Most people assume the Berlin Wall’s shoot-to-kill policy died with the Cold War. The trial of Egon Krenz proved otherwise. On August 25, 1997, a unified German court in Berlin found the former East German head of state guilty of manslaughter. The verdict hinged not on him pulling a trigger, but on his role in the National Defense Council that formally upheld the *Schießbefehl*—the order for border guards to use lethal force to prevent escapes. He received a six-and-a-half-year sentence.
This conviction mattered as a delayed, but definitive, legal reckoning. It established that political leaders could be held criminally responsible for systemic state violence, even under the shield of a vanished regime’s laws. The trial meticulously reconstructed the chain of command, linking Krenz and other Politburo members to the deaths of specific individuals. It treated the GDR’s border policy not as politics, but as homicide.
The event is often framed as victor’s justice. Krenz argued he was being judged by the laws of a country that did not exist at the time of the crimes. The court rejected this, ruling that the policy violated fundamental human rights recognized in both German and international law, which took precedence over the GDR’s own constitution. The legal principle was clear: you cannot defend murder by calling it a legal order.
The impact was a template. The Krenz trial, along with others of border guards and their commanders, provided a blueprint for transitional justice. It demonstrated that a society could legally dissect and condemn the machinery of its oppressive past, setting a precedent that would be studied in post-conflict nations for decades.