After WW2, Germany was split into two sides, west Germany and east Germany. East Germany was ruled under a communist dictatorship. Within this side of the country there were secret police, the Stasi. No one, at the time, knew what the Stasi did until after the peaceful revolution in 1989. Only then, is was revealed to people what the Stasi were doing during the time. One group of the Stasi were a secret police, these people could be your friends or family, and they would report to higher ups in the system with the information they had collected from talking to you. This relates to the novel 1984. In this novel there are thought police. These police are seen as normal citizens and they befriend and gain trust of people in the community so they can report them back to the inner party. The goal of the secret police in both of these cases was to report information that could not be caught through video cameras or wiretapping. In those methods the government could only see what was going on as it happened, but through the secret police, Stasi or thought police, the government was able to get into people’s heads or thoughts to understand what you wanted to do before it happened. The goal of this was to have total control over the people. They could do this by catching someone, or a group of people, before they tried to rise above the government. East Germany was a small taste of what our society would be like in a world like 1984.
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January 2018
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