• ‘The Little  Service’ was made  up of many former Gestapo and S.S. men as well as titled barons and  counts
• Kissnger  even discussed with them the possibility of a coup to overthrow the government  of Chancellor Willy Brandt
• The Little  Service which came into being in 1969 and ran for a  decade
• Was  lavishly funded and with more success than state intelligence agencies which  were riddled with East German moles

By  Allan Hall

PUBLISHED: 08:40 EST, 3  December 2012 |  UPDATED: 09:44 EST, 3 December 2012

A German academic has unearthed evidence  showing former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once discussed a coup  with disgruntled Nazis to overthrow the West German government in the  1970s.

Kissinger and Richard Nixon were aggrieved at  the left-leaning government of the day’s burgeoning friendship with the hardline  East German government.

Kissinger became the contact man for a secret  spy network made up of old Nazis and elite aristocrats aimed at torpedoing the  plans formulated by Chancellor Willy Brandt.

Secret: Henry Kissinger in the 1970s in his White House  office in Washington. He gave advice to a secret network made up of old Nazis  and elite aristocrats

By the end of 1970, Kissinger was offering  the spies advice on how to deal with Brandt’s Social Democratic government.

The group he became embroiled with  was  called ‘The Little Service’ and was formed by the conservative  Christian  Democratic Union (CDU), which was allied with Bavaria’s  Christian Social  Union.

One agent who visited Kissinger  quoted him saying, ‘It might be possible  to overthrow the current government,  but it remains to be seen whether this  would involve risks which could  put a Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/  Christian Social Union (CSU)  government in great difficulty.

Whether Kissinger, the architect of  the  disastrous secret bombing of Cambodia in the Vietnam War which paved the way for  the Khmer Rouge regime and its hideous genocide programme,  approved of the plan  to usurp the elected government of the day is  unclear.

Revealed: Kissinger even discussed the possibility of a  coup to overthrow the government of Chancellor Willy Brandt

The group he became embroiled with was called  ‘The Little Service’ and was formed by the conservative CDU party.

Brandt pursued a policy of engagement with  the German Democratic Republic, convinced it was better to build  bridges with  the dictatorship to defuse Cold War tensions rather than  always being at  loggerheads. For the all-white, all male conservatives  of the CDU, this was too  much.

They wanted West Germany to face off  against  the Soviet-backed regime in the belief that isolation would make it crumble. It  was out of this belief that its private spy  organisation, made up of many  former Gestapo and SS men as well as  titled barons and counts, was  formed.

Political scientist Stefanie Waske  spent  seven years researching letters from politicians from the  Christian Democratic  Union and its Bavarian sister party the Christian  Social Union, and her results  are to be published next year; potentially embarrassing timing for Chancellor  Angela Merkel who in November 2013  will seek re-election as CDU chancellor for  the third time.

Waske approached Kissinger for  comment but  he refused, as did many of the noblemen who worked for the  The Little Service  which came into being in 1969 after the party lost  its first general election  since the postwar republic was formed in  1949. Details of her research are  published in the current edition of  the German intellectual weekly Die  Zeit.

The catalyst for the spy group was  Brandt’s  decision to recognise post-WW2 borders dividing Germany and a  pledge Brandt  gave that his state would not use violence against the  Communist one in the  east.

Conservative MP Karl Theodor Freiherr zu  Guttenberg, who was the grandfather of the disgraced former defence  minister  who had to resign last year after it was discovered he cheated  on his  doctorate, held a meeting in the autumn of 1969 with former  chancellor Kurt  Georg Kiesinger and leading CDU and CSU politicians, the CSU being the Bavarian  wing of the party.

‘They decided to form an information service  for the opposition,’ said Waske. ‘It was a secret spy service.’

Beliefs: The Berlin wall. The catalyst was Brandt’s  decision to recognise post-WW2 borders dividing Germany and a pledge Brandt gave  that his state would not use violence against the Communist one in the  east

The former head of the BND, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, was tapped and he offered up a ready-made web of  informants across the globe in countries as far apart as the US, France and  Saudi Arabia.

Hans Christoph von Stauffenberg, the  cousin  of the man who tried and failed to kill Hitler in the July 1944  bomb plot, was  chosen to head the network.

Casimir Prince of Sayn-Wittgenstein,  who  would later only narrowly miss imprisonment for the CDU’s party  donation  scandal of a decade ago, was recruited to raise the hundreds of thousands of  D-marks necessary to fund the network.

He collected from conservatives in  industry,  many of whom had previously supported Hitler, and who now  viewed with suspicion  the apparent coziness developing between Brandt  and the Communists.

The first act was to open a secret  ‘back  channel’ to Kissinger who was keen to know what the Soviets were  up to at all  times, including their puppets in East Berlin.

The treasurer of the group was Alfred Seidl,  a former Nazi who acted as the chief defence lawyer for Hitler deputy Rudolf  Hess.

‘In 1971 Brandt was talking about the administration of Berlin with Leonid Brezhnev in Yalta and  Stauffenberg’s  informants were delivering secret information to the  conservatives who were  discussing it with Kissinger,’ said Waske.

The intelligence gleaned came from  eavesdropping, intercepted mail, informers and telephone taps. The  Little  Service ran for a decade, lavishly funded and with probably more  success than  the state intelligence agencies which were riddled with  East German  moles.

It was Helmut Kohl, who came to power  in  1982, who disbanded the network. It was Kohl who promoted Angela  Merkel – who  grew up in East Germany – to become the party leader: now  she will have serious  political bullets to dodge about her party’s murky past before polling day next  year.

It was Helmut Kohl, left, who came to power in 1982, who  disbanded the network – it was him who promoted Angela Merkel, right, to become  the party leader

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