Honecker Plans to Use Army in Crisis Told

Former East German leader Erich Honecker wanted to use the army to put down demonstrators before he was ousted, but the hard-line leader was restrained by his successor, Egon Krenz, a non-Communist political leader said Friday.

Manfred Gerlach, head of East Germany’s Liberal Democratic Party, which is allied with the Communists, said in a West German television interview that Honecker considered the young people who demonstrated for reforms counterrevolutionaries.

Honecker wanted to send units of the East German army to Leipzig when he heard of plans for a mass demonstration of several hundred thousand on Oct. 9, Gerlach said. He believed that the West was behind the demonstration.

The Oct. 9 demonstration was one of the first of the mass protests nationwide that helped force the replacement of Honecker, 77, by his 52-year-old protege, Krenz.

Krenz, Gerlach said, blocked Honecker from using the army by using his authority as the Communist Party security chief.

Honecker was ousted Oct. 19 by a unanimous vote of the old 21-member Politburo, the top party body, and was dropped from Parliament.

A former East German intelligence chief, meanwhile, told a West German newspaper that Honecker and Guenter Mittag, the 66-year-old former economics minister, should be put on trial as a way for the new government to regain the confidence of East Germans.

Markus Wolf, chief of East Germany’s foreign intelligence until 1987, said he felt a trial might be necessary although the two former leaders might escape without a prison sentence and be given probation, the West German daily Bild said.

“I don’t think there is any other way to regain the trust of the people,” said Wolf, who has emerged as an advocate of reform.