EJP | News | Germany | Report: East German secret police employed Nazis

The former East Germany’s feared Stasi secret police set Nazi officers to work as spies and shielded them from prosecution for war crimes, according to a new book that belies the official anti-fascist stance of the communist regime. Historian Henry Leide drew on Stasi files that have not been opened to the general public since the fall of communism in 1989 to trace the often well-paid careers of 35 of Hitler’s men who found a reprieve in the Stasi. The case of SS officer Hans Sommer is not exceptional, according to the book, titled "Nazi Criminals and the Secret Service: The German Democratic Republic’s Secret Ways of Dealing With the Past." (...) Officially, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) adopted a resolutely anti-fascist stance and in the years following World War II its courts condemned more than 8,000 former Nazis. The Waldheim trial in Saxony in 1950, for example, saw 32 former Nazi operatives sentenced to death. But the book claims that high-profile convictions covered up a more cynical reality. Instead of serving sentences they were blackmailed into working for the ubiquitous Stasi, which had more operatives per member of the population than any other spy network in the communist bloc. Naziverbrecher im Sold von Nachkriegsregierungen sind alles andere als unmgewöhnlich. Dabei sind gerade in sog. "demokratischen Staaten" Verstrickungen mit (Rechts-) Terrorismus und vielfachem Mord offenkundig. Siehe dazu z.B. Gladio bzw. Stichwortsuche Gladio