What You Do In Your Own Home Is All Of My Business | East Germany & The Stasi

32:00And so they start to really kick on with their state security service that had been founded in 1950 that's now known as the Stasi. Probably the most infamous and effective secret police of all time. Yes. And lots of people have tried it in different ways. Also very, very German. Yes, it's just a very deadly mix. Yes. Authoritarian communism blended with the German spirit. With a German sort of perversion. Yes, because I guess, what was the Russian... The NKBD. NKBD. So obviously they had, it was semi-based on that as a model. Yeah, because Ulbricht is taking everything from the Soviet Union. But Russian secret police, I guess it's more corrupt.

32:40It's more, you know, what's the subtext here? Do you know what I mean? It's like, what can you do for me? There's a lot of that in the Russian spirit, right? With the Germans, it's not really subtext. it's more I've got 15 pages of documents about his bowel movements the attention to detail is second to none the data gather is extraordinary and it's all about very very there is no secret police force in Tonga that is interesting the Tongans do not have a secret police where are you going? they need one what did you say? where are you going? what's that? what is that meant to be a secret police?

33:16is that what the secret police do? where are you going? Is that you being a secret police officer? It was him being a Tongan secret police officer. So the Stasi had been founded in 1950 by a man called Eric Milke. Right. Now, he's a fascinating figure, right? So he had fled Germany in 31. He was a kind of communist agitator. He'd killed two policemen in 31 and then fucked off, went to Moscow, basically learned the Cheka NKVD terror tactics, then went to the Spanish Civil War as like a sort of secret agent to try and stir shit up. um yeah because i obviously we all did the rise of the nazis at school and that period where the fascists the communists are fighting in the 30s it's a lot of they repopulate east germany's high command with the people who were involved in all that sort of stuff but they're also the only people that had survived yes i mean you look at what they had to survive for like 20 years they had to survive yeah it's such a rare paramilitary clashes in weimar germany you had to survive the nazi clamping down on the Stalin purges, the Spanish Civil War.

34:21Yeah, I mean, so these people, when you're looking at the apparatus of the state as to why it's so paranoid and so all-consuming. Yeah, but also anyone with any sort of charisma would have been purged by Stalin. So you're left with the... To be honest, it's a nation of Eichmanns. Yeah. It's led by an Eichmann. They're all Eichmanns. They are all Eichmanns. There's no charismatic leader, really. No, there's no Mengele. Yeah, not even a Goebbels, really. Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times. Your to-do list may feel endless with new tasks, and lists can easily begin to overrun your life.

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37:24Listen to the free audiobook now. So, well, this is fascinating. Goebbels and Ulbricht had debated each other in the early, maybe late 20s or early 30s. Peter's a versus Zizek. Yeah. I mean, man, how the West has fought. At 31, Ulbricht and Goebbels appear on the same stage for a planned debate. Ulbricht speaks first and stirs up his supporters. And then after his speech, the communists sing the Internationale so loudly that Goebbels can't be heard, so the Nazis just start a fight. That is a real lovely analogy. a mess for fascists if you're losing an argument turn it to violence and communists drown out things any other opinions blah blah blah blah blah so yeah now Milka he is the man who he runs the Stasi from 53 I think until the very very end so it's all him the entire time so he's the longest serving security chief in Eastern Europe yeah he had said at one point the gossip king there were six types of people and five of them were hostiles to the state that's what you want that's what you want but my point is is that so the people who run the gdr they are the least charismatic but also the most paranoid and they are the kind of cockroach survivors yes 100 of the sort of the middle part 20th century which is why the gdr is so paranoid snoopy um in like obsessed with other people's lives but also i guess the comparison is to sort of the russian model but russia's this huge superpower yeah whereas the gdr is a actually a tiny country that people are not fishing about in the same way they're sort of 18 million people yeah they're more left to their own devices in a way it's sort of like you know those kind of private schools where pedophiles roam because no one's checking on them private schools yeah but no one's checking on them because it's like there's just a small private school on the south coast you know yes yeah but then you also you have pedophile informants yes which is what the stars he did yes um you have people in the private school nazi pedophile informants probably yeah exactly i mean it's a terrific time um it's paris in the 20s it's weird wind you're a nazi pedophile can i just shake your hand um so at its peak the stars employed 91 000 full-time surveillance officers and then 170 ,000 informers who were called IMs, Mitarbeiter, informal collaborators.

39:55So one in six people worked for the Stasi. So if you threw a party in the GDR and invited 12 guests, statistically one of them was an informant. This basically means that in East Germany, you can't really do anything without being found out. and there's some amazing stories of the informants. So firstly, what I was saying about this being a very German security service is that they built, they're obsessed with data and Germans being German, they built an archive of smells. Yes. So they have, basically they take everyone's farts in a jar and they store them in a massive library of smells. Yeah.

40:37Imagine Charlie's Flats an archive of smells. Yes, it is. The Starz's the archive of smells. And they then, so they can train sniffer dogs to track you down if they decide that they want to get you. It's pragmatic, it's cold, but it's also perverse simultaneously. Yeah, very German. There's like a logic to it, which is kind of unromantic and cold, but it's still just a bit. It's hot farts in a jar. Fundamentally, it's still kinky. How cold and unromantic and detached can you be about collecting an old woman's farts in a jar? You never know, we might need it later. Yes. Just in case. 79 onwards, it built an archive of odour samples, stored in airtight glass jars, and the last known use in Germany was 2007, when the federal prosecutor took odour samples from anti-G8 activists.

41:25Fucking hell. They still got this information. They're still dipping into the wall of smells. The wall of smells. Was it Brian Eno's wall of sound, but it's the wall of smells. I just imagine it's this big fuzzy wall, and you just go... and you have like different you've gone a different journey but but yeah i mean it's it's like i've i've always said the worst thing after a big stinky shit is to try and cover it up with potpourri and air freshener just let just let one smell please one smell at a time yeah anything else is too much yeah yeah um they surveil everyone they bug her phones cars uh they open letters they secretly film people there's an amazing photograph of a Stasi person photographing a CIA person who's photographing him yeah which kind of defines the vibe of the Cold War yeah it's just taking photos scared that you're going to start World War 3 and what's amazing is that no one really knows or rather they didn't really after the 60s they don't really do much all this information but they have this very brutal first phase of Stasi where they sort of they kidnap people and they put them into this jail and then they're just collecting data just collecting data yeah so when there's when there's amazing stories that come out when they open the archives in 91 because they there's more written in by the Stasi than the whole of German literature yeah there's more words from like the middle ages to World War 2 yeah there's an amazing story of a woman called Vera Langsfeld who's a German politician and she discovered in 1992 that her husband of 11 years had the entire time been informing on her and had been telling the Stasi like what her psychological weaknesses were, what she was like in bed, when she was on her period.

43:16Just complete documentation. She then divorces him straight away and he goes, well I'm actually a Jew so I support the GDR because I think it's a response to Auschwitz. Which then, you know... This is the Kevin Spacey I'm gay defence. I mean it's an impenetrable defence because what's she meant to go? I'm gay actually.

43:37I don't understand that culture. You know, it is, it's different. Yeah, it is different. You know, men harass women putting a hand on the knee. You're sucking off strangers in public toilets. I don't understand the rules. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing. What? Yeah. What, what helped me? I'm blind. You know, the rules are different. It's a different game. Does it count if I'm blind? Maybe. I'm blind and gay. Yeah. That's the only better Kevin Spacey defense. I'm blind. Oh, right. Fine. He was just trying to shake the hand. This is also fascinating. The Stasi youth, right? So bear in mind, they put a lot of Hitler youth boys and girls into concentration camps for being Hitler youth, which is a bit, you know, they're teenagers.

44:18Come on, they're kids. We all think weird things when we're 15, right? They then start the Stasi youth, not the Stasi youth, they start the GDR youth, and they have a salute, right? That's slightly too close. So it's this. Yeah. So it's basically a Hitler salute that's been bent at 45 degrees. Yeah, that's... It's close. This is why it's a counterfactual. It's weird. It's AI. What if the Germans became communists, but it actually all happened? Yes. It's image. And also, if you lived through... If you're like a 90-year-old woman in the 80s, you've lived through the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, and communist Germany.

44:56Yeah. And then reunification if you lived to like 91, 92. But they're not living to see Austria becoming part of it. it again so hopefully we will hope i hope so yeah so yeah they have this salute which is just it's sort of like a right angle hitler salute and it's just a bit it's a bit close yeah comfort but this is again this is fascinating because the east germans are like we're communists so we're not fascists and then in uh west germany that's where they start saying well actually you're totalitarian definitely and that's the shared language so they try and move it away from fascism to fascism communism you're all the same it's about totalitarianism and authoritarianism because That argument starts in the sort of 70s.

45:33Because East Germany, in a way, is more anti-Nazi than West Germany, but it has more of the same fixtures of Nazi regime than West Germany. Well, there's more people working in... West Germany... It's Gestapo, Stasi... Yeah, West Germany's fascinating because they basically just go, la, la, la, la, nothing happened. Yeah. Just give everyone the jobs. Ignore it, otherwise we'll never get anywhere. And then when the next generation comes in at the end of the 60s, there's this German word, I can't remember what it's called, it's mad, mad long, basically means reckoning with your past. Right. And there's Fritz Bauer, who's the attorney from the Eichmann series.

46:10He's done a series of trials off the back of the Eichmann trial in the 60s. It's called Vergangenheitsbevittigung.

46:20That's when suddenly the new generation are like, well, hang on, what did you do in the war? Right. And then to the 70s, Willy Brandt, who is the chancellor of West Germany, he falls to his knees at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial in Poland. And that's like a huge moment. What did he do? Well, he was the Prime Minister of West Germany. Wait, so why is he falling to his knees? It's basically a way of saying sorry. Charlie just mimes. No, he's not sucking off the Warsaw Ghetto. He's trying to make his reparations. It would not be the same thing if he got down to his knees and just... It's the least I could do.

46:58I didn't know what to do what do you say so I just got on my knees and started sucking it off

47:06no he's so until what's he feeling emotionally overcome about about the fact that he didn't de-nazify as much as he should have no no it's more that the culture shifts so from a period of like let's park this yeah that's the photo iconic photo in Germany right it's been edited out of that he's a guy with his dick out in his mouth yeah very good the war so what this exposes Eichmann exposes the sort of cold bureaucracy of the Holocaust and actually everyone's understanding the Holocaust comes from that trial and then in Germany they have this sort of series of trials by Fritz Bauer is this post Eichmann yeah in the 63 is it a response to Eichmann yeah and I think it's called is it called the Saxony camp trials anyway they then they them they them Germany has to reckon with the Holocaust Of course, culturally, because there's a new generation of people who are learning about it from the Eichmann trial who are going, well, hang on, they're doing the maths here.

48:01They're going, well, you're 50. What were you? You were 30 in the 40s. What the fuck were you doing? I mean, that's what we're doing now. We'd looked up Dukal's fucking granddad. You know, we're still doing it now. It never ends. That's the word, but this word for gang and heights, for Wettig and whatever, it never ends. I.e. always find out who's related to a Nazi. Yeah. Right. What's one thing the Stasi are very, this is very interesting. they how they infiltrate the gay scene in east germany yeah is because this is very interesting this is the thing because they view all of this kind of counterculture as deeply threatening and they're very uptight and conservative but they're also unbelievably nosy yes they're very like it's it's not that conservative thing it's like i don't even want to hear about it it's like it's disgusting it's a threat but what are you guys doing what you do in your own home is my business that's what it is yeah it's whatever you do in your own home i want to know about it I want to know about it.

48:51I want you to tell me. I want to film it. It's Ewan Berghain, basically. What are you doing over there? Can I come and watch? That's fucking disgusting. Don't stop it. It's fascinating, isn't it? The socially conservative curtain twitcher. Yeah, yeah. Astonishing combination. Yeah. That's absolutely disgusting. Can I film it and just keep it in a library? And can I take your farts in a jar? Yeah. So what they did to the gay scene, so there was something called the Homosexual Interest Group in Berlin, right, which gets set up. And then the Stasian region, you're like, fuck, we've got to know about this.

49:23Because they always think that their main enemy is subversive elements. Well, because the whole regime is so insecure. To be gay is to be subversive. Yes. Okay, in this day and age. And interestingly, East Germany, they legalize or decriminalize homosexuality earlier than West Germany. But what they do with that, when they say, oh, you're all allowed to be gay, they then fucking blackmail. that they infiltrate all the dogging hotspots in East Germany and then black catch people, blackmail them saying, you have to work for us now because otherwise we'll tell everyone that you're gay. Yeah. Right.

49:58They even open gay nightclubs in the 80s. What, Stasi run gay nightclubs? State sponsored gay clubs. Unbelievable. And then they're, but they're filled with cameras and they're bugging it. Yeah, so good. So basically they think that it's getting out of hand because if you're, basically their logic goes that if you're gay in a society that doesn't accept that, then you're inherently sneaky and good at spying. So we should use that for the state, but also you're not to be trusted. It's a nation of glory holes, but on the other end, it can be someone spying on you. A nation of glory holes. It is.

50:30Because there's people with holes who are spying on you. Get out of there. They're either sticking knobs through there or they're surveilling you. They are. They are. Totally are. Now let's just go through some of their methods because they had this tactic. basically after the Berlin Wall goes up the kind of brutal first phase of the Stars League starts to ease off because they're always aware of looking bad in the West because they're always comparing themselves to the West they don't want to look bad so they start they move away from being the more physical torture methods and they move towards this thing called Zezetzung yeah they get onto chick shit which is this is chick gaslighting on a state yeah they move away from like blokey stuff to yeah girl shit yeah they move from non-fiction to fiction so this is psychological pressure this is teenage girl stuff okay uh so that translates as decomposition or disruption yeah it attacks your mental stability yeah your self-confidence your reputation your family life yeah it's a fight with a woman to continue yeah it is and you can't win because they will just constantly think you're you're crazy you're losing your mind and then if that doesn't work they'll call you a pedophile.

51:44Yeah, yeah, yeah. He raped me. Right, brilliant. I'm gay. Doesn't work. Doesn't work. Kevin Spacey defense. That's the only thing you've got. That's all you've got. So Jürgen Fuchs, who's one of the best known victims, described it as an assault on the human soul. This is where the stars would sneak into your house and they would just change all the clocks to be wrong by like two hours. They'd move some furniture. They'd change the brand of tea. Make your life uncanny and weird. And you'd walk in and be like, It's the beginning. It's the first third of a horror film. Yeah. everything's just a bit off.

52:14But the entire time. Yeah. They change the brand of tea that you drank to make you think you were going mad. Yeah. But they also leave traces. I piss in their pants or like, I just shit in their pants. What, in their drawers? Yeah. So, but they put them on and be like, I shat myself. What? I shat myself and then I didn't clean the pants? Or just leave skid marks in every pair of pants. I think that's a bit better, I think. Yeah. Doing shit in someone's pants. Because in the drawer. Yeah. yeah yeah but just if you keep myself if i don't remember i tell you what you go through someone's washing and you leave a skid mark in every pair of their pants yeah and they just start thinking or you change all their pants to female pants so they're like what do i like wearing this um victims would then sound paranoid when they try and explain what's going on yeah and so this is what's amazing it's in a horror film when when you're like trying to explain to the police that and then they don't believe you.

53:11It's the exact same thing. But they were trying to trap people. They engineer situations to steer people into criminal acts. Bear in mind that one in six people in the state are collaborating with the state. That's because the state have Compromat on them. So they're getting husbands to spy on wives. When the archives open, it is amazing the amount of divorces that spike because people realise that their husbands have just been basically gossiping on everything. The case of Vera Langsfell, that politician I mentioned earlier, she would always get worried about the Stasi taking her kids. And her husband told them that and said that she's particularly vulnerable to that when she's on the third day of her period.

53:54And then they jail her for being a protester in the 80s or something. And then they wait till the third day of her period and then say, oh, we're going to take your kids if you don't tell us what you're planning. It's creepy though. Yeah. And then she only finds out five years later they're her husband yeah they are period tracking it's really odd that's none of your business uh so they use these things called romeo agents right uh which is where they would send men not romeo beckham they would send men to try and uh seduce uh low-level female administrative staff yeah with uh but with um esteem issues which rarely happens that way around you normally send in the women but these brave men two hands up no no um so uh they were romeo agents were trained in psychology and etiquette and they prioritized active listening yeah patience and attentiveness yeah love bombing love yeah love state love bombing yeah there's a story of a woman who was working as like a secretary in the american embassy in east germany in Berlin maybe in the Soviet sector and the a guy starts love bombing her and then they get married and then she's giving him gifts and then she finds out 10 years later that he's already got a wife and family and all the gifts she's been giving him he's just giving it to her I mean it's astonishing the level of like infiltration you couldn't trust anything no and that would make you go mad they think that people have there's a name for a form of PTSD that only East Germans have because their idea of reality was completely compromised.

55:35They think there's about 300 ,000 to half a million victims of the Shazi. Some people think that they cause cancers and physical illnesses. What is it, Charlie? How important do you think trust is in romantic relationships? Well, I think this level of mistrust is damaging, I'd say. Is it all sexy or is it just kind of fucked? Is it sexy? The idea that... This is such a mess. i don't think i think the problem is you find anything sexy because you can always say this is a mess isn't it uh yeah you're like your wife of 10 years uh never loved you yeah and what's the stars nothing who even are you no nothing's real let's fuck i think you just say that with anything don't you yeah maybe yeah i think you're just horny i mean this also explain yeah explains why germany is the way it is now totally it's just so scrambled this is such a mess let's put rubber fist up my ass no yes Charlie did I tell you about on field do you know field yeah yeah the kinky kinky I was trying to be kind of I was trying to be non-threatening on there so I said I was bisexual which I kind of am but it was more of a phase at this point and I put my thing on men as well as women and 95 out of 96 of them were men but I don't want to just go to the pub and like chat about a bond law I might kiss your your knob if you know we're on pills and it's and it's dark but i'm not i'm not going pub with you so that's on the kinsey scale of like quite gay very gay super gay you're only at the gay level where if you're in a vest in a nightclub on on mdma you might do it but you're not gay enough that you could talk about fifa with a with a guy and still get i'll chat about fifa with you yeah but that's it's fascinating how when when homosexuality and traditional masculinity intersect in that you you want to be gay in a very hyper masculine way yeah in that i want to be like wearing a string vest busting fags doing pills yeah yeah that's incredibly offensive no i didn't mean busting fags in the 50s the stars were busting fags it must be said no i mean you want to be you want to be smoking cigarettes being basically ray winston they go yeah i'll fucking suck you off as if it's like the height of aggression in aggressive way you don't want to be canoodling a guy in a big sweater in autumn talking about the colors but i guess the point you're trying to make though is that like the kind of real like blokiness of like a you don't you don't want a straight guy to talk about who knows about you know the aston villa top scorers of the 2012 season that was a massive turnoff that does not yeah that does not turn me on no i want like kind of a little a little schmally sort of guy schmally what's that don't know just i'm like something like less i don't want like trevor i want schmull not trevor schmull fucking schmull is he a small german man i don't know like do you know someone do you know someone called schmull yeah or do you know okay do you fancy i mean this happened i don't know if it was on the other podcast but we were talking about like male crushes and we're talking about celebrities right charlie brought up a guy he saw on Instagram with like 2 ,000 followers who lives down a couple of streets away from him.

58:54You have mentioned this before. Yeah. Is he called... Is a guy who could easily be listening to this who's just like a guy who you're basically... Is he called Schmuel? No, he's called Liam. Right, okay. Anyway, the stars infiltrate the gay scene. And to be honest, you can see how easy it is. The amount of information we just got out of, Charlie. They're gossips, they're gossips. So basically, Zezet Singh meant that they would break people down to such a degree that when they were questioned by the Stasi, or rather they would have no option but to just go along with it. Yeah, and they show this quite well in lives of others.

59:28Which we'll be talking about on the Patreon this week, yeah. It's just endurance interviewing until they get the answer they need. Yeah. So there's something about how they'd keep them awake, or rather they'd wake them up at one in the morning and then keep them awake till five, and then they'd have an hour's sleep and then they'd turn all the lights on and go, you have to be up now. So they'd have these nighttime interrogations. They'd also just call you a paedophile. Yeah. which I think is quite route one. That's my kind of state security. None of this spying, just like, oh, he's a nonce. You're a pedophile.

59:55You're a pedophile. Brilliant. Who are you here to meet? You. You met me. Got you. Yeah, the Stasi ends up being the most comprehensive state security system probably ever invented. Yeah. Because it's got the highest proportion of the population ever to be involved. Yeah, something like the, in Nazi Germany, it was one out of every... Like 40 or something. 40. Yeah. East Germany is becoming a brutal police state with a struggling economy run by a man with a high-pitched voice. And as you said earlier, people are leaving a lot because the borders are just open. Now, obviously, Berlin had been separated into four zones.

1:00:39Which is what's weird about Berlin. Is West Berlin the capital of West Germany? No, that's Bonn. Okay. But, yeah, because I don't know what it would be like living in West Berlin because it's deep in the heart of East Germany. It's an island in the middle of a sea of East Germany. Presumably you're allowed to travel out of West Berlin. Yes, and there's a wall around a motorway that goes from West Germany to East Germany, to East Berlin, West Berlin. And they just have a wall along that hole. So just like an autobahn basically that takes you there. It's weird. What's the vibe? Would you want to, is it popping off in West Berlin?

1:01:11But you're right in the heart. You're not connected to anything. Well, what's interesting is that some of the theatre zone was in East Berlin. So a lot of people would go for a night out in the East and also they'd have so much money to spend in the east yeah because they're making bank in the west yes so they could have a fucking amazing cheap night in the east but there's not much of choice what are you going to do no there's the state there's a state play yeah there's what the state is the state beer it's the state it's all house wine yes it is yeah it's hard to splash out really um so everything is house basically yeah it is the tension had um erupted in the berlin airlift of 1948, I think, which is where, so that's when Stalin cuts off Berlin from the Marshall plan.

1:01:55Stalin blockades Berlin in 48 to 49 by trying to force out Western powers by cutting off the land access. But then the Allies supply the city by air, humiliating the Kremlin and ensuring that West Berlin will stay in Allied hands. But it's a poorer city. So East germany uh people are just leaving east berlin to go to west berlin and then presumably from there they can then leave to the west germany so between 49 and 61 around the most poorest border of the cold war basically so between 49 and 61 nearly three million people leave east germany for the west so about six yeah uh and the most practical route is through berlin yeah and these are young people professional educated and so this westward brain drain and the mounting economic crisis means that Ulbricht has got to do something.

1:02:45So on the 1st of August 61, he bluntly lays out the crisis to Khrushchev, who's now in charge. And Khrushchev fears that if they collapse, then it would destabilize the rest of the Soviet bloc. So they initiate what has become known as Operation Rose. And overnight, on 13th of August 61, a wall is built around the eastern sectors of Berlin. And we will deal with the history of the Berlin Wall and the rest of the GDR in our next episode. Why have you said that? Sorry.

1:03:23That's always my line. When has that ever been your line? All right, do you want to plug? Do you want to plug? You know, you do the end. Yeah, well, I've actually got a podcast. No, no, no, no. Don't do a plug for your podcast. Andrew and Charlie investigate every Thursday. Plug for this podcast. It's a rival podcast if you want to hear my side. Rival. Why have you said that? You're the producer of this podcast. He's producing a rival podcast. If you're going to plug, which you shouldn't be plugging another podcast, don't say it's a rival podcast. It's a competitive podcast. Check out the rest of his history as well.

1:03:49Those are great guys. That's already on the Patreon part two along with our bonus episode on the Lives of Others. A great film. Three pounds a month, all it costs and it's an absolute hoard now. Watch the Lives of Others even if you don't watch the episode. It captures all of this. Interestingly, one in six of our members of our Patreon are informing for Have a Word. Are they? Yeah. so anyway that's on the Patreon but if not we will see you on Thursday for the story of the Berlin Wall and our continuing epic on the GDR goodbye goodbye

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