Secret police kept file detailing communist leader's Nazi past

The Stasi secret police reportedly kept a hidden dossier on East Germany's once-revered leader, Erich Honecker, and forced him to resign in 1989 by threatening to expose his wartime attempts to collaborate with the Nazis.

Details from the 25-page dossier by the communist-era Ministry for State Security, published by the Bild am Sonntag paper yesterday, showed it was compiled in 1971 on the orders of Erich Mielke, East Germany's feared and detested Stasi chief, to ensure he remained the real power behind the communist throne.

The paper said at an explosive East German politburo meeting in October 1989, the country in deep crisis as thousands of its citizens fled to the West, Mielke threatened to reveal his "black file" on Honecker, causing him to resign almost immediately.

Shortly after, Honecker was replaced by Egon Krenz, the communist apparatchik groomed to succeed him. The Berlin Wall fell less than a month later.

Honecker, who was a member of the German Communist party before World War II, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1937 and held until 1945 in a Nazi prison.

Throughout his 19 years as East German leader, he was lauded by his own regime as an anti-fascist hero and one of the Nazis' most ardent opponents.

However, Mielke's file, which was drawn up soon after Honecker's appointment as leader, shows that he had tried to convince the Gestapo he had renounced communism and was prepared to fight at the front for Hitler's "Final Victory".

The dossier also reveals that while in Gestapo custody, Honecker gave wide-ranging evidence incriminating fellow imprisoned communists.

The dossier shows that Honecker asked his father to press for a political amnesty and twice got him to petition the Nazi authorities with a letter claiming that his son had renounced communism for good.

After his 1945 release, and completely untainted by Nazism, Honecker played a key role in the creation of the Soviet satellite state of East Germany, and helped organise building of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

The secret file on Honecker, kept in Mielke's safe at Stasi headquarters in East Berlin, would have been viewed as high treason even under East Germany's communist system.

Mielke kept silent about the file's contents until his death in 2000. The red leather case it was kept in was recently found among Stasi files held by the reunited Germany.

- Independent