German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (left) meeting with the Communist Politburo in East Berlin 1984; Photo: Hubertus Knabe
The new German Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz may have been groomed as a Stasi agent, according to explosive new charges from Germany’s former top spy.
Renowned Stasi expert Hubertus Knabe documented Scholz’s intimate involvement with the East German communist party in a recent Dossier. Scholz was vice-chair of the Young Socialists 1982 to 1988 and opposed Reagan’s arms build-up in response to the Soviet Union’s deployment of mid-range SS-20 nukes. West Germany was faced with a “right-wing shift” which would mean “complete submission under the US imperialist strategy of global offensives,” Scholz wrote in the Magazine for Socialist Politics and Economics 1982.
No wonder the East German Communists soon took an interest in the young and upcoming, avowed Marxist. In September 1983, 25-year old Scholz was invited to visit East Berlin as head of a delegation of Young Socialists, including a visit to the sauna with members of the Communist Youth League. Back in West Germany, Scholz urged the Social Democrats to support the “Peace Movement” and discuss leaving NATO.
Scholz was obviously very popular with the murderous regime in East Berlin. On Jan 4, 1984 he returned to East Berlin via the Friedrichstrasse crossing and was received by then-head of Interior Security Egon Krenz, the second-highest Communist party member. Scholz appeared on East German TV to dump on NATO and was featured on the front page of the party newspaper New Germany.
He continued to visit East Germany all the way up to 1988, the year before the Fall of the Wall. The Young Socialists visited East Germany at least a dozen times in this period.
New documents now document that Scholz was closely monitored by the infamous Stasi secret police, who gave border guards special instructions to give the Young Socialist delegations red carpet treatment. Several foreign agents were assigned to monitor Scholz in Hamburg, writes Welt newspaper under the headline “Scholz was spied on by the Stasi as a Young Socialist leader.”
The former head of German secret service Hans-Georg Maassen now raises the question of whether the current German head of government was recruited as a Stasi asset. “’Spied on’?”, Maassen wrote. “The Stasi had no reason to spy on Young Socialists. This was about something else: His recruitment as a prospective agent for the Stasi or KGB. The Stasi maintained a dense web on West German campuses to recruit prospective agents, who were supported and maneuvered into leadership positions.”
Olaf Scholz now occupies the top leadership position in Germany.