Erich Mielke - The Peaceful Revolution

The Peaceful Revolution

According to John Koehler,

Increasingly concerned over the growing popular opposition, Stasi Minister Mielke early in 1989 ordered the creation of a special elite unit for crushing disturbances. Its personnel were carefully selected members of the counterespionage and counterterrorism directorate. They were equipped with special batons similar to electric cattle prods but much more powerful. In a secret speech to top-ranking Stasi officers on June 29, Mielke warned that, "hostile opposing forces and groups have already achieved a measure of power and are using all methods to achieve a change in the balance of power." Former Stasi Colonel Rainer Wiegand told me he was horrified when Mielke compared the situation with that of China two months earlier. Chinese students in Beijing had begun massive protests in April and in May, during a student demonstration in Tiananmen Square, security troops had opened fire on them killing hundreds. "Mielke said our situation was comparable and we had to be ready to counter it with all means and methods," Wiegand recalled. "Mielke said that the Chinese leadership had succeeded in smothering the protests before the situation got out of hand."

Despite Mielke's attempts to squelch them, East Germany's protesters grew more emboldened with every arrest.

According to Koehler,

Despite the unrest, the regime celebrated its fortieth with a huge, pompous ceremony in Berlin on October 7, while tens of thousands of jeering citizens stood outside the ornate building of the State Council. The People's Police cordons were utterly ineffectual. As Stasi Minister Erich Mielke drove up and was greeted by General Günther Kratsch, the counterintelligence chief, Mielke screamed at police: "Club those pigs into submission!" The police ignored Mielke's ranting.

However, just days later, Mielke became part of the conspiracy that toppled Honecker as leader of the SED. Suspecting that Honecker's personal bodyguards might try to arrest the members of the Politburo when it met to vote Honecker out in favour of Egon Krenz, Mielke saw to it that reliable Stasi men were stationed near the meeting room.

On 7 November 1989, Mielke resigned, along with all of the other members of the GDR government (the Council of Ministers of the GDR), in response to the changing political and social situation in the GDR. Six days later, on 13 November 1989, Mielke was at the center of one of the most famous televised incidents in German history. When Mielke addressed the members of the GDR parliament, or (Volkskammer), as "Comrades", angry non-SED members demanded that he refrain from calling them that. The shattered Mielke first tried to justify his wording, "That is a question of formality" and then apologized, declaring: "But I love – I love all – all people..." (German: „Ich liebe doch alle Menschen!“). This was met with jeers and laughter from the assembly.

On 18 November 1989, following the Volkskammer's decision a day earlier to rename the MfS as the Amt für Nationale Sicherheit (AfNS - Office for National Security), Mielke's tenure in office finally ended when Generalleutnant Wolfgang Schwanitz was elected by the Volkskammer as the director of the AfNS.

On 3 December 1989, Mielke was expelled from membership in the SED. On 7 December 1989, he was arrested and placed in "investigative custody", or (Untersuchungshaft) as he was charged with "damaging the national economy" (Schädigung der Volkswirtschaft).