Fall and rise

he Stasi. Just the name, even today, is enough to send chills down the spine. Formed in 1950, the Ministry for State Security was set up with one express purpose: to collect information and to know everything about the citizens of East Germany. “They were,” writes former FBI agent Ralph Hope in THE GREY MEN Oneworld, $32.99), “an intelligence service, secret police, public prosecutor and elite military all at once.” During the four decades this oppressive and loathsome surveillance regime existed, it employed 250,000 officers, known as the Grey Men, with an additional 600,000 informants – “unofficial employees” – by which children dobbed in parents, brothers snitched on