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Located in the graceless suburbs of East Berlin, through
a huge network of full-time staff, aided by part-time informers
numbering in the millions, the Stasi infiltrated East Germany
with neurotic overkill, creating and fuelling an atmosphere
of fear and mistrust to the extent that family dinner table
conversations were curtailed.
The Stasi's power resided in its insidious thoroughness
rather than explicit violence, although beatings were not
unknown.
The Stasi headquarters can be visited today, and are interesting
not for what can be seen, but because of what went on here.
There is a lingering empty resonance of a perverted commitment
to soullessness and utter lack of personality.
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