Siegfried Müller

When the Congo became independent in 1960, clashes between rival groups ensued. White mercenaries with war experience are also involved in the conflicts. They include Germans who, under the leadership of the former Wehrmacht officer Siegfried Müller, brutally attack the black population. After the "Stern" reporter Gerd Heidemann had uncovered the machinations, the GDR filmmaker Walter Heynowski made a politically motivated documentary about Siegfried "Kongo Müller". Now Siegfried Ressel has reconstructed the story of the German mercenaries and the propaganda argument about their use.

The epilogue to the film "The Laughing Man" (1966), which alternates between objectivity and anger, exposes the involvement of the West German mercenary Siegfried Müller in the war against the Congolese government Lumumba. In the sequel, new witnesses against Major Müller have their say, including a former school friend and a French paratrooper colonel. GDR lawyer Kaul reports on the status of the criminal proceedings against Müller, while the final images show the war criminal feeding the ducks in South Africa.

Posing as West German journalists, East German documentary filmmakers Heynowski and Scheumann pay a visit to the notorious Nazi-turned-mercenary Siegfried “Kongo” Müller, pump him with booze, and get him to talk about his life and war campaigns in Africa.

The film deals with the infamous "Kommando 52", which was active in the 1960s civil war in the Congo and was recruited mainly from West German men. Among them is the former Wehrmacht officer Siegfried Müller. Based on personal accounts and original material - backed by tape recordings of interviewed mercenaries and photos of murdered Africans - it creates a hard hitting historical document.