Erich Mielke was born in a tenement in Berlin-Wedding, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire, on 28 December 1907. During the First World War, the neighborhood was known as "Red Wedding" due to many

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Planning
During the last days of the Weimar Republic, the KPD had a policy of assassinating two Berlin policeofficers in retaliation for every KPD

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The Great Terror
Although Moscow's German Communist community was decimated during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, Mielke survived and was promoted.

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Komissariat-5
In April 1945, Mielke returned to the Soviet Zone of Occupied Germanyaboard a special Soviet aircraft that also

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Independence
In 1949, the Soviet Military Administration ceded its legal functions to the newly created German Democratic Republic.
On 14 January 1950, Marshal Vasili Chuikovannounced that all Soviet "internment camps" on

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Purges
Alarmed by the uprising, Lavrenty Beria, the First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union and head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, personally travelled from

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Mielke headed the Stasi from 1957 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. There was, under the East German system, no provision for parliamentary oversight. However, starting in 1971 Mielke was required to provide a detailed intelligence briefing to

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