First, to call out "Halt, stehenbleiben, oder ich schieße!".
Next, to fire a warning shot.
Finally, if the fugitive failed to comply, to fire an aimed shot, preferably at the legs, to stop the person.
The Border Troops were told to avoid shooting in the direction of the territory of West Berlin and West Germany. from West Berlin in 1986, showing the "death strip" built on the former Luisenstadt Canal in Kreuzberg. All occurrences at border outposts were kept secret from the general public, with each attempted or successful escape followed by a formal investigation by the military prosecution authority and the Ministry for State Security. After stopping a potential escape attempt, the shooter would be granted a special leave and rewarded with commendations and cash bonuses. Often the shooter would be transferred to another military unit and ordered to keep silent. By contrast, when a fugitive was successful and crossed the border into West Germany, disciplinary measures were taken against those border guards who had failed to prevent this "Grenzverletzung und Republikflucht", which often included prison terms in the infamous military prison at Schwedt. Many border guards tried to let fugitives escape while deflecting such accusations by deliberately shooting off-target. When would-be escapees were killed, strict regulations were imposed on the family regarding the funeral; for instance, no obituaries were to be printed in the local newspapers. To avoid negative press, the Schießbefehl was suspended for public holidays or state visits. In 1968, the Einsatzkompanie was founded as a special unit of the Stasi dedicated to preventing the defection of guards from the Border Troops.
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 the leave the country under threat of prison sentences up to three years. The construction of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961 saw the effective illegalization of Republikflucht, with the law only allowing legal border crossings at so-called Grenzübergangsstellen, and requests for migration received very limited 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", and any violation was considered a criminal act. After construction of the Berlin Wall, with authorized travel by East Germans into West Germany and West Berlin incredibly difficult, the number of migrants dropped sharply from hundreds of thousands to only several hundred per year. The new migration system particularly discriminated against young East Germans, leading many to become motivated to attempt a desperate flight over the Inner German border despite the dangers.
Deaths
On 6 February 1989, Schießbefehl was formally abolished. Overall, an official total of about 260 people were killed attempting to cross at the Berlin Wall, at the main East-West border, or via the Baltic Sea. The exact number of fatalities is difficult to estimate and an unknown number were heavily wounded and later arrested. Victims of this system also include border guards who were shot by fugitives and their supporters. In Berlin alone, 190 people were killed in the course of 28 years, and the last-known victim of the Berlin Wall was Chris Gueffroy. Schießbefehl occurrences at the border were also recorded by the Bundesgrenzschutz, the West Berlin police, and by the military police of the Allied Forces. Files were collected in the central registration office at Salzgitter.
Reunification
After German reunification in October 1990, the Todesschützen were brought to trial in the federal courts in what were known as the Mauerschützen-Prozesse. 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.
