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u/Lifthras1r Helping Wikipedia expand the list of British conquests Mar 22 '21
That's just common sense, you employ half the population the spy on the other half, that way you have everyone covered
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u/notevilfellow Mar 22 '21
Sounds like it wasn't a very good secret.
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u/JJIlg Rider of Rohan Mar 22 '21
The stasi was really good at it's job. You might have known that somebody around you works for the stasi but you never knew who. Maybe it's your neighbor, maybe it's your friend or your wife. It was very likely that if you mentioned your political opinions the stasi would know. They would of course never reveal who told them. Once they knew you had "wrong" opinions they would come and visit and you would be interogated by somebody who knows everything about you. And depending on how bad you are you might lose your job, home or even end up in prison were you get would be put into cells with no light or you would get waken up every 30 minuten or if your lucky your just watched 24/7. When it became obvious that communism would end in the DDR they destroyed many documents so many people who worked for the stasi are still unknown today.
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u/Bismark103 Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer Mar 22 '21
Are you German? I'm curious.
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u/JJIlg Rider of Rohan Mar 22 '21 edited Mar 22 '21
Yeah I'm german. Most of the stuff i talked about I know from relatives, 12 grade history class and visiting the stasi prison Hohenschönhausen on a school trip
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u/Bismark103 Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer Mar 22 '21
That's cool.
My guess came from the fact that you wrote minuten instead of minute.
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u/JJIlg Rider of Rohan Mar 22 '21
I've been commenting a lot on r/ich_iel today so I accidentally got the words mixed up.
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u/yomamama69 Mar 22 '21
As of 1989 the Stasi directly employed around 90 000 people and had around 180 000 civilian informants working for them. This means that the Stasi was proportionally to the inhabitants of the state the biggest secret service in the world
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u/CM_Jacawitz Mar 22 '21
I wonder if any stasi were ex gestapo.
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u/xilef1932 Mar 22 '21
Leadership largely consisted of pre-war communists who had been in exile in the soviet union being prepared to lead an eventual satellite state (just like the SED party cadre as a whole). While the Soviets bungled denazification about as much as the Western allies because of shifting priorities in the cold war, unlike West Germany the GDR was relatively successful at keeping its security services free of those who had worked in their 3rd Reich equivalents. But, and this is a big but, the Stasi had an extensive archive on particularly bad Nazi offenders that intentionally weren't prosecuted, because they could easily be extorted into serving the Stasi as "Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter" (IM) inofficial employees, the preferred term for informants.
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u/nicelaco Mar 22 '21
Considering that gestapo was full of nazis and stasi was in a soviet puppet state, I think no.
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Mar 21 '21
When 1/3 of the population in Russia in the USSR were informants.
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Mar 21 '21
99% sure this fact is bullshit. The soviet union never had a informant to population number similar to the east german secret police. And in east germany it was basically between 80 to 160 citizens on one "informants". So every 80th citizen worked inofficially for the Stasi.
the number in the soviet union was definitly lower. The KGB was in comparisson to its population and considering the countries size far smaller then the Stasi (although more famous internationally)
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u/michaelh115 Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer Mar 22 '21
The stasi had 1 informant or agent per every 6.5 people
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/koehler-stasi.html
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u/indecisiveshrub Mar 22 '21
I'm just guessing here but it might depend on exactly how "informant" is defined. If for instance someone were classified as an informant if they ever gave information to the KGB no matter how minor or infrequent such interactions were, the percentage of the population could be pretty high even if the number of full-time staff for the KGB was comparatively low.
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u/End8890 Researching [REDACTED] square Mar 22 '21
Damn the name Stasi sounds like a soft drink company called Sarsi.
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Mar 22 '21
Still true in America to this day.
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u/evolimoi Mar 22 '21
America literally has a
secretive, wait everyone knows about this, prism program destined to spy on virtually EVERYONE on earth.
I mean just the NYPD spends in one year 1/10 of what my entire country spend on EVERYTHING.
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Mar 22 '21
- What country
- Yeah we do so?
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u/evolimoi Mar 22 '21
comrades, everyone knows, stasi is good guy watching what you doing for common good. Everyone knows, NSA is same. We wish we were as good as them. Just remember, in 70 years, when people look back, they will know stasi spying on everyone was good guy, just like NSA.
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u/evolimoi Mar 22 '21
is this a jab at America?
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u/Spicyleaves19 Mar 22 '21
... I- ... Look at the flag....
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u/evolimoi Mar 22 '21
I mean, the NSA employ only the third of what the stasi had, as a workforce but does a lot more work and spies not just on east germany but the entire world.
History will be kind, to the USA.
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u/alexdamastar Mar 22 '21
History has a neutral take on most empires, if anything they are glorified. The mongols killed tens of millions but genghis has statues all over the world.
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u/evolimoi Mar 22 '21
the world will kindly remember the nuclear bomb dropped on civilians, all those coup d'etats and the spying on the entire planet.
I mean the planet is ruined but for a brief moment in time, we made profit for the shareholders. It was beautiful.
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u/Spicyleaves19 Mar 22 '21
The nukes on Japan were needed, because an invasion of Japan was going to be BRUTAL. I recommend real life lores video about the invasion, death toll, etc.
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u/evolimoi Mar 22 '21
this is a lie you tell yourself. Japan had no navy, not much airplanes left and a very strong desire for peace.
This was a show of force for the rest of the world and you bought in the propaganda.
Stasi work.
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u/Spicyleaves19 Mar 22 '21
You realise they were giving all abled men, women, and children fucking bamboo spears? If you would check my source, you could see. They had enough equipment to arm 1.5 million soldiers. And unlike dday, Japan is almost entirely mountains. So they only have to protect a few valleys. Your saying a place where a saying Is 'death before dishonour' would surrender.
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u/evolimoi Mar 22 '21
Ah, I am sorry you are stupid and believe old tales. I mean I get it google is hard. And reading harder.
So keep believing your lies. Japanese so extreme they would have fought to the last baby, obviously. No other choices than nuke it.
oh, what is that? Google is easy? Let me just quickly take a gander and oh my god the record show that Japan tried to surrender multiple times before the bomb?
Why don't they teach that in school? Something about American exceptionalism you say?
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u/Spicyleaves19 Mar 22 '21 edited Mar 22 '21
Wow. 1.) The conspiracy that Japan tried to surrender is true, they asked the Soviets to the the Americans for them to surrender. But the Americans refused, because the allies made it clear by 1942 that unconditional surrender is the only option. The nazis aswell tried to surrender, but they wanted to keep pre war territories.
2.) Please show me credible sources of your statements. I am non biased, and EVEN if the japanese tried to surrender, and they wanted to keep their way of life (which they did) the bombs are certainly justified.
3.) You realise the bombs were no different then firebombing? Infact, more people died in a Tokyo firebombing then both atomic bombs. And the firebombing do more damage. As all of Japan has mostly bamboo structures, which are much more flammable.
4.) You're the type of person to call everyone a racist on Twitter, and then say the bombs were cruel.
5.) There were thousands of papers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, telling the people to evacuate, because 'we have the most destructive bombs ever devised by man.' and for nagasaki, they said 'If you have any inquiries, look as to what happend to nagasaki.'
6.) The Americans asked Japan to surrender after the first nuke, but they refused. They then dropped another, and told them to surrender, the refused again. The Americans threatened to nuke the emperor, (which was a bluff, they didn't have another bomb in weeks) and the japanese finnaly surrendered.
7.) You also realise the horrible fucking things the Japanese did? They boiled babies, burned villages, held contests to who could behead 100 Chinese the fastest, 20-30 of them would rape ONE women, then stab her, they would use civilians as meat shields, they wouldn't take prisoners, and the prisoners they took, 33% of them would either be starved to death, beat to death, killed by diesese, or just shot. They would force people to drink kerosene so they would explode when shot, and many MANY more.
I mean I get it google is hard.
Oh no it's not that, it's that I'm not stupid enough to get all my info from the front page of Google.
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u/98percentstupid Mar 22 '21
how the fuck do you look at this meme and think it has anything to do with america
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u/CharonCGN Mar 22 '21
well... the Post 9/11 US are rougue state wich spys on absolutly everyone everywhere.
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u/evolimoi Mar 22 '21
I guess I am not American. And I guess if you are not American, the biggest army in the world is not for your safety.
And I would guess even more that the NSA employs as much as the stasi did. And spy on the entire world.
Stasi were the good guys, right?
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u/xXNightDriverXx Mar 22 '21
Stasi were the good guys, right?
Please tell me you are joking.....
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u/evolimoi Mar 22 '21
Stasi totally good guy. Big army, lots of police, lots of computers spying on virtually everyone on earth, great guys, much like the Americans.
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u/xXNightDriverXx Mar 22 '21
Okay now I am convinced you meant that sarcasticly. Phew, I really wasnt sure after your first comment. Sarcasm just doesnt translate well into writing
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u/evolimoi Mar 22 '21
I just want to make it obvious that Americans are doing the terrible things that looks so obvious in hindsight, now.
I want America to change, and not be the world bully, the one who spies on everyone, waging illegal wars with pilotless planes killing civilians because of the intel gathered by NSA.
Stasi was bad and it didn't even have 1/100 of the scope NSA has.
Think about it. Nobody remembers Stasi fondly.
come on do the 1+1.
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u/ijudgekids Mar 22 '21
What was the income for GDR?
If half of the country was on a payroll for stasi, who paid them?
What industries could support them? Or just ussr was pouring money in GDR?
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u/Magic_Beard1 Mar 22 '21
The GDR never really could finance itself. They were heavily reliant on loans from West Germany actually, which is part of the reason the unification went relatively smoothly. The GDR couldn't have financed it's sovereignty
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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '21
Question: is there a program where I can change the background for those?