[Henry's essay was victorious in the school's History Essay Prize 2021, in the Sixth Form Category]
HENRY PEART
The Stasi - perhaps the greatest and most efficient secret police agency ever to have existed - spied on and tormented nearly the entire population of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, also "East Germany") from 1950-1990, and successfully kept an incredibly unpopular government in power for 40 years. However, the days of the police state (in Western Europe at least) are over, and so the questions that arise are those of how we rehabilitate those who have had their lives destroyed by the Stasi, and how we rehabilitate those torturers and the complex web of informants that made the police state a reality. Perhaps more importantly, how should we judge the Stasi through our modern lens of constant criticism of the past, and is the current German state doing enough to make up for historical state-sponsored horrors? This essay will provide a brief overview of the Stasi and their methods before diving into these pertinent questions.
The Stasi was formed on the 8th February 1950 as the Ministry for State Security with the purpose of repressing uprisings against the ruling party (the SED, Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), to maintain communist power in perpetuity. During the immediate postwar years, the Stasi could act with total impunity from their lair in the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen prison. Torture was not merely condoned but often carried out in hideous manner, such as by filling the broken legged Karl Heinz Richter’s cell 3/4 full with water, forcing him to stand for hours to stay alive. Such brutality was deemed acceptable as the GDR was facing mass unrest, which culminated in the 1953 uprisings, in which over a million Germans protested against communist rule. East Germany was also diplomatically isolated; the US did not officially recognise it until 1974. These two factors coupled with huge international upheavals like the Suez Crisis, the Hungarian Revolution and the Korean War meant there was very little international scrutiny placed on the Stasi, who therefore had carte blanche for state-sponsored torture.
However, as the international situation calmed there grew a desire for recognition of the GDR, beginning with Ospolitik, a thawing of relations between East and West Germany. Yet, blatant torture and international recognition are mutually exclusive, so the Stasi had to rethink its strategy and employ subtler methods. Now, instead of physical torture the Stasi used ‘mental decomposition’ - psychological torture, whereby the Stasi would break down victims via extensive gas-lighting and blackmail. These techniques included moving furniture around in targets’ houses, letting down their tyres and prescribing incorrect medical treatment. The blackmail included threatening to expose things such as homosexuality or an affair. Such methods, coupled with smear campaigns and the blocking of career paths meant the Stasi could very effectively dismantle a target’s life.
Once a suspect had been arrested, further ‘Zersetzung’ - the German word for mental decomposition - would be carried out. Wolfgang Arndt, arrested for 'attempting to organise an illegal border transgression with particular malice,’ was put through many of these sessions. He was never called by his name, known simply as the ‘accused,’ and was regularly left in pitch black solitary confinement. When this failed to break him, he was moved to the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen prison, where interrogations lasted for 12 hours, and often during the night so prisoners could not sleep. These sessions rendered Arndt nearly insane, until he reached a point where he was drugged and carried off into solitary confinement. Delirious for nearly 12 days in a rubber lined box with no light and minimal food, he was rendered a blubbering wreck, with every word he said recorded. Eventually, Arndt was removed and convicted, serving 6 years in prison for attempting to cross into the West.
The torments of Wolfgang Arndt, and many others like him, illustrate the extent to which the Stasi psychologically destroyed their victims. But how did they identify a target? The Stasi had permission to open mail, bug telephones and carry out surveillance. They exploited this authority to a massive extent, opening 5% of Dresden’s daily post and bugging 1,000 telephones per day in Leipzig in the 1980s. However, the Stasi’s most famous tactic was their use of 'Informal Members', members of the public cajoled and forced into spying on neighbours, colleagues and friends for the Stasi. This network was so large it was estimated in 1985 that 1 in every 120 people were IMs. Such a massive pool of intelligence allowed the Stasi to quarry massive amounts of information on targets very quickly. The records they kept were extensive, with everything noted, even to the level of a suspect's specific body odour. Similar to the Gestapo, the threat that an IM was listening and reporting on you was enough to stop most people from resistance, passive or active.
Despite its varying methods through the period of the GDR’s existence, the Stasi was throughout an incredibly efficient operation and became the model for surveillance states worldwide. The Stasi held links with many terrorist groups such as the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Red Army Faction in West Germany. Sought after for their espionage expertise, the Stasi were contacted by Iraq after the Ba’ath Party seized power in 1968. The Iraqis were trained in bugging telephones and conducting covert surveillance, which kept a minority group in power until the US-led invasion of 2003. This reflects the incredible spying proficiency developed by the Stasi.
The fall of the Berlin Wall put the Stasi on notice, and on 30th June 1990 the Ministry of State Security ceased to exist, leaving behind a complex web of hurt and misery for millions of Germans and 180 km worth of paper files on suspects. The new unified German government quickly latched onto this problem and debate ensued on how these were to be viewed, with many wishing the data to be kept hidden for privacy, whilst others campaigned for full and free access. A third and more extreme faction, the Stasi-hunters, wanted to find and prosecute former Stasi members. Despite the controversy, with even Prime Minister Lothar de Maizière predicting potential murder ensuing from the adopted policy, the new German government took the view that healing through allowing access to all files was the best path forward. On 29 December 1991 the Stasi Records Act came into force, creating a new ministry and allowing full access to Stasi files. 111 km of paper files were released, the Stasi having printed more paper than during the whole of the rest of the history of Germany. Those who wanted were able to find all information gathered about them, and allowed to find out who had been spying on them. In general, this proved to be an exorcising process, giving answers and closure for many Germans, and also a great success, which helped to heal a split nation. In contrast, after the US invasion of Iraq, most of the Ba’ath Party files were flown back to America, and many have speculated that this has severely damaged any efforts at reconstructing society, reflecting how important it was for the new German government to release the Stasi files.
However, much as during the period of 'denazification', the processing and prosecuting of former Stasi agents was haphazard at best, and a total failure at worst. The Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic, the agency set up after the Stasi Records Act, found that it had itself employed 79 former Stasi members and at the point of enquiry (2009) still employed 52, potentially allowing for serious tampering of records. Not only this; nearly 1,500 Stasi members joined the new German police force, and furthermore the German government still pays Stasi pensions (albeit at a low rate in modern terms) to this day. Prosecutions themselves were very hard to come by, with a constitutional court ruling in 1995 that ‘one can’t go to jail for acting under the laws of East Germany,’ meaning nearly all Stasi officers went free. To add insult to injury, a similar court ruled in 1997 that membership of the Stasi did not exclude persons from working in the modern civil service. The only two high profile convictions for Stasi actions were Erich Mielke and Erich Honecker, head of the Stasi and head of state respectively. It is clear that a mere couple of convictions goes nowhere to compensate the damage wrought on the East German populace by these men. This, in contrast to the arrest and sentencing of nonagenarians forced to hold minor roles at Nazi death camps, for war crimes, is completely absurd.
In current society, past injustices committed by a country against its population are increasingly coming under severe scrutiny. With talk of ideas such as mass compensation for slavery, it seems that only a country with a perfect, violence free past can be tolerated by the modern cancel-culture mob, which makes the paradoxical response to the Stasi incredibly fascinating. Sadly, in terms of global impact, 20th century Germany was prone to mass murder and gross crimes against humanity, for example in German South West Africa, where it is now officially recognised that genocide was carried out. In May 2021 Germany agreed to pay €1.1 billion to Namibia in compensation, and the country has also paid out €63 billion in compensation to holocaust survivors. However, in 2009 the German government agreed only a €250/month pension for Stasi victims. €3000/year is a pitiful amount and goes nowhere towards healing the historical damage. This token gesture appears even smaller given that there are thousands of living Stasi ex-prisoners, yet no single survivor of the Namibian genocide lives today. How low must Stasi victims feel on the list of their government’s priorities? To add insult to injury, it is often very difficult for survivors to access these funds as it is near-impossible to prove lost earnings and career damage, especially as hearings on these matters can be harrowing re-enactments of the traumas inflicted.
However, Germany has indeed established many museums to document Stasi brutality, and the group's actions are freely taught and discussed in schools and in public, in order to lessen survivors' isolation, and prevent future tragedy. Further treatment is available, such as group therapy, yet this is an expensive method which often doesn’t reach those most in need, with some estimates stating that only 1/3 of Stasi victims have received any type of therapy. Given that today, therapy can be prescribed for little more than exam stress, it is absolutely inhumane that survivors of such psychologically destructive torture as the Stasi's can go without this support.
In conclusion, the German government has acted in many ways to help heal a broken nation, through opening Stasi records and financial compensation, coupled with several high-profile trials. However, these actions don’t go nearly far enough to aid Stasi victims, as the compensation is pitiful for people whose entire lives were destroyed by the Stasi. Watching former Stasi members not only walk free but take an active part in politics through the historical denialist organisation GRH (Gesellschaft zur Rechtlichen und Humanitären Unterstützung - Society for Legal and Humanitarian Support) is, for victims, a constant reminder of that painful period. The blame for this injustice lies squarely at the feet of the German government. Although prohibited from prosecuting Stasi members by a constitutional court, the German government makes the laws and amends the constitution. Whilst a herculean effort would be required, the government should have at least attempted to have the controversial diktat reversed, to reflect the immense suffering inflicted on East Germany by the Stasi. This issue exemplifies the complications of rebuilding nations where trust has been abused. There seems to be no panacea.