History of the Stasi - East Germany''s Secret Police, 1945-1990

Originally published under title: Mielke-Konzern. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001.

List of contents

Preface

Preface to the 2011 edition

Introduction: Ten Years and Ten Days

Chapter 1. Antifascism - Stalinism - Cold Civil War: Origins and Influences, 1945 to 1956

Chapter 2. The Safest GDR in the World - The Driving Forces of Stasi Growth

Chapter 3. The Unofficial Collaborator - A New Type of Informer

Chapter 4. Blanket Surveillance? State Security in East German Society

Chapter 5. Resistance - Opposition - Persecution

Chapter 6. Wolf and Co. - MfS Operations Abroad

Chapter 7. Final Crisis and Collapse, 1989-90

Chapter 8. Legacy - Aufarbeitung - Culture of Memory: The Second Life of the Stasi

Notes

Select Bibliography

About the author

Jens Gieseke is head of the “Communism and Society” research department at the Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam, Germany. He previously worked for fifteen years in the research division of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records in Berlin. He co-edited Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft (Göttingen, 2007); Handbuch der kommunistischen Geheimdienste in Osteuropa (Göttingen, 2008); and Die Geschichte der SED (Berlin, 2011).

Summary

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...

Product details

• Authors: Jens Gieseke, Gieseke Jens
• Assisted by: David Burnett (Translation)
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.01.2014
• EAN: 9781782382546
• ISBN: 978-1-78238-254-6
• No. of pages: 278
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Contemporary history (1945 to 1989); Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Politics; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Freedom, HISTORY / Europe / Germany, Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000, European History, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Human Rights, Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999, Political oppression & persecution, Political oppression and persecution, c 1945 to c 2000 (Post-war period), East Germany, Ddr