944 (AdsD, WBA, A 5). ↩︎
Telegram from the Minister in Sweden (Johnson) to the Secretary of State, Stockholm, September 14, 1944, No. 3661, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1944, Volume I, Document 320 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1944v01/d320). ↩︎
Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield (New York: Basic Books, 1999), Introduction and endnotes 44 to 47: Focus (Munich), June 15, 1998; Roger Boyes, "Defector Says Willy Brandt was KGB Agent," The Times, June 16, 1998; ITAR-TASS interview with Yuri Kobaladze, June 19, 1998; Sunday Times, April 26, 1998, on Butkov. ↩︎
Daniela Münkel, Kampagnen, Spione, geheime Kanäle: Die Stasi und Willy Brandt (BF informiert 32, 2nd ed., Berlin: BStU, 2015), PDF page 8 (Neues Deutschland headlines of February 5, 1950 and May 4, 1954, in her notes 2 and 3), PDF pages 14 to 15 (Angerer, the 54-page statement, the campaign plan of mid-May 1959; notes 18 to 20, BStU, MfS, AU 4000/65, Bd. 1, Bl. 275, 384), PDF pages 54 to 55 (Steiner, Wolf's Spionagechef im geheimen Krieg, p. 261, in her note 110, Wagner, Fleissmann, Honecker's remarks to Ceausescu of May 11 and 12, 1972, Brandt's Erinnerungen (1994), p. 290, Seebacher, Willy Brandt (2006), p. 229) (https://www.bundesarchiv.de/assets/bundesarchiv/de/Publikationen/BFi32_Muenkel_Stasi_und_Brandt.pdf). Wolf's sentence is quoted in German in the publication and translated here. ↩︎
Der Spiegel, December 16, 2021, report on CIC files and the research of Thomas Boghardt, as reported by ORF, "Spiegel: Willy Brandt war Informant für US-Geheimdienst" (https://orf.at/stories/3240609/). ↩︎
Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta, "Brandt alleged agent for CIA, possibly KGB," Washington Post, November 11, 1981, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP90-00552R000100730004-8 (https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp90-00552r000100730004-8). The column attributes the CIA payroll and KGB allegations to four unnamed intelligence sources. ↩︎
Drew Pearson, "Washington Merry-Go-Round: Distaff Dulles Serves U.S. Well," New York Mirror, March 14, 1961, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP70-00058R000200150126-4 (https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp70-00058r000200150126-4). ↩︎
Jack Anderson and Dale Van Atta, "Carter Tried To Deny Brandt Payola Report," Washington Post, November 12, 1981, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP90-00965R000100160021-4 (https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp90-00965r000100160021-4). The column attributes the 1956 IRC courier account to knowledgeable intelligence sources. ↩︎
Associated Press, "U.S. Denies Report on Brandt-CIA Tie," Washington Post, November 13, 1981, reporting a State Department statement of the previous day, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP90-00965R000100160018-8 (https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp90-00965r000100160018-8). ↩︎
Telepolis, "USA sponsorten Willy Brandt," 2016, reporting Scott Krause's findings in the Landesarchiv Berlin as presented at the Bundeskanzler-Willy-Brandt-Stiftung in Berlin (https://www.telepolis.de/article/USA-sponsorten-Willy-Brandt-3380017.html); Gulf Daily News (AFP), "US covertly financed Germany's Willy Brandt: historian," June 10, 2016 (https://www.gdnonline.com/Details/93142/US-covertly-financed-Germanys-Willy-Brandt-historian); University of Erfurt, Brandt School, report of Krause's lecture of May 25, 2022, on his book Bringing Cold War Democracy to West Berlin: A Shared German-American Project (Routledge, 2019; German edition Vorposten der Freiheit, Campus, 2022) (https://www.uni-erfurt.de/en/university/current/news/news-detail/willy-brandt-on-the-frontlines-of-the-cold-war). ↩︎
David Anderson, "Figure in Spy Trial of Soblen Linked to Brandt of West Berlin," New York Times, 1961, CIA CREST copy CIA-RDP75-00149R000700320004-9 (https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp75-00149r000700320004-9). The Hirschfeld identification was made by the defense motion. ↩︎
Kurt Krueger, "What Interests Are Represented by the Rightwing SPD Leadership?", Neues Deutschland, May 1, 1961, as translated in Foreign Broadcast Information Service, "Dulles and Brandt," May 15, 1961, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP70-00058R000200140104-9 (https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp70-00058r000200140104-9). ↩︎
Willy-Brandt-Biografie (Bundeskanzler-Willy-Brandt-Stiftung), "Außenminister und Bundeskanzler in Bonn 1967-1974" (https://www.willy-brandt-biografie.de/aussenminister-und-bundeskanzler-in-bonn-1967-1974/): signing of the Basic Treaty by Egon Bahr and Michael Kohl in East Berlin on December 21, 1972. ↩︎
Memorandum from the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger) to President Nixon, Washington, October 20, 1969, subject "Visit by Willy Brandt's Emissary, Egon Bahr," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XL, Germany and Berlin, 1969-1972, Document 36 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v40/d36). ↩︎
Stephan Kieninger, "The Secret Side of Ostpolitik," Wilson Center, History and Public Policy Program blog, April 3, 2017 (https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/the-secret-side-ostpolitik). Kieninger cites the Archiv Helmut Schmidt, Hamburg, "Soviet Union" files, volumes 1 to 5, and the Archiv für soziale Demokratie, Bonn, "L(ednev)" files within Bahr's papers. ↩︎
Wolfgang Schmidt, "Persönliche Diplomatie in der Ostpolitik: Willy Brandts Beziehungen mit Leonid I. Breschnew und Michail S. Gorbatschow 1970-1992," Ausgewählte Vorträge des DHI Moskau 2021/2 (lecture of June 29, 2021), notes 21 to 24 and 52 to 54, citing Vjačeslav Keworkow, Der geheime Kanal: Moskau, der KGB und die Bonner Ostpolitik (Berlin, 1995), pp. 47-57, 104-120, 151 and 176-177; Egon Bahr, Zu meiner Zeit (Munich, 1996), pp. 263-264, 293 and 382-383; and Akten zur Auswärtigen Politik der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1970, pp. 1457-1468 (https://perspectivia.net/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/pnet_derivate_00004610/schmidt_persoenliche_diplomatie_in_der_ostpolitik.pdf). The lecture attributes the Brezhnev remark to Keworkow. ↩︎
Memorandum from Director of Central Intelligence Helms to the President's Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger), Washington, November 30, 1970, subject "Background of Bahr-Soviet Talks," paragraphs 2 to 7 and notes 2 and 4, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XL, Document 138 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v40/d138). Note 2 of the volume editors cites Falin, Politische Erinnerungen, pp. 128-129, and Kevorkov, Der geheime Kanal, pp. 90-91. ↩︎
Memorandum from Kissinger to Nixon, Washington, August 20, 1970, subject "Conversation with Brandt's Foreign Policy Advisor, Egon Bahr," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XL, Document 108 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v40/d108). ↩︎
Memorandum from Peter Rodman to Kissinger, Washington, April 13, 1972, subject "Talk Between Bahr and Emissary of Brezhnev," Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume XL, Document 353 (https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v40/d353). ↩︎
Memorandum from Helmut Sonnenfeldt to Kissinger, March 27, 1972, subject "Your Meeting with Bahr: Additional Information," Henry A. Kissinger Papers, Library of Congress, LOC-HAK-270-6-5-0 (https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/loc-hak-270-6-5-0). The memorandum relays West German press accounts. ↩︎
B. M. de Jong, review of Vjačeslav E. Kevorkov, Der geheime Kanal: Moskau, der KGB und die Bonner Ostpolitik, Nieuwsbrief/Newsletter, Netherlands Intelligence Studies Association, volume 4, issue 4 (1996), pages 15-16 (https://dare.uva.nl/id/f13a83ac-6d89-40dd-a538-e2d3e99e1b5a). ↩︎
Deutscher Bundestag, 7. Wahlperiode, Drucksache 7/3246, "Bericht und Antrag des 2. Untersuchungsausschusses" (February 19, 1975) (https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/07/032/0703246.pdf): the section on the security review after the BND telex of December 23, 1969 (Wessel, Bahr's note of December 30, 1969, Ehmke's initials of January 4, 1970, Schlichter's of January 5, the notes of January 6, the interview of January 7, the decision of January 27, 1970); section VI on the briefings of May 29 and 30, 1973 (Genscher, Nollau, Dr. Kinkel, the BfV note of July 4, 1973; testimony cited as 16/8, 93, 15/224, 16/9, 16/95, 27/11 f.); and the section "Die sogenannte Bahr-Akte" (testimony at 20/98 ff., 20/102 f., 22/121 ff., 19/102 f., 121). ↩︎
CIA, Weekly Summary Special Report, "Ostpolitik from Brandt to Schmidt," August 9, 1974, No. 0032/74A, CIA CREST document CIA-RDP85T00875R001500060014-1 (https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp85t00875r001500060014-1). ↩︎
Deutscher Bundestag, "27. April 1972: Misstrauensvotum gegen Bundeskanzler Willy Brandt," Textarchiv (https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/1972-04-27-misstrauensvotum-brandt-890810). The page gives the vote count, the Article 67 motion by Barzel, the Steiner allegation that Markus Wolf repeated in his memoirs, and the Stasi files on Wagner analyzed in 2006. ↩︎
Deutscher Bundestag, 7. Wahlperiode, Drucksache 7/1803, "Bericht und Antrag des 1. Untersuchungsausschusses" (March 13, 1974), including the introduction's account of the Quick articles of June 7 and June 14, 1973 (https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/07/018/0701803.pdf). The majority and minority conclusions appear under "Ergebnis der Untersuchung." ↩︎
Stasi-Mediathek (BStU), "Bericht zur 'Entwicklung der Krise der Koalition und zum Verfall der Autorität Willy Brandts'," report of the Stasi's Zentrale Auswertungs- und Informationsgruppe, BArch, MfS, ZAIG, Nr. 5023, Bl. 3-17, dated May 14, 1974, with the editorial introduction on the Guillaume case, the 1956 emigration, the 1972 post, the 1972 bribery of two deputies and the 1975 sentences (https://www.stasi-mediathek.de/fileadmin/pdf/dok1534.pdf). ↩︎
Bundeskanzler-Willy-Brandt-Stiftung, "Die Guillaume-Affäre und der Rücktritt Willy Brandts im Frühjahr 1974" (https://willy-brandt.de/en/neuigkeiten/die-guillaume-affaere-und-der-ruecktritt-willy-brandts-im-fruehjahr-1974/) and "Der Rücktritt Willy Brandts" (https://willy-brandt.de/en/neuigkeiten/der-ruecktritt-willy-brandts/): Guillaume's post from January 1970, the briefing of May 29, 1973, the dossier of the Bundeskriminalamt handed over by Klaus Kinkel on May 1, 1974, the meeting at Bad Münstereifel on May 4, the announcement to the SPD leadership on the morning of May 5, and the letter received by Federal President Heinemann on the evening of May 6. ↩︎
Karsten Rudolph (ed.), Willy Brandt, Mehr Demokratie wagen: Innen- und Gesellschaftspolitik 1966-1974 (Berliner Ausgabe, vol. 7, Bonn: Dietz, 2001), documents 104 ("Notizen zum Fall G[uillaume], 24.4.-6.5.1974," AdsD, WBA, A 9, 42), 105 (handwritten letter of Brandt to Heinemann, May 6, 1974, AdsD, WBA, B 25, 172, with the editor's note 1) and 106 (statement of May 8, 1974) (https://willy-brandt.de/wp-content/uploads/ba_07_gesamt.pdf). ↩︎
Bundesarchiv, "Günter Guillaume: Der Spion, den niemand stoppte," Geschichtsgalerie, photo and document captions, including the arrest of April 24, 1974, Ehmke's testimony to the second committee on September 12, 1974, Brandt's testimony to the second committee on September 20, 1974, and Brandt's testimony before the 4th Strafsenat of the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf on October 1, 1974 (https://www.bundesarchiv.de/themen-entdecken/online-entdecken/geschichtsgalerien/guenter-guillaume-der-spion-den-niemand-stoppte/). ↩︎
Wissenschaftliche Dienste des Deutschen Bundestages, "Zur Amtsbeendigung des Bundeskanzlers," WD 3 - 285/07, section 1 (https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/415144/5b09af6887d1349ca5200bd532983388/wd-3-285-07-pdf-data.pdf): the dismissal certificates handed over by Heinemann on May 7, 1974 and Scheel's request to carry on the business until a successor was elected. ↩︎
New York Times, Bonn dateline of October 1, 1981, reporting the exchange, CIA CREST copy CIA-RDP90-00552R000202410005-9 (https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp90-00552r000202410005-9). The article also reports the 13-year sentence imposed in 1975. ↩︎
Independent Commission on International Development Issues, North-South: A Programme for Survival (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980), catalogue record at https://archive.org/details/northsouthprogra00inde. Cited for the title and date. ↩︎

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