A well-balanced and detailed look at the East German Ministry for State Security, the secret police force more commonly known as the Stasi.

"This is an excellent book, full of careful, balanced judgements and a wealth of concisely-communicated knowledge. It is also well written. Indeed, it is the best book yet published on the MfS." -- German History

The Stasi stood for Stalinist oppression and all-encompassing surveillance. The "shield and sword of the party," it secured the rule of the Communist Party for more than forty years, and by the 1980s it had become the largest secret-police apparatus in the world, per capita.

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, supplying key information on perpetrators, informers, and victims. In an assessment of post-communist memory politics, he critically discusses the consequences of opening the files and the outcomes of the Stasi debate in reunified Germany.

A major guide for research on communist secret-police forces, this book is considered the standard reference work on the Stasi.

• We started tracking this book on June 26, 2016.
• This book was $28.49 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 21 times in the past 2,854 days.
• The current price of this book is $16.17 last checked 15 hours ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past 90 days.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $15.37.
• The lowest price to date was $15.37 last reached on January 3, 2021.
• This book has been $15.37 5 times since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $28.99 last reached on August 6, 2016.
• This book has been $28.99 one time since we started tracking it.

• Politics & Social SciencesPolitics & GovernmentIdeologies & DoctrinesCommunism & Socialism
• HistoryEuropeGermany
• France20th Century
• History

• Publication Date: January 1, 2014
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 278 Pages
• File Size: 1,757 KB