Matthias accused Egon Krenz of having asked Mikhail Gorbachev during a visit to Moscow on November 1, 1989, for the deployment of Soviet troops against East German citizens. Gorbachev rejected this and stated that the troops would remain in their barracks. Krenz only signed the order against the use of firearms on November 3, Matthias wrote. He claimed that Krenz later falsely asserted that he had prevented bloodshed in the fall of 1989. The responsible commanders on the ground had waited in vain for orders from the leadership and had independently ordered not to shoot. Matthias also accused Krenz of shared responsibility for election fraud in May 1989 and wrote that he had approved of the Tiananmen massacre. Furthermore, Matthias pointed out that Krenz had been sentenced in 1997 to six years and six months in prison for manslaughter and co-responsibility for the East German border regime, of which he had served nearly four years. He criticized Krenz's complaints about the conditions of his detention in the Plötzensee prison, his defense of the GDR, and his complaints about the amount of his pension. Matthias also wrote that Krenz had only been in power for 50 days before being ousted by the people, and he stated that he should have been entitled to social welfare instead of pension and royalty payments. #DDR #Gorbatschow #Wende (translated)
