East German term for the use of lethal force at the East-West border to prevent defection
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After German reunification in 1990, East German leader Erich Honecker was indicted by the Berlin District Court on charges of mass murder stemming from the Schießbefehl orders. However, his failing health and legal disputes over jurisdiction led his trial to be abandoned.
All occurrences at border outposts were kept secret from the general public, with each attempted or followed by a formal investigation by the military prosecution authority and the Ministry for State Security (Stasi).[citation needed] Often the shooter would be transferred to another military unit and ordered to keep silent. [citation needed] By contrast, when a fugitive crossed the border into West Germany, disciplinary measures were taken against those border guards who had failed to prevent this. Many border guards tried to let fugitives escape while deflecting such accusations by deliberately shooting off-target.
In 1968, the Einsatzkompanie was founded as a special unit of the Stasi dedicated to preventing the defection of guards from the Border Troops.
At the Berlin Wall
East Germany began to tighten its emigration laws during the 1950s, creating increasingly strict criteria for legal migration to non-Warsaw Pact countries, including requirements for de-registration with East German authorities and permission to leave the country under threat of prison sentences up to one year. [citation needed] The construction of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 saw the illegalization of unregistered border crossings, with the law only allowing legal border crossings at Grenzübergangsstellen ("checkpoints"), and requests for migration received approval from authorities. Checkpoint Charlie was special, since this was one of the few border crossing points in Berlin where foreigners could enter East Berlin. Elsewhere, warning signs were posted telling people not to enter the border zone, known as "death strips", due to the presence of landmines (which were attempted to be removed, however due to harsh winters the landmines had migrated) [2]
The new migration system particularly favoured the travel of elderly East Germans, due to their stronger connections to the citizens of the West. [3]
On 6 February 1989, Schießbefehl was formally abolished. Overall, an official total of about 37 people were killed attempting to cross at the Berlin Wall, at the main East-West border, or via the Baltic Sea according to the Free University Berlin. And an unknown number were wounded or later arrested. Victims of this system also include border guards who were shot by fugitives and their supporters & West German border guards, from the same Free University Berlin study. The very last "victim of the Wall" was Winfried Freudenberg, dead by falling from an improvised flight device.[clarification needed]
Reunification
After German reunification in October 1990, the Todesschützen ("death shooters": soldiers who allegedly killed those attempting to escape East Germany) were brought to trial in the federal courts in what were known as the Mauerschützen-Prozesse ("Wall shooters trials"). Also, high-ranking officers of the Border Troops and the East German National Defense Council were charged in court. The verdicts generally agreed that even the common soldier should have and must have recognised that the East German border laws were so fundamentally in conflict with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which East Germany had signed and ratified, that they were not law at all but formalized injustice, and thus the soldiers ought to have disobeyed their commanding officers.[4]
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