Ministerium für Staatssicherheit
Between 1950 and 1989, the Stasi employed a total of 274,000 persons in an effort to root out the class enemy.[5][6] In 1989, the Stasi employed 91,015 persons full time, including 2,000 fully employed unofficial collaborators, 13,073 soldiers and 2,232 officers of GDR army,[7] along with 173,081 unofficial informants inside GDR[8] and 1,553 informants in West Germany.[9] In terms of the identity of inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (IMs) Stasi informants, by 1995, 174,000 had been identified, which approximated 2.5% of East Germany's population between the ages of 18 and 60.[5] 10,000 IMs were under 18 years of age.[5]
While these calculations were from official records, according to the federal commissioner in charge of the Stasi archives in Berlin, because many such records were destroyed, there were likely closer to 500,000 Stasi informers.[5] A former Stasi colonel who served in the counterintelligence directorate estimated that the figure could be as high as 2 million if occasional informants were included.[5]
Stasi efforts with one agent per 166 citizens dwarfed, for example, the Nazi Gestapo, which employed only 40,000 officials to watch a population of 80 million (one officer per 2,000 citizens) and the Soviet KGB, which employed 480,000 full time agents to oversee a nation of 280 million residents (one agent per 583 citizens).[10] When informants were included, the Stasi had one spy per 66 citizens of East Germany.[10] When part-time informer adults were included, the figures reach approximately one spy per 6.5 citizens.[10]
