[pmachinery]

That link doesn't mention the KGB, the deaths and executions it refers to (largely of Communist Party and Red Army personnel) occurred before the KGB even existed, and nothing like what is described happened during the KGB era (1954-1991).

[varjag]

KGB is the direct successor to MGB, which was spun off from punitive branch of NKVD, which itself was a reorganized CheKa.

Huge swathes of KGB operatives worked through all of its organizational incarnations. They did (and Russian FSB still does) refer themselves as 'chekists' informally. Their professional holiday is the CheKa foundation day.

[pmachinery]

Huge swathes of post-war German police, judiciary, political personnel were Nazi Party members[0], but we don't attribute crimes carried out in the Third Reich to West (or East) Germany or its institutions.

If you want to pretend the KGB, or the regime it operated under[1], was just the same as the NKVD under Stalin, then please provide examples of the same crimes (mass killings) occurring from 1954-1991.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braunbuch

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Stalinization

[varjag]

Do you really suggest that West German police was basically Gestapo that changed the name? Because that's what MGB to KGB transition was. The status was changed from Ministry to Committee, that's it.

The policy has been changed under Khrustchev, but thousands of the same butchers that committed massacres of 1930s were serving (often in the same offices) until late 1970s.

[pmachinery]

Okay since you want to pretend you don't understand my point: if around 40 members of the embryonic BND came from the SS, even by the head of the BND's own admission[0] in 1953, does that mean "the BND killed millions of people" is a reasonable statement?

Of course not, it's as ridiculous as claiming the KGB, the intelligence agency of anti-Stalinist USSR, killed millions of people, just because an utterly different (Stalin) regime did so while employing some of the same personnel.

If the KGB is just a name change, as you keep trying to pretend, then as I already asked, where are the mass killings perpetrated in the KGB era (1954-1991)?

[0] "Reinhard Gehlen, head of the Org and later president of the BND, [stated] that around 40 of his employees came from the SS and SD ... If there was ignorance on the matter, it was only because no one wanted to know"

Apparently even today, on Hacker News, some people still don't want to know and prefer their own fantasy version of history instead.

"Many Nazi functionaries including Silberbauer, the captor of Anne Frank, transferred over from the Gehlen Organisation to the BND ... Instead of expelling them, the BND even seems to have been willing to recruit more of them"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehlen_Organization

"The then-opposition leader and SPD head Kurt Schumacher [...] described the Gehlen Organization as 'riddled' with former members of the murderous Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the SS's intelligence agency"

While relevant to your initial question:

"The British press at the time openly mocked the 'Gestapo boys' working at the BND's headquarters in Pullach, near Munich."

https://archive.is/uKG93

[varjag]

People working in KGB did not "come" from MGB, it was the same bloody organisation, and referring to KGB for NKVD purges is perfectly semantically correct. Also the analogy for "Nazi members" would be CPSU members, who were anyway in all positions of power in USSR. It makes no sense, you are being intentionally obtuse.

[pmachinery]

Intentionally obtuse is pretending that Nazi Party members in West German institutions simply concerns random citizens who filled out a membership form between 1933-1945, because it was good for their career/life.

We both know the issue is members of the SS, SD, war criminals continued to work in (West) German institutions, including its intelligence service, after post-WWII regime change.

I've already asked you twice, if "KGB" is nothing but a name change from "NKVD", simply state when, in its ~37 year existence, did it engage in the same actions (mass killings) as the NKVD.

We both know this too, though, that the KGB did not kill millions of people, as was the claim, because it was for all intents and purposes a different organization, with different objectives and under different orders from a government diametrically opposed to the Stalinist regime of the NKVD era.

[sebmellen]

Allegedly 1800 people is not a

> Huge [swath] of post-war German police, judiciary, political personnel

And the Braunbuch is very dubiously sourced.

[pmachinery]

Living in denial and refusing to accept (historical) facts because you don't happen to like them is really not healthy.

"It's one of the country's worst-kept secrets. Yet questions still surround the presence of former Nazis and war criminals in West Germany's police, secret service (BND) and politics."

https://www.dw.com/en/stasi-files-shed-light-on-west-german-...