Erich Mielke was born on December 28, 1907, and he was a German communist official. He was Head of the East German Ministry for State Security between 1957 and 1989. Erich Mielke was one of the two people accused of the murders of the 1931 murders of Berlin Police Captains Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck.
He had to escape arrest after he got to know a witness had survived. He relocated to the Soviet Union, where the NKVD recruited him and he was one of the key players with respect to the decimation of Moscow’s many German Communist refugees during the Great Purge 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 Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.
After the end of World War II in 1945, he returned to the Soviet Zone of Occupied Germany and he was instrumental in the formation of Marxist-Leninist satellite state under the Socialist Unity Party (SED).
Erich Mielke was the brain behind the 1961 construction of the Berlin Wall and he signed into force the right for the Border Guards to use lethal force against all East Germans who attempted to commit “desertion of the Republic.
The establishment of other pro-Soviet police states throughout the Third World was under the guide of Erich Mielke and he was the one in charge of training armed Far Left guerrillas and terrorist organizations aimed at violent regime change in Western Europe, Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.
He was also an Army General in the National People’s Army (Nationale Volksarmee), and a member of the SED’s ruling Politburo. Erich Mielke was prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned for the 1931 police murders after the German reunification in 1990.
Based on grounds that he was not mentally competent to stand trial, a second murder trial for the 260 killings of defectors at the Inner German border was placed on hold but he was also charged with ordering two 1981 terrorist attacks by the Baader-Meinhof Group against United States military personnel in West Germany.
Erich Mielke Cause of Death
Erich Mielke died after he had been released from incarceration early due to ill health and senile dementia in 1995.
Mielke died in a Berlin nursing home in 2000. He was 92 years old at the time of his death. He was cremated at the crematorium in Meissen and buried in an unmarked grave at the Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde in Berlin.
Honours and Awards
Before the death of Erich Mielke, he received a lot of awards. Some of these are Awards of the German Democratic Republic which include Patriotic Order of Merit in gold (7 October 1954), Six Orders of Karl Marx (28 December 1957, 20 November 1973, 1 December 1975, 28 December 1977, 28 June 1982, 28 December 1982), Twice Hero of Labour of the GDR (5 October 1964, 24 February 1968), Twice Hero of the GDR (1 December 1975, 28 December 1982) and Banner of Labour (8 May 1960).
Others are the Medal for Exemplary Border Service (26 April 1956), the Medal for Faithful Service in the National People’s Army, the Medal for Fighters Against Fascism (6 September 1958), the Gold Medal of Merit of the National People’s Army (1 March 1957) and Scharnhorst Order, twice (25 September 1979, 7 October 1984).
Some of his awards also include Hero of the Soviet Union (25 December 1987), Four Orders of Lenin (12 June 1973, 28 December 1982, 1 April 1985, 28 December 1987), Order of the Patriotic War, 1st class (6 May 1970), Four Orders of the Red Banner (23 October 1958, 5 February 1968, 28 December 1977, February 1980), Jubilee Medal “50 Years of the Soviet Militia” (20 December 1967), Jubilee Medal “In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary since the Birth of Vladimir Il’ich Lenin” (1970), Medal “For Distinction in Guarding the State Border of the USSR” (6 January 1970) and Order of the October Revolution (February 1975)
Reference :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Mielke
