The Ministerium für
Staatssicherheit known as the Ministry for State Security or commonly referred
to as the Stasi was the official state security service of the German
Democratic Republic charged with conducting both foreign and domestic
intelligence gathering operations. Another organ of the Ministerium für
Staatssicherheit, was the Staatssicherheitsdienst or State Security Service
which was a research institution for the investigation of 'political crimes' in
the German Democratic Republic. The Stasi was a primarily an organ employed by
the East German SED communist party to monitor the population of East Germany,
and politically oppression the population through use of surveillance, terror,
intimidation and the wearing down of political opponents and dissidents.
Foreign intelligence was carried out by the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung or
Intelligence Headquarters of the Stasi. It was headquartered in East Berlin,
with an extensive complex in Berlin -Lichtenberg and several smaller facilities
throughout the city. It was widely regarded as one of the most effective and
repressive intelligence and secret police agencies in the world. The Stasi
motto was "Schild und Schwert der Partei" (Shield and Sword of the
Party). It was outlawed and considered a criminal organization following the
dissolution of the German Democratic Republic and several Stasi officials were
prosecuted for their crimes after 1990.
The Stasi was founded
on 8 February 1950. It was modelled on the Soviet MGB, and was regarded by the
Soviet Union as an extremely loyal and effective partner organization. Wilhelm
Zaisser was the first Minister of State Security of the German Democratic Republic,
and Erich Mielke was appointed as his deputy. Zaisser, who tried to depose SED
General Secretary Walter Ulbricht after the June 1953 uprisings in the economic
sector of East Germany was after this being removed by Ulbricht and replaced by
Ernst Wollweber. Wollweber resigned in 1957 after clashes with Ulbricht and
Erich Honecker, and was succeeded by his deputy, Erich Mielke.
In the early years of
its existence, the Stasi waged a campaign against Jews, who were already
subject to widespread discrimination and violence in the Soviet Union. The
Stasi took extensive measures to censor the fact that Jews had been victims
during the previous regime and in one instance, even took gold from the bodies
of Jews. The Stasi labeled Jews as harbingers of pro-capitalist sentiments and
thus labeled them as criminals against the East German regime. Gypsies were
also blamed and targeted in a similar manner.
Between the years of
1950 and 1989, the Stasi employed a total of 274,000 people in an effort to
root out what it identified as 'the class enemy'. In 1989, the Stasi employed
91,015 agents full time, including 2,000 fully employed unofficial
collaborators as well as 13,073 soldiers and 2,232 officers of the Nationale
Volksarmee. Thus number was boosted with an additional 173,081 unofficial
informants inside the German Democratic Republic and 1,553 informants inside
the borders of the Federal Republic of Germany. In terms of the identity of
Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter or Stasi informants, by 1995, 174,000 had been identified,
which approximated for some 2.5% of East Germany's population between the ages
of 18 and 60.10,000 Stasi informant's were under the age of 18.
While these
calculations were taken from official records, according to the federal
commissioner in charge of the Stasi archives in Berlin, because many such
records were destroyed in the final hours of the East German nation, there were
likely closer to 500,000 Stasi informants active at the time of the collapse. A
former Stasi Colonel who served in the counterintelligence directorate
estimated that the figure could be as high as 2 million if occasional
informants were included in this number.
Full time officers
were posted to all major industrial centers as the extensiveness of any
surveillance operation largely depended on how valuable a product was to the
economy. Also one tenant in every apartment building was designated as a
watchdog of sorts, order to record and file a report to an Area Representative
designated by the Volkspolizei. Spies reported every relative or friend who
stayed the night at another persons apartment. A common practice for
surveillance was for tiny holes to be drilled in apartment and hotel room walls
through which Stasi agents placed special video cameras to record the actions of
East German citizens. Public services such as schools, universities, and
hospitals were extensively infiltrated by agents of the Ministerium für
Staatssicherheit.
The Stasi had formal
categorizations of each type of informant, and had official guidelines on how
to extract information from, and control, those who they came into contact
with. The roles of informants ranged from those already in some way involved in
state security positions such as the Volkspolizei and the Nationale Volksarmee,
to those considered as members of dissident movements such as performers in the
arts and members of the Protestant Church. Information gathered about the
latter groups were frequently used to divide or discredit members of the
labeled organization. Informants coerced and were made to feel important, given
material or social incentives, and were imbued with a sense of adventure, and
only around 7.7%, according to official figures, were coerced into full
cooperation. A significant proportion of those informing were members of the
SED Communist Party often to employ some form of blackmail, which was not
uncommon. A large number of Stasi informants held fairly unsuspecting jobs not
normally associated with espionage such as trolley conductors, janitors,
doctors, nurses and teachers. The Stasi director Erich Mielke believed the best
informants were those whose jobs entailed frequent contact with the public.
The Stasi's ranks
swelled considerably after Eastern Bloc countries signed the 1975 Helsinki
accords, which Erich Honecker viewed as a grave threat to his regime because
they contained language binding signatories to respect "human and basic
rights, including freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and
conviction." These were largely viewed as 'western policies of fascism'.
The number of Stasi informants peaked at around 180,000 in this year, having
slowly risen from 20,000 to 30,000 in the early 1950s, and reaching 100,000 for
the first time in 1968. This growth was
attributed largely as a response to Ostpolitik and worldwide protests. The
Stasi also acted as a proxy for the Soviet KGB to conduct activities in other
Eastern Bloc countries, such as the Peoples Republic of Poland or Czechoslovak
Socialist Republic where the Soviets were generally despised by the population.
The Stasi infiltrated
almost every aspect of East German life. In the mid 1980s, a network of
informants for the Stasi began growing in both East and West Germany. By the
time East Germany collapsed in 1989, the Stasi employed 91,015 employees and
173,081 informants. About one of every 63 East Germans had collaborated with
the Stasi. By at least one estimate, the Stasi maintained greater surveillance
over its own people than any secret police force in world history. The Stasi
employed one full time agent for every 166 East Germans. The ratios swelled
when informers were factored in; counting part-time informers, the Stasi had
one informer per 6.5 people. By comparison, the Nazi Gestapo employed one
secret policeman per 2,000 people. This comparison led Nazi hunter Simon
Wiesenthal to call the Stasi even more repressive than the Nazi Gestapo.
Additionally, Stasi agents took great
measures to infiltrate and undermine West Germany's federal government
and intelligence agencies.
In some cases,
spouses even spied on each other.
People were
imprisoned for such reasons as trying to leave the country without official
permission, or for telling political jokes considered criticizing of the SED
communist party. Prisoners were often kept isolated and disoriented, knowing
nothing of what was going on in the outside world.
After the middle of
the 1950s, the Stasi ordered that executions were to be carried out in strict
secrecy, and were usually accomplished with a guillotine and, in later years,
by a single pistol shot in the neck. In most instances, the relatives of the
executed were not informed of either the sentencing of the victim or the
execution.
After the Berlin Wall
fell, X-ray machines were found in prisons across East Berlin. It was duely
noted that three of the best known East German dissidents died within a few
months of one other, of similar rare forms of leukemia. Survivors of the
imprisonment in these facilities state that the Stasi intentionally irradiated
political prisoners with high doses of lethal radiation, possibly to provoke
cancer development in them.
The Stasi perfected
the technique of psychological harassment of perceived enemies which it termed
'Zersetzung'. Zersetzung was essentially a term borrowed from chemistry which
literally means "decomposition" or "undermining".
By the 1970s, the
Stasi had decided that methods of overt persecution which had been employed up
to that time, such as arrest and torture, were too crude and obvious. It was
realized soon after that psychological harassment was far less likely to be
recognized for what it was, thus being easily concealed and so its victims as
well as their supporters, were less likely to be provoked into active
resistance. This also ensured that they would often not be aware of the source
of their problems, or even its exact nature. Zersetzung was designed to side
track and "switch off" perceived enemies so that they would lose the
will to continue any activities deemed inappropriate by the East German
government.
Tactics employed
under Zersetzung generally involved the disruption of the victim’s private or
family life. This often included breaking into homes and messing with the
contents of the home such as moving furniture, altering the timing of an alarm,
removing pictures from walls or sinply by replacing one variety of tea with
another. Other more menacing practices included mysterious phone calls or
unnecessary deliveries, even including sending a sex toy to a target's wife.
Usually victims had no idea the Stasi were responsible for such activities.
Many thought they were losing their minds, and mental breakdowns and suicide
would often result.
One great advantage
of the harassment perpetrated under Zersetzung was that its subtle nature meant
that it was able to be quickly denied. That was important given that the German
Democratic Republic was drastically trying to improve its international
standing during the 1970s and 1980s.
Zersetzung techniques
have since been adopted by other security agencies.
Other files known as
the Rosenholz Files, contained the names of East German spies abroad, which led
American intelligence agencies to capture them. After German reunification, it
was revealed that the Stasi had secretly aided left wing terrorist
organizations such as the Red Army Faction, even though no part of the group
had ever been ideologically aligned with East Germany.
Directorate X was
responsible for spreading disinformation. Rolf Wagenbreth, the director of
disinformation operations once stated, "Our friends in Moscow call it
‘dezinformatsiya'. Our enemies in America call it ‘active measures,’ and I,
dear friends, call it ‘my favorite pastime'".
Stasi experts also
helped to build the secret police of Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia.
Fidel Castro's regime
in Cuba was particularly interested in receiving training from Stasi. Stasi
instructors were sent to and worked in Cuba. Cuban communists also vice-versa
received training in East Germany. The Stasi Chief Markus Wolf described how he
set up the Cuban state security system based along the patterns of the East
German system.
The Stasi's experts
worked with building secret police systems in the People's Republic of Angola,
the People's Republic of Mozambique, and the People's Republic of Yemen.
Stasi experts helped
to set up Idi Amin's secret police.
Stasi organized,
trained, indoctrinated Syrian intelligence services.
Stasi experts helped
Kwame Nkrumah to build his secret police. When Ghanaians overthrew the regime,
Stasi Major Jurgen Rogalla was imprisoned.
The Stasi sent agents
to the West as sleeper agents. For instance, sleeper agent Günter Guillaume
became a senior aide to social democratic chancellor Willy Brandt, and reported
about his policies and his private life.
The Stasi also
operated at least one brothel. Agents were used against both men and women
working in Western governments. "Entrapment" was used against married
men and homosexuals alike.
Martin Schlaff,
according to the German parliament's investigations, the Austrian billionaire's
Stasi codename was “Landgraf” and registration number "3886-86". He
made money by supplying embargoed goods to East Germany.
Sokratis Kokkalis,
Stasi documents suggest that the Greek businessman was a Stasi agent, whose
operations included delivering Western technological secrets and bribing Greek
officials to buy outdated East German telecommunications equipment.
The Red Army Faction,
commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang was a terrorist organization which
killed dozens of West Germans and others in terrorist attacks across Europe.
The Stasi ordered a
campaign in which cemeteries and other Jewish sites in West Germany were
vandalized often smeared with swastikas and other Nazi related symbols. Funds
were also secretly channelled to a small West German group for it to defend
former Nazi Adolf Eichmann.
The Stasi channelled
large amounts of money to pro Neo-Nazi and other anti-Semetic groups in the
West, with the purpose of discrediting the West's anti-fascist stance.
The Stasi worked in a
campaign to create extensive material and propaganda against the State of
Israel.
In the murder of
Benno Ohnesorg, a Stasi agent carried out the murder, which stirred a whole
movement of left wing protest and violence. The Economist describes it as
"the gunshot that hoaxed a generation".
In a campaign called
Operation Infektion, the Stasi helped the KGB to spread HIV/AIDS disinformation
that claimed the United States had created the disease. Millions of people
around the world still believe in these claims.
In the Sandoz
chemical spill, the KGB reportedly ordered the Stasi to sabotage the chemical
factory to distract attention from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster six months
earlier in the Ukraine.
Investigators have
found evidence of a death squad that carried out a number of assassinations
including assassination of Swedish journalist Cats Falck, on orders from the
East German government from 1976 to 1987. Attempts to prosecute members of the
group have since failed.
The Stasi attempted
to assassinate Wolfgang Welsch, a famous critic of the East German regime.
Stasi collaborator Peter Haack (Stasi codename "Alfons") befriended
Welsch and then fed him hamburgers poisoned with thallium. It took weeks for
doctors to find out why Welsch had suddenly lost his hair.
Documents in the
Stasi archives state that the KGB ordered Bulgarian agents to assassinate Pope
John Paul II, who was known for his criticism of human rights in the communist
bloc, and the Stasi was asked to help with covering up traces of the
assassination plot.
A special unit of the
Stasi assisted Romanian intelligence in kidnapping Romanian dissident Oliviu
Beldeanu from West Germany.
In 1975, the Stasi
recorded a conversation between senior West German CDU politicians Helmut Kohl
and Kurt Biedenkopf. It was then "leaked" to the Stern magazine as a
transcript recorded by American intelligence agencies. The magazine then claimed
that Americans were wiretapping West Germans and the public believed the story.
Recruitment of
informants became increasingly difficult towards the end of East Germany's
existence, and after 1986, there was a negative turnover rate of informants.
This had a significant impact on the Stasi's ability to survey the population,
in a period of growing unrest, and knowledge of the Stasi's activities became
more widespread. The Stasi had been tasked during this period with preventing
the country's economic difficulties which were becoming a political problem,
through suppression of the very worst problems the state faced, but it failed
to do so.
Stasi officers
reportedly had discussed rebranding East Germany as a democratic capitalist
country to the West, but which would be in practice taken over by Stasi
officers. The plan specified 2,587 Offiziere im besonderen Einsatz or “officers on special assignment” would take over power and it was registered
as Top Secret Document 0008-6/86 of 17 March 1986. According to Ion Mihai
Pacepa, the chief intelligence officer in communist Romania, other communist
intelligence services had similar plans. On 12 March 1990 Der Spiegel reported
that the Stasi was indeed attempting to implement 0008-6/86.
On 7 November 1989,
in response to the rapidly changing political and social situation in East
Germany in late 1989, Erich Mielke resigned. On 17 November 1989, the Council
of Ministers or Ministerrat der DDR renamed the Stasi as the Office for
National Security or Amt für Nationale Sicherheit, which was headed by
Generalleutnant Wolfgang Schwanitz. On 8 December 1989, East German Prime
Minister Hans Modrow directed the dissolution of the Amt für Nationale
Sicherheit, which was confirmed by a decision of the Ministerrat on 14 December
1989.
As part of this
decision, the Ministerrat originally called for the evolution of the Amt für
Nationale Sicherheit into two separate organizations: a new foreign
intelligence service to be known as the Nachrichtendienst der DDR and an
"Office for the Protection of the Constitution of the GDR" or
Verfassungsschutz der DDR, along the lines of the West German Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz.
However, the public reaction to this decision was extremely negative, and under
pressure from the "Round Table" known as the Runder Tisch, the
government dropped the creation of the Verfassungsschutz der DDR and directed
the immediate dissolution of the Amt für Nationale Sicherheit on 13 January
1990. Certain functions of the Amt für Nationale Sicherheit reasonably related to law enforcement were
handed over to the East German Ministry of Internal Affairs. The same ministry
also took guardianship of remaining Amt für Nationale Sicherheit facilities.
When the parliament
of Germany investigated public funds that disappeared after the Fall of the
Berlin Wall, it found out that East Germany had transferred large amounts of
money to Martin Schlaff through accounts in Vaduz, the capital of
Liechtenstein, in return for goods “under Western embargo”. Moreover,
high-ranking Stasi officers continued their post-East German careers in
management positions in Schlaff’s group of companies. For example, in 1990 Herbert
Kohler, Stasi commander in Dresden, transferred 170 million marks to Schlaff
for "hard disks" and months later went to work for him. The
investigations concluded that “Schlaff’s empire of companies played a crucial
role” in the Stasi attempts to secure the financial future of Stasi agents and
keep the intelligence network alive. The Stern magazine noted that KGB officer
Vladimir Putin worked with his Stasi colleagues in Dresden in 1989.
During the Peaceful
Revolution of 1989, Stasi offices were overrun by enraged citizens, but not
before the Stasi destroyed a number of documents which equated approximately 5%
of the files.
As East Germany began
to fall, the Stasi did as well. They began to destroy the extensive files that
they had kept, both by hand and with the use of shredders.
When these activities
became known, a protest erupted in front of the Stasi headquarters. On the
evening of 15 January 1990, a large crowd of people formed outside the gates in
order to stop the destruction of their personal files. In their minds, this
information should have been available to them and also have been used to
punish those who had taken part in Stasi actions. The large group of protesters
grew and grew until they were able to overcome the police and gain entry into
the complex. The protestors became violent and destructive as they smashed
doors and windows, threw furniture, and trampled portraits of Erich Honecker,
leader of the GDR. Among the destructive public were officers working for the
West German government, as well as former Stasi collaborators seeking to
destroy documents. One explanation postulated as to why the Stasi did not open
fire was for fear of hitting their own colleagues. As the people continued
their violence, these undercover men proceeded into the file room and acquired
many files that would become of great importance to catching ex-Stasi members.
With the German
Reunification on 3 October 1990 a new government agency was founded called the
Office of the Federal Commissioner Preserving the Records of the Ministry for
State Security of the GDR. There was a debate about what should happen to the
files, whether they should be opened to the people or kept closed.
Among the
high-profile individuals who were arrested and tried for Stasi activities after
the collapse of the German Democratic Republic were Erich Mielke, Third
Minister of State Security of the GDR, and Erich Honecker, head of state for
the GDR. Mielke was sentenced to six years in prison for the murder of two
policemen in 1931. Honecker was charged with authorizing the killing of would
be escapees along the Inner German Border and the Berlin Wall. During his
trial, he went through cancer treatment. Due to the fact that he was nearing
death, Honecker was allowed to spend his final time in Chile. He died in May
1994.
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