A German academic has unearthed evidence showing former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once discussed a coup with disgruntled Nazis to overthrow the West German government in the 1970s.
Kissinger and Richard Nixon were aggrieved at the left-leaning government of the day’s burgeoning friendship with the hardline East German government.
Kissinger became the contact man for a secret spy network made up of old Nazis and elite aristocrats aimed at torpedoing the plans formulated by Chancellor Willy Brandt.
By the end of 1970, Kissinger was offering the spies advice on how to deal with Brandt’s Social Democratic government.
The group he became embroiled with was called ‘The Little Service’ and was formed by the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which was allied with Bavaria’s Christian Social Union.
One agent who visited Kissinger quoted him saying, ‘It might be possible to overthrow the current government, but it remains to be seen whether this would involve risks which could put a Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/ Christian Social Union (CSU) government in great difficulty.
Whether Kissinger, the architect of the disastrous secret bombing of Cambodia in the Vietnam War which paved the way for the Khmer Rouge regime and its hideous genocide programme, approved of the plan to usurp the elected government of the day is unclear.
The group he became embroiled with was called ‘The Little Service’ and was formed by the conservative CDU party.
Brandt pursued a policy of engagement with the German Democratic Republic, convinced it was better to build bridges with the dictatorship to defuse Cold War tensions rather than always being at loggerheads. For the all-white, all male conservatives of the CDU, this was too much.
They wanted West Germany to face off against the Soviet-backed regime in the belief that isolation would make it crumble. It was out of this belief that its private spy organisation, made up of many former Gestapo and SS men as well as titled barons and counts, was formed.