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The Stasi in 1972 made plans to assist the Ministry of Public Security (Vietnam) in improving its intelligence work during the Vietnam War. [77] In 1975, the Stasi recorded a conversation between senior West German CDU politicians Helmut Kohl and Kurt Biedenkopf. It was then "leaked" to Stern magazine as a transcript recorded by American ...
Markus Johannes Wolf (19 January 1923 – 9 November 2006), also known as Mischa, [1] was an East German spy who served as the head of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance (Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung), the foreign intelligence division of East Germany's Ministry for State Security (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, abbr. MfS, commonly known as the Stasi).
It had secret police, commonly referred to as the Stasi, which made use of an extensive network of civilian informers. [30] From the 1970's, the main form of political, cultural and religious repression practiced by the Stasi, was a form of 'silent repression' [31] called Zersetzung ("Decomposition").
Directive No. 1/76 on the Development and Revision of Operational Procedures, which outlined the use of Zersetzung in the Ministry for State Security. The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS), commonly known as the Stasi, was the main security service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany or GDR), and defined Zersetzung in its 1985 dictionary ...
The Stasi kept files on about 5.6 million people. [9] The Stasi had 90,000 full-time employees who were assisted by 170,000 full-time unofficial collaborators (Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter); together these made up 1 in 63 (nearly 2%) of the entire East German population. Together with these, a much larger number of occasional informers brought up ...
During and after World War II, similar restrictions were put in place in non-Soviet countries of the Eastern Bloc, [2] which consisted of the communist states of Central and Eastern Europe (except for non-aligned Yugoslavia). [3] [4] Until 1952, however, the Inner German border between East and West Germany could be easily crossed in most ...
An unofficial collaborator [1] or IM (German: ⓘ; both from German inoffizieller Mitarbeiter), or euphemistically informal collaborator (informeller Mitarbeiter), was an informant in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) who delivered private information to the Ministry for State Security (MfS / Stasi).
To prevent such defections, the Stasi secret police kept a close watch on the border guards with agents and informers. A special Stasi unit worked covertly within the Grenztruppen, posing as regular border guards, between 1968 and 1985. [6] The Stasi also maintained a pervasive network of informers within the ranks of the Grenztruppen. One in ...