Berlinwalk.com • Berlin History
East Germany was watched by one of the densest surveillance machines in modern history. Set the size of any group of people and see how deep the Ministry for State Security actually reached.
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full-time Stasi officers
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unofficial informers (IMs)
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people with a Stasi file
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shelf length of surviving files
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sacks of hand-shredded pages left
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of secret policing (1950 to 1990)
Figures for 1989, the Stasi's last full year, from the Stasi Records Archive and standard histories. Informer estimates vary between studies; "about 1 in 90" uses roughly 189,000 unofficial informers against a population of about 16.4 million. The often-quoted "one in 6.5 people" counts every part-time contact and is disputed by historians, so it is not used here.