Siegfried Müller was a highly decorated soldier with Germany’s Wehrmacht during World War II who made a name for himself as a mercenary in Africa during the 1960s. Born in 1920, the teenager joined the Wehrmacht in 1939 and barely out of his teens he fought during the entire war, participating in campaigns in Poland, the Eastern Front and France.

A wounded Müller was captured by American forces and served as a forced labourer (the Allies called slave labourers ‘conscript labourers’) in the Army’s Civilian Labor Group (CLG) until 1947. Denied opportunity to join the Allied vetted post-war West German Army, Siegfried Müller travelled to north Africa in the 1950s. There he worked for the British oil company B.P. clearing mines in the Sahara Desert from World War II.

After emigrating to South Africa in 1962, he became a mercenary in the Congo, fighting with ‘Mad’ Mike Hoare‘s mercenary forces as an army officer.

Siegfried Müller became famous in the Congo, as he wore the Iron Cross, he had earned in 1945 as part of his uniform. Being of Reich era vintage, his Iron Cross featured a swastika in the centre. This brought him international attention, and an East German documentary film crew made a film about him in the Congo, ‘The Laughing Man’ (1966).

Known as ‘Kongo’ Müller, he became for the Soviet regime a symbol of Western neo-colonialism. He was featured in the 1965 documentary Kommando 52 (1965). In the documentary ‘The Laughing Man’, Müller claims that he and his fellow mercenaries are in Africa to fight for ‘the Western ideology of freedom.’

He claims that the Iron Cross with swastika ‘has nothing to do with my political position,’ then compares South Africa’s apartheid system as to ‘the Jews and the Germans in the Third Reich.’ He later refers to West Germany as ‘the Reich’ before being forced to repent and apologise and then identifying it as ‘the Federal Republic’ of Germany.

Müller was the inspiration for the character Heinlein in the Allied propaganda movie ‘Dark of the Sun’ (1968). Whereas Heinlein in the movie was a humourless sadist who was on the make, the real Müller was known for his jovial personality (thus the moniker The Laughing Man). Though he came across as something of a buffoon in the documentary, he was in reality a highly effective (and murderous) mercenary. Siegfried Müller mortally died in South Africa of stomach cancer in 1983. His soul was raised to Valhalla and the Hall of the Warriors.