Free Republic

[Subtitle: German media claims Horst Mahler identified as an informant for East German secret police in leaked report into 1967 shooting]He is one of the most paradoxical and notorious figures in modern German history: a social democrat lawyer turned leftwing terrorist who went to prison, turned to Maoism and then came out as a far-right nationalist.Now there is another twist: Horst Mahler, a founding member of the Red Army Faction, was also a Stasi informant.According to German newspaper reports, the revelation comes from a leaked report by state prosecutors re-investigating the shooting of a pacifist by a Berlin policeman during...

Is Germany doing enough to figure out how much the Stasi, East Germany's secret police, influenced West Germany? Or would it prefer to not open old wounds? The discovery that the policeman who unwittingly helped triggered the 1968 student protest movement was a Stasi spy has unleashed a heated historical debate. The revelation that the policeman who shot Berlin student Benno Ohnesorg in 1967 was a spy for the Stasi East German intelligence service has led to an intense historical debate in Germany. Ohnesorg's death radicalized many students and is seen as one of the factors that lead to the...