Personnel and recruitment Between 1950 and 1989, the Stasi employed a total of 274,000 people in an effort to root out the
class enemy. In 1989, the Stasi employed 91,015 people full-time, including 2,000 fully employed
unofficial collaborators, 13,073 soldiers and 2,232 officers of the GDR army, along with 173,081 unofficial informants inside the GDR and 1,553 informants in West Germany. Regular commissioned Stasi officers were recruited from conscripts who had been honourably discharged from their 18 months' compulsory military service, had been members of the
SED, had had a high level of participation in
the Party's youth wing's activities and had been Stasi informers during their service in the Military. The candidates would then have to be recommended by their military unit
political officers and Stasi agents, the local chiefs of the District (
Bezirk) Stasi and
Volkspolizei office, of the district in which they were permanently resident, and the District Secretary of the SED. These candidates were then made to sit through several tests and exams, which identified their intellectual capacity to be an officer, and their political reliability. University graduates who had completed their military service did not need to take these tests and exams. They then attended a two-year officer training programme at the Stasi college (
Hochschule) in
Potsdam. Less mentally and academically endowed candidates were made ordinary technicians and attended a one-year technology-intensive course for non-commissioned officers. By 1995, some 174,000
inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (IMs) Stasi informants had been identified, almost 2.5% of East Germany's population between the ages of 18 and 60. as were organizations, such as
computer clubs where teenagers exchanged Western video games. The Stasi had formal categorizations of each type of informant, and had official guidelines on how to extract information from, and control, those with whom they came into contact. The roles of informants ranged from those already in some way involved in state security (such as the police and the armed services) to those in the dissident movements (such as in the arts and the
Protestant Church). Information gathered about the latter groups was frequently used to divide or discredit members. Informants were made to feel important, given material or social incentives, and were imbued with a sense of adventure, and only around 7.7%, according to official figures, were coerced into cooperating. A significant proportion of those informing were members of the SED. Use of some form of blackmail was not uncommon. The Stasi's ranks swelled considerably after
Eastern Bloc countries signed the 1975
Helsinki Accords, which GDR leader
Erich Honecker viewed as a grave threat to his regime because they contained language binding signatories to respect "human and basic rights, including freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and conviction". The number of IMs peaked at around 180,000 in that year, having slowly risen from 20,000 to 30,000 in the early 1950s, and reaching 100,000 for the first time in 1968, in response to
Ostpolitik and
protests worldwide. The Stasi also acted as a proxy for the KGB to conduct activities in other Eastern Bloc countries, such as
Poland, where the Soviets were despised. The Stasi infiltrated almost every aspect of GDR life. In the mid-1980s, a network of IMs began growing in both German states. By the time that East Germany collapsed in 1989, the Stasi employed 91,015 employees and 173,081 informants. About one out of every 63 East Germans collaborated with the Stasi. By at least one estimate, the Stasi maintained greater surveillance over its own people than any secret police force in history. The Stasi employed one secret policeman for every 166 East Germans. By comparison, the
Gestapo deployed one secret policeman per 2,000 people. As ubiquitous as this was, the ratios swelled when informers were factored in: counting part-time informers, the Stasi had one agent per 6.5 people. This comparison led Nazi hunter
Simon Wiesenthal to call the Stasi even more oppressive than the Gestapo. Stasi agents infiltrated and undermined West Germany's government and spy agencies. In some cases, spouses even spied on each other. A high-profile example of this was peace activist
Vera Lengsfeld, whose husband, Knud Wollenberger, was a Stasi informant. Anyone who was judged to display politically, culturally, or religiously incorrect attitudes could be viewed as a "hostile-negative" force and targeted with
Zersetzung methods. For this reason members of the Church, writers, artists, and members of youth sub-cultures were often the victims. Zersetzung methods were applied and further developed in a "creative and differentiated" manner based upon the specific person being targeted i.e. they were tailored based upon the target's psychology and life situation. Tactics employed under
Zersetzung usually involved the disruption of the victim's private or family life. This often included psychological attacks, such as breaking into their home and subtly manipulating the contents, in a form of
gaslighting i.e. moving furniture around, altering the timing of an alarm, removing pictures from walls, or replacing one variety of tea with another etc. Other practices included property damage, sabotage of cars, travel bans, career sabotage, administering purposely incorrect medical treatment,
smear campaigns which could include sending falsified, compromising photos or documents to the victim's family,
denunciation,
provocation,
psychological warfare, psychological
subversion,
wiretapping,
bugging, mysterious phone calls or unnecessary deliveries, even including sending a
vibrator to a target's wife. Increasing degrees of unemployment and social isolation could and frequently did occur due to the negative psychological, physical, and social ramifications of being targeted. Usually, victims had no idea that the Stasi were responsible. Many thought that they were losing their minds, and mental breakdowns and suicide were sometimes the result. Direct physical attacks were not part of the process, even covertly. In 2000, the research group
Projektgruppe Strahlen disputed claims that the Stasi had used
X-ray projection against victims. The claims persisted, however, and in 2001 the Gauck Commission, a modern government agency investigating the activities of the Stasi, claimed that 'unusual non-medical X-ray machines' found in political prisons could have been weapons and used to irradiate inmates. It was suspected that such exposure resulted in the deaths from cancer of a number of prominent dissidents. == Structure ==