Erich Fritz Emil Mielke (December 28, 1907 – May 21, 2000) was a German secret police official in the service of the Soviet Union and East Germany.After being one of two triggermen the 1931 murder of Berlin Police Captains Paul Anlauf and Franz Lenck, Mielke escaped prosecution by fleeing to the USSR and was recruited into the NKVD. He was one of the perpetrators of the Great Purge as well as the Stalinist decimation of the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War.Following the end of World War II, Mielke returned to the Soviet Zone of Occupied Germany, which he helped organize into a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship under the Socialist Unity Party (SED).Between 1957 and 1989, Mielke headed East Germany's Ministry for State Security (MfS or Stasi). During his tenure as, "the longest serving secret police chief in the Soviet Bloc," Mielke transformed the Stasi into, "the largest, best equipped and most pervasive police state apparatus ever to exist on German soil."In addition to his role as head of the secret police, Mielke was also a General in the East German Army and member of the SED's ruling Politburo. Dubbed, "The Master of Fear," (German: der Meister der Angst) by the West German press, Erich Mielke was one of the most powerful and most hated men in East Germany. After German reunification, Erich Mielke was prosecuted, convicted, and incarcerated for the 1931 murders of Captains Anlauf and Lenck.Australian journalist Anna Funder has written of Mielke, "It is said that psychopaths, people utterly untroubled by conscience, make supremely effective generals and politicians, and perhaps he was one."
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