page_title: Erich Mielke
section_title: The Peaceful Revolution
hierarchical_section_title: Erich Mielke / The Peaceful Revolution
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. ADN-Robert Roeske-24.9.1990/Berlin: Streiflichter vom Herbst '89/ „Geprügelt für das Wohl des Volkes …“ Tausende waren am Abend des 7. Oktober 1989 in Ostberlin auf die Straße gegangen, um demokratische Grundrechte einzufordern. Die DDR-Führung setzte ihr pervertiertes Demokratie-Verständnis entgegen und ließ uniformierte und zivilie „Ordnungshüter“ aufmarschieren, die – wie hier an der DimitroffsStraße/Ecke Prenzlauer Allee – massiv gegen die Demonstranten vorgingen.
context_page_description: Erich Fritz Emil Mielke was a German communist official who served as head of the East German Ministry for State Security, better known as the Stasi, from 1957 until shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
  A native of Berlin and a second-generation member of the Communist Party of Germany, Mielke was one of two triggermen 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 German Communists during the Great Purge as well as in the savage persecution of suspected anti-Stalinists in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.
  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, later becoming head of the Stasi; according to John Koehler, he was "the longest serving secret police chief in the Soviet Bloc".
  The Stasi under Mielke has been called by historian Edward N.
context_section_description: 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 29 June, 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 suppress them, East Germany's protesters grew more emboldened with every arrest.
caption: The SED dispatched plainclothes officers to arrest demonstrators (depicted in October 1989, prior to die Wende).
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