Talk:Guillaume affair

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Confusing[edit]

"The West German government blamed Brandt for having a spy in his party". It seems strange that the government would blame their own chancellor for having a spy in his party, which must have been the same party that most of the members of the government belonged to! Or am I missing something here? /Marxmax (talk) 12:59, 11 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's a lot of ground under that sentence (though possibly it should be "the West German governing party blamed Brandt for having a spy in his government"). Guillaume was suspected of espionage for more than a year before his arrest. Brandt thought Guillaume was accused of espionage mostly because of his GDR background (discrimination against citizens from the GDR was not uncommon then), and underestimated the whole issue. Rd232 ^talk 19:53, 11 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Substance of the espionage…?[edit]

There is little if any detail in the article of exactly what Guillaume did or passed in the way of information, which is a pity; having just seen the Michael Frayn play, his activities would appear to have been largely trivial (although the fact that he rose so high is obviously a feather in the cap of his E. German handler(s)), and the instrument used by those close to the Chancellor in the W. German government to provoke Brandt’s resignation is a list of Brandt’s sexual conquests on the campaign trail, compiled by his own security guard (who was not a foreign spy), which they imply that the Stasi has - whereas Guillaume (in the play at least) says he never passed on any of that information to the East. Can anyone flesh out the nature of what Guillaume did, whether he passed on vital intelligence, and whether he was (as the play implies) actually tasked with trying to *stop* Brandt resigning, while supposed colleagues in Brandt’s party were trying to oust him? Thanks. Jock123 (talk) 22:54, 18 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How was Guillaume unmasked[edit]

I wonder how Guillaume was discovered. The statement that "Matthias, then twelve years old, who was the first to discover that Guillaume and his wife 'were typing mysterious things on typewriters the whole night through'" would, if true, suggest that Guillaume wanted to be discovered. Otherwise what he was doing was idiocy. That would suggest that the East Germans were indeed engineering his downfall, and had instructed Guillaume to allow himself to be discovered. Is there any reliable information on this topic?Royalcourtier (talk) 22:09, 14 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]