Summary of John O. Koehler's Stasi

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 After the Berlin Wall was torn down, the German government was faced with demands that the communist officials who had ordered, executed, and abetted crimes against their own people be prosecuted. #2 The Stasi, the East German communist police force, had more spies than any other totalitarian government in history. The Soviet Union’s KGB employed 480,000 full-time agents to oversee a nation of 280 million citizens, which means there was one agent for every 5,830 citizens. #3 The Stasi was the secret police of East Germany, and they were everywhere. They knew no limits, and had no shame when it came to protecting the party and the state. They were the sinister side of deutsche Gründlichkeit, or German thoroughness. #4 The crimes committed by the communists were not as heinous as the Nazis’ extermination of the Jews, but their brutal oppression of the nation by means including murder alongside legal execution put the SED leadership on a par with Hitler’s gang.