Order 101: Shooting to kill at the Berlin Wall

By Bruce Kennedy
CNN Interactive

Like cosmetic surgery on an old wound, Berlin is quickly filling in the scar once occupied by its infamous Wall. Building projects have taken the place of what once were "death strips" -- a lethal no-man's land separating East from West.

But the Berlin Wall has left psychological as well as physical scars on the German landscape -- especially as Germans consider the hundreds of people who died in failed attempts to escape the East.

More than 260 people died trying to cross the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989. About three times that number were killed attempting to flee westward from elsewhere in East Germany.

No written shoot-to-kill order has ever been found among the papers of the former East German government. But in 1995, at the trial of eight former East German generals, prosecutors produced the minutes from several meetings of the East German Defense Ministry's so-called "Collegiate" -- a group of military and security officials in charge of long-term planning. And prosecutors say that among those minutes was evidence of Defense Ministry Order 101: that "border violators should be destroyed and all attempts to breach the defenses should be prevented."

Hope Harrison, a research fellow at the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, has done extensive research in recently opened Soviet bloc archives. In the files of the East German Foreign Ministry she found notes from an August 1961 meeting in Beijing between the East German ambassador and China's foreign minister, Chen Yi -- in which "Comrade Chen Yi expressed his satisfaction that the GDR [East Germany] is now going forward with harsh measures and also shooting at border violators."

The Wall was baptized as an "anti-fascist" barrier by its creators in East Germany -- meant to control those who would otherwise commit the crime of "republikflucht," or "fleeing the republic." In recent years much of the East German leadership, along with several border guards, have been brought to trial for their part in the deaths at the Wall. One of the most publicized cases was that of East German leader Erich Honecker. Charges against him regarding the deaths of would-be escapees were dismissed -- due to his deteriorating health. He fled to Chile, where he died of liver cancer in 1994.

Egon Krenz, who succeeded Honecker and ruled East Germany for a mere 44 days before the Wall fell and his government collapsed, was convicted of manslaughter in 1997 and sentenced to 6 1/2 years imprisonment. Krenz served only 18 days in jail. He was released on appeal of his sentence, which is scheduled to be ruled on by a higher court in 1999.

Around the time of Krenz's trial, two former border guards were given suspended sentences for their part in the 1962 shooting death of Peter Fechter. The 18-year-old Fechter was shot in the pelvis and was left to lie in the no-man's land between East and West for nearly an hour as he bled to death. His screams of pain, left unanswered, horrified onlookers. Fechter's fate symbolized for many the cruelty created by the Wall.

But in spite of those deaths, a large number of eastern Germans believe their former leaders and troops are being victimized by "victor's justice" -- vindictive treatment by the West against its former rivals. At his trial, Krenz maintained that he and other East German leaders were pawns in a game between the Cold War superpowers.

There are also signs that a unified Germany is trying to move beyond its painful, divided past. A 1995 survey of state prosecutors by the German news agency DPA found that only 336 indictments had been handed down against the thousands of people accused of abuses under the auspices of the East German government. About half of those indicted were convicted, but most of the convicted defendants received probation.

Also in 1995, Germany's Constitutional Court ruled that intelligence agents of the former East Germany could not be prosecuted for their espionage against the West. The ruling effectively halted any attempts to go after thousands on the payroll of the Stasi, the East Germany security apparatus -- which assigned the code name "Rose" to the Berlin Wall.

But it appears that new revelations, coming from previously sealed Soviet bloc archives, are sure to keep the controversy and hurt surrounding the deaths at the Berlin Wall alive for some time.

A poignant example surfaced in late 1997 when, according to a DPA report, a 57-year-old man in the eastern German city of Magdeberg was dismissed from his teaching job and charged in the 1966 shooting deaths of two boys, aged 10 and 13, while he was an East German border guard on the Berlin Wall. The boys were hit by gunfire while attempting to cross the Wall in Berlin's Teltow district.

Stasi officials allegedly covered up the deaths, fearing negative publicity. They told the boys' families that one of the youths had drowned, and that the other was struck by lightning. According to testimony in the case, death certificates for the boys were falsified and their bodies cremated. The names of the two boys, who were first listed as "missing," were only recently discovered by investigators on a cremation list.

The former guard was convicted of manslaughter and given a suspended sentence.