Adrian Lee: The saga of Willy Brandt and Gunter Guillaume | Conservative Home

On Tuesday 22^nd July 2025, a 65-year-old man called Howard Phillips was found guilty, following jury trial at Winchester Crown Court, of assisting a foreign intelligence service under the National Security Act, 2023.

Mr. Phillips had attempted to pass on personal information regarding the former Defence Secretary, Sir Grant Shapps, to the Russians. He contained this information, which included Shapp’s home address and location of his private aircraft, on a U.S.B. stick, and deposited this on a bicycle located between Euston and St. Pancras stations.

Fortunately, the Russian agents that Phillips contacted were undercover Police Officers. However, the fact that Britain is having to rigorously Police Russian espionage is a sign of the times. Phillips was a small fry fantasist, but 51 years ago, during the Cold War, subversion at the highest of government levels destroyed a very prominent world statesman’s career.

Willy Brandt, the West German Chancellor between 1969 and 1974, had enjoyed a colourful political career long before he became Chancellor. Brandt was born in 1913 in the Free City of Lubeck to an unmarried mother, who worked as a cashier in a local department store. As his parents were unmarried, the child was registered under his mother’s surname, becoming Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm. Brandt never met his father, but it was revealed decades later that he was a schoolteacher from Hamburg by the name of John Heinrich Moller.

Brandt first entered politics at the age of 16 in 1929, when he joined the Social Democratic Party’s (S.P.D.) youth section in Lubeck. By 1931, Brandt resigned from the S.P.D. and joined the breakaway Socialist Workers Party (S.A.P.), which openly supported Marxism. This new party’s youth section then affiliated to the pan-European International Bureau of Revolutionary Youth Organisations, which itself was a satellite of the International Revolutionary Marxist Centre, led by future Labour M.P. Fenner Brockway. These groups were essentially Trotskyist and this led to Brandt’s association with the Spanish Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (P.O.U.M.) during the Spanish Civil War.

Adolf Hitler’s succession as German Chancellorship on the 30^th January 1933 signalled Brandt’s departure from Germany. He fled to Norway and, rather like Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky before him, adopted the pseudonym of “Willy Brandt”. In 1938, the Third Reich revoked his German citizenship, which led to Brandt adopting Norwegian nationality. Captured by the invading Nazis in 1940, Brandt went unrecognised, as his name rang no bells and anyway, he was dressed in Norwegian Army uniform. Following release, Brandt fled to neutral Sweden, where he attained a job as a lecturer, despite having no formal higher education. In 1946, he returned to Germany as a Norwegian government employee. Two years later, Brandt became a German citizen once more and re-joined the S.P.D.

Between 1948 and 1952, he worked as a U.S. Army intelligence informant and received monies from the C.I.A. to promote his political career. The U.S.A. wanted to build a German Centre Left alternative to the Soviet-backed Communists Party (K.P.D.). Brandt was elected to the West German Bundestag to represent West Berlin in 1949. He stayed there until 1957, when he elected as Governing Mayor of Berlin. Brandt’s Mayoral term, which continued until 1966, coincided with one of the most dramatic Cold War events: the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall. Brandt became the international face of defiant West Berlin. Little wonder that the S.P.D., which had been in opposition to the Christian Democrats since the Federal Republic’s creation, saw Brandt as a future Chancellor. In 1969, that dream became reality.

Brandt pursued a policy called “Ostpolitik”, which meant seeking a reproachment with the Communist bloc, such as establishing diplomatic ties with the satellite states, particularly East Germany. In 1970, West Germany signed treaties with both the Soviet Union and Poland, and the image of Brandt kneeling at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising monument led to Time magazine naming Brandt as their “Man of the Year”. The following year, he was awarded the Noble Peace Prize. All seemed to be going well for Willy, but there was a ticking bomb buried beneath his premiership.

Gunter Karl Heinz Guillaume was a very different sort of person to Willy Brandt. Born in Berlin over thirteen years after Brandt in 1927, he was a pianist’s son who played in cinemas during the silent film era. The coming of “talkie” pictures in 1929 saw the family slide into poverty. Gunter’s father, Karl, joined the Nazi Party in 1934, and his son followed him ten years later in on 20^th April 1944 (Hitler’s birthday).

Gunter left school at 14 years in 1941, starting work as an apprentice in a photo laboratory, but was later conscripted into the Wehrmacht. After briefly serving as a prisoner of war, he returned to Berlin and worked as a photographer in a photo agency. In 1950, he met his future wife, Christel Boom, through a group called the Committee of the Fighters for Peace, for whom Boom worked as a secretary and which was a pro-Soviet front organisation run by the East German government (G.D.R.). The couple married the following year.

Sometime between 1952 and 1954, both were recruited to work as spies by the H.V.A., the East German Stasi’s foreign intelligence service, led by the infamous Markus Wolf, on whom John Le Carre modelled the fictional spymaster Karla in his George Smiley novels. In 1956, the couple were sent to work in Frankfurt-am-Main, West Germany and tasked with infiltrating the S.P.D. For a while, they ran a coffee shop, which became a centre for East German spies.

Meanwhile, Gunter worked his way up the S.P.D. and by 1957 was appointed a local party director.  However, the couple decided to move to the West German capital of Bonn and get closer to the heart of the state. This was achieved by becoming friendly with an S.P.D. Bundestag Member called Georg Leber, who conveniently represented Frankfurt, and who eventually became Cabinet Minister for Transport. After a campaign of cultivation, Gunter was appointed his campaign manager for the 1969 Bundestag elections.

Following a successful election campaign, a grateful Leber introduced his prodigy to the Federal Chancellery to apply for a job as a negotiator between unions and employers. Gunter had an interview, but faced a problem: he needed to be a graduate to work in this department. However, after much lobbying, he was allowed to take up the post, as he convinced them that he had attained a wealth of practical experience that would compensate for his lack of academic qualifications. Once inside the tent, Gunter wasted no time in meeting Willy Brandt.

Gunter Guillaume had access to much confidential and even secret documents, as he worked within the Federal Chancellery. He was popular with work colleagues and soon got a reputation for diligent hard work. The only fly in the ointment was his fondness for the ladies. Gunter was known to have a series of adulterous affairs with female civil servants, which damaged his marriage. In 1972, a personal advisor of Brandt vacated his post and recommended Gunter to replace him. He got the job and became Brandt’s campaign manager in the 1972 Federal Election. Gunter travelled with Brandt on his train throughout the campaign. After the S.P.D.’s victory, he remained working as the Chancellor’s Liaison Officer for Party and Parliamentary Affairs.

West German intelligence became suspicious of Guillaume when a nest of East German spies was discovered, and all were found to be associated with Gunter. Also, analysis was made of East German transmitted messages to their field agents and several referred to personal details which applied to Gunter, such as the couple’s son’s birthday. In May 1973, Brandt was informed of the suspicions and gave permission for him to be put under surveillance. This did not, however, stop Guillaume from accompanying Brandt on his family holiday to Norway. Gunter used the opportunity to leak information sent to Brandt whilst abroad, to his Stasi paymasters.

After the holiday, Brandt told his intelligence officers to complete their investigations into Guillaume quickly. A search of their home was scheduled and they intended to interrogate the couple. Amazingly, when they attended their house at 6.30am on 24^th April 1974, Gunter greeted the Federal Police by declaring “I am a citizen of the German Democratic Republic and an officer of that country. I urge you to respect that.” The authorities were stunned by his immediate confession.

During the subsequent weeks, the story became huge in the press. It was also revealed that Brandt, like Gunter, was a ladies’ man and details of his multiple affairs had been passed back to the Stasi by his personal assistant. Brandt resigned on 7^th May 1974. Following trial, both Gunter and his wife received long custodial sentences, but they were released in 1981 as part of a prisoner exchange. The couple were hailed as heroes in the G.D.R. and lived out their lives in luxury.

The new generation of Russian spies have yet to reach such heights, but the story of Willy and Gunter highlights the necessity for increased vigilance when making appointments for all positions of influence within the ranks of the Civil Service, the Spads and Party employees.