History of Germany (1945–90) eventually hundreds of thousands of people in several cities—particularly in Leipzig—continued to grow. On 7 October, the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited Berlin to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the establishment of East Germany and urged the East German leadership to pursue reform, without success. The movement of civil resistance against the East German regime—both the emigration and the demonstrations—continued unabated. On 18 October, Erich Honecker was forced to resign as head of the SED and as head of state and was replaced by Egon Krenz. But the exodus continued unabated, and pressure for political reform mounted. On 4 November,
Erich Honecker then spoke, in turn, but none in favour of Honecker. Günter Schabowski even extended the dismissal of Honecker to also include his posts in the State Council and as Chairman of the National Defence Council while childhood friend Günter Mittag moved away from Honecker. Mielke supposedly blamed Honecker for almost all the country’s current ills and threatened to publish compromising information that he possessed, if Honecker refused to resign. A ZDF documentary on the matter claims this information was contained in a large red briefcase found in Mielke's possession in 1990. After three hours the Politburo voted to remove Honecker.