We know Gerhard Schröder as ex-Chancellor had a real bromance with Putin:
...As the kids say: Find someone to look at you the way Putin looks at Gerhard Schröder.
Herr Schröder was Germany's Chancellor before Mutti came in.
Gazprom has paid him a lot of money. A lot.
The strange case of Angela Merkel
Was Angela Merkel a deep cover KGB mole undermining NATO and the West from within? And even if she wasn't, could she have been any worse than she was?
"Barbarossa Red" sounds like a fiery cocktail for hardcore barflies. In fact, it was an unremarkable, but very entertaining late Cold War thriller I read many years ago: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/j/dennis-jones/barbarossa-red.htm
[SPOILER ALERT] The central twist has a (West) German chancellor, who turns out to be a KGB agent.[END]
I was reminded of the book as I considered the records of Germany's last two chancellors: Angela Merkel and Gerhard Schröder. This was after I came across an article about a freedom of information request from a transparency pressure group, enquiring about several closed meetings between the former chancellors in 2020 and 2021: https://web.de/magazine/politik/schroeder-merkel-treffen-kanzleramt-haelt-informationen-zurueck-36675672
But before you laugh and think I've been mixing too many Barbarossa Reds, know that intelligence agencies often crib bizarre ideas from novels and articles. Life imitating art? Schröder is so corrupt and venal he would most certainly do anything for money. The way he took over Nord Stream within weeks of leaving office needs no commentary. The idea of Merkel, however, sounds preposterous and outlandish.
But take a closer look and many of her decisions played right into Putin's playbook, almost as if by design. Top of the list, and rarely remarked on, is how Germany's armed forces, the Bundeswehr, fell into disastrous neglect due to a lack of funding, poor management and low morale, to the extent it became a laughing stock under her watch. Some of the examples sound like scenes from a Carry On movie. German armoured vehicles in a NATO exercise that used broomsticks because they hadn't been fitted with guns! Helicopter pilots who lost their licenses when they couldn't get enough flying hours. The woeful lack of combat readiness and preparedness of German armed forces made any serious NATO challenge to Russia in the last ten years uncredible. Any military theorist knows deterrence depends on the enemy's belief you are willing and able to fight. As NATO's largest and most strategically important member in Europe, Germany under Merkel certainly was not: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/will-putins-gamble-lead-to-the-revival-of-german-military-prowess
Despite growing evidence of Putin's malign intentions, Merkel increased Germany's dependence on Russian gas by exiting nuclear energy early. This was after Russia had already weaponised its dominance of the European gas market in 2009 when it cut supplies to Ukraine and eastern Europe. Despite that, she approved the Nord Stream 2 pipeline a year after the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, a decision that increased divisions and tensions within NATO and the EU. It raised suspicions against Germany's reliability as a partner and ally, especially in eastern Europe....
....MUCH MORE
You can take the girl out of East Germany but can you take East Germany out of the girl?
She spoke Russian well enough to win a trip to Moscow while at the same time Putin learned enough German to get a posting to Dresden, DDR.
Stranger things have happened.
The thing that always stood out for me was her steadfast refusal to raise the German defense budget to anywhere near the NATO member requirement of 2%.
From Janes Defence Weekly, May 18 2022 (left scale: dollar-equivalent amount; right scale: percent of GDP):
