Leonhard Helmschrott (born 5 June 1921 (Unterthürheim); died 28 October 2011 (Berlin) was a German journalist and politician.

[1] He promptly agreed to cooperate with his Red army captors and was very soon agitating with fly-leaflets (to be dropped from light planes flying over German lines)[2] and loud speakers in trenches on the Soviet-German frontline.

Between February and July 1943 Helsmschrott was sent to the Antifascist school at Krasnogorsk, and it was here that he participated in the conference that founded the Soviet-based National Committee for a Free Germany (NKFD / Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland).

After the war Helschrott left the prison camp at the end of November 1945, and on 8 December 1945, along with other prisoners of war including Luitpold Steidle and Matthäus Klein, was flown on a flight organised by the NKFD from Moscow to Berlin to be greeted by Walter Ulbricht, head of the nation building team that had itself arrived in Berlin from Moscow at the end of April 1945.

[1] He retained this editorship till 1989, and during the intervening 41 years was responsible for more than 6,000 editions of the newspaper which appeared three times per week.

He generated headlines in West Germany in 1963 with a declaration that a right to Conscientious objection against military service was unthinkable in the German Democratic Republic.