Reply People's War - preview

[lordroel]

The PEOPLE’S WAR by James G on Alternate Timelines (https://alternate-timelines.com/thread/3894/peoples-war)

PEOPLE’S WAR – EAST GERMANY, 1995


One – Temporary closure


At the end of June 1989, the East German government decided to close the country’s external borders. The frontier controls weren’t completely sealed with some traffic open to Westerners and also a few East Germans allowed out, yet the usual summer vacations to be taken by tens of thousands of the nation’s citizens to various countries within the ‘friendly’ Eastern Bloc were no longer possible. Exit visas were cancelled for trips to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. A trickle of people would still be allowed to make crossings because the closure wasn’t meant to be air-tight, but it would be good enough. It was announced as a temporary measure though without a firm end date given. The reason presented to the people of East Germany was due to the ‘troubling international situation’. Neighbouring governments, allies they were, weren’t that impressed: the East German visitors brought with them money to spend and, in addition, that excuse brought questions aplenty about views from East Berlin on their regimes. Internal trouble was anticipated in response by the Politburo led by the ageing and ailing Erich Honecker. The people wouldn’t like it and there would be some unrest. Nonetheless, the leadership stuck with their decision.

What was done was to head-off further expected trouble, worse than people upset at their holidays abroad cancelled. The political situation underway in both Poland and Hungary, especially the latter where many East Germans often went to spend their summer vacations, was troubling just as the country’s leadership had explained as their reasoning. A briefing was delivered by the Stasi to the Politburo ahead of the decision on the borders concerning something else going on with Hungary, beyond the transfer of power from fellow socialists to quasi-democrats. That concerned a plan concocted by outside troublemakers behind the ‘Pan-European Picnic’ to try and do something amazing: bring down the entire power superstructure of Eastern Bloc countries resistant to change, reform & liberalisation through seeing people cross into the West via borders to be opened through the Iron Curtain. Other options as to dealing with that were discussed, including ‘active measures’, but Honecker and his cohorts opted for that temporary closing of the borders. That was deemed less dramatic and more proportional.

What wasn’t expected then was that those borders would stay sealed for good. Moreover, the Politburo didn’t foresee the Eastern Bloc falling apart around them just as those schemers against them aimed to see done. There was also no foresight that acting as was done in June ‘89, even though it brought about some internal trouble, would keep the regime that led East Germany in power with all that they had into the 1990s and long past the additional implosion of the Soviet Union as well.

The German Democratic Republic would outlast those who created it.

[lordroel]

Two – National survival

East Germany wasn’t meant to survive 1989, let alone the following years when the complete fall of the Eastern Bloc everywhere else but in the German Democratic Republic (DDR) occurred. The country was written off time and time again with everyone sure that it would fall like the others did. The doubters were wrong though. While East Germany didn’t thrive following the Revolutions of ‘89, it did survive.

Like dominoes, other communist nations in Eastern Europe collapsed from within. All of them came apart at the seams. It was peaceful in the case of a few, Czechoslovakia, Hungary & Poland, while there was extreme violence in Romania & Yugoslavia. The later spectacular fall of the Soviet Union was something to quite witness. East Germany didn’t outlast the others by going down the China route though. There was no ‘Tiananmen solution’ undertaken. Protesters came out in East Germany, encouraged by media broadcasts coming from the West – West Germany television was freely available to watch across most of the DDR –, to protest but there was no need for a massive crackdown. A little violence came yet it wasn’t much. Instead, the Stasi did what it was good at and worked in the shadows to silence dissent. A few worrying moments came for Honecker and his cohorts where they feared ending up like Romania’s leader when tense situations happened, but people power was never concentrated against them in enough strength. Moreover, the will was never there among enough in the ranks of those who did go out and protest that year to fully overthrow their country. Protest leaders disappeared or were manipulated into doing the state’s bidding. Demonstrations were broken up where necessary, before they really got going too. In the West, they called what protests were seen the Failed Uprising of 1989 but that was wholly inaccurate. Tiananmen was an uprising, so too was Bucharest in December of that same year, but what happened in Dresden, Leipzig & Rostock where people were on the streets before being dispersed was never enough to see East Germany descend into chaos and thus fall apart.

Before he was himself forced out, Mikhail Gorbachev was exceptionally unfriendly towards the DDR just when Honecker felt that he needed the Soviets the most. The economy of East Germany tanked and the West refused to help. East Berlin requested the assistance of Moscow to no avail. Gorbachev gave nothing but lectures though. The Soviet leader sucked up to the Americans and left the DDR to wither on the vine. He even suggested openly that East Germany would be best dissolving itself and reunifying with West Germany! With the cold shoulder from the USSR in its own last days, the DDR entered what became known as the ‘special period’. Foreign trade and economic ties were cut (a similar situation later repeated in Cuba & North Korea) by friends who turned into non-friends. Belts were tightened. There were shortages and financial upheaval. There was a serious drop in living standards and East Germans had a spartan yet healthy diet due to food import restrictions. That brought with it trouble from protest movements who sought to reignite the issue during 1990 where once more they called for democracy and the end of the rule of the authoritarian dictatorship in power. Talking heads in the West claimed that in ‘90, the DDR would fall due to internal and external pressures. Things got very difficult indeed. Honecker struggled to hold it all together as he attempted to force his countrymen to accept the situation they found themselves in and keep the faith. East German identity was played up, an exceptionalism: there was less and less focus on communism. Enemies overseas were blamed for all misfortunes. Nonetheless, the regime endured another year in the face of everything thrown its way including a rapidly decreasing birthrate and an economy that made its currency near worthless too.

Honecker’s Politburo supported the Soviet coup attempt in the summer of 1991. That was a serious mistake. The plotters in Moscow, including among them some of those thought closest to the General Secretary, made promises of support for the DDR. Their own people wouldn’t let them get away with what they tried to do though. Gorbachev regained this throne and, while his crown was mortally weakened, East Germany had made an enemy of him by backing those who had temporarily deposed him with the intention of turning the clock back. Moscow cut off the last remaining aid, including, crucially, military technical assistance. Alas, doing anything more was beyond Gorbachev due to the final fall of the Soviet regime. George Bush, the 41st US President, embarrassed himself – the ‘Chicken Kiev’ speech – in trying to keep the Soviet Union together. The USSR was done for with the ending of that empire right before the year was out. The Soviets had created East Germany yet failed the test which Honecker managed to pass in keeping power at home themselves.


In what outsiders would deem a foolish act, something that the DDR surely had to know would come back to bite it it hard when it was likely to fail, there was strong support in early 1992 for a counter-revolution in Romania provided by East German operatives. The parents of Nicu Ceaușescu had been deposed then shot by a kangaroo court at the end of ‘89 and he, who had been groomed to eventually take over there, had escaped to East Germany in the aftermath. An undertaking was made to see the young drunkard return. It failed, miserably. Romanians wanted nothing to do with the boy Ceaușescu. Stasi efforts to see him installed in Bucharest in a blatant assault on democracy blew up in their faces. Ceaușescu lost his life at the hands of his countrymen while the interference of East Germany was exposed for all the world to see. Erich Mielke barely held onto his post as Minister for State Security during a furious argument during a Politburo session in the aftermath: he got the blame for the disaster more than Honecker who had approved the gamble to see an indebted ‘friend’ put in power there in Eastern Europe. Honecker had critics removed from the leadership council, Egon Krenz & Heinz Kessler foremost among them, to save Mielke’s job: losing the Stasi boss might have cost him his own position due to their mutual support of one another. That meeting did the nation’s head of state no end of good health-wise. Two days later, already gravely ill, Honecker had a stroke. It was mild and he recovered yet it left him weakened. None of that was in the public domain but it was known at the top.

Margot Honecker took an increasing role in the Politburo following her husband’s further ill health. She was no ordinary wife of an authoritarian leader. Once a political force in her own right before she met the already married Honecker to have a child with him out of wedlock, Margot had continued to be a political figure after they subsequently married. She cultivated professional relationships and had a power base of her own, one which dramatically increased during East Germany’s special period and the tensions her husband was under. From overseas, there came diplomatic repercussions to what the DDR had done in Romania. The West imposed economic sanctions. There was personal targeting of regime figures within East Germany but more than that, the whole country was lined up for collective punishment. In Bonn, Chancellor Helmet Kohl was replaced by Wolfgang Schäuble due to a different internal political matter and the latter was very sceptical about efforts by European partners and the Americans to cripple East Germany financially so that the regime would fall. West Germany would inherit the mess! Fellow countrymen of Schäuble were amenable to the idea of German reunification, as he too had been before he became leader, but the practicalities had been studied and alarm caused. The cost – in every way – was thought to be immense. Moreover, Schäuble had no desire to see fellow Germans, innocent of the actions of Honecker overseas, gravely suffer. The West Germans limited the sanctions imposed by others. Shortages in the DDR would continue and the economy there took a beating, but the country wouldn’t fall apart with the people left to starve as long as Bonn had any say in the matter. Schäuble successfully put his foot down on that, which angered allies but also fellow West Germans who remained committed to reunification despite the anticipated costs.

Across the Atlantic, Mario Cuomo ran against and defeated the incumbent in that year’s US Presidential Election. It was quite a victory for the Governor of New York, quite a defeat for President Bush. Francois Mitterrand died that same year while in office as the President of France. His long-concealed cancer was announced months before his untimely end. A former prime minister, the young Laurent Fabius, would succeed Mitterrand in the hot seat within Paris to lead France. John Major won his election in the UK to remain British Prime Minister. Boris Yeltsin had also assumed the presidency of the new-born Russian Federation as well. These leadership matters at the top of several of the most influential powers whose foreign policy often was of concern to East Germany changed the landscape for the DDR. Cuomo’s election took place late in the year and he wouldn’t take office until early-’93 but nonetheless, 1992 was a year of so many changes and it all mattered. Britain, France, Russia and the United States were the Allied Powers who had been victorious in World War Two where they had defeated and occupied then-united Germany. East Germany was the result of the former Soviet Union’s occupation zone. Both Germany’s had sovereignty but there were legal technicalities about that which meant that those four countries had a say in the fate of the DDR… or so they thought. Honecker saw things differently and wouldn’t stand for any hint of external interference. In his last years (he had liver failure) he was increasingly hostile towards all of them no matter who was leading each. Yeltsin, even more than Gorbachev, cared nothing for the surviving DDR. He continued the frosty relations and troop pull-out started by Gorbachev. On the issue of foreign soldiers, the three countries in the West had troops in West Berlin – somewhere due to the WW2 hold-over not actually part of West Germany – while the Russians had theirs in East Berlin too. Yeltsin moved troops out of the wider DDR and significantly reduced those in East Berlin yet didn’t withdraw the last of them in that divided city just as the West didn’t fully leave West Berlin despite their own drawdowns. Honecker would call the militarised Berlin – both sides of the city – a thumb in the eye of his country and raged against the continued foreign military presence there more than its actual existence as two separate pieces.

Throughout 1992 & ‘93, suffering under the effects of sanctions, East Germany would involve itself in extensive smuggling to mitigate their effects. Back in the Eighties, the Stasi had been heavily involved in weapons smuggling with the excuse that was it did was to aid foreign liberation movements among oppressed people. That was really about access to foreign currency reserves as well as luxuries for the leadership. During the Nineties, what was done was on a much bigger scale and was about national survival of the DDR itself. Access to the international banking system dominated by the West was cut off as punishment for what had happened in Romania. That really hurt. East Germany struggled to import and export necessities and had to operate outside of that. The smuggling of weapons and illicit goods was more than necessities. There was a lot of ruthlessness involved in it too. Stasi long-term foreign contacts including a very rich Austrian financial magnate and a wealthy Greek businessman were exploited along with new opportunities. The Bulgarian mafia had exploded in size and influence, so too on an even greater scale the more-fractured Russian mafia. There was the Brother’s Circle as well, a transnational group. Only because the agents of the Stasi had the power of a state behind them could they operate with safety among such people in a very cut throat world. Their contacts got what they wanted in exchange, what a nation state could provide too in terms of passports, safe ground & even fool-proof export licenses. The DDR was able to import fuel and foodstuffs. There were shipments of medicines too. The country needed all of that more than it needed the weapons. All across the collapsed Eastern Bloc, there was quite the buyer’s market out there for some quite fancy equipment to be stolen in every conceivable manner. East Germany went shopping, being fussy with what they wanted. The fate of Iraq in 1991 when it had stood up to the West was noted. In East Berlin, there was a fear that one day the Americans and their allies might make war on the DDR. If that happened, East Germany wouldn’t go down in humiliation like Iraq had done. As to Iraq, there were ties aplenty with that country. East Germany had supported Iraq during Desert Storm as part of its long-standing commitment to the PLO and the Palestinian cause. Saddam Hussein had declared himself acting on behalf of Palestine, pretending he wasn’t engaging in grand larceny on the biggest scale when he took Kuwait, and that the DDR was with Baghdad on. Diplomatic support from East Germany didn’t help much though to stop what had happened. The ties were nonetheless maintained post-’91.

Those were put right in the forefront of the mind of Cuomo and the American people when Former President Bush was assassinated during a visit to Kuwait not long after leaving the White House. Saddam blamed the Kuwaitis, the Israelis too. Cuomo refused to do nothing, not when his immediate predecessor had been slain in such a manner by a hostile foreign power. Killing Bush had been an attack against the United States. He authorised air and missile strikes against Iraq which went on for a week. In addition, an undeclared state of war then followed where Cuomo and Saddam were at each other’s throats. East Germany sided with Iraq once more diplomatically. The further ties where missile technology was exchanged was exposed too. Cuomo saw to it that those links, profitable in various ways for each notion, came under extreme pressure. When an East German flagged ship was sunk leaving Aqaba (Jordan’s only port, with Jordan looking the other way to what Baghdad was doing), it was Margot Honecker who spoke to the world to condemn it. Rumours were abound that her husband was gravely ill with everyone sure that his death would see the regime fall. Her public denouncements and presented evidence of American complicity in that attack against an unarmed merchant ship in international waters caused quite the stir. Britain and France were also looking into those East German-Iraqi smuggling links and joint sanction busting in the aftermath. Some of what was going on was uncovered. There were also revelations about how the DDR had links to further instances of international law being violated when Stasi operations with the Bosnian Serbs had a torch shone upon them.


The Bosnian war raged throughout ‘93. Cuomo wanted to intervene with military force against the Bosnia-Serbs, even Belgrade as well. His European partners refused. No one in Western Europe nor NATO wanted to see the conflict continue with genocide right in the heart of the continent continue but the idea of military force being used by outsiders was rejected in Bonn, London, Paris and Brussels too. When the US Secretary of State came over to Europe, she called the desired policy of dealing with the issue of the catastrophe in Bosnia ‘lift and strike’. Arms sanctions against the Croats and the Bosniaks would be lifted and American-led NATO air strikes would be made. There was rejection to that. The Croats and Bosniaks didn’t have clean hands either. A wider war was feared, one that would threaten the peace on the continent outside of just where it had broken down within the backwater which was Bosnia. The trans-Atlantic divide on that issue was pretty strong and wouldn’t break. However, there was agreement on combatting East German activities with regard to the Bosnian Serbs. What was achieved wasn’t much yet the effort was made to forestall the DDR in making something for themselves out of the suffering.

East German borders were never fully sealed. There were ways across the Iron Curtain that the DDR had moved to expand not just facing West Germany but also around all of its long borders too. There were legitimate crossings as well as illegal ones. From out of the country went refugees and defectors as well. The latter departed with tales, even evidence to be presented to intelligence services in the West, of all that the Stasi was up to internationally. Targeted killings of dissents aboard were revealed. For many long years, the DDR had been suspected of doing such things, yet during the special period where the country was effectively embargoed by so much of the outside world, there was finally some proof. Stories about domestic oppression at home were also made public where the regime played it smart in that rather than shooting demonstrators. There was a lot of scepticism when ‘Zersetzung’ was exposed for public scrutiny. It fascinated many in the West though sounded far too fanciful for most people to believe. The reality was proved though. So too did defectors further reveal all that the regime was doing to keep East Germany standing with its illegal activities far afield. Suspicions were confirmed about the acquisition of high-tech weaponry from dubious sources. There were even rumours, though unconfirmed, that the DDR was working to make itself a nuclear power. None of that could be proved nor was there enough strong evidence to give the West the shove to really look hard into that, but the tales were told of East Germany seeking to give itself the ultimate weapon so that the defence of that regime could be made with threats of the employment of such in a worst case scenario.

In October 1993, trouble once more exploded on the streets of Moscow. Yeltsin’s dispute with the communists in the Russian Parliament turned deadly. It wasn’t a coup like two years beforehand but something different indeed. International media coverage was on-hand to see tanks sent by Yeltsin to fire on the Russian White House. Comparisons were made to Sarajevo despite the wholly different circumstances of what happened there. Yeltsin looked certain to win early on though in London, Paris and Washington there were a lot of nerves about the whole situation. The worry was that the clock would be turned back to the Bad Old Days of the Cold War once again if Yeltsin should fail to bring the opposition in the new country which was Russia to heel. Those were misplaced. Yeltsin crushed the parliamentarians. Relief swept the West at that outcome. That only lasted a day though. The story which came out of Moscow afterwards was that Yeltsin, a known heavy drinker, had had one too many and taken a tumble down a flight of stairs in the Kremlin while celebrating victory. He’d hit his head and died as a result. He was pushed as far as many people were concerned… if there had actually been a fall/push and not a death via some other means. Vice President Alexander Rutskoy had been behind the attempt to depose Yeltsin via parliamentary means and had been imprisoned when the siege of the Russian White House was over with. Yeltsin had dismissed Rutskoy right beforehand anyway, leaving the presidency without a clear successor when Yeltsin apparently took his tumble. Several contenders emerged as a possible new president leading to worries abroad that the country might descend into a civil war which would have made that attack on the parliament look trivial in comparison. That wasn’t to be though. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin took charge. He’d stood by Yeltsin though there were rumours that the two of them might have been at odds. That in turn led to later suspicion that it was Chernomyrdin who saw to it that Yeltsin lost his life.

Corruption allegations had long followed Chernomyrdin about. He was sworn in as President of Russia with those hanging over him as far as non-Russians were concerned yet without many Russians troubling themselves about such things. In post-Soviet Russia, that was expected: everyone in power was corrupt and in it for themselves. The people, the state mattered for nought when compared to personal enrichment among their leaders. Off in distant East Berlin, the accession of of Chernomyrdin was welcomed, especially by Mielke. The head of the Stasi and the new Russian leader had a ‘relationship’. It wasn’t one of friendship nor shared ideology. Instead, the leadership of Russia by Chernomyrdin was believed to be only of beneficial to the survival of the East German regime because he had been intimately involved in allowing for the illegal activities of the DDR during sanction busting and weapons smuggling to go on. Chernomyrdin, having taken a cut where he could, wasn’t opposed to East Germany doing what it must to stay standing. A new lease of life was thrown to the Honecker regime with Chernomyrdin gaining power even if Honecker personally still had ill feelings towards Moscow. Events the following year, where changes happened in other countries that East Germany would benefit from too, would only add to that reason to be hopeful that the DDR would stay afloat.

[Raellus]

I'm curious about what our German members think about this alternative history.

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[lordroel]

I'm curious about what our German members think about this alternative history.

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Impossible as there is no way East Germany van survive without it Soviet master.

[lordroel]

Three – The Purple Witch

The East German national identity post-1989 was something studied from afar for how the regime in East Berlin tried to make it real. The country had been a satellite state of the Soviet Union when created and throughout much of its existence. There had been some moves ahead of the fall of the wider Eastern Bloc to change that narrative but that went into overdrive once the Failed Uprising of ‘89 occurred. A whole mythology, a whole load of new lies were told about the German Democratic Republic. Most people nodded along while trying to get along with their lives. Margot Honecker, still increasing her public profile, remained education minister and set about indoctrinating a new tranche of children in the lies. East German youth were already subject to extensive propaganda – catch ‘em young seemed to be the motto of the leader’s wife – and that went further during the special period where the country was near isolated on the world stage. The DDR ‘needed’ enemies. That was part of the ethos of the country as something exceptional where it was the lone warrior standing steadfast against international wrongdoers… rather than being that exact thing itself. Israel was a long-standing target of state-directed angst. So too were the Americans as well in the bastion of capitalism that was the United States. Further opponents, those who it would be claimed threatened the DDR and led to the harsh conditions that the people were suffering under, were sought out. Czechoslovakia had split into two new countries during ‘93 with the new Czech Republic neighbouring East Germany to the southeast. Additionally, there was Poland on the eastern border too. The governments in each were no friends to Honecker’s regime though in Prague & Warsaw the argument would be that it was East Berlin that was hostile towards them. Alleged conspiracies were uncovered where those two countries were working with treasonous citizens within the DDR to do the country harm for nefarious purposes. Spy rings were uncovered and terrorist incidents stopped. Denials came from abroad that these were real. An especially damaging West German television broadcast, seen by millions of East Germans, investigated some of the more outrageous claims and pulled them apart for the bad fiction that they were. Of note was the supposedly plot by Polish ultra-nationalists to seize territory and as part of that conduct a terror attack in East Berlin where the iconic Fernsehturm tower would be toppled to weaken the morale of the people. It was all very ridiculous! That damaging exposé resulted in the propaganda campaign being brought to a suspension.

More than her husband, Margot Honecker was the face of the DDR come 1994. He didn’t make any public appearances nor was there much video footage of him recorded in controlled environments. The Stasi had appropriated Western medical equipment and medicines, as well as paying for some of the best foreign doctors to come in from aboard to treat him, but Erich Honecker’s last days approached. He couldn’t be saved. Successors were making moves to replace him but his wife was determined that it was to be her instead. Both domestically and internationally, there was widespread opinion that no woman was capable of leading a nation such as East Germany. Women in the Twentieth Century had led such countries as Britain, India & Israel but none of them were authoritarian one-party oppressive states. It wasn’t conceivable that she would replace her husband no matter how much she sought to position herself to succeed him. Public appearances, regular broadcasts to the East German people, speeches made before the UN in New York… none of that mattered to those who said that Margot Honecker would never become the next leader of East Germany. Those same people were the ones who kept on saying that the country was on verge of collapse and would any day fall though and they’d been saying that since ‘89.

East German athletes had gone to the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Medals had been won aplenty where the national team competed in the sporting events in that Spanish city: they took home over a hundred of them. That total was more than twice what the West Germans did. Such achievements were widely celebrated by the state. A small country such as the DDR took pride in doing so well on the world stage. Allegations swirled in the background of state-sponsored doping but nothing could be proved on that. It was all rather suspicious that their athletes could achieve all that they did. East Germany had also played at the football World Cup in Italy in ‘90. There had been a dismal performance there which had come on the back of the ‘miracle in Vienna’ during November ‘89 where qualification had come for that tournament. In the summer of ‘94, the World Cup was staged in the United States. The two Germany’s qualified with East Germany managing to get there by knocking out England (on home turf at Wembley too!) from the qualifying round the late year before. The embarrassment in England was quite profound while the DDR held up that outcome as an example of the prowess of the state. When across the Atlantic, first a non-playing member of the travelling squad and then a central defender too both defected. They deserted their team and their country to cause a media storm by both making notable public statements, in good English as well, denouncing their nation and imploring the West to save their fellow citizens. East Germany went out of the tournament at the first hurdle, failing in the group stages, and (theoretically) denying fans the chance to see an East vs. West contest in the third stage where the two Germany’s could have met in the quarter finals. When the team came home, there was talk at the highest levels of putting in ‘preventative measures’ to ensure that when the ‘96 Olympics took place in Atlanta two years in the future, such high-profile defections wouldn’t happen again.

Britain gained a new leader that same summer. Prime Minister Major was engulfed in a personal scandal going back to the Eighties of an extra-martial affair with a former fellow junior minister. The revelations came at the height of the ‘sleaze’ issue besetting his party and government. Major was unable to hold on, not when the tabloids went all out against him followed by a crisis of confidence among his senior ministers in his ability to keep on leading them towards the next general election. A leadership challenge came from outside of his Cabinet and it was one he barely won: the circumstances were almost the same as what had occurred with his predecessor four years beforehand. A second round of voting was needed and Major dropped out of that at the last minute (again, mirroring ‘90 and Thatcher) when it was clear that he had lost so much support. Michael Heseltine emerged as the final victor there and would become the new PM before the end of July. Dealing with East Germany wasn’t a priority at the outset of the Heseltine Ministry but, unlike Major, the UK’s new leader was willing to see more done than had previously been government policy when faced with such an unpleasant, hostile regime subjugating its people and acting illegally on the world stage too.


August 1st saw the death of the DDR’s leader. Honecker finally succumbed to liver failure in the face of every effort to keep him alive. The death wasn’t immediately announced and was a state secret initially. His demise came at a time when Mielke was overseas on a trip to Iraq. The Minister of Security was considered to be the likely replacement no matter how much Margot Honecker had positioned herself as heir-apparent. He at once set about returning home, flying on a military aircraft which had taken him to Iraq a few days beforehand. Joining the head of the Stasi aboard the Soviet-built Tupolev-154 converted airliner outfitted for VIP tasks was Saddam’s eldest son. Uday Hussein was a regular visitor to East Germany and invited himself along for the flight. Propriety should have seen that not done yet Mielke was cultivating a deeper DDR–Iraq alliance for the future where he believed that Saddam wouldn’t be around forever. Uday wanted to pay his respects and so flew on the same aircraft. That Tu-154 went through Syrian airspace and then out over the Med. A refuelling stop was planned to occur in Libya ahead of a final inbound flight to East Berlin. However, the aircraft never made it to Tripoli when it disappeared from radar screens over the Gulf of Sirte. Somewhat of a Cold War aerial battleground between the Libyans and the US Navy, that stretch of the Med. was away from the regular airline routes. There were no direct witnesses to the fate of the aircraft carrying East Germany’s security chief and the son of Saddam. Gaddafi was a loss as to what had happened too. Allegations were made internationally that Mielke and Uday had been assassinated though as to whom was behind that, there were multiple parties supposedly responsible: the Americans, the Israelis, the West Germans etc. It was even said that Iraq or East Germany were behind it due to those onboard and those promoting such a theory having outlandish ideas on the reasoning behind those claims.

The truth of the matter would for the foreseeable future remain unclear though.

When Mielke didn’t return to East Germany, Margot Honecker’s position as the successor to her husband was unchallengeable. No one else, all those second-rate male potential leaders, was in-position to make a real claim on the top job. The Politburo voted her into power. After that, the death of her husband was then announced to the public. It took the East German people – just as it did Western intelligence services – by complete surprise despite the long-term inevitability of that. Honecker had seemingly been dying forever with reports throughout the years that he was close to death never followed up by a final report of him passing away. Finally he did though. Margot announced it herself, taking full prominence in the state’s response to it all. What she expected as a reaction from the people of the DDR was a respectful period of national mourning followed them giving her the respect as their new leader which she believed she deserved. That wasn’t what happened at all.

It was the summer and young people weren’t at their places of education. With warm weather adding to the situation, such background factors as those helped create the atmosphere for a mass of people to come out and demonstrate. Organisers worked fast and impromptu to fill the streets of East German cities with people, especially the young, to demand that the country be given democracy and freedom. Honecker was dead and his wife wasn’t wanted as his replacement. Pre-warned during that period of it happening and his death being made public, the Stasi was ready to meet an attempt at mass subversion by known troublemakers. There were low-visibility arrests made and even a lot of disinformation put out there too. Nonetheless, the unorganised opposition in East Germany managed to put on quite the display. They did fill the streets with people. Where they failed in their efforts to bring about profound, wholescale change was coordination. There was a rush to get things going and not enough working together ahead of time. Infiltration by the Stasi was extensive and debilitating to the disunited movement to overthrow the regime. The result was a second failed uprising, five years after the first. Margot didn’t have to order police and troops to fire en masse on protesters. Demonstrations were dealt with using non-lethal force combined with that internal weakening of the movement. Public order was eventually restored as once more. The people of the DDR hadn’t been able to do what else had been done across Eastern Europe and get rid of the dictatorship that causing them so much suffering.

An unfortunate sobriquet for Margot was the name ‘the purple witch’. It was her tinted hair and her reputation as an authoritarian, a cruel one at that. Germans both sides of the divide between their country despised her. One of the UK tabloids deemed her ‘Cruella’ and that was picked up in America too as a description. Regardless, the purple witch was her name to the public in the two Germany’s. She took a firm grip on power once she had it and showed no intention of giving it up. Margot secured her position by putting in an ally of hers to replace Mielke too. Wolfgang Schwanitz took over the Stasi with Margot raising him up to the Politburo as well. Foreign observers noted other promotions, demotions and changes within the regime as well where they concerned what East Germany’s new leader did after she stopped that ill-prepared domestic opposition movement seeking to see change made. Reputed figures from either the Stasi, the influential Border Troops organisation and the East German Armed Forces’ own political service – the PHV – gained powerful positions. It was said that the new look regime was becoming one run by securocrats. The old school communists were out and it was people with a security & intelligence background who Margot surrounded herself with to maintain her position. Doing that was, as far as commentators were concerned, was never a long-term viable strategy for her own continued rule yet there was agreement that it gave her breathing room to guard against an internal effort to topple her not from protesters but political figures pushed aside. In addition, it also was something that was remarked upon as sure to expand what East Germany was involved in internationally in the shadows.

Bulgaria had a change of government late in the year while there had too been during 1994 a new leader installed within Belarus too. Mielke had opened ties with Belarus but Margot expanded them just as she made contact too with Bulgaria’s supposedly reformed communists down in Sofia. Those were personal connections as well. It was the same with Chernomyrdin in Moscow. He came to the funeral of her husband and stayed for several days at a guest house within the Waldsiedlung residential complex outside of East Berlin. That was where the leadership all had their homes, where they were guarded extensively and lived in luxury too. Chernomyrdin made it clear that he had no intention of seeing a return to previous Soviet-DDR relations but Margot was equally clear that she wasn’t asking for that. Instead, what she wanted was friendship and cooperation between the two nations. Schwanitz attended a meeting with the Russian president as well. What had gone on before with sanction busting would carry on. Personal enrichment would also continue for those involved though everyone politely didn’t mention that. Chernomyrdin had a rising group of influential securocrats at home and when he returned to Moscow, his instructions for them were to work with the East Germans more than before. There was mutual interest in the DDR remaining afloat. Unlike Yeltsin, the West was absolutely distrusted by Chernomyrdin. The notion of East Germany being a lighting rod for their unfriendly attentions, rather than on Russia, appealed to him. Russia was back at war with the rebellious Chechens and the distraction that the DDR was to the West was welcomed. Nonetheless, what Chernomyrdin couldn’t foresee was that how far his new ally would press things the following year when it came to the growing confrontation with the West.

Margot aka the purple witch aka Cruella was just going to go too far with the hostile behaviour directed towards fellow countries far closer to home than Russia was. That would be something Chernomyrdin wouldn’t like nor desire at all.

[lordroel]

Four – At it again

No wreckage of the aircraft nor remains of those aboard were found following the Gulf of Sirte air crash in August 1994. There had been two notable passengers aboard but also thirteen others who vanished with them along with the East German Air Force’s Tu-154. Like magic, every trace of the passengers and mode of transport had disappeared.

Mielke’s apparent death had a big impact on the future of East Germany with a lot of attention paid to that. However, Uday Hussein was the second notable passenger aboard the VIP transport jet that had been flying from Iraq to the DDR via Libya. He was Saddam’s eldest son. He was also quite the incarnation of the devil. Thoroughly evil in every way, few tears would ever be shed over his demise. Saddam had had many disputes with Uday, violent ones at that, but he was still his son and heir-apparent. Libya’s leader, Colonel Gaddafi, a fellow Arab strongman dynamically opposed to the West, had no answers for what had occurred. All he could say was that the aircraft never reached Tripoli where it was supposed to refuel for an onwards flight to East Berlin. That response didn’t satisfy Saddam. He became insanely suspicious that Libya had something to do with the aircraft disappearing and his son vanishing like that. Elsewhere, there were allegations that maybe the Americans, the Israelis even the East Germans themselves had had something to do with it all. Saddam’s mind imagined Libyan complicity though. Qusay Hussein, younger sibling of Uday, expressed doubt to that effect: it made more sense to him to have been either the work of the devious West or Margot Honecker where she secured her position as the new leader without Mielke to stop that. Nonetheless, Saddam wouldn’t be swayed especially when Gaddafi refused to allow Iraqi investigators to fly to Libya. He did let the East Germans send some people but claimed that Libya wouldn’t violate its sovereignty by allowing Iraqis to come an investigate. In the minds of uninformed outsiders, Iraq and Libya were thought to be close in many ways with regard to their shared hostility towards Israel, the United States and the Western-accommodating Gulf Arabs. That wasn’t the case at all though. There was a long-standing clash of personalities between Gaddafi and Saddam meaning that their countries were at odds because each man considered their countries to be no more than an extension of themselves. Both were involved with the East German’s illegal overseas activities through the early Nineties yet had worked to cheat and undercut each other. Mielke had been involved in trying to bring them together to help the DDR yet the only effect had actually been to strain tensions. A married niece of Gaddafi’s had been in East Berlin at a cultural event where Uday had been a guest like she & her husband. Uday had subjected her to a violent sexual assault just like he had done hundreds, maybe thousands of women. Saddam remembered Gaddafi’s fury at that just as he recalled Libya’s history with attacks against aircraft (Lockerbie) and mysterious disappearances (Musa al-Sadr).

The following month, an armed kidnapping occurred in Geneva. That Swiss city was somewhere that foreigners in Europe often visited and among them Arab princelings: royal or those of dictatorial families. The nineteen year-old Mutassim Gaddafi was snatched from outside his hotel with his bodyguards roughed up but left alive to later face the ire of Libya’s ruler. The mercenary team who took the fourth-born son of Gaddafi flew him via a light aircraft to Slovenia after they left Swiss territory for France. From that small, new European country which had not long beforehand been part of Yugoslavia, Mutassim was then put on a larger aircraft by Iraqi agents who took him to Baghdad. Gaddafi had other sons but Saddam was certain that Mutassim would be missed by his father. After a week, contact was made with the Libyans. Saddam used a Lebanese intermediary to send a message to Gaddafi. A trade was demanded: Mutassim for Uday. Gaddafi was unable to make that trade. Furthermore, he was just as enraged as Saddam had been when it came to the fate of one of his sons. That middleman, a notorious arms dealer who had been working with Iraq, Libya & East Germany for some time, was punished for his agency for Saddam with Gaddafi having him shot dead. An Iraqi diplomat working down in the Sudan, in contact with a rich Saudi exile who set himself up a base of operations in that African country, was likewise murdered at Gaddafi’s express orders to show the long reach of Libya. Directly, Saddam was told to return Mutassim or the killings would continue.

Mielke’s successor Schwanitz was aghast at all that happened. The violent spat between those two Arab dictators was unwelcome in countless ways. Both nations were working with the DDR in efforts to ensure the security of his country where weapons and technology were shared illegally all in violation of international law. Those killings took place in other countries where there was no way of controlling the news. Western intelligence agencies were aware of what was going on and, while examining the Iraqi-Libya spat, were able to see all of the connections between it all. Schwanitz met with Tariq Aziz. No longer Iraq’s foreign minister, Aziz was still an important figure in Saddam’s regime. Schwanitz urged Aziz for Iraq to release Mutassim. There were no evidence at all that Libya was complicit in the death of Uday. It looked like an accident as far as East Germany was concerned. His country had lost its minister of security, Iraq had lost a ‘beloved son of the revolution’ and Schwanitz didn’t want to see Libya’s leader lose a child over what was all one big misunderstanding. What was happening with the foreign spooks all over everything was too brought up with Schwanitz focusing Aziz’s attention on that. Iraq needed to keep open those channels of embargoed goods flowing just as East Germany and Libya did too. Mutassim was released before the end of September following three weeks in Iraqi custody. Saddam let him go right at a time when he was engaged in another foreign crisis, one of far more significance that the violent dispute with Libya’s leader.


In 1991, the US-led Operation Desert Storm had smashed Iraq apart and thrown Saddam out of Kuwait. Bush had ordered air strikes against Iraq in the final days of his presidency and then Cuomo had struck extensively with his own wave of air & missile attacks following the post-presidential assassination of Bush. The twin ‘93 American attacks against Iraq hadn’t been as devastating as those two years earlier yet they had still hurt the regime. Cuomo had kept Operation Southern Watch in-place during his presidency where US aircraft flew operations through Iraqi airspace denying Iraq the ability to fly above their own country. Incidents occurred on and off over Iraq. Days before he released Mutassim, in something that would afterwards be pointed to as a factor in that decision so that Saddam would by some goodwill aboard among friends, a SAM battery lofted a pair of missiles to bring down an American jet. One of those SAMs struck a US Air Force F-16 with the pilot ejecting. Iraqi troops tried to locate him and so too did American special forces too. Instead of locating the pilot, they engaged each other in a deadly firefight which left several dead: the pilot himself wandered the desert and would be overcome by the elements leading to his demise. Four Americans – plus the pilot whose fate wasn’t revealed for some time – died in that deadly September 26th incident. Cuomo wouldn’t, couldn’t do nothing in response to it all. There was just no way that he would be able to not make a reply Southern Watch was a UN-backed operation to maintain no-fly zones across Iraq to stop Saddam from committing genocide against his own people. While taking part in that internationally authorised operation, American forces had been deliberately attacked. He addressed the American people and made that justification for taking action against Iraq in response.

Cuomo wasn’t a supporter of foreign intervention. He had inherited the Iraqi mess from Bush. Those attacks he had made to avenge his predecessor’s death had been something that had to be done after Saddam had murdered Bush – a killing that Saddam had never taken responsibility for, claiming repeatedly that Iraq had been framed – and the air missions flown over Iraq since were an issue that he regarded himself as being forced into continuing. During much of ‘94, the 42nd President had in fact been overseeing a wind-down of American commitment to Southern Watch. His personal fears, expressed to his vice president, were that the United States would be eventually drawn into a proper conflict with Iraq in the end should the overflights carry on for good. It wasn’t just with Iraq where Cuomo was weary of getting involved in. Members of his administration, plus an influential bloc in Congress, oh and throughout much of the US Intelligence Community as well, there was a push for US military intervention in Bosnia and to also act against East Germany as well. Yet, the role of ‘world policeman’ wasn’t one which he wanted to play. When it came to responding to the September ‘94 incident, once more Cuomo didn’t see that he had a choice though. American lives had been lost and that came alongside ongoing Iraqi efforts to acquire long-range missiles along with maybe weapons of mass destruction to arm them. He authorised a deployment of forces to the Gulf to build-up strength ahead of an attack being made against Saddam’s regime.

Iraqi tanks started moving first though. To placate the East Germans and cease Libyan aggressive actions, Mutassim was released right before a good portion of the Republican Guard started rolling southwards towards the Kuwaiti border. It would be many years later when defectors from the Iraqi regime claimed that there had actually been a plan afoot before that F-16 was shot down for Kuwait to be re-invaded come late ‘94 with Saddam determined to do it as he watched Cuomo wind-down Southern Watch. The unwillingness of Cuomo to fight a continuation of what some in the West called ‘Bush’s war’ was taken note of in Baghdad with Saddam eyeing taking another shot at Kuwait. How true any of that actually really was was debatable. Most US forces were in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain or out in the Gulf but there were still some boots on the ground in Kuwait. The tank columns which Saddam had moved southwards ready to make that final drive down towards the Kuwaiti border had gone into jumping off points during July. SAM cover had escorted them and it was one of the supporting batteries which started the shooting. Those facts gave credence to the belief that Saddam was going to invade, though detractors of such a theory stated that it was all about posturing. Whatever the truth, the Republican Guard closed up upon the Kuwaiti frontier with a trio of tank-heavy divisions faster than the Americans could get their forces into place. Everyone held their breath waiting for them to go over the line in the sand which was the frontier and once more storm Kuwait. Should they had, there would have been quite the fight indeed with the Americans. Soldiers and marines had been flown to the Middle East to meet up with pre-positioned equipment while airmen were also deploying with their aircraft too. Operation Desert Knight was a major US deployment that involved carrier groups likewise racing full steam ahead towards the region. The Saudis and the other Gulf Arabs hit the panic button and made an urgent mobilisation. American allies outside of the Middle East signalled their intent to support the mission too. Saddam looked like he was at it again with designs on conquering his neighbour. Differences of opinion with Washington over Southern Watch were put aside with the possibility that Iraq would once more seek to overrun Kuwait.

The Republican Guard moved into defensive positions though. They didn’t cross into Kuwait but rather deployed to guard against an attack coming out of Kuwait to violate Iraqi soil. Saddam got them in-place fast and their arrangement was supported by later arriving lighter infantry units who deployed to protect against an amphibious landing. He also spread out armed units across the desert far back from the border to have soldiers on-hand to fight against further American heli-borne employments of attackers as well. The whole thing was ultimately defensive. Those who said in later years that he had been planning to invade Kuwait at that time would claim that at the last minute he changed the battle plan to a defensive one: again, the detractors of such theory would point to there being no evidence of any invasion really planned. It all might have been defensive, yet Desert Knight continued. The Americans moved significant forces into the region and then Cuomo ordered the start of an aerial bombardment come October 4th. Bombs and cruise missiles slammed into Iraq with a focus against air defences throughout the south of the country. Baghdad wasn’t hit and neither were the Republican Guard. Just as Saddam didn’t seem intent to take the final step and send his tanks over the border, Cuomo would eventually settle for not making a full-on assault against Iraq as it had been first believed he might do. Domestic political opponents back home weren’t happy. Cuomo was accused of cowardice, of not wanting to truly punish Iraq for what it had done.

When the three days of American attacks came to an end, that wasn’t the end of Desert Knight nor, ultimately, Southern Watch too. Saddam kept his army in the field deployed where it was right next to Kuwait. If it had gone back home, Cuomo would have wanted to see US forces slowly withdrawn back to pre-crisis levels even if he couldn’t manage a complete disengagement from the whole matter as he had started the year on course to possibly pull off. American troops stayed in Kuwait throughout the rest of the year with there being no indication of when a later withdraw could be made. Saddam had his army seemingly ready to strike the moment that they might leave, which would result in a long-term expensive and resource-committing deployment there.