Stasi East facts
While investigating facts about Stasi East Germany and Stasi East German Secret Police Documentary, I found out little known, but curios details like:
The East German Stasi used psych warfare called Zersetzung against dissidents. Tactics involved breaking into homes and subtly manipulating the contents; moving furniture, altering alarms, removing pictures from walls. Many thought they were losing their minds, and had mental breakdowns.
how long until a mouse starves to death?
The East German secret police, the Stasi, had at least one spy watching every 66 citizens. For comparison, the KGB had one agent per 5,830 citizens, and the Gestapo had one officer for 2,000 people.
What did the stasi do in east germany?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 17 of the best facts about Stasi East Germany's Secret Police and Stasi East German Secret Police I managed to collect.
what happened to the east german stasi?
-
East Germans can request to inspect any file the Stasi (State Security Service) has kept on them (that has not been voluntarily destroyed).
-
Two families escaped East Germany during the height of the Cold War by designing and building a hot air balloon under the noses of the German Stasi secret police, and flying it more than 20 miles across the border in the middle of the night.
-
The Stasi, East Germany's secret police during the Cold War, supposedly used radiation to track enemies of the state. Once given a dose large enough to track, officers could follow suspects, their documents and money with geiger counters.
-
Up to one quarter of East Germany's population occasionally informed for the Stasi, the East German secret police
-
The guillotine was named after a man who didn't invent it, and who was against the death penalty, and that it was used long before the French Revolution and long after, from 1210 in Ireland to 1990 in East Germany for secret executions by the Stasi.
-
Ulrich Mühe, who portrayed an East German Stasi officer who surveilled a radical playwright in the film "The Lives of Others", was himself under surveillance in the 1980s by four fellow actors in the East Berlin theatre, and by his wife.
-
The Stasi - East German police during the Cold War - kept a museum of 'smell samples' of its citizens in case it ever needed to hunt someone with dogs
-
Beginning in 1975 the East German secret police, the Stasi, introduced an automatic letter opening machine that opened 600 letters per hour. They also had an automated letter closer that sealed 1200 letters per hour.
-
In communist East Germany, every 100th person on average was an unofficial collaborator of the state terror service called "Stasi". In addition, Stasi placed listening devices into numerous homes and tortured/executed people in secret prisons - often old nazi prisons and concentration camps.
-
In 1974, one of the West German Chancellor's closest aides was discovered to be a Stasi [East German] spy!
What is true about stasi east?
You can easily fact check it by examining the linked well-known sources.
In East Germany, approximately 1 out of every 6.5 people was an informant for the Stasi at some point.
The 'Stasi-punks,' informants in early 80s East Berlin. Two members of the same band were undercover and it's possible that neither of them knew it. - source
The Stasi (East German secret police) ran an antisemitic campaign in West Germany in an attempt to discredit them. This included setting up a small group to defend Adolf Eichmann. - source
Documents in the Stasi (East German secret police) archives state that the KGB ordered Bulgarian agents to assassinate Pope John Paul II. - source
