Stasi

The Stasi were among the most successful security and intelligence services in the Cold War. Behind the Berlin Wall, colleagues, friends, husbands and wives, informed on each other. Stasi chief, General Mielke, prided himself on this situation. Under Marcus Wolf, Stasi agents were spectacularly successful in gaining entry into the West German Establishment and NATO. Some remain undiscovered. Now, for the first time in English, two British experts reveal how the Stasi operated. Based on a wealth of sources, including interviews with former Stasi officers and their victims, the book tells a fascinating yet frightening story of unbridled power, misguided idealism, treachery, widespread opportunism and lonely courage.

DAVID CHILDS is Professor of Politics at Nottingham University. Among his 15 other works are Germany in the 20th Century, GDR: Moscow’s German Ally and East Germany to the 1990s: Can it Resist Glasnost? He predicted the demise of the East German regime in 1988 and was himself spied upon by the Stasi in Britain as well as in Germany. He has published many contributions on Germany in The Independent, The Times and elsewhere.

RICHARD POPPLEWELL is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Salford. He was Bradley Fellow at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, after completing his PhD at Cambridge in 1988. Dr Popplewell worked in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office before taking up academic work. His study of the British imperial intelligence service will be published next year.