Germans are veterans of World War II. Veterans of the Wehrmacht do not grow old in spirit

There are veterans' unions in almost all countries. And in Germany, after the defeat of Nazism in 1945, all traditions of honoring and perpetuating the memory of veterans were broken. According to Herfried Münkler, professor of political theory at Humboldt University, Germany is a “post-heroic society.” If in Germany they commemorate, it is not the heroes, but the victims of the First and Second World Wars. At the same time, the Bundeswehr, within the framework of NATO and UN peacekeeping missions, participates in combat operations abroad. Therefore, a discussion began among military personnel and politicians: who should be considered veterans?

Bundeswehr veterans

After the war, until 1955, there was no army at all in Germany - both East and West. Veterans' unions were banned. What kind of glorification of heroism is there when German soldiers participated in a criminal war of conquest? But even in the Bundeswehr, founded in 1955, no veteran traditions arose during the Cold War. The functions of the army were limited to protecting its own territory; there were no military operations.

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In recent years, the Bundeswehr has been participating in operations abroad, for example, in the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. In total, it is estimated that about 300 thousand soldiers and officers completed such service. Until very recently, they did not dare to directly call these operations even “war” or “combat operations”. The talk was about “help in establishing a peaceful order,” humanitarian actions and other euphemisms.

Now it has been decided to call a spade a spade. German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere brought the word “veteran” back into use last September. Speaking in the Bundestag, he stated that “if there are veterans in other countries, then in Germany he has the right to talk about “Bundeswehr veterans.”

This discussion was started by the soldiers themselves - those who returned from Afghanistan with wounds or mental trauma. In 2010 they founded the "Union of German Veterans". Critics say that the very term “veteran” is discredited by German history and is therefore unacceptable.

But who is considered a “veteran”? Everyone who wore a Bundeswehr uniform for some time, or just those who served abroad? Or maybe only those who participated in real hostilities? The "Union of German Veterans" has already decided: whoever served abroad is a veteran.

Defense Minister Thomas de Maizières, for his part, is trying to avoid a split on this issue. Many military personnel believe that military service during the Cold War was fraught with risk, so it would be inappropriate to assign “veteran” status exclusively to those who had a chance to smell gunpowder in Afghanistan.

Will there be a Veteran's Day?

For soldiers of the Bundeswehr who have been in battle, special awards have been established - the “Cross of Honor for Courage” and the medal “For participation in combat." However, many military personnel believe that society does not value their willingness to risk their lives highly enough. After all, decisions about participation in operations abroad, the Bundestag, that is, the elected representatives of the people, takes over. Consequently, soldiers also participate in dangerous operations at the will of the people. So why doesn't society give them the respect they deserve?

The possibility of establishing a special “Veteran’s Day” is currently being discussed. This idea is also supported by the influential Union of Bundeswehr Military Personnel, which unites about 200 thousand active and retired military personnel. But there is also a proposal to honor on this day the work of not only soldiers, but also rescue workers, police officers and employees of development assistance organizations.

Defense Minister de Maizière is also considering the establishment of a special commissioner for veterans' affairs and, following the American example, special homes for veterans. But there are no plans to increase benefits for veterans. The Minister of Defense believes that in Germany the social security of active and retired military personnel is already at a fairly high level.

Attitude towards veterans is an indicator not only of the economic state of the state, but also of less material things.
It is interesting to compare the situation of World War II veterans in different countries.
Germany
The state provided Wehrmacht veterans with a comfortable old age and a high level of social protection.
Depending on their rank and merit, the size of their pension varies from 1.5 to 8 thousand euros.
For example, a junior officer's pension is 2,500 euros. About 400 euros are awarded to the widows of those killed or deceased in the post-war period.
Payments are guaranteed to persons of German origin who served in the Wehrmacht and “performed statutory military service in accordance with the rules for its completion before May 9, 1945.”

Interestingly, Red Army veterans living in Germany are also entitled to a pension of 400-500 euros per month, as well as social security.
War veterans can count on free hospitalization twice a day during the year, and if we are talking about prisoners of war, the number of hospitalizations is unlimited.
The state also partially pays for former Wehrmacht soldiers to visit the places where they fought, including abroad.

Great Britain
The size of the pension for World War II veterans in the UK directly depends on military rank and the severity of injuries.
Monthly payments in European currency range between 2,000 and 9,000 euros.
If there is a need, then the state pays an additional nurse.
Moreover, the right any Briton who suffered during the Second World War is eligible to receive a pension.
A supplement to the basic pension is also provided to widows of veterans.

USA
US authorities honor American participants in World War II Twice a year.
Fallen soldiers are remembered on Memorial Day, observed on the last Monday in May, and veterans are honored on November 11 on Veterans' Day.
American veterans are entitled to a $1,200 bonus to their pension, which averages $1,500.
Supervises participants of the Second World War in the USA Department of Veterans Affairs, which operates 175 hospitals, hundreds of nursing homes and thousands of district clinics.
If a veteran’s illness or disability is a consequence of military service, then all expenses for his treatment are borne by the state.

Israel
World War II participants living in Israel receive a pension of $1,500.
People from the former USSR can also count on it.
Many veterans, having collected the necessary package of documents at home, receive a pension not only from the Israeli Ministry of Defense, but also from the Russian budget.
Veterans are exempt from paying city taxes, receive a 50% discount on medications, and are also given significant discounts on electricity, heating, telephone and utilities.

Latvia
The situation of war veterans in Latvia can be called deplorable.
They do not have any benefits, unlike the “forest brothers” (nationalist movement), who receive a monthly pension supplement of $100 from the Ministry of Defense.
The average monthly pension in Latvia is approximately 270 euros.
The lack of attention to WWII veterans in Latvia is not surprising, since Victory Day does not officially exist for Latvians.
Moreover, quite recently the Latvian Seimas passed a law banning Nazi and Soviet symbols.
It means that WWII veterans living in Latvia will be deprived of the opportunity to wear military decorations.

Czech
Life is slightly better for Czech veterans.
The list of their benefits is quite modest: free use of public transport and telephones and an annual voucher to a sanatorium from the Ministry of Defense.
Unlike other European countries In the Czech Republic, benefits do not apply to widows and orphans.
It is interesting that until recently, Czech veterans were provided with medicines for free, but now they have to pay for them out of their own pockets.
Veterans of the Czech Republic receive a regular pension of 12 thousand crowns, which approximately corresponds to the pension of Russian veterans.

France
The number of World War II veterans in France is approximately 800 thousand people, of which 500 thousand are former military personnel, 200 thousand are members of the Resistance and 100 thousand are deported to Germany.
Also included in the category of veterans were former prisoners of war - 1 million 800 thousand.
The pension of French veterans is higher than that of Russians - 600 euros. They receive it not from the age of 65, like ordinary citizens, but from 60.
French veterans have their own department that deals with their problems Ministry for the Affairs of Former Military Personnel and War Victims.
But the subject of special pride of France is that it has a long history Home for the Invalids.
It is both a hall of military glory and a hospital. Veterans in need of care can count on a permanent stay here. To do this, they will have to give up a third of their pension, and the rest will be transferred by the state to their bank account.

The other day I visited the scion of the famous noble family of Stakhovich - Mikhail Mikhailovich. Four years ago, he, who had lived his entire life in Austria and the USA, returned to his family nest, which his parents left during the October Revolution - the village of Palna-Mikhailovka, Stanovlyansky district of the Lipetsk region.

I will not hide, despite the contradictory feelings that some facts of his biography evoke, such as his service in the ranks of the German Wehrmacht from 1939 to 1945, I am interested in communicating with this old man.

It’s not always true, however, that one dares to call him an old man, because at 88 years old, Mikhail Stakhovich looks like a young man - fit, athletic and, most importantly, of sound mind and solid memory.

Stakhovich never ceases to amaze. During our last meeting, he stunned me with the fact that he had just returned from a road trip around Europe, having clocked ten and a half thousand kilometers on the speedometer of his Renault minivan. I traveled by car to Austria, visited my daughter in Sweden, vacationed with my young wife in Croatia, and transited through half of Europe. At 88 years old!

To my surprise, he said that he was very comfortable traveling behind the wheel. “I can drive for 12 hours and not get tired at all,” says Stakhovich.

And I look at his Russian peers and am simply amazed. Comparisons are far from being in our favor. And rarely do anyone live to this age. Moreover, “this age” defended our country from the Nazis; the war, for the most part, wiped them out.

Once I told his wife Tatyana, who is half his age, about this and she told me one interesting detail.

When we registered our marriage in Salzburg, during our honeymoon I attended a meeting of Mikhail’s classmates,” said Tatyana. - Can you imagine, all his classmates are alive. And they feel great. They danced for so long! At the same time, all the guys from his class, like Mikhail, served in Hitler’s army. There are also those who survived Stalingrad...

I won’t hide the fact that I asked Mikhail Mikhailovich various questions. And inconvenient for him, it seems to me, including. Once he reproached that it was difficult for our country to recover after what the brave soldiers of Adolf Hitler did here. So I tried to justify all the disorder in our country. He, of course, agrees with this, but... He once said, as if by chance, while trying not to offend me: “Berlin was destroyed by Soviet troops almost to the ground. Dresden too. And such a fate befell 60 cities in Germany. The Germans restored everything almost from scratch in 12 years. And then there was only development, and you know what Germany has become...”

Mikhail Stakhovich does not try to make excuses for his past, his service in the Wehrmacht. It was not his fault that the Revolution of 1917 forced his father, a tsarist diplomat, to stay in Europe, where Mikhail Stakhovich was already born in 1921. And how could he, an 18-year-old boy, a citizen of Austria, know when he volunteered for Hitler’s army what the Fuhrer had in mind and what fate he was preparing for his historical homeland. Stakhovich was motivated by another interest - volunteers had the advantage of choosing their place of service and type of military service. Had he enlisted in the army a little later, upon conscription, it is not known how his fate would have turned out. However, I will not repeat myself, more about this in...

The Austrians aspired to the Third Reich with great desire

This time I asked Mikhail Mikhailovich about what I forgot to ask before: “Have you seen Hitler?”

“One single time,” Stakhovich began his story. - It was in 1938, during the Anschluss of Austria by Germany. On March 13, our entire class was brought from Salzburg to Vienna, where the Reich Chancellor was supposed to arrive. I remember we were brought to some bridge under which he was supposed to pass. People gathered on the streets of Vienna - darkness. All with flowers, flags with swastikas. And at some point, real hysteria began, my ears started to fill up from an enthusiastic scream - a car appeared, on which Hitler stood at full height and waved his hand to the Viennese people who greeted him. I saw him...

It was the famous, triumphant entry of Adolf Hitler into Vienna, accompanied by the chief of the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces, Wilhelm Keitel. On the same day, the law “On the reunification of Austria with the German Empire” was published, according to which Austria was declared “one of the lands of the German Empire” and began to be called “Ostmark”.

It must be said that the vast majority of Austrians, and this is confirmed by Mikhail Stakhovich, a witness to those events, accepted the Anschluss with approval. As Stakhovich said, and this is confirmed by history, during the so-called plebiscite about the Anschluss, which took place after the fact, on April 12, 1938, the overwhelming majority of Austrian citizens supported it (official data - 99.75%).

But there were also those who opposed the Anschluss and Hitler. There were very few of them, and after reunification their fate was unenviable. A concentration camp awaited such people.

The plebiscite was not secret, the Austrians voted by name, and, as they say, everyone knew the opponents by sight. Real repressions began against such people. Two Austrians, persecuted for their beliefs, hid in the attic of the Stakhovich house. Mikhail Mikhailovich himself learned about this from his mother only many years later.

Of course, if the police had found out about this, the fate of my family could have changed dramatically,” he says now. - I think that we, Russians, who sheltered opponents of Austria’s annexation to Germany, would hardly have been able to avoid reprisals.

But the vast majority of Austrians really wanted reunification with Germany, recalls Mikhail Stakhovich. - The Austrians lived very poorly then, there was terrible unemployment. And nearby was Germany, which had already become rich, where there was no unemployment and the Germans lived very decently. Austria simply longed for reunification with Germany. This was actually true.

How can one not believe old man Stakhovich? These are well known facts. The Germans, losers in the First World War, whose national pride was trampled under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and subsequent events, with the advent of Hitler greatly perked up and under him Germany gained unprecedented economic power.

It must be admitted that the evil genius of Adolf Aloizovich Schicklgruber did the impossible.
That’s why Germany idolized him so much, and the people followed him to all his adventures. The average German did not need to know that the entire economic power of the country rose mainly through loans from American and British banks. And in order to pay off the bills, and at the same time try to conquer world domination, Hitler plunged the world into the most terrible meat grinder in the entire history of mankind.

It seemed to me that after four years of acquaintance with Stakhovich, I already knew the biography of this living witness to the terrible events of the bygone 20th century quite well. It was stupid to think so. No one knows his life better than himself. And apparently there is a lot of unknown in it. During my recent visit to Stanovoe, Mikhail Mikhailovich again showed his photo archive. I had already seen some of the photographs and had the opportunity to retake them. This time, among the heap of photographs, one card flashed by, which seemed very interesting to me and promised new pages of history from the life of Mikhail Stakhovich. On it, Mikhail Mikhailovich stands next to American soldiers. He himself, noticing my interest in this photo, explained: “This is me after the war, in the USA, at an American military base. There I taught the Americans lessons in radio communications and encryption...”

Damn it! It looks like another “series” of storytelling is brewing. We’ll have to “try” it about the soldiers of Hitler’s army, who ended up in the hands of the Americans after the war, and, apparently, brought considerable benefit to their military.

On the eve of the 65th anniversary of the victory over fascism, German social authorities informed veterans of the Great Patriotic War living in Germany that the veteran's supplement to the pension they receive in Russia will now be deducted from their social benefits. Germany does not recognize the work experience of our compatriots (with the exception of ethnic Germans) in the USSR and Russia and pays them the minimum basic old-age benefit in Germany - 350 euros. This is the same amount received by German declassed citizens who have never worked anywhere and have not earned a pension. The Russian government, for its part, pays a pension supplement of approximately 70-100 euros to war veterans, war invalids and blockade survivors living abroad. This money, according to German law, is considered additional income for a veteran, so it was decided to deduct the “earned” amount from the benefit paid by Germany. According to the social legislation of Germany, similar compensation payments to veterans and disabled war veterans, Leningrad siege survivors and victims of Nazi repression, which are paid by German authorities, are not considered income and are not deducted from the social pension.
Appeals from Russian veterans to the German Ministry of Labor and Social Security did not yield any results, despite the fact that the problem was repeatedly raised at special hearings in the Bundestag by the Greens and the Left Party. The veterans' requests to intervene in the situation were ignored by the Russian Embassy in Germany, the Pension Fund and the Russian Foreign Ministry.
German lawyers state that there is no unified federal legislation on this matter in Germany; this area is regulated by local authorities. Today, about 2 million Russian citizens live in Germany. There are only a few thousand veterans, disabled people of the Great Patriotic War and Leningrad siege survivors among them.
Germany pays monthly significant pension increases to veterans of the German Wehrmacht who were in captivity and disabled people of World War II - from 200 to more than 1 thousand euros. About 400 euros are received by the widows of Wehrmacht soldiers, both those killed in the war and those who died after its end. All these payments are guaranteed to persons of German origin who “performed statutory military service in accordance with the rules for its completion and served in the German Wehrmacht until May 9, 1945.” The same laws state that a participant in World War II who committed self-mutilation in order not to participate in hostilities as part of Hitler’s army is deprived of all these additional payments and compensations.
According to Russian media reports, not a single country in the world, including the United States and Israel, where a significant number of Russian veterans live, applies for veteran bonuses.
The federal law “On the State Policy of the Russian Federation towards Compatriots Abroad” proclaims: “Compatriots living abroad have the right to rely on the support of the Russian Federation in the exercise of their civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights.” But neither the Russian Pension Fund, nor the Russian Embassy, ​​nor the Russian Foreign Ministry want to deal with Russian WWII veterans who, for various reasons, found themselves outside of Russia. They prefer to ignore any requests and appeals regarding this problem. But the Russian criminals sitting in German prisons for violating German laws are given full respect! Their consuls are obliged to visit them and find lawyers for them, in a word, to soften the “hard” fate of the criminal element.
Meanwhile, the Russian government has repeatedly stated its desire to improve the lives of Russian veterans. Thus, this year, veterans of the Great Patriotic War will be provided with a number of additional payments and benefits. Over the course of a year, pensions for the elderly will be increased by 2 thousand 138 rubles and 2 thousand 243 rubles, respectively, for veterans and war participants. According to the decision of the authorities, from May 1 to May 10, veterans will be able to travel free of charge throughout the CIS. They will enjoy the right to free travel on all types of transport, and “will also be delivered to cities located in the CIS countries - Minsk, Kiev, Brest, as well as throughout Russia.” For these purposes, it is planned to allocate 1 billion rubles from the 2010 budget through the Ministry of Transport. For the anniversary of the Victory, WWII veterans and disabled people, as well as home front workers and concentration camp prisoners will receive one-time payments in the amount of 1 thousand to 5 thousand rubles. War veterans and disabled people will receive 5 thousand rubles each, and home front workers and concentration camp prisoners will receive a thousand rubles each. A total of 10 million rubles are allocated from the budget to achieve these goals.
At the end of last year, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a decree on an additional allocation of 5.6 billion rubles for the purchase of housing for veterans of the Great Patriotic War. The government also decided to abandon the idea of ​​providing housing only to those who joined the waiting list before March 1, 2005. In accordance with the resolution, housing will be provided to all veterans of the Great Patriotic War. Additional funding will be used to provide housing for those veterans who did not get on the waiting list for housing before March 1, 2005. Last year, the government spent 40.2 billion rubles on improving housing conditions; 19,442 veterans received apartments or improved their living conditions. By May 1, it was planned to provide housing to 9,813 veterans.
In 2009, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, at the suit of the Hero of the Soviet Union, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, Stepan Borozenets, living in the United States, ruled that Heroes of the Soviet Union and other veterans-order bearers living abroad have the right to monthly monetary compensation instead of the social benefits provided for in the homeland, but only if Russia has a special agreement with the country where the veteran lives. According to the existing laws of the Russian Federation, the state is obliged to pay pensions to veterans regardless of the location of the citizen, while the provided benefits can only be provided on the territory of Russia.

In the middle of the last century, a secret group of Wehrmacht and SS veterans operated in Germany, preparing to repel the invasion of the USSR
The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has declassified a 321-page document that describes the activities of an underground Nazi organization formed in 1949, writes Spiegel magazine. The paramilitary group included about two thousand Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS veterans. Their goal was to protect Germany from potential Soviet aggression.

The document fell into the hands of historian Agilolf Kesselring by accident. The scientist studied the archives of the Gehlen Organization, the predecessor intelligence service of the BND. Kesselring was rummaging through papers, trying to determine the number of employees hired by the intelligence service, and suddenly came across a folder called “Insurance.” But instead of insurance documents, the dossier contained reports on the activities of the Nazi underground in West Germany.

The paramilitary organization was founded by Colonel Albert Schnetz, who successively served in the Reichswehr, Wehrmacht and Bundeswehr. He took part in the formation of the armed forces of Germany and was part of the inner circle of Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss, and during the reign of the fourth Chancellor Willy Brandt he received the rank of lieutenant general and the position of army inspector.

Forty-year-old Schnetz began thinking about creating an underground organization after the end of the war. Veterans of the 25th Infantry Division, where he served, met regularly and discussed what to do if the Russians or East German troops invaded the Federal Republic. Gradually, Schnetz began to develop a plan. At meetings, he said that in case of war, they should flee outside the country and fight guerrilla warfare, trying to liberate West Germany from abroad. The number of his like-minded people grew.

Albert Schnetz. Photo: German Federal Archives

Contemporaries describe Schnetz as an energetic manager, but at the same time a selfish and arrogant person. He maintained contacts with the League of German Youth, which also trained its members for partisan warfare. The League of German Youth was banned in Germany in 1953 as a far-right extremist organization.

In 1950, a fairly large underground society was formed in Swabia, which included both former Wehrmacht soldiers and those who sympathized with them. Businessmen and former officers who also feared the Soviet threat transferred money to Schnets. He worked diligently on an emergency plan to respond to the Soviet invasion and negotiated the deployment of his force with the Swiss from the northern cantons, but their response was "very restrained." Later he began to prepare a retreat to Spain.

According to archival documents, the extensive organization included entrepreneurs, salespeople, lawyers, technicians and even the mayor of one Swabian town. All of them were ardent anti-communists, some were driven by a thirst for adventure. The documents include a reference to retired Lt. Gen. Hermann Holter, who "simply felt miserable working in an office." The archive quotes Schnetz's remarks, according to which over several years he managed to gather almost 10 thousand people, of which 2 thousand were Wehrmacht officers. Most members of the secret organization lived in the south of the country. In the event of war, the document states, Schnetz hoped to mobilize 40 thousand soldiers. According to his idea, command in this case would be taken by officers, many of whom later joined the Bundeswehr - the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The former infantry general Anton Grasser took care of the weapons of the underground. He served through World War I as a commander of an infantry company, fought in Ukraine in 1941, and received the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves for extreme bravery in battle. In the early fifties, Grasser was called to Bonn to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, where he became responsible for coordinating tactical police units. The ex-general planned to use the assets of the West German Ministry of Internal Affairs to equip Schnetz's shadow army.

Otto Skorzeny. Photo: Express/Getty Images

The Stuttgart branch of the army was commanded by retired General Rudolf von Bünau (also a holder of the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves). The unit in Ulm was headed by Lieutenant General Hans Wagner, in Heilbronn by Lieutenant General Alfred Hermann Reinhardt (holder of the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords), in Karlsruhe by Major General Werner Kampfhenkel, and in Freiburg by Major General Wilhelm Nagel. Cells of the organization existed in dozens of other localities.

Schnetz was most proud of his intelligence department, which checked the backgrounds of recruits. This is how his intelligence officers describe one of the candidates: “smart, young, half Jewish.” Schnetz called this spy service the “Insurance Company.” The colonel also negotiated with the famous SS Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, who became famous for his successful special operations during World War II. Skorzeny became a true hero of the Third Reich after his mission to free the ousted Benito Mussolini from prison. Adolf Hitler personally entrusted him with the leadership of this operation. In February 1951, Skorzeny and Schnetz agreed to "immediately begin cooperation in the area of ​​Swabia", but the archives do not mention what exactly they agreed on.

The creation of the underground army was supported by Hans Speidel, who in 1957 became the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Ground Forces in Central Europe, and Adolf Heusinger, the first Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, then Chairman of the NATO Military Committee.

In search of funding, on July 24, 1951, Schnetz approached the Gehlen Organization. The archives emphasize that between Albert Schnetz and intelligence chief Reinhard Gehlen “there have long been friendly relations.” The leader of the underground army offered the services of thousands of soldiers "for military use" or "simply as a potential ally." His organization was classified by intelligence officers as a “special unit” with the unattractive code name “Schnepf” - “snipe” in German.

It is likely, Spiegel notes, that Schnetz would have been able to impose his company on Gehlen if he had come a year earlier, when the war on the Korean Peninsula had just broken out. In 1950, Bonn considered the idea of ​​“gathering former German elite units in the event of a disaster, arming them and transferring them to the Allied forces” attractive. But in 1951, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer had already abandoned this plan, taking up the creation of the Bundeswehr, for which the secret paramilitary force was terrorists. Therefore, Schnetz was denied large-scale support. And yet, paradoxically, Adenauer decided not to take any measures against the underground, but to leave everything as it was.

Perhaps the first leader of the Federal Republic of Germany was trying to avoid conflict with Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS veterans. Adenauer understood that it would still be several years before the Bundeswehr was created and began to operate normally, so he needed the loyalty of Schnetz and his fighters in case of the worst-case scenario of the Cold War. As a result, the Federal Chancellor's Office strongly recommended that Gehlen "keep an eye on Schnetz's group." Adenauer reported it to the American allies and the opposition. At least the papers indicate that SPD National Executive Committee member Carlo Schmid “was in the know.”

Gehlen's organization and Schnetz's group were in regular contact and exchanged information. Once Gehlen even praised the colonel for his “especially well-organized” intelligence apparatus - that same “Insurance Company”. The Schnetz network became essentially a street intelligence agency, reporting on anything they thought deserved attention, such as misbehavior by former Wehrmacht soldiers or “residents of Stuttgart suspected of being communists.” They spied on left-wing politicians, including the Social Democrat Fritz Erler, one of the key players in reforming the SPD after World War II, and Joachim Peckert, who later became a diplomat at the West German embassy in Moscow.

Schnetz was never given the money he had hoped for, except for a small amount that dried up by the fall of 1953. Two years later, the first 100 Bundeswehr volunteers swore allegiance. With the emergence of regular armed forces, the need for Wehrmacht spies disappeared. The declassified archive does not say a word when exactly Schnetz's secret service was dissolved. He himself died in 2007, without ever speaking publicly about the events of those years.