Second only to the KGB, the Stasi was the Soviet Bloc's most effective spy organiz-ation. Although it was employed mainly against West Germany, it successfully infiltrated NATO, the European Community, the US Department of Defense, NSA, and had agents at British and other universities. Even more sinister was its internal secret police role. It employed more informers than Hitler's Gestapo. In its efforts to bolster the sagging East German regime it used teacher against student, doctor against patient, friend against friend and even husband against wife. British experts, Childs and Popplewell, tell this amazing story for the first time in English. They reveal how the Stasi exploited ambition, idealism, fear, greed, romance and sex to gain and hold its agents. They trace the Stasi's origins in the dreaded Soviet Cheka, outline its development, structure, organization, personnel, system of rewards and punishments and much more. Based on interviews with Stasi officers and their victims, archival sources, published material, and years of personal experience, their book will be of interest both to the specialist and the general reader.
