Stasi

Stasi
Author: John O. Koehler
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 587
Release: 2008-08-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786724412

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.

The History of the Stasi

The History of the Stasi
Author: Jens Gieseke
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2014-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1782382550

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.

Book of Judas

Book of Judas
Author: Linda Stasi
Publisher: Forge Books
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2017-09-19
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0765378752

The hunt is on for the apocryphal Gospel of Judas in the thriller that Lisa Scottoline says "you won't be able to put down," from celebrated New York Daily News columnist Linda Stasi

Images from the Stasi archives

Images from the Stasi archives
Author: Simon Menner
Publisher: Hatje Cantz Publishers
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 9783775736206

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.

Stasiland

Stasiland
Author: Anna Funder
Publisher: Odyssey Editions
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2015-10-29
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1623730376

Stasiland tells true stories of people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of people who worked for its secret police, the Stasi. Internationally hailed as a classic, it is ‘fascinating, entertaining, hilarious, horrifying and very important’ (Tom Hanks) and ‘a heartbreaking, beautifully written book.’ (Claire Tomalin). East Germany was one of the most intrusive surveillance states of all time. One in 7 people spied on their friends, family and colleagues. In ‘the most humane and sensitive way’ (J.M. Coetzee) Funder tells the true stories of four people who had the extraordinary courage to refuse to collaborate with the Stasi, and the price they paid. She meets Miriam Weber, who was imprisoned at 16 after scaling the Berlin Wall. She drinks with the legendary “Mik Jegger” of the Eastern Bloc who was ‘disappeared’. And she finds former Stasi men who defend their regime long past its demise, and yearn for the second coming of Communism. Stasiland won the Samuel Johnson Prize for best non-fiction published in English in 2004. It was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the W.H. Heinemann Award, the Index Freedom of Expression Awards, The Age Book of the Year Awards, the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (Innovation in Writing). It is read in schools and universities in many countries, and has been adapted for CD and the stage by The National Theatre, London.

The Sixth Station

The Sixth Station
Author: Linda Stasi
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 371
Release: 2013-01-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1466809841

Some say Demiel ben Yusef is the world's most dangerous terrorist, personally responsible for bombings and riots that have claimed the lives of thousands. Others insist he is a man of peace, a miracle worker, and possibly even the Son of God. His trial in New York City for crimes against humanity attracts scores of protestors, as well as media and religious leaders from around the world. Cynical reporter Alessandra Russo heads to the UN hoping for a piece of the action, but soon becomes entangled in controversy and suspicion when ben Yusef singles her out for attention among all other reporters. As Alessandra begins digging into ben Yusef's past, she is already in more danger than she knows—and when she is falsely accused of murder during her investigation, she is forced to flee New York. On the run from unknown enemies, Alessandra finds herself on the trail of a global conspiracy and a story that could shake the world to its foundations. Is Demiel ben Yusef the Second Coming or the Antichrist? The truth may lie in the secret history of the Holy Family, a group of Templars who defied the church, and a mysterious relic stained with the sacred blood of Christ Himself. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

God's Spies

God's Spies
Author: Elisabeth Braw
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2019-09-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1467456403

The real-life cloak-and-dagger story of how East Germany’s notorious spy agency infiltrated churches here and abroad East Germany only existed for a short forty years, but in that time, the country’s secret police, the Stasi, developed a highly successful “church department” that—using persuasion rather than threats—managed to recruit an extraordinary stable of clergy spies. Pastors, professors, seminary students, and even bishops spied on colleagues, other Christians, and anyone else they could report about to their handlers in the Stasi. Thanks to its pastor spies, the Church Department (official name: Department XX/4) knew exactly what was happening and being planned in the country’s predominantly Lutheran churches. Yet ultimately it failed in its mission: despite knowing virtually everything about East German Christians, the Stasi couldn’t prevent the church-led protests that erupted in 1989 and brought down the Berlin Wall.

The Grey Men

The Grey Men
Author: Ralph Hope
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2021-05-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786078287

‘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.

The History of the Stasi

The History of the Stasi
Author: Antonella Colonna Vilasi
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2015-03-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1504937058

The Stasi meant to East Germany, and historically means to the entire world, four decades of repression and prosecution carried out in the name of justice, which only ended in 1989. The word relates to the special secret police agency that was founded on February 8, 1950, by its first executive, Wilhelm Zaisser, and took the complete name of Ministerium fr StaatSichereit or MfS (Ministry for State Security), which Stasi is the abbreviated form resulting from its phonetic contraction. It was formally dependent on the government, but actually referred to the intelligence of the SED Central Committee. The very purpose of the Stasi was to endorse and impose the power of the SED by catching and destroying any dissident man or woman who tried to escape, plot, and work against the party or, simply, was differently thinking. Every little suspect could turn to the evidence of a crime against the government, either being real or nonexisting; any single attempt of rebellion should be prevented not to turn to real uprising. The way to make it possible was the careful monitoring of the population with the utmost secrecy to the purpose of collecting as much information as possible about individuals.