On V.1 Background: Germany and the Bundeswehr in the Eighties

[Ursus Maior]

It goes far beyond Operation Gladio or its national equivalents. The West German security apparatus was rebuild from the part of Nazi Germany's intelligence community that specialized on the USSR (Abteilung Fremde Heere Ost, transl. Department Foreign Armies East), for obvious reasons. It turned out that looking at counter-intelligence within your own population from the perspective of fascist extermination warfare does something to your ability to foster a liberal democracy, even 50-70 years later. Let's just say, no other extremist group has been paid in cash by these agencies or committed murder against civilians with intelligence agents sitting in the next room.