Bibliograph

God's spies, the Stasi's Cold War espionage campaign inside the church, Elisabeth Braw

Type

Label

God's spies, the Stasi's Cold War espionage campaign inside the church, Elisabeth Braw

Language

eng

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

God's spies

Medium

electronic resource

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Responsibility statement

Elisabeth Braw

Sub title

the Stasi's Cold War espionage campaign inside the church

Summary

The real-life cloak-and-dagger story of how East Germany's notorious spy agency infiltrated churches here and abroad East Germany only existed for a short forty years, but in that time, the country's secret police, the Stasi, developed a highly successful "church department" that-using persuasion rather than threats-managed to recruit an extraordinary stable of clergy spies. Pastors, professors, seminary students, and even bishops spied on colleagues, other Christians, and anyone else they could report about to their handlers in the Stasi. Thanks to its pastor spies, the Church Department (official name: Department XX/4) knew exactly what was happening and being planned in the country's predominantly Lutheran churches. Yet ultimately it failed in its mission: despite knowing virtually everything about East German Christians, the Stasi couldn't prevent the church-led protests that erupted in 1989 and brought down the Berlin Wall

Target audience

adult

resource.variantTitle

Stasi's Cold War espionage campaign inside the church

Classification