Authors: Frederick Taylor
The entire operation actually said far more about the true nature of the East German regime—Why sealed trains? Why treat your own people like some kind of dangerous bacillus?—than about the thousands of exhausted but exhilarated expellees who piled into the eight trains that left Prague on 2 October. There were by this time 12,000 of them.
Everything backfired for Honecker. His decision turned out to be a terrible misjudgement. On the route through East Germany, far from being shunned and humiliated, the refugees were greeted by thousands of ordinary East Germans, who lined roads and embankments beside the tracks and waved and cheered. At Dresden, the first major city across the border, the refugees were defiant. They did not reluctantly surrender their identity documents, as the authorities expected, but tore them up and tossed them out of the train windows, along with the worthless Eastern marks they would not be able to spend once they arrived in the West.
Meanwhile, 1,500 local people, mostly young, defied the authorities and assembled at Dresden’s main station to greet the refugee trains. Demonstrators tried to climb aboard. The
Vopos
struggled to stop them. Fighting broke out. Substantial areas of the concourse were wrecked. One man slipped under the train and was so badly injured that he had to have his legs amputated. After the trains left, demonstrations continued. Many Dresdeners, including older citizens, gathered in a dignified demonstration outside the station. The crowd was ordered to disperse. It refused. There followed a stand-off with the armed police.
So much for Honecker’s conviction that he could neutralise the bacillus by confining it to a sealed train. Matters got even worse when
the trains bearing the refugees from Prague finally reached Hof, in northern Bavaria, and were received on to West German soil. The welcome celebrations were huge. Cheering West Germans. Smiling East Germans. Brothers and sisters welcoming brothers and sisters. The entire emotionally stirring scene was televised in West Germany, and almost all East Germans could pick up Western broadcasts. Those, that is, who were not already heading for the border in their trusty Trabants. Soon the embassy grounds in the Czech capital were filling up again with a new wave of would-be refugees.
In Dresden, the demonstrations outside the station were not forcibly dispersed. The
Volkspolizei
colonel commanding the forces of order had to decide whether to start shooting, and he decided not to. He became, and remains to this day, a hero in Dresden. Within hours the news spread, first to Leipzig and then to Berlin. People had defied the regime in Dresden, but the regime’s policemen had not dared open fire.
On Monday 2 October, 10,000 citizens of Leipzig appeared on the streets. They chanted slogans about freedom, but above all they declared: ‘We will stay HERE’. This message was, in its way, even more worrying for Honecker than that conveyed by the West Germany-bound hordes of refugees. The regime had got used to arresting its dissidents and dumping them in the West. Now they were determined to stay in the East, and there were too many to deport them all.
Despite everything, Erich Honecker pressed on with preparations to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the regime he had fought and—it must be admitted—suffered to create. He was absolutely determined that this would be the greatest, most spectacular proof of the GDR’s viability that anyone could possibly want.
The ageing, ailing General Secretary had obvious problems. First of all, the flood of refugees. The worst of this was stopped when on 3 October the right to visa-free travel to Czechoslovakia was ‘temporarily’ withdrawn. Then there were the demonstrations. These could be minimised by an increased police presence and more brutal intervention. But Honecker also had hidden problems, ones he never wanted to think about but which were now impossible to ignore. Such as the fact that the state he planned to celebrate with such pomp was actually on the verge of bankruptcy.
In the past few years the GDR had become reliant on West German largess. In the 1960s and 1970s East Germany had been relatively successful as an exporter. In the 1980s, when according to the economic plan the country was supposed to be turning into a high-tech, R&D-based modern powerhouse, the story had in fact been one of steady decline and increasing foreign indebtedness. The GDR could only imitate, not innovate. Between 1980 and 1988, the outlay required for a state enterprise to earn one West mark almost doubled, from 2.40 East marks to 4.40. Low productivity and high raw-materials prices meant that the actual trade deficit (without credits or other payments from West Germany) just kept ballooning. And worse was expected. The Soviet Union, with grave financial and economic problems of its own, had indicated that it would be scaling down deliveries of cheap oil to East Germany and raising foreign trade prices within the Eastern Bloc to world market levels.
5
All the same, Honecker, who had grown used to ignoring uncomfortable economic realities, and who trusted the Marxist God of History to save him every bit as fervently as any fundamentalist trusts his deity, was determined to throw the biggest party imaginable for the GDR’s big birthday.
Though Gorbachev had paid a triumphant visit to West Germany, for the past two years he had avoided the GDR. However, he could not ignore East Germany’s fortieth. Nor, after his arrival in East Berlin, could he ignore the vast torch-lit parade of youth groups staged for his benefit, or the tanks and artillery pieces that rolled past the saluting dais where he stood with the GDR’s leadership. As the long columns of FDJ members marched past in their blue shirts and red scarves, many called out over and over in honour of the Soviet reformer, ‘Gorbi! Gorbi!’ Some were heard to shout: ‘Gorbi, help us!’ The Polish Communist leader, Mieczyslaw Rakowski, asked Gorbachev if he understood what the young people were saying. The Russian nodded, but Rakowski translated for him anyway. ‘They are demanding: “Gorbachev, save us!”’ he explained incredulously. ‘But these are the party activists! This is the end!’
6
Later, there were talks between Gorbachev and Honecker, at which the East German leader refused to discuss Soviet-style reforms. Honecker asked instead, ‘Has your population enough food, bread, and butter?’
And he compared the standard of life in the USSR unfavourably with that in the GDR.
The relationship between the two leaders deteriorated further during Saturday evening. At a meeting with the East German Politburo, Gorbachev made some more pointed remarks. ‘When we fall behind, life punishes us immediately,’ he observed with obvious reference to Honecker and his supporters. Honecker appeared oblivious, continuing to brag about the success of the GDR and its alleged status ‘among the top ten economies in the world’. His words met with silence. Except from Gorbachev, who turned to his neighbour and let out a soft but clearly audible hiss of derision.
7
Günter Schabowski, since 1985 First Secretary of the SED’s key Berlin District, later remarked: ‘We were assholes, we should have done the
coup d’état
right there, in front of his eyes!’
8
That night over dinner, Krenz finally decided to wield the stiletto. By the end of the meal, he had pledges of support from Politburo members Schabowski, Siegfried Lorenz (SED boss in Karl-Marx-Stadt) and, most important of all,
Stasi
Minister Erich Mielke, eighty-one years old but still Moscow’s man. The Soviets were discreetly informed, and the conspirators set to plotting Honecker’s downfall. After eighteen years in power, the miner’s son from Wiebelskirchen was a marked man.
In 1953, the SED regime had survived only because of Soviet troops. Rumours were already spreading that Gorbachev would not let the Red Army intervene if the same thing happened now. None the less, the government had no compunction in keeping ‘order’ in the streets during this crucial period by judicious use of force. This applied mainly to Leipzig and Dresden, where demonstrations were continuing and growing. East Berlin was relatively quiet, in part due to sometimes brutal interventions by the
Stasi
and police to nip demonstrations in the bud.
Despite veiled threats and savage action against individual protesters during the fortieth-anniversary weekend, 70,000 of Leipzig’s citizens flocked to the next Monday ‘prayer meeting’ at the Nikolaikirche, which had become the most important single focus for the opposition.
Informed of growing unrest in Saxony, on Sunday 8 October Mielke issued a ‘code red’ alert which, in effect, gave his forces a ‘licence to kill’ in the streets. ‘There has,’ the directive declared, ‘been an aggravation of
the nature and associated dangers of the illegal mass gatherings of hostile, oppositional, as well as further hostile-negative and rowdy-type forces aiming to disturb the security of the state…’
The order continued chillingly:
I hereby order:
1. A state of ‘full alert’ according to Directive No. 1/89, Para. II, for all units until further notice. Members of permanently armed forces are to carry their weapons with them constantly, according to the needs of the situation…
Sufficient reserve forces are to be held ready, capable of intervention at short notice even for offensive measures for the repression and breaking up of illegal demonstrations.
9
The army had also been placed on alert. Orders were given for a regiment of paratroopers to be moved close to Leipzig in case of trouble. On the evening of 9 October, the security forces, armed with live ammunition, were stationed in the side-streets near the Nikolaikirche. Hospitals prepared for an influx of wounded.
In the end, the demonstration, though huge and clearly threatening to the regime, did not deteriorate into violence. The crowd responded to the admonishments of several prominent speakers, including the internationally known director of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Kurt Masur, with remarkable restraint. It has been said that Honecker ordered the security forces not to shoot, because he did not want to be blamed for possible civil war. Whatever the case, Gerhard Strassenberg, the police commander in the city, told his force to use weapons only in self-defence.
The ninth of October in Leipzig signalled a turning-point. The Russian occupation army failed to show itself, confirming that Gorbachev had confined it to barracks. The seventeenth of June 1953 had not been repeated in Leipzig—and neither had Tiananmen Square.
The fall of Honecker came just over a week later, by a simple vote in the Politburo. A defiant slogan had been taken up by the masses on 9 October: ‘We are the People’. Even some of the police had joined in the chant. In the next few days, demonstrations spread through the GDR, to Magdeburg, Potsdam, Halle, Karl-Marx-Stadt and elsewhere.
Krenz and his fellow conspirators started to build the pressure on Honecker straight after Gorbachev’s departure. They put together a document admitting the regime’s problems and suggested corrective measures. Honecker attempted to block its discussion in the Politburo, but failed. He found himself supported only by Mittag, the guardian of economic orthodoxy, and by his old intimate and foreign-policy adviser, Hermann Axen. When challenged, however, Honecker insisted he would not resign. No one quite had the nerve to force the issue.
The conspirators paused to regroup. The phone lines ran hot. On 16 October 1989, most of the Politburo watched uneasily as a secret
Stasi
TV feed from Leipzig, filmed with cameras hidden on squares and street corners, showed a vast crowd—this time 120,000-strong—gathering peacefully for the Monday meeting. They were chanting not just ‘Gorbi! Gorbi!’ but ‘The Wall must go!’. Honecker, appalled, exclaimed repeatedly, ‘Now, surely, we have to do something!’ but no one else in the room suggested using force. The army chief of staff, Colonel-General Fritz Streletz, specifically declined to unleash his men against the demonstrators. ‘We can’t do anything,’ he said. ‘We intend to let the whole thing take its course peacefully.’
The next day, 17 October, the Politburo was due to meet. Mielke, who despite his age still took a morning dip in his swimming-pool at Wandlitz, was up even earlier than usual. He phoned the security chief in the Central Committee building, who was, of course, a
Stasi
officer and Mielke’s subordinate. The minister instructed him to ensure the meeting room was surrounded with reliable officers. Honecker must be prevented from summoning his own bodyguards when the moment of crisis arrived.
At ten the meeting began. Honecker seemed relaxed. He opened the meeting as if everything was quite normal and tranquil in the GDR, the best of all Germanys. Then he asked if anyone had any suggestions for the agenda.
There was a brief silence. Then 75-year-old Willi Stoph, chair of the Council of Ministers, indicated his desire to speak. Stoph had long been critical of Honecker in private letters to Gorbachev and had joined Krenz’s clique. Like everything else that happened that morning, his remarks were pre-arranged with the other conspirators.
‘Erich, allow me,’ Stoph began in his bureaucratic monotone. ‘I
suggest: first item on the agenda, “The release of Comrade Erich Honecker from his duties as General Secretary and the election of Egon Krenz as General Secretary”.’
Honecker froze and stared vacantly round the room. Then, after a few moments, he collected himself and said calmly, ‘Good, then I open the discussion’.
They all betrayed him, one by one, in the three-hour session that followed. Even his long-time henchman, economic mastermind Günter Mittag, finally saw the way the wind was blowing and declared that Honecker had ‘lost the trust of the party’. This was the man who had lied to everyone about the state of the East German economy, who more than any other was responsible for the country’s plight. The other Politburo members could not suppress their mocking laughter.