History Made Germans Into Putin Apologists

In the days of the cold war, the Soviet Union and East Germany infiltrated their spies into the Bundestag, the federal bureaucracy, and even the chancellor’s (Willy Brandt’s) inner circle. The Federal Republic of Germany was Russia’s most spectacular espionage success, made possible by the common lineage of German communists and the Social Democrats (SPD), who alternated in power with rival Christian Democrats throughout the postwar era.

A quarter century after the end of the cold war, the German social democrats are still providing ideological cover for the Russian Bear along with their cast-out brethren – the ex-communists of Die Linke party. These prominent German Putin-Empathizers (from Versteher or, literally “understander” in German) serve as Putin’s first line of defense against meaningful European sanctions for the Anschluss of Crimea.