"No other agency in the GDR is more able to support the Party, to assist it and give suggestions as to how and with which methods [a problem] should be tackled." This is how Stasi head Erich Mielke commented on the role of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) in the GDR dictatorship in 1960. For forty years, the SED aged an unofficial civil war against its own population with the help of the secret police - the shield and sword of the Party.This Reader on the State Security provides an overview of the most important aspects of the GDR dictatorship and its secret police. It also serves as a supplement to the permanent exhibition "State Security in the SED Dictatorship" in the Stasi Museum Berlin.
