It has been described as one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies ever to have existed. Erich Mielke was the Stasi's longest-serving chief, in power for thirty-two of the GDR's forty years of existence. One of its main tasks was spying on the population, mainly through a vast network of citizens turned informants, and fighting any opposition by overt and covert measures, including hidden psychological destruction of dissidents Zersetzung , literally meaning decomposition.
It arrested , people as political prisoners during its existence. Under its long-time head Markus Wolf , this directorate gained a reputation as one of the most effective intelligence agencies of the Cold War.
The Stasi also maintained contacts, and occasionally cooperated, with Western terrorists. Numerous Stasi officials were prosecuted for their crimes after After German reunification , the surveillance files that the Stasi had maintained on millions of East Germans were laid open, so that any citizen could inspect their personal file on request; these files are now maintained by the Stasi Records Agency.
The Stasi was founded on 8 February The Stasi held this status until November , when was restored to a ministry. As intelligence chief, Wolf achieved great success in penetrating the government, political and business circles of West Germany with spies.
In , Wolf retired and was succeeded by Werner Grossmann. Although Mielke's Stasi was superficially granted independence in , until the KGB continued to maintain liaison officers in all eight main Stasi directorates, each with his own office inside the Stasi's Berlin compound, and in each of the fifteen Stasi district headquarters around East Germany. The Ministry for State Security was organized according to the Line principle.
