Markus Wolf — Le chef d'espionnage que l'Occident a traqué pendant trente-quatre ans

Markus Wolf headed the foreign intelligence service of the German Democratic Republic for thirty-four years, and for most of that time, no Western intelligence agency knew what he looked like. This documentary traces his entire life, from the childhood of a Jewish, communist writer's son, expelled from Germany in 1933, to his death in Berlin in 2006, on the anniversary of the fall of the Wall. We follow his exile in Moscow and the years of the Great Terror, which shaped a teenager who learned that survival meant silence. We enter the secret school of the Communist International where he received his first clandestine training, and then the years of journalism and diplomacy that made him, at twenty-nine, the youngest intelligence chief in the Eastern Bloc. The film then examines the methods that earned him his notoriety and his scandalous reputation: the systematic exploitation of isolation in the West German capital, as well as his most spectacular success: the implantation of an agent at the heart of the Federal Chancellery, an operation that led to the resignation of Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1974. This documentary also addresses the major cases that marked the German Cold War: the career of an analyst at the top of West German intelligence, the defection of January 1979 that cost Markus Wolf his anonymity and caused the collapse of his networks, the recruitment of an enemy counterintelligence officer, the infiltration of the American listening post in Berlin, then the collapse of the regime, the escape, the voluntary return and the trials of the 1990s, culminating in the legal question that the German justice system had to decide: can an officer of a defunct sovereign state be tried for treason? Our approach is strictly documentary. The disputed facts are presented with their various interpretations, without a definitive verdict, and areas of uncertainty are clearly indicated. This account seeks neither to rehabilitate nor to condemn, but to understand how a cultured, discreet man, perfectly clear-sighted about the system he served, could become one of its most effective instruments. A biography for enthusiasts of 20th-century history, the Cold War, German history, and the history of intelligence. Story, writing, and narration: Étienne Beaumont. Copyright notice: All of this content—text, narrative structure, narration, and editing—constitutes an original work protected by copyright. Any reproduction, reuse, translation, or distribution, in whole or in part, without prior written permission is prohibited. Subscribe to Legendary Stories so you don't miss any of our biographical documentaries. #MarkusWolf #ColdWar #Espionage #GermanHistory #Documentary