East Germany's 'Master of Fear': the Stasi chief who ruled state security for 32 years
“All this blithering over to execute or not to execute, for the death penalty or against — all rot, Comrades. Execute! And, when necessary, without a court judgment.” — to senior Stasi officers, 1982
A communist militant from Berlin's Wedding district, Mielke fled to the USSR after the 1931 killing of two Berlin policemen and was trained by the NKVD. After the Spanish Civil War he returned in 1945 to help build the GDR's state security apparatus, leading the Stasi from 1957 to 1989 and expanding it into a 90,000-strong surveillance network. The Stasi controlled all of East German society while training armed groups across the Third World and Western Europe, extending socialist-bloc security architecture. He fell with the regime in 1989 and was convicted after reunification for the 1931 murders.
Career timeline
1925Joined the KPD
1931Fled to USSR after Bülowplatz police murders
1936–1939Served in International Brigades, Spain (Captain)
1945Returned to Berlin, Police Inspector Lichtenberg
1950Deputy Minister of State Security, State Secretary
1957–1989Minister for State Security (Stasi chief)
The West German journalist whose question drew Ulbricht's 'No one intends to build a wall'
'I would like to ask a supplementary question: does the formation of a free city mean, in your opinion, that the state border will be erected at the Brandenburg Gate?'
A German journalist who studied law in Hamburg without finishing her degree and went into the press. After the war she worked for the Soviet-controlled Berliner Rundfunk, then moved to West Berlin in 1949 as the Frankfurter Rundschau correspondent, where on 15 June 1961 her question to Ulbricht about whether the state border would run at the Brandenburg Gate elicited his famous 'No one has the intention to erect a wall.'
Career timeline
1929Began studying law at the University of Hamburg
1934Volunteer at the Institute for Foreign Policy in Hamburg
1936Worked at the Hamburg World Economic Archive
1942Moved to Berlin as editor of Wirtschafts-Ring
1943Editor at the controlled Transocean-Europapress central desk
1945Joined the Soviet-controlled Berliner Rundfunk
1946Editor of the Berliner Rundfunk's 'Zeitecho'
1949West Berlin correspondent of the Frankfurter Rundschau
East German planner who ran planning in the German Economic Commission and then chaired the State Planning Commission
A shoemaker’s son from Rixdorf, Berlin, he worked as a clerk, studied economics at night and joined the KPD in 1931. Under the Nazis he worked for the illegal paper “Der Rote Wedding” and the party’s military intelligence apparatus until his arrest in 1936; sentenced to six years in prison, he was then held in Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen until 1945. After the war he built up and headed the KPD’s economic department, and from 1947 played a major part in creating the German Economic Commission, where he took charge of planning and drew up the half-year plan of 1948 and the two-year plan of 1949/50. He succeeded Heinrich Rau as chairman of the State Planning Commission (1952–1961), joined the Politburo in 1958 and was deputy premier from 1955 to 1965. Removed as planning chief in 1961, he became the GDR’s permanent representative to Comecon. He died in East Berlin in 1965.
Career timeline
1931Joined the KPD
1936–1945Imprisoned; held in Sachsenhausen and Mauthausen
1947–1949In charge of planning at the German Economic Commission
1952–1961Chairman of the State Planning Commission
East German chemist who survived a Nazi death sentence and later, expelled from the SED, became a dissident under house arrest
Born in Munich, he studied chemistry in Munich and Berlin and took a doctorate in physical chemistry at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. A founder of the resistance group European Union, he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 and sentenced to death, but his execution was repeatedly postponed on the grounds that his research was needed, and he survived. After the war he headed Berlin’s Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes until the Americans dismissed him; in 1950 he became professor of physical chemistry at the Humboldt University, a member of the Volkskammer and of the German Peace Committee. On 16 June 1953 he faced the crowd outside the House of Ministries with Fritz Selbmann. His 1963–64 lectures, published as “Dialectics without Dogma”, cost him his party membership and his chair. After protesting Wolf Biermann’s expatriation in 1976 he was put under house arrest. He died in Grünheide in 1982.
Career timeline
1932Joined the KPD
1943Arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced to death
1950Professor of physical chemistry at the Humboldt University
The long-serving East German leader of the walled republic
His removal in October 1989 showed that the GDR's collapse could no longer be contained even within its leadership.
A German communist trained at Moscow's International Lenin School, he rose through East Germany's youth organization and party leadership. He led the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 to 1989 as the GDR's long-serving ruler.
Career timeline
1930–1931Studies at Moscow's International Lenin School
The Nazi Gestapo chief who made Lyon a center of terror
At his 1987 Lyon trial, he denied the Izieu roundup and said: “I fought the Resistance. It was war.”
Klaus Barbie was an SS and Sicherheitsdienst officer who commanded the Gestapo in occupied Lyon, organizing systematic persecution of the French Resistance and Jews. He arrested and tortured Jean Moulin at Caluire and was responsible for deporting 44 Jewish children and their teachers from Izieu to Auschwitz. After the war, U.S. intelligence used him in anti-communist operations and helped him escape to Bolivia, where he avoided justice for decades before his 1987 Lyon trial and life sentence for crimes against humanity. His case exposes both the continuity of Nazi criminal networks and the impunity produced by Cold War anti-communism.
Career timeline
1935Joined the SS and began service in the Sicherheitsdienst
1940–1941SD service in Amsterdam, targeting Jews and communists
1942Assigned to Dijon for security work in occupied France
1942–1944Head of the Lyon Gestapo, repressing the Resistance and deporting Jews
1947–1951Agent of the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps
1951–1983Lived in Bolivia as Klaus Altmann
1987Lyon trial, convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life
A social democrat who made reconciliation a politics of divided cities
After the Wall was built, he said: “The Wall must go, but until it goes, the city must live.”
Willy Brandt was a German social-democratic politician shaped by exile and resistance to the Nazi dictatorship. As Governing Mayor of West Berlin, he defended the city’s morale after the Wall was built and pressed the West to honor its responsibilities, helping popularize the name “Wall of Shame.” As chancellor, he pursued Ostpolitik and “change through rapprochement,” easing Cold War confrontation and earning the 1971 Nobel Peace Prize.
Career timeline
1933–1945Exile and resistance activist against the Nazi dictatorship
1948–1953SPD representative in Berlin
1957–1966Governing Mayor of West Berlin
1964–1987Chairman of the SPD
1966–1969Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor
1969–1974Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
From labor camp to Vostok: pioneer of spaceflight control and guidance
In my life I had only two bosses — Korolev and Keldysh. Both were people of high integrity. That's what matters.
A physicist and rocket engineer who laid the foundations of Soviet spaceflight guidance. At Korolev's OKB-1, Rauschenbach designed the orientation and control systems that made the Luna 3 far-side lunar photography (1959) and Gagarin's Vostok 1 flight (1961) technically possible. Born to Volga German heritage, he was interned in a labor camp in 1942 solely on ethnic grounds yet continued his calculations from captivity; Keldysh secured his return, and he became a core designer of the space program. In his later years he turned to the mathematical study of perspective in painting and Orthodox theology, producing original interdisciplinary work.
Career timeline
1932–1937Studied at Leningrad Institute of Civil Air Fleet; glider stability research
1937–1941Engineer at RNII under Korolev; winged missile flight control automation
1942–1946Interned in Tagillag camp; performed calculations for Bolkhovitinov's bureau
1946–1948Exile in Nizhny Tagil; worked for Keldysh's calculation bureau
1948–1954Researcher at NII-1 under Keldysh; vibration combustion theory
1955–1959OKB-1 under Korolev; pioneering spacecraft orientation systems
1960–1973Department Chief at OKB-1; guidance systems for Luna, Vostok, Mars, Venera, Soyuz
1959–1978Professor and Chair of Theoretical Mechanics, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology
1978–2001Chair, Academy of Sciences Commission on Space Pioneers' Legacy; art theory and theology
From Peenemünde to Gorodomlya, the German rocket engineer who designed the conceptual ancestor of the R-7
'If we abandon the old conservative form of the V-2, it may be quite possible to reach nearly two thousand miles. The conical shape is, fundamentally, the only possible solution.' to his wife Irmgard, 1949
A German applied physicist and rocket guidance specialist. At Peenemünde under Wernher von Braun, he developed the V-2's guidance and control systems; in 1944 the Gestapo arrested him for expressing defeatist views about the war. Forcibly relocated to the USSR in 1946, he led over 170 German specialists on Gorodomlya Island, where his team designed the G-4 (conical single-stage) and G-5 (packet of clustered G-4s). These concepts directly shaped Korolev's R-7 ICBM; in 1949 a Soviet commission rated G-4 superior to the rival R-3. After returning to West Germany in 1953, he left rocketry, invented the smart card, and coined the German term 'Informatik.'
Career timeline
1939–1945V-2 guidance and control department, Peenemünde Army Research Center
1945–1946Head of Büro Gröttrup, Bleicherode (Soviet occupation zone)
1946German head of Institut Nordhausen, then General Manager of Zentralwerke
1946–1950Head of Branch 1, NII-88, Gorodomlya Island
1954–1958Engineer, Standard Elektrik Lorenz, Pforzheim
Youngest member of the Ulbricht Group who fled to Yugoslavia in 1949 and became a leading Western scholar of Soviet communism
Born Vladimir Leonhard in Vienna, he went into Soviet exile with his Communist mother in 1935; she was arrested in 1936 and spent twelve years in the Vorkuta camps. After the Comintern school he became an announcer for Radio Free Germany, and on 30 April 1945 he returned to Berlin as a member of the Ulbricht Group. He worked in the agitation and propaganda department of the KPD and then SED Central Committee and from 1947 lectured at the party college. Convinced that Germany would replicate the Soviet system, he fled via Czechoslovakia to Yugoslavia in March 1949 and moved to West Germany in 1950. His 1955 memoir Die Revolution entlässt ihre Kinder became an international bestseller, and from 1966 to 1987 he taught Soviet history at Yale.
At the August 1984 RYaN meeting, he stressed the need to establish the “actual situation” rather than mistake indicators for a Western nuclear attack.
Markus Wolf was a communist official and intelligence chief who, after fleeing Nazi persecution to the Soviet Union, led the foreign intelligence service of East Germany. From 1952 to 1986 he directed the Stasi’s Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, organizing espionage and active measures aimed at West German political, military, and economic institutions. When Soviet leaders expanded Operation RYaN amid fears of a pre-emptive nuclear attack in the early 1980s, Wolf maintained cooperation while exposing a tension between alarmist indicators and the need to establish the actual situation. After German reunification he passed through exile and trial, and used memoirs and public interventions to address responsibility for state security work and the possibility of reforming socialism.
Career timeline
1923–1933Grew up in Stuttgart
1933–1943Exile in the Soviet Union; studied in Moscow and at the Comintern school
1943–1945Editor and announcer for the German-language Moscow radio
1949–1951First counsellor at the East German embassy in Moscow
1952–1986Head of the foreign intelligence services IWF and HVA
1953–1986First deputy minister for state security
1986–1990After retirement, wrote memoirs and joined debates on reform
The architect of détente who used 'linkage' to build the first framework for superpower arms control, the face of American realism
In his notorious 1972 interview with Oriana Fallaci, he declared: 'Americans like the cowboy who leads the wagon train by riding ahead alone on his horse. This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely.' The comment infuriated Nixon.
A Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany at fifteen, Kissinger rose through Harvard's academic ranks to become the most consequential American foreign-policy maker of the Cold War. As National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford, he pioneered détente with the Soviet Union, devising the 'linkage' strategy that tied arms control and trade to Soviet restraint and conducting the secret backchannel with Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that broke the deadlock over SALT I and the ABM Treaty at the 1972 Moscow Summit. He opened relations with Mao's China through clandestine diplomacy, mediated the Paris Peace Accords to win the Nobel Peace Prize, but also presided over the bombing of Cambodia and covert interventions that earned him lasting accusations of war crimes.
Career timeline
1938–1943Fled Nazi Germany for the U.S.; studied accounting at CCNY, then drafted into the U.S. Army
1943–1949Served in U.S. Army intelligence in Europe, Battle of the Bulge; CIC agent tracking Gestapo and administering denazification
1950–1969Harvard professor of government, director of the Defense Studies Program; foreign-policy advisor to Rockefeller and Nixon campaigns
1969–1975National Security Advisor: led détente, China opening, SALT I negotiations; managed the secret Dobrynin backchannel
1971–1972Secret trips to Beijing, meeting Zhou Enlai; paved the way for Nixon's 1972 China visit
1973–1977Secretary of State: Paris Peace Accords, Nobel Peace Prize (1973), Middle East shuttle diplomacy; implicated in 1973 Chilean coup
1977–2023Founded Kissinger Associates; authored books and advised twelve U.S. presidents
The East German Politburo spokesman whose mistake brought down the Berlin Wall
Asked 'When does it take effect?' at the press conference, he shuffled through his papers and replied: 'As far as I know… immediately, without delay.'
The GDR's leading propagandist, he rose from editor-in-chief of Neues Deutschland to SED Politburo member and First Secretary of East Berlin. On 9 November 1989, asked at a press conference when new travel regulations would take effect, he answered 'immediately, without delay,' triggering the rush that breached the Berlin Wall that night. He later called his mistake 'the final nail in the coffin' of the regime; after reunification he was convicted for the border deaths, but his public acceptance of moral guilt earned him a reduced sentence.
Career timeline
1947Began journalism career as editor at FDGB paper Tribüne
1952Joined the SED
1967–1968Studied at the CPSU party academy in Moscow
1978–1985Editor-in-chief of Neues Deutschland, the SED central organ
1981–1989SED Central Committee member and Politburo candidate, full member from 1984
1985–1989First Secretary of the SED East Berlin district
1989.11.09Triggered the Wall's fall by announcing travel rules effective immediately
1997–2000Sentenced to 3 years for border deaths; pardoned after serving one
The chancellor who seized the initiative on the German question with a ten-point unification plan days before Malta
On 28 November 1989, Kohl rose in the Bundestag without having told his allies, or even his own foreign minister. President Bush received Kohl's letter summarizing the Ten-Point Plan just as the chancellor was already speaking in Bonn.
A Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician who served sixteen years as chancellor of West Germany and reunified Germany, leading both European integration and German reunification. On 28 November 1989, without consulting his allies, he presented a 'Ten-Point Plan' for German unity to the Bundestag; days later, at the Malta summit, the German question dominated the proceedings on his terms. The following year, on 3 October 1990, Germany was reunified; together with French president François Mitterrand, Kohl drove the Maastricht Treaty and the introduction of the euro. He achieved reunification by extending the West German system into the former East, and after his long tenure ended with electoral defeat in 1998, he resigned as CDU honorary chairman amid a party donations scandal.
Career timeline
1959Elected to the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate (youngest member)
1969–1976Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate
1973–1998Chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
1976–1982Leader of the CDU/CSU opposition in the Bundestag
1982–1998Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
1989.11.28Presented the Ten-Point Plan for German unity to the Bundestag
1990.10.03Presided over German reunification
1998Defeated in federal elections; resigned as CDU chairman
The last communist leader of East Germany, who succeeded Honecker, opened the Wall, and fell in 50 days
On 9 November 1989, Krenz read the travel regulation draft to the Central Committee, handed the note to Schabowski saying "Here, explain this to the journalists," and hours later the Berlin Wall was open.
Designated as Erich Honecker's successor, Egon Krenz was the last communist leader of East Germany, becoming SED General Secretary after Honecker was ousted in October 1989. Just three weeks into his tenure, he approved the draft travel regulations, read them to the Central Committee on 9 November, and handed the note to Günter Schabowski for announcement at a press conference; that night the Berlin Wall was opened. He promised reforms but never gained public trust, and resigned all his posts by early December. After reunification, he was convicted of manslaughter for the border deaths and served nearly four years of a six-and-a-half-year sentence.
Career timeline
1955Joined the Socialist Unity Party (SED)
1971–1974Chairman of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation
1974–1983First Secretary of the FDJ Central Council
1983–1989SED Politburo member, CC Secretary for Security, Youth and Sport
1984–1989Deputy Chairman of the State Council
1989.10–12SED General Secretary
1989.10–12Chairman of the State Council and National Defence Council
In his Berlin 1961, Kempe records General Lucius Clay's retort to President Kennedy at the height of the Checkpoint Charlie tank standoff: "Mr. President, we're not worried about our nerves. We're worrying about those of you people in Washington."
Frederick Kempe is an American journalist and author whose German family background and European reporting shaped his work on Cold War politics and transatlantic affairs. His major book, Berlin 1961, combines newly declassified American, Soviet, and German documents with interviews to reconstruct the building of the Berlin Wall and the October tank confrontation at Checkpoint Charlie. The book interprets Kennedy's crisis management as weakness and places Khrushchev's decisions within their political constraints, an asymmetry that an independent review challenged and made part of the work's historiographical significance.
Career timeline
1977Graduated from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism
1981Joined The Wall Street Journal as a London correspondent
1984Opened The Wall Street Journal's Vienna bureau
1990Became The Wall Street Journal's Berlin bureau chief
1992–1997Senior editor at The Wall Street Journal; founded Central European Economic Review
2002–2005European editor of the global Wall Street Journal
2007–President and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council
