STASI

official name Staatsicherheit (German: State Security) the secret police of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) from 1950 until German reunification in 1990. A secret-police apparatus was established by German Communists with Soviet help in the latter's zone of occupied Germany soon after World War II, and in 1950 this became the new Ministry for State Security. Under the direction of Erich Mielke from 1957, the Stasi was responsible for both domestic political surveillance and foreign espionage, the latter mainly directed against West Germany and its allies within NATO. Over the course of four decades the Stasi built up a formidable reputation for effectiveness; under its longtime chief of foreign operations, Markus Wolf, it extensively penetrated West Germany's governing circles and military and intelligence services. The discovery in April 1974 that Gnter Guillaume, a top aide to West German chancellor Willy Brandt, was in fact an East German spy led to Brandt's resignation two weeks later. According to information gleaned from the agency's own internal records after the communist regime in East Germany collapsed in 198990, the Stasi at its peak employed about 85,000 full-time officers in its 39 departments. It kept files on 5,000,000 East German citizens (one-third of the entire population), and it relied on several hundred thousand informers to monitor the East German citizenry. Besides maintaining many undercover agents in West Germany, the Stasi ran a highly sophisticated effort to electronically eavesdrop on West German governmental and military communications. The Stasi fed some of its information to the KGB in the Soviet Union, with whom it maintained close relations. The Stasi also had links to various terrorist groups, notably the Red Army Faction in West Germany. Following the reunification of East with West Germany in 1990, the Stasi was disbanded by the German government.