Would you have been a Stasi informant?

[slimsid2000]

If you lived in the old GDR would you have been one of the 10% (I think) of the population who worked either formally or informally for the Stasi?

[Vague_Boy]

If you lived in the old GDR would you have been one of the 10% (I think) of the population who worked either formally or informally for the Stasi?

 

Likewise the Gestapo in Nazi Germany would have been unable to function without civilian informants. They just didn't have the numbers.

 

With its limited resources, the Gestapo had to rely heavily on the civilian population as a source of information. This information seldom came from paid informants; rather it was usually supplied by plain citizens acting out of a wide variety of motivations. Angry neighbors, bitter in-laws, and disgruntled work colleagues frequently used the state's secret police apparatus to settle their personal and often petty scores.

 

LINK

 

Somehow I have a feeling that I would be one of the people being informed on, rather than doing the informing.

[HeadingNorth]

Very few people are going to think they would have chosen to be an informer; but it's quite a different matter when the threat of the Stasi is hanging over your own head if you don't divert it onto someone else.

[slimsid2000]

Maybe you would have been moved up the Trabant waiting list if you co-operated. They say on each floor of every tower block in East Germany (and almost everyone there lived in a tower block) there was a stasi informer. Likewise for every workplace.