Erich Fritz Emil Mielke (; 28 December 1907 – 21 May 2000) was a German communist official who served as head of the East German Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatsicherheit – MfS), better known as the Stasi, from 1957 until shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Dubbed "The Master of Fear" () by the West German press, Mielke was one of the most powerful, feared, and hated men in East Germany.
A Working class native of the Wedding slum district of Berlin and a second-generation member of the Communist Party of Germany, Mielke was one of two gunmen in the 1931 murders of Berlin Police captains Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck. After learning that a witness had survived, Mielke escaped arrest by fleeing to the Soviet Union, where the NKVD recruited him. He was one of the key figures in the decimation of Moscow's many German Communist refugees during the Great PurgeJohn O. Koehler, The Stasi; The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police, page 51. as well as in the Red Terror; the witch-hunt by the Servicio de Información Militar for both real and imagined members of the anti-Stalinist left within the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.Koehler (1999), pages 48, 416–417.
Following the end of World War II in 1945, Mielke returned to the Soviet Zone of Occupied Germany, which he helped organize into a Marxist–Leninist satellite state under the Socialist Unity Party (SED).Koehler (1999), page 72. The Stasi under Mielke has been called by historian Edward Peterson the "most pervasive police state apparatus ever to exist on German soil".Peterson (2002), page 24. During the 1950s and 1960s, Mielke led the process of forcibly forming collectivised farms from East Germany's family-owned farms, which sent a flood of refugees to West Germany. In response, Mielke oversaw the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall and co-signed standing orders for the Border Guards to use lethal force against all East Germans who attempted to commit "desertion of the Republic".
Throughout the Cold War, Mielke also oversaw the establishment of other pro-Soviet police states throughout the Third World. Mielke covertly trained and armed far-left guerrillas and militant organisations aimed at committing terrorist attacks and violent regime change in Western Europe, Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. Due to his close ties to former dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, John Koehler has accused Mielke and the Stasi military advisors he assigned to Ethiopia under the Derg of complicity in the Red Terror, genocide, and many other crimes against humanity.
Mielke, who joined the SED's ruling Politburo fairly late, was regarded as belonging to its pro-Moscow faction alongside Willi Stoph and Werner Krolikowski. During the later years of SED leader Erich Honecker's rule, Mielke was part of the small clique of Politburo members who made all consequential decisions on their own, alongside Joachim Herrmann and Günter Mittag. He was instrumental in the removal of both major SED leaders Walter Ulbricht and Honecker, partly motivated by their respective transgressions of Soviet policies.
After German reunification in 1990, Mielke was prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned for the 1931 policemen's murders. A second murder trial for the 260 killings of defectors at the Inner German border was adjourned after Mielke was ruled not mentally competent to stand trial. Mielke was also charged, but never tried, with ordering two 1981 terrorist attacks by the Baader-Meinhof Group against United States military personnel in West Germany. Released from incarceration early due to ill health and senile dementia in 1995, Mielke died in a Berlin nursing home in 2000.
Early life
Erich Mielke was born in a tenement in Berlin-Wedding, Brandenburg, on 28 December 1907. During the First World War, the neighborhood was known as "Red Wedding" due to many residents' Marxist militancy. In a handwritten biography written for the Soviet secret police, Mielke described his father as "a poor, uneducated woodworker," and said that his mother died in 1911. Both were, he said, members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). After his remarriage to "a seamstress," the elder Mielke and his new wife joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany and remained members when it was renamed the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Erich claimed "My younger brother Kurt and two sisters were Communist sympathisers."Koehler (1999), p. 44.
Despite his family's poverty, Mielke was sufficiently academically gifted to be awarded a free scholarship in the prestigious Köllnisches Gymnasium, but had to leave it a year later, for being "unable to meet the great demands of this school."Koehler (1999), pages 44–45. While attending the Gymnasium, Mielke joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1925, and worked as a reporter for the communist newspaper Rote Fahne from 1928 to 1931.
Under the Weimar Republic, the KPD was the largest communist party in Europe and was seen as the "leading party" of the communist movement outside the Soviet Union.Ralf Hoffrogge / Norman LaPorte (eds.): Weimar Communism as Mass Movement 1918–1933, London: Lawrence & Wishart, p. 2 Under Ernst Thälmann's leadership, the KPD was completely obedient to Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin, and from 1928 the Party was both funded and controlled by the Comintern in Moscow.
Until the end of the Republic, the KPD viewed the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which dominated German politics between 1918 and 1931, as their mortal enemy. In keeping with Stalin's policy towards social democracy, the KPD considered all SPD members to be "social fascists". The KPD also believed that all other political parties were "fascist" and regarded itself as "the only anti-fascist Party" in Germany. Nevertheless, the KPD closely collaborated with the Nazi Party during the early 1930s and both Parties intended to replace the democratically elected government of the Weimar Republic with a totalitarian single party state.
Soon after joining the Party, Mielke joined the KPD's paramilitary wing, or ("Party Self Defense Unit"). It was a part of the Antimilitärischer Apparat, the party's clandestine intelligence service. At the time, the Parteiselbstschutz in Berlin was commanded by KPD Reichstag Deputies Hans Kippenberger and Heinz Neumann.
According to John Koehler, "Mielke was a special protege of Kippenberger's having taken to his paramilitary training with the enthusiasm of a Prussian Junker. World War I veterans taught the novices how to handle pistols, rifles, machine guns, and hand grenades. This clandestine training was conducted in the sparsely populated, pastoral countryside surrounding Berlin. Mielke also pleased Kippenberger by being an exceptional student in classes on the arts of conspiratorial behavior and espionage, taught by comrades who had studied at the secret M-school of the GRU in Moscow."Koehler (1999), page 38.
According to John Koehler, members of the Parteiselbstschutz "served as bouncers at Party meetings and specialized in cracking heads during street battles with political enemies." Besides the ruling SPD and its paramilitary Reichsbanner forces, the arch-enemies of the Parteiselbstschutz were the Stahlhelm, which was the armed wing of the Monarchist German National People's Party (DVNP), Trotskyites, and "radical nationalist parties."
According to Koehler, the KPD's Selbstschutz men "always carried a Stahlrute, two steel springs that telescoped into a tube seventeen centimeters long, which when extended became a deadly, 35-centimeter weapon. Not to be outdone by the Nazis, these street-fighters were often armed with pistols as well."The Stasi, p. 38.
In a 1931 biography written for the Cadre Division of the Comintern,Koehler (1999), pages 43–44. Mielke recalled, "We took care of all kinds of work: terror acts, protecting illegal demonstrations and meetings, arms-trafficking, etc. The last work, which was accomplished by a Comrade and myself, was the Bülowplatz Affair" ()."Der Man der alle liebte", by Die Zeit, 15 November 2007. (In German).
Bülowplatz murders
Planning
During the last days of the Weimar Republic, the KPD had a policy of assassinating two Berlin police officers in retaliation for every KPD member killed by the police.Koehler (1999), page 33.
On 2 August 1931, KPD Members of the Reichstag Heinz Neumann and Hans Kippenberger received a dressing down from Walter Ulbricht, the Party's leader in the Berlin-Brandenburg region. Enraged by police interference and by Neumann and Kippenberger's failure to follow the policy, Ulbricht stated, "At home in Saxony we would have done something about the police a long time ago. Here in Berlin we will not fool around much longer. Soon we will hit the police in the head."John Koehler, The Stasi, p. 36.
Enraged by Ulbricht's words, Kippenberger and Neumann decided to assassinate Paul Anlauf, the 42-year-old Captain of the Berlin Police's Seventh Precinct. Captain Anlauf, a widower with three daughters, had been nicknamed "Schweinebacke", or "Pig Face" by the KPD.
According to historian John Koehler, "Of all the policemen in strife-torn Berlin, the reds hated Anlauf the most. His precinct included the area around KPD headquarters, which made it the most dangerous in the city. The captain almost always led the riot squads that broke up illegal rallies of the Communist Party."The Stasi, p. 36.
On the morning of Sunday 9 August 1931, Kippenberger and Neumann gave a last briefing to the hit-team in a room at the Lassant beer hall. Mielke and Erich Ziemer were selected as the shooters. During the meeting, Max Matern gave a Luger pistol to fellow lookout Max Thunert and said, "Now we're getting serious. We're going to give Schweinebacke something to remember us by."The Stasi, pp. 38–39.
Kippenberger then asked Mielke and Ziemer, "Are you sure that you are ready to shoot Schweinebacke?"John Koehler, The Stasi, p. 39. Mielke responded that he had seen Anlauf many times during police searches of Party Headquarters. Kippenberger then instructed them to wait at a nearby beer hall which would permit them to overlook the entire Bülow-Platz. He further reminded them that Anlauf was accompanied everywhere by Senior Sergeant Max Willig, whom the KPD had nicknamed, "Hussar".
Kippenberger concluded, "When you spot Schweinebacke and Hussar, you take care of them."The Stasi, p. 39. Mielke and Ziemer were informed that, after the assassinations were completed, a diversion would assist in their escape. They were then to return to their homes and await further instructions.
That evening, Anlauf was lured to Bülow-Platz by a violent rally demanding the dissolution of the Prussian Parliament.
According to Koehler, "As was often the case when it came to battling the dominant SPD, the KPD and the Nazis had combined forces during the pre-plebiscite campaign. At one point in this particular campaign, Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels even shared a speaker's platform with KPD agitator Walter Ulbricht. Both parties wanted the parliament dissolved because they were hoping that new elections would oust the SPD, the sworn enemy of all radicals. That fact explained why the atmosphere was particularly volatile this Sunday."The Stasi, pp. 39–40.
Murder at the Babylon Cinema
At eight o'clock that evening, Mielke and Ziemer waited in a doorway as Anlauf, Willig, and Captain Franz Lenck walked toward the Babylon Cinema, which was located at the corner of Bülowplatz and Kaiser-Wilhelm-Straße. As they reached the door of the movie house, the policemen heard someone scream, "Schweinebacke!"The Stasi, p. 41.