In fact, the Kremlin could only welcome the German Chancellor's decision. However, he who sups with the devil should have a long spoon and unfortunately, Willy Brandt's might not have been long enough, as the Guillaume Affair would prove.
Henri de Bresson
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Fiercely resisted in his own country by the Right, who were locked in systematic opposition, no one was indifferent to Ostpolitik.Abroad, where some, like Henry Kissinger, did not hide their distrust, we are grateful to the Chancellor for having the political courage to admit the post-war realities. He knew what he needed to do to prove his sincerity and overcome suspicions, so that the rapprochement between Bonn and the East would be reflected in other western capital cities. During his visit to Warsaw to sign the treaty, he silently knelt before the memorial to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto: an act which made considerable impact throughout the world. In November 1971 he received the Nobel Peace Prize, which was very important for Germany, occurring only twenty-six years after its surrender. In his speech, the Chancellor stated that no international interest could be separated today from overall responsibility for peace.
Gunther Guillaume, who died in 1995, had a French surname. If his name really was
Guillaume (William), then he must have been descended from French Huguenots who had fled to Germany after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. But his true nationality is of little importance. Only his story matters. A lot of what we do know of him is shrouded in mystery: his father, for example, was a Berlin doctor and a man of communist sympathies, who would have looked after Brandt during the time when he was being hunted by the Gestapo. Others, however, claim that Guillaume’s father was a cellist and a Nazi. What is fairly certain though is that the young Gunther Guillaume was born in 1920 and a was a member of the Hitler Youth. At the end of the war he was to be found serving in the Wehrmacht and although captured by British soldiers, he managed to escape and return home to Berlin, where he was told that his father had been taken prisoner by the Russians. Despite the fact that he lived in the Soviet zone, Guillaume was not worried about his Nazi past.These were confusing times and many people who were at risk of being compromised changed their identity or went into hiding.
Guillaume tried to earn a living by working as a photographer, but his past soon caught up with him. By this time, the East German secret police were beginning to mobilize and work their way through the Third Reich's archives, assisted by the KGB. Consequently, Guillaume was indentified and so joined the many other former Nazis who had been recruited by the East German intelligence agencies. It was impossible to refuse: his hands were tied by a bond that could not be broken at any price.
Nevertheless, Guillaume joined the Communist Party with the same zeal he had previously shown when joining the Nazi ranks. So much so that much later, when he was denounced and arrested, Guillaume would proudly assert that he was an officer of East Germany. Even so, he was first hired as a photographer in a publishing company that was known for being a hotbed of communist agents. He then spent a long time at an intelligence officer training school in Kiev. Guillaume certainly had many talents and already seemed to have a promising career as a spy: the results he achieved exceeded the expectations of his leaders, including the enigmatic Markus Wolf.
After his long training, Guillaume was ready to become operational. In the mean time, however, he got married - no doubt on the instructions of his superiors. His wife, Christa (or Christel) was also a HVA agent, the secret service of East Germany. To outsiders, a couple attracted far less attention than a single man, however, that is not to say that there was no genuine affection between the two agents: they always seemed very attached to each other, even if Guillaume had no qualms about lying to his wife.
Their mission was to go to the West. They began by completing missions in West-Berlin, which were successful as they were granted permits to travel to West Germany in 1955 or 1956. At the time, the border was not as tightly controlled, which was why the two spies had no difficulty slipping though as they joined a band of refugees who were heading west for ‘freedom'. After spending time in a refugee camp they were questioned by counterintelligence agents, but were experienced enough to undergo such an examination with ease. They were now West German citizens and settled in Frankfurt, an SPD stronghold, and began by running a news kiosk. Their mission was to infiltrate the SPD and so both Gunther and Christa enrolled in
