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Zusatztext 'illuminating! well structured and lucid study...His impressive and useful book will be essential reading for students and scholars of the GDR for many years to come.'European History Quarterly Informationen zum Autor Mike Dennis is Professor of Modern History at the University of Wolverhampton. Among his main publications are The German Democratic Republic; Social and Economic Modernization in Eastern Germany: From Honecker to Kohl and The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Republic 1945-1990 . Klappentext A study of the powerful and much-feared East German Ministry of State Security from its establishment in 1950 to its fall in 1990. The Stasi were a central institution of the GDR, and this book illuminates the nature and operation of the entire East German regime, addressing one of the most important topics in modern German history. Its emphasis is primarily on the key years under Erich Honecker, who was Head of State from 1976 and ousted in 1989.The book looks at all aspects of the control, operation and impact of the security police - their methods, targets, structure, accountability, and in particular the crucial question of how far they were an arm of the ruling communist party or were themselves a virtually autonomous political actor. Zusammenfassung The East German Ministry of State Security, popularly known as the Stasi, was one of the largest and most intrusive secret police systems in world history. So extensive was the system of surveillance and control that in any given year throughout the 1970s and 1980s, about one in fifty of the 13 million East German adults were working for the Stasi either as an officer or as an informer. Drawing on original sources from the Stasi archives and the recollections of contemporary witnesses, The Stasi: Myth and Reality reveals the intricacies of the relationship between the Stasi enforcers, its agents and its targets/victims, and demonstrates how far the Stasi octopus extended its tentacles into people’s lives and all spheres of society. The origins and developments of this vast system of repression are examined, as well as the motivation of the informers and the ways in which they penetrated the niches of East German society. The final chapters assess the ministry’s failure to help overcome the GDR’s inherent structural defects and demonstrate how the Stasi’s bureaucratic procedures contributed to the implosion of the Communist system at the end of the 1980’s. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction. I. THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE EAST GERMAN SECURITY SERVICE, 1945-71 . 1.From Weimar Republic to GDR. 2.The Ministry of State Security, 1950-71. II. THE SWORD AND THE COMPASS . 3. The party and its Sword. 4. The Security Colossus. 5.Political Justice in Dictatorship. III. THE FIRM AND ITS SERVANTS . 6. Serving the Cause - the Officer Class. 7. Mielke's Unofficial Collaborators. IV. HUNTING FOR THE ENEMY . 8.Monitor and firefighter. ...
