proved merely short-term and had no lasting military significance.
After the dissolution of the Abwehr in early summer 1944, most of
the Brandenburgers were transferred to the Panzergrenadier Division
Brandenburg and saw frontline combat on the eastern front. Another
group of 800–1,000 men became part of the SS-Jagdverbände (Hunt-
ing Teams) led by Otto Skorzeny. At the end of the war, many
worked as mercenaries or advisors in various parts of the world.
See also JABLONKA PASS; KOENEN, FRIEDRICH VON;
PFUHLSTEIN, ALEXANDER VON.BRANDT, WILLY (1913–1992). The first Social Democratic chan-
cellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), and formerly a
wartime informant, Willy Brandt was born Walter Frahm in Lübeck
on 18 December 1913. A leader in the youth section of the left-wing
socialist splinter party Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei, he took refuge in
Norway following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 and started his
underground work, changing his name to Willy Brandt as a precaution
against the Gestapo. Brandt’s participation in the Spanish Civil War
as a liaison with a militia of the POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist
Unification) led him to denounce the “blind terror” unleashed by
communists against fellow-leftists on orders from Moscow; he was
in turn labeled “an agent of Franco.” His attitude changed dramati-
cally with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. A file
was established on Brandt (code name polyarnik), which revealed
that information was conveyed to the residency of the NKVD (Soviet
People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) in Stockholm, but he was
never considered a bona fide agent, as his ardent desire to hasten the
defeat of Adolf Hitler caused him to maintain contact with British
and American intelligence officers as well.
After his return to Germany and election in 1957 as the resolute
anticommunist mayor of West Berlin, a joint disinformation opera-
tion of the KGB and the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit sought
to distort his wartime record by portraying him as an agent of Brit-
ish and American intelligence—even the Gestapo—but it failed to
achieve the desired effect. When Brandt became chancellor of the
FRG in 1969 and inaugurated a policy of détente (or Ostpolitik)
many members of the Bundesnachrichtendienst registered their
sharp disapproval regarding this change of direction toward the
BRANDT, WILLY • 51