In his long years of devoted service to Socialism, Otto Grotewohl had never been a real big shot. But when the Russians moved into Germany, they seized on Grotewohl as a handy tool in their drive to capture the German Socialist Party. In a big shot's place at last, Grotewohl presided over the 1946 "merger" of the Eastern zone's Socialist and Communist parties into the new Socialist Unity Party, which meant in fact Grotewohl's complete surrender to the Reds.
Recently Grotewohl's conscience, and the scorn of his former Socialist friends, seemed to trouble him. Last year he paid a secret...