Daughters of the KGB (41 page)

After the Russian Zone of Occupation was re-named ‘German Democratic Republic’, life there was increasingly regimented with the two Erichs, President Honecker and Stasi boss Mielke (above) congratulating themselves on their rule of iron.

Even the ‘spontaneous demonstrations’ of the workers on Mayday were joyless manifestations of the cult of personality, with marchers carrying giant posters of Party leaders.

The Stasi Centre on East Berlin’s Normannenstrasse epitomised state terror.

Strikes were forbidden, but on 17 June 1953 workers downed tools all over the GDR and found themselves confronting riot police, the army and Soviet tanks. Many died.

In 1961 it was still possible for a GDR citizen to take a train in East Berlin and get off in one of the western sectors. To block this last route to freedom, on 13–14 August the GDR cut rail links and erected barbed wire barriers on the sector boundaries (above left), guarded by sentries ordered to shoot to kill anyone trying to cross (above right). Desperate people living near the boundaries bundled some belongings into sheets and literally ran for their lives into the West before it was too late (left).

Within a few days the barbed wire was replaced by a concrete block wall (above) that snaked through Berlin’s streets, cutting off parents from children and workers from their jobs (US satellite photo below).

From this office in Stasi Centre, now a tourist attraction (below), Erich Mielke (left) waged a relentless war on his fellow citizens of the GDR
and
an undercover war targeting the Western democracies, especially the Federal German Republic.

Major General Reinhard Gehlen (POW ID photo left) surrendered to US forces at the end of the war, bringing the Abwehr archives with him. His reward was to be made head of the new West German intelligence service – and Mielke’s sworn enemy.