Angela Merkel (then Kasner), age 17, in 1972, marching happily next to an East German Officer in her FDJ uniform.

Angela Merkel was embarrassed when newspapers all over Europe published photos of her marching and smiling in the uniform of East Germany’s Young Communist Movement as a teenager.

Daily Mail:

She denies she was close to the Communist rulers in East Germany, where she grew up.

So this 1972 photo of her in military-style uniform has left German Chancellor Angela Merkel ‘not amused’.

Then called Angela Kasner and aged 17, she is shown happily involved in a civil defence exercise under the gaze of an East German officer.

Drills included first aid and preparing for nuclear attack.

All children had to take part if they wanted to go to university, but Mrs Merkel is also alleged to have been a propaganda secretary for the youth movement, the FDJ*.

The photo was found by an old schoolfriend, Sonja Felssberg, 58, and handed to a German newspaper.

Her smile is easily recognisable and her forage cap is set at a jaunty angle as she strides along at the High School Hermann Matern in Templin, where she was brought up behind the iron curtain.

* Freie Deutsche Jugend [Free German Youth], East Germany’s version of Russia’s Young Communists or Nazi Germany’s Hitler Youth movements.