Spanish Civil War
From 1936 to 1939 Mielke served in Spain as an operative of the Servicio Investigación Militar, the political police of the Second Spanish Republic. While attached to the staff of future Stasi minister Wilhelm Zaisser, Mielke used the alias Fritz Leissner.
At the time, the S.I.M. was heavily staffed by agents of the Soviet NKVD, whose Spanish rezident was General Aleksandr Mikhailovich Orlov. According to author Donald Rayfield,
"Stalin, Yezhov, and Beria distrusted Soviet participants in the Spanish war. Military advisors like Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, journalists like Koltsov were open to infection by the heresies, especially Trotsky's, prevalent among the Republic's supporters. NKVD agents sent to Spain were therefore keener on abducting and murdering anti-Stalinists among Republican leaders and International Brigade commanders than on fighting Franco. The defeat of the Republic, in Stalin's eyes, was caused not by the NKVD's diversionary efforts, but by the treachery of the heretics."
Walter Janka, a German communist and company commander in the International Brigade, was repeatedly interrogated by Mielke, who falsely accused him of spying for the Falangists. In an interview years later, Janka recalled:
"While I was fighting at the front, shooting at the Fascists, Mielke served in the rear, shooting Trotskyites and Anarchists."
After the defeat of the Spanish Republic, Mielke fled to France and was interned with thousands of his comrades. However, he soon escaped and returned to the Soviet Union.
Read more about this topic: Erich Mielke
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