The Stasi Files Unveiled

The Stasi Files Unveiled PDF Author: Barbara Miller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351302663
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 112

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1992 the massive files of East Germany's infamous Ministry for State Security, the Stasi, were made publicly available and thousands of former East Germans began to confront their contents. Finally it was possible for ordinary citizens to ascertain who had worked for the Stasi, either on a full-time basis or as an "unofficial employee," the Stasi's term for an informer. The revelations from these documents sparked feuds old and new among a population already struggling through enormous social and political upheaval. Drawing upon the Stasi files and upon interviews with one-time informers, this book examines the impact of the Stasi legacy in united Germany. Barbara Miller examines such aspects of the informer's experience as: the recruitment procedure; daily life and work; motivation and justification. She goes on to consider the dealings of politicians and the courts with the Stasi and its employees. Her analysis then turns to the way in which this aspect of recent German history has been remembered, and the phenomenal impact of the opening of the files on such perceptions of the past. The Stasi Files Unveiled: Guilt and Compliance in a Unified Germany offers important new perspectives on the nature of individual and collective memory and is a fascinating investigation of modern German society. Barbara Miller graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1991 with a degree in German and psychology. She taught and researched in Germany and Austria before completing her doctoral thesis in Glasgow in 1997. She is now based in Sydney, Australia.

The Stasi Files Unveiled

The Stasi Files Unveiled PDF Author: Barbara Miller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351302663
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 112

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1992 the massive files of East Germany's infamous Ministry for State Security, the Stasi, were made publicly available and thousands of former East Germans began to confront their contents. Finally it was possible for ordinary citizens to ascertain who had worked for the Stasi, either on a full-time basis or as an "unofficial employee," the Stasi's term for an informer. The revelations from these documents sparked feuds old and new among a population already struggling through enormous social and political upheaval. Drawing upon the Stasi files and upon interviews with one-time informers, this book examines the impact of the Stasi legacy in united Germany. Barbara Miller examines such aspects of the informer's experience as: the recruitment procedure; daily life and work; motivation and justification. She goes on to consider the dealings of politicians and the courts with the Stasi and its employees. Her analysis then turns to the way in which this aspect of recent German history has been remembered, and the phenomenal impact of the opening of the files on such perceptions of the past. The Stasi Files Unveiled: Guilt and Compliance in a Unified Germany offers important new perspectives on the nature of individual and collective memory and is a fascinating investigation of modern German society. Barbara Miller graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1991 with a degree in German and psychology. She taught and researched in Germany and Austria before completing her doctoral thesis in Glasgow in 1997. She is now based in Sydney, Australia.

Images from the Stasi archives

Images from the Stasi archives PDF Author: Simon Menner
Publisher: Hatje Cantz Publishers
ISBN: 9783775736206
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Get Book Here

Book Description
Almost 300,000 people worked for the East German secret police, per capita far more than were employed by agencies such as the CIA or the KGB. Not quite fifty years after the Berlin Wall was built, Simon Menner (*1978 in Emmendingen) discovered spectacular photographs in the Stasi archives that document the agency's surveillance work. Formerly secret, highly official photographs show officers and employees putting on professional uniforms, gluing on fake beards, or signalling to each other with their hands. Today, the sight of them is almost ridiculous, although the laughter sticks in the viewer's throat. This publication can be regarded as a visual processing of German history and an examination of current surveillance issues, yet it is extremely amusing at the same time. The fact that the doors of the opposite side-the British or German intelligence services, for example-remained closed to the artist lends the theme an explosive force as well as a tinge of absurdity.

The Stasi Files

The Stasi Files PDF Author: Anthony Glees
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 484

Get Book Here

Book Description
Before the collapse of Communist East Germany the country ran one of the most extensive intelligence networks in the world. Its secret service, the Stasi, consisted of as many as 150,000 agents by the time of its demise in 1990. Much more than a junior partner to the Soviet Union's KGB, the Stasi was in fact a highly professional and ruthless organisation which was dedicated to principles of conspiratorial aggressiveness and the protection of the Communist cause. Anthony Glees is one of the last researchers to gain access to the Stasi Archive in Berlin before it was closed. Drawing on documentary evidence in the files he presents a fascinating portrait of the Stasi's interest in, among other topics, the burgeoning CND movement in Britain and the Labour Party's prospects of holding office. Along the way he explains the elaborate structure of intelligence officers, agents and sources who together constituted the troops on the ground for the Stasi's campaign against the UK. Revelatory and controversial, THE STASI FILES is the most important book on espionage to appear since THE MITROKHIN ARCHIVE.

Secret Police Files from the Eastern Bloc

Secret Police Files from the Eastern Bloc PDF Author: Valentina Glajar
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1571139265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book Here

Book Description
New essays exploring the tension between the versions of the past in secret police files and the subjects' own personal memories-and creative workings-through-of events.

The History of the Stasi

The History of the Stasi PDF Author: Jens Gieseke
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782382550
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 277

Get Book Here

Book Description
A well-balanced and detailed look at the East German Ministry for State Security, the secret police force more commonly known as the Stasi. “This is an excellent book, full of careful, balanced judgements and a wealth of concisely-communicated knowledge. It is also well written. Indeed, it is the best book yet published on the MfS.”—German History The Stasi stood for Stalinist oppression and all-encompassing surveillance. The “shield and sword of the party,” it secured the rule of the Communist Party for more than forty years, and by the 1980s it had become the largest secret-police apparatus in the world, per capita. Jens Gieseke tells the story of the Stasi, a feared secret-police force and a highly professional intelligence service. He inquires into the mechanisms of dictatorship and the day-to-day effects of surveillance and suspicion. Masterful and thorough at once, he takes the reader through this dark chapter of German postwar history, supplying key information on perpetrators, informers, and victims. In an assessment of post-communist memory politics, he critically discusses the consequences of opening the files and the outcomes of the Stasi debate in reunified Germany. A major guide for research on communist secret-police forces, this book is considered the standard reference work on the Stasi.

The File

The File PDF Author: Timothy Garton Ash
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd
ISBN: 1782397841
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Get Book Here

Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE In 1978 Timothy Garton Ash went to live in Berlin to see what that divided city could teach him about tyranny and freedom. Fifteen years later, by then internationally famous for his reportage of the downfall of communism in Central Europe, he returned to look at his Stasi file which bore the code-name 'Romeo'. Compiled by the East German secret police, with the assistance of both professional spies and ordinary people turned informer, it contained a meticulous record of his earlier life in Berlin. In this memoir, he describes rediscovering his younger self through the eyes of the Stasi, and then confronting those who had informed against him. Moving from document to remembrance, from the offices of Britain's own security service to the living rooms of retired Stasi officers, The File is a personal narrative as gripping, as disquieting, and as morally provocative as any fiction by George Orwell or Graham Greene. And it is all true.

Stasi

Stasi PDF Author: John O. Koehler
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0786724412
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 587

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this gripping narrative, John Koehler details the widespread activities of East Germany's Ministry for State Security, or "Stasi." The Stasi, which infiltrated every walk of East German life, suppressed political opposition, and caused the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of citizens, proved to be one of the most powerful secret police and espionage services in the world. Koehler methodically reviews the Stasi's activities within East Germany and overseas, including its programs for internal repression, international espionage, terrorism and terrorist training, art theft, and special operations in Latin America and Africa. Koehler was both Berlin bureau chief of the Associated Press during the height of the Cold War and a U.S. Army Intelligence officer. His insider's account is based on primary sources, such as U.S. intelligence files, Stasi documents made available only to the author, and extensive interviews with victims of political oppression, former Stasi officers, and West German government officials. Drawing from these sources, Koehler recounts tales that rival the most outlandish Hollywood spy thriller and, at the same time, offers the definitive contribution to our understanding of this still largely unwritten aspect of the history of the Cold War and modern Germany.

Stasiland

Stasiland PDF Author: Anna Funder
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 1443406090
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 350

Get Book Here

Book Description
In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell; shortly afterwards the two Germanies reunited, and East Germany ceased to exist. In a country where the headquarters of the secret police can become a museum literally overnight and in which one in fifty East Germans were informing on their fellow citizens, there are thousands of captivating stories. Anna Funder tells extraordinary tales from the underbelly of the former East Germany. She meets Miriam, who as a sixteen-year-old might have started World War III; she visits the man who painted the line that became the Berlin Wall; and she gets drunk with the legendary “Mik Jegger” of the East, once declared by the authorities to his face to “no longer exist.” Each enthralling story depicts what it’s like to live in Berlin as the city knits itself back together—or fails to. This is a history full of emotion, attitude and complexity.

The Grey Men

The Grey Men PDF Author: Ralph Hope
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1786078287
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 391

Get Book Here

Book Description
‘Fascinating and powerful.’ Sunday Times What do you do with a hundred thousand idle spies? By 1990 the Berlin Wall had fallen and the East German state security service folded. For forty years, they had amassed more than a billion pages in manila files detailing the lives of their citizens. Almost a hundred thousand Stasi employees, many of them experienced officers with access to highly personal information, found themselves unemployed overnight. This is the story of what they did next. Former FBI agent Ralph Hope uses present-day sources and access to Stasi records to track and expose ex-officers working everywhere from the Russian energy sector to the police and even the government department tasked with prosecuting Stasi crimes. He examines why the key players have never been called to account and, in doing so, asks if we have really learned from the past at all. He highlights a man who continued to fight the Stasi for thirty years after the Wall fell, and reveals a truth that many today don’t want spoken. The Grey Men comes as an urgent warning from the past at a time when governments the world over are building an unprecedented network of surveillance over their citizens. Ultimately, this is a book about the present.

Tunnel 29

Tunnel 29 PDF Author: Helena Merriman
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541788826
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 410

Get Book Here

Book Description
He escaped from one of the world’s most brutal regimes.Then, he decided to tunnel back in. In the summer of 1962, a young student named Joachim Rudolph dug a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Waiting on the other side in East Berlin were dozens of men, women, and children—all willing to risk everything to escape. From the award-winning creator of the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 podcast, Tunnel 29 is the true story of this most remarkable Cold War rescue mission. Drawing on interviews with the survivors and Stasi files, Helena Merriman brilliantly reveals the stranger-than-fiction story of the ingenious group of student-diggers, the glamorous red-haired messenger, the Stasi spy who threatened the whole enterprise, and the love story that became its surprising epilogue. Tunnel 29 was also the first made-for-TV event of its kind; it was funded by NBC, who wanted to film an escape in real time. Their documentary—which was nearly blocked from airing by the Kennedy administration, which wanted to control the media during the Cold War—revolutionized TV journalism. Ultimately, Tunnel 29 is a success story about freedom: the valiant citizens risking everything to win it back, and the larger world rooting for them to triumph.