Angry Planet - European Policing From the Carabinieri to the Stasi

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

Elisabeth Braw​ is a Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London. RUSI is the oldest defense think tank in the world and Braw leads its Modern Deterrence program. She’s also a columnist at Foreign Policy and the host of the On the Cusp podcast.Welcoming back Jason Fields to the foldWhat a difference training makesEurope’s different policing stylesThe darkside of European policingA brief history of the Stasi You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Hello, welcome to War College. I'm Matthew Galt. And I'm Jason Fields. Why, Jason Fields, welcome back to the show. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure. It's an absolute pleasure to have you back on. Yeah, I've been away for a really, really long time. But, I mean, as long as I've been gone, you've been doing a fantastic job. I mean, the show sounds great. And I think listeners are happy.

So, you know, people will wonder why I'm back. Well, we don't talk about history enough, A. And it turns out that I missed having you. And it's really hard to do a podcast with only two people and one host. It's a giant nightmare. So I needed you back. Well, like I said, I'm really thrilled. And I miss the show.

I mean, I miss doing it. I'm the great people that we talk to every week. And, you know, you always come away from it knowing something you didn't know before. I mean, whatever the reason why you decided to ask the question in the first place. Yeah, I'm always surprised. Well, I'm glad that you're going to be back and going to be asking questions. Well, I got plenty of questions. Let's hope the guests have answered.

You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts. Hello, welcome to War College. I'm Matthew Galt. And I'm Jason Field. Elizabeth Brawl is a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London. It is the oldest defense think tank in the world, and Braw leads its modern deterrence program. She's also a columnist at Foreign Policy and the host of the On the Cusp podcast.

Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. So this week we wanted to look at how policing works in Europe and the differences between it and the United States. And in particular, I want to talk about your recent foreign policy column titled Cops Could Learn from Italy's. Jason, you're going to have to help me out. I don't know why I can't say the word. I only can say it because I was in Rome for, oh, an entire week, you know, so what so it's cops could learn a lesson from Italy's Carbignetti. Thank you.

So it's a different kind of police force, kind of a category that we don't really have in America. So first, can you kind of explain the concept of their gendarie, right? They are. So what is that? So it's essentially what you might call a hybrid between military and police. And when you say that, people think, oh, it's military police or it's something really sinister because it's a police run by the military. But it's actually an old concept or an old-fashioned concept. So the caravineering in particular were founded 206 years ago.

So even before Italy itself was founded, they were founded by the king, which is what Italy had back then, King. Victor Emmanuel I, the first of Sardinia, and they were formed to protect both the country, the country of Sardinia in that case, from both internal and external threats and aggression. And so that's really what the gendarmerie force is about. It's really a multi-use force, and historically or traditionally has been part of the Ministry of Defense or the Department of Defense, but with policing duties as well. So how does that make them different from the army itself? Because Italy does have its own actually official army.

Yes, it does. So the Italian army is called the Serciito Italiano, and it does what armies traditionally do, territorial defense, expeditionary missions. But what the caraviniere do is, as I said, a combination of, military duties and police duties. And what's interesting is that in peace time, which has been for a very long time now, domestically the Kerminieri focus on policing duties. And that's everything from community policing to extremely complex investigations

involving the mafia, for example, which is, of course, Italy's biggest criminal enterprise. So they focus on a range of duties. in that criminal justice field, but abroad, and that's what makes it different from your traditional police force, they train other countries police forces in what's called stability policing. They are part of UN missions, UN peacekeeping missions, for example, which traditional police forces are not. And so they really bridge that divide between what is it an army does, what is a police force does, when, for example, in K-FOR, as part of K-FOR, they help training local forces and local police forces to essentially keep the country safe and calm.

And that's something that the army would be the Italian army or indeed any army would struggle to do simply because they do territory of defense. They can do a little bit of partner training, but they don't have those specialist skills that the Kerviniere. have. And just very quickly, if I may add, that's what make the Kerminieri. So incredibly popular on four missions that the Italians get many more requests for Kerminieri foreign deployments than they can handle. They are still different, though, from the local police. It's not that there aren't local police in Italy, right? That's right. So there are really three main police forces. There are the Kerminieri. There are, there is. the Polizia, which is what we might call the traditional police or the regular police,

then there is the traffic police, and there is also the Guardia di Finanza, which is the agency also affiliated with the armed forces that handles financial crime. So it's all these four forces, and you might think it would end in complete chaos, but it seems to be work to work for the Italians. What are the different, I guess, jurisdictions? Like, how would you know, do you call them or is it something that they kind of get assigned to take on a case or a task? Yeah, so you would call the equivalent of 911 if there's a crime. But it's interesting.

Often the Italians just say what they call the Carragunieri rather saying call 911. So that really illustrates how present they are in society. But it's important to remember that they are a national force. So very much unlike American police forces, or I'm supposed to say police agencies, unlike American police agencies, they have a national structure. And whereas the police is more. locally focused. But for all law enforcement or criminal cases,

or if you find you're being attacked or you're having some sort of problem where you need to call the police, you just call the 911. You wouldn't call the caravignieri specifically. And then your case can then be brought to the caraviniere if they are the force that is responsible. And so, as you. think what's really interesting about them is that they have this national reputation and

offices moving around the country on different assignments and we can talk about that later. I think it's actually something that they keep them on their on their toes and keep them learning all the time. So it's actually in that case, sort of like the way the U.S. Army works, people are constantly changing their stations. Exactly. And it's something that is that every armed forces, every military organization does. So you have an assignment for three years or a posting or a tour and then you move on to two years or three years and then you move on to the next one.

And it's something that obviously works very well for the armed forces. But it hasn't been seen as something that the police should do because it's obviously in the US and in most other countries. It's a local agency and you become a cop in your hometown. and that's where you stay. But that's what makes the caraviniere is so different, that they have the equivalent of tours or postings at a similar rate to what the U.S. Army, for example, has. And that can help with corruption, too, right? I mean, if you can't have the same ties that you might have if you were there for 10 years, 15 years.

Yes. And I think most of all it just keeps you alert and keeps you learning new things. And of course, the downside is, and what many people say is that if you spend three years in a community, then you're not going to develop the sort of ties that you would need to be a good community police officer or to conduct complex investigations simply because you don't know people well enough. And there is that downside. But the upside is that you rarely become complacent. And you obviously also have some sort of career path where it's in your interest to want to develop

because you can rise through the ranks, not just within a town, but within the country. Okay, but I think just from an American perspective, some of this strikes me as part of the a lot of our complaints about the police here are that they are from outside of the community, that they are too militarized. Why do you think that this works in, that stuff like this works in Italy, but it may not work or is not working in America? And, you know, I think one of the things that we had discussed a little bit before the show is training, right? Yeah. I think primarily what works really well with the carabiniere. And I should say, I'm not saying that every carabiniere is a hugely successful officer,

or that there are no flaws whatsoever. There are flaws within the carvenieri Corps as well. But I think what works really well for them is that they are, they have military training. They know how to handle weapons, but they rarely use them. And that is the secret to that success, that they are. out in the community, but you just wouldn't know that they have any weapons. And often they don't have weapons, which is what happened to that caramineria officer who was killed very recently in Rome by an American teenager, as it happens, he was, he apprehended a teenager,

no, two American teenagers who had stolen a backpack from a drug dealer in Rome. And when he apprehended him, one of them stabbed him to death. That was a caromero. Air officer carried no weapons. And in that case, it ended badly. But ordinarily, there just isn't a lot of violence against Karaminer because I would maintain people have respect for them simply because they don't carry weapons. They are very good at engaging with people. They are very good at de-escalating.

And so I think, since you asked about training as well, that's one of the reason they are successful. They know how to handle weapons, but they're also very well trained or extremely well trained in how to de-escalate situations and obviously still get that man, or woman for that matter. They managed to arrest countless mafiosi every year despite not having the sort of armored personnel carrier and other advanced equipment that US police agencies have. do they deal with protests like what we've been having in the United States recently? They do. And in fact, I would argue how they cut their teeth in modern time.

As I mentioned, they've been around for more than 200 years. But for a long time, they were sort of not hugely respected. And then in the late 60s, but primarily early 70s, Italy had went through a horrible stretch and it had domestic terrorism. You'll remember the red brigades. And it also had violent student protests. And it was all very, very unedifying. And that's where the carabinieri learned or was, I shouldn't say, perfected,

but hugely improved their crowd control skills. And that's something that has served them ever since. And I think that has also helped increase or improve their reputation so that today they have a fantastic reputation. And it's interesting, for example, to think about the peacekeeping missions they have served on. In the Balkans, they have taught exactly those skills to local police forces on behalf of, you know, of the international community, and that has been extremely valuable, I think, for example, in the country like Kosovo. So what, can we get into specifics as much as we know about what their training entails,

like how long is it, you know, what exactly do they do? Like, how long, if you sign up to do this, how long are you in, that kind of thing? Yeah, so you sign up to become a carabinieri, you spend your initial training almost like a military officer in training, living in barracks, and then you go out into the community. But what's important, what makes Carravenieri different from U.S. police officers, they then regularly return for more training. And what's also really interesting, I think, is that they sometimes live in barracks.

They live in barracks during their training. Then they may live out in the community with their families. And then they return for more training. And they also return to some assignments where they live in barracks. So they never, I think, get stuck in a particular position or a particular place or a particular way of thinking. And here is something that's really interesting or really important, not just interesting, but important. they are also the lead agency in NATO's stability policing Central Excellence, which is based in Vicenza, which is a city in northern Italy,

where they teach exactly these skills to whichever countries want to learn from them. And that's a fantastic contribution, I sort of think, that it may not be a bad idea for a few American police agencies to come visit. Obviously, stability policing is different from what you. you do as a sort of bread and butter of city policing, but still American police officers could learn a great deal from the carabiniere and maybe come and live and serve with them for a little while and see how you could do things a different way, even though I realize there are differences between the US and Italy, primarily the huge number of weapons that are

that circulate among the American population. But even bearing in mind those differences, I think there is a great deal that American police officers could down from the carvenieri. Are they well paid? They are paid like other civil servants. And so they get, it's essentially the same pay structure as the armed forces. And having had a father-in-law once upon the time, was in Italian general.

I do have some familiarity with the pay structure. And it's not hugely well paid, but it's a safe career. And it comes with, for example, the 13th month, which is a very Italian thing. Where you can get, for Christmas, you get, or in December you get two months salary. So it's, I guess it's, you could say it's like civil servants. everywhere not hugely well paid, but respectable and obviously a safe career. Well, sometimes also I think that there's civil services looked at differently in Europe than it is in America. Right.

There's a different culture around it, I think. Sometimes it feels like in America the only part of the saying civil services broadly that's respected as the military. You raise an interesting point. So I lived in the U.S. for 12 years and I'm actually married to an American. So I think I keep my hearing to the ground there. You all are right that there is huge appreciation for the armed forces as a service to the nation in the U.S. in a way that we don't have here in Europe. But it does clash with maybe the lack of appreciation that most people feel for any federal government workers,

which is really what armed forces, members of the armed forces are. Yes, now that I think about it, and again, you raise an interesting point, that we probably respect civil servants more here in Europe. it's because there is this history of benevolent government in many of our countries, not all countries, of course, and there isn't this suspicion of the capital or government in general that many Americans feel. Coming from Sweden myself, I think it's just one extreme. Swedes just trust the government to a huge degree and think that civil society. servants are very respectable people.

And so that sort of confirms what you just said. So I'm just wondering about one of the biggest complaints right now in the United States is that police are protecting police. That when bad actions take place on behalf of one officer, the other officers create what, you know, we call the thin blue line. and they won't report on each other. I just wonder if you know about whether there are similar issues in the Caravigneri or, you know, in other forces in Europe. Everywhere, simply because you're keen to protect or be loyal to your comrade in arms.

But I think the difference between American police officers and Caravaniery, and now, I'm just, generalizing terribly. But I think the difference is that the Cabernier spends so much time out in the community that I think they feel more connected to the local population than American police officers may do. And obviously, there are many fantastic American police officers who spend a lot of time talking to troubled kids and to others who may otherwise slide into a life of crime. But if we just look at the way the Carabiniere have been working during the coronavirus pandemic, I think it just illustrates how they operate. So they, the ones who are out working in the community, it was decided that they would offer to retirees. They would offer the opportunity

for those retirees to receive their pension at home. So the way it works, in Italy is that if you're retired, you're going to collect your pension at the post office. Well, what do you do if you have to shield in place? You can't go to the post office. And because you're retired, you're most likely very vulnerable, and you're often 70-year-old. So you're stuck at home. Somebody needs to get your pension to you. So the Carabiniari decided that they would offer that service.

And so retired people could essentially also. authorize the caraviniere to collect the pension for them. And that's what they did. So they've been in all these towns and cities around Italy, they've been bringing people their pensions. And that just brings them, it illustrates how close they are to the people. And it strengthens that bond. And they have been bringing food to homeless people and to vulnerable people and to families who were struggling.

And again, that brings them closer to the people. I think helps them see people as just fellow human beings as opposed to somebody who might commit a crime. That sounds sort of terribly touchy-feely and maybe something that just couldn't apply to the US. But I keep thinking, what if in tough neighborhoods, what if police officers were to in some sort of time of crisis, including coronavirus, if they were just to come around. and maybe see if people needed anything. And that would help them to establish such bonds.

And it would help them to be seen as a friendly institution and not as a threatening one. And it would also help maybe de-escalate situations when dangerous situations do occur. I'm not sure that would work here because they do do some of that. And sometimes, like they perform wellness checks. And sometimes because of, I think, a lot of different reasons, some of it comes down to really piss poor training. They, the American police end up turning wellness checks into crime scenes. A lot of the police shootings started that way.

It just feels like there's a culture difference here that I'm not sure is, that at this moment in American life feels insurmountable. And I feel like that's why we're seeing what we're seeing is everyone's so frustrated that they're not even sure. Like, we're in a place where defunding the police and like tearing down the entire institution is on the table and being reasonably discussed in major American cities. Right. That's how bad things have gotten here. Yeah. And so the idea, like, like I hear what you're saying. the idea of

of like this kind of this branch of the military like showing up to people's homes to check on them and like trying to integrate into the community is just it feels so anathema to me. And I think that's just because I'm an American and because I've grown up in this

paradigm where the cops have not been good guys here for a long time. I have a question and sort of a thought maybe. in Italy you have migrants right I mean it's been the migrant crisis for the last few years and I am going to guess the migrants don't look at the carabin area the same way that other groups do because that's one of our biggest problems in the United States is that there's a large

part of the population that actually still does like the police but minority groups are you know disproportionately targeted yes that's that's that's that's that's that's a good point. I think so the migrant crisis has been a crisis mostly in the south, which is where people arrive and where you have these tense situations and it's completely unclear where these migrants should go because the point is that they arrive in Italy, not because they want to stay in Italy, but because it's the closest part of Europe, that and Greece. So, And then, of course, many, many of them try to get to Germany or, in fact, to Sweden, which is, you know, sort of the best countries in Europe to live in as an asylum seeker.

But you're right. Many asylum seekers may not see the carabiniere in the same way as Italians do. And that's something that where the caribiniere may need more training. I think they are still, they still behave in a very professional manner, but they will need to establish those links with minority communities as well. And I know there have been some issues in the past between Roma in Italy and law enforcement. But that sort of training will become necessary or we become even more necessary as a number of migrants in Italy increases. and just as a precautionary mesh, I'm not saying that they will commit more crime than people who were born in Italy. But if the Carbineo could establish those sort of community links of the same quality that they have with people who were born in Italy,

I think that would be a very positive thing. But you're right. It is, in a sense, a similar situation to what is the case in the U.S. And unfortunately, I think the relations between minority groups and law enforcement agencies are not perfect anywhere. We have seen very tense relations outside the U.S. as well. I would say, for example, here in the UK, the police has been maybe unfairly targeted because it really doesn't use the same aggressive techniques that American police officers do,

but it's not to say that the tension doesn't exist. But again, it comes down to training, and that's, I think, where the Karadigieri are, where they completely outperform American police officers. simply because they have access of training that American police officers don't. So there's just one other thing I would mention. And Matt, actually, you tell me what you think, too. American police officers are trained for specific purposes, right? There are no national standards for policing, right?

I mean, there may be some forces that are more professional than others. There may be some forces that are better at crowd control than others. and less violent about it. But there are no national standards. And I guess that's one thing about the carabinieri is that it's by definition a national standard. Yes, exactly. And with national oversight, so you sort of can't hide in your town, because it's a town where nobody really looks,

Yes, they look because you will be examined when you move. At the very least, when you move on to your next position, your record will be examined. And now people say, oh, she's proposing a national police force in the U.S. I wouldn't go that far as all. And who am I to dismiss American? We also have national police forces here, right? We have the FBI and the ATF and these law enforcement. agencies that do operate on a national level.

It's different, but we do, and I, you know, the standards that they, that they adhere to are not the same standards that local law enforcement does, but they do exist. Yeah. But imagine if you had something like that that involved community policing, and where, yeah, where local citizens could actually regularly interact with. with such a force. But I think it's possible in the US, even within the federal structure, or even within the city-based structure.

So what if there were training, if there was a training curriculum for police officers, where they would every three years or every five years be trained at something like Fort Livermore, or what have you, but not at military installations, but at their own training centers and would receive the latest training and also maybe get a reminder about what it is they are supposed to do. I think that would go far away.

Of course, that would require cities teaming up to form such regional units for police training. But I think that's more feasible than simply defunding police departments. police departments and starting them all over again. All right. We're going to pause here for a break. We'll be right back after this. All right, listeners, welcome back to War College. Do you all want to talk about the Stasi?

How much time do you have, Elizabeth? We can talk about the Stasi. Wow, we could do two episodes at once, Matt. Is that what you're thinking? Well, no, I'm just saying we've talked for about half an hour. hour. I feel like we've, we've, we've, we've, we've been through that topic. And I think that, uh, there are, it would be, it would be bad. I'm trying to push the show for an hour right now. And we have someone here who wrote a very interesting book about a different kind of police force. And we should talk about it. Right. Happy to. Um, it's always a good time to talk about the Stasi. Yeah. It is. It's. So, So I guess my transition here is, so we've looked at one kind of good European police force.

You have written a book called God's Spies, which is about another kind of European police force. It's very, very different. It's about the Stasi, but it kind of has a specific bit in an angle. Can you tell us about your book? Yes. So the Stasi, just for those of you who were born after 1989, The Stasi was East German as secret police. The Stasi is a slang word.

The official name is the MFF, so the Ministry for State Security, and it was an enormous agency, government agency, led by somebody called Eirich Mielke, General Eirich Mielke, who was Minister for State Security. And this ministry, which operated as a police force, with corresponding titles all the way up to full, general, actually managed to keep track of the entirety of East Germany with all of its aspect, its civil society, its athletes, its churches, its political parties, such as they were,

because it was obviously an authoritarian country, its children, its retirees, its workers. And the Stasi knew, you might say, knew every thought of every East German, or at least every thought they expressed. And my book deals with one particular aspect of the Stasi, which has been, has barely been written about it at all, which is surprising because it was so important. Now, East Germany had a very vibrant religious community, or it had a very vibrant Lutheran church. So Luther was born in what then became East Germany. By the way, those Lutherans impressed Martin Luther King's father so much when he went to visit that he then renamed his son and obviously named him Martin Luther King. So it was a very strong community. And that posed a huge threat to the regime in East Germany because all these Christians maintained links, including to America.

They had their Christian friends all over the world. And they were, in general, just much more non-conformist than your garden variety, East German. So Estasi had this department whose only task was to undermine East Germanist churches and the Lutherans in particular. And they were phenomenally successful in doing so. And for this book, I managed to talk to the man who led this church department. It was called Department 20 slash four, who led it for the last 10 years of his Germanist existence. And he had been an officer in the department for many years before that. And it's the first and only time he has spoken to a journalist or a book author.

And he is now obviously not very young anymore, but still very alive, but he won't be around for much longer. So I was incredibly lucky that he agreed to speak to me, not just for 10 minutes, but for many, many hours. And thanks to him, I got the information that you won't find in any archives, including in the Stasi archives. So the Lutheran Church, I guess, had a history of standing against repressive regimes, too, right? I mean, this was the same. they also had a similar function against the Nazis, if I'm remembering right. Dietrich Bonhofer and... That's right, yeah.

So he, yeah, he was a Lutheran pastor himself. There was also somebody called Martin Niemler, who's famous all over the world for his saying, first they came for the communists, and I didn't say anything, then they came for the Jews, and they didn't say anything, and so forth. And it ends with, and then they came to me, and there was nobody who could say anything. Roughly, that's the quote. And he, too, became very active in the resistance to the Nazis. And in general, the Lutherans are just very political, whereas the Catholic Church is primarily,

they mostly focus on church services, on the liturgy. They don't really get involved in politics. But the Lutherans are so active, and that really bothered the Stasi. and, well, as they had bought the Gestapo back in the day. And the question was, so you are a socialist country, and you have this secret police agency staffed by workers, because obviously to be somebody in the worker in a peasant state, you had to be a worker at present too, even though there were some exceptions. And so imagine you are a stasi officer, and you are, as was the case, for example,

with the protagonist of my book, you are a farmhand. How do you even figure out how to infiltrate the church? I mean, what do you even talk to these pastors about? And that's how they started out in the early 50s, these officers, with no clue about anything relating to churches. And yet they knew they had to defeat this enemy. And lo and behold, they learned on the job and became incredibly successful.

They knew everything that was going on in these. in these church communities and in the decision-making organs and then global decision-making organs, there's something called the World Council of Churches, which is like the United Nations of global Christianity. They knew what was going on there too. And you won't be surprised to hear they knew exactly what was going on in those peace prayers that grew in 1988 and then grew beyond anybody's expectations in 1980 and then led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Stansi knew all of that. They knew who was organizing it, what was planned, but, well, we can talk about later what

happened. Well, one of the things I think is really interesting here is this idea that you're able to build a surveillance state, as I would argue that the world is kind of building now. You can have all of this information. You can know everything that's going on, but you can't actually stop or control anything. Right. Exactly. And that was the challenge that the Stasi had, specifically this department 20-slash-4.

So just to explain how they worked, they became so successful because they didn't threaten. They didn't coerce. They did a bit of that in the beginning, but then they gave it up because it was counterproductive. That's what the KGB did, by the way, in the Soviet Union. They just sent priests to the gulag. Well, those priests are never going to do them any favors, or those Christians are not going to do them any favors later. What the Stasi did was they recruited pastors as informants,

essentially as spies, to spy on their fellow Christians. And that was phenomenally successful because Christians, I think, are just, generally they trust one another. And so you wouldn't, they, didn't, they trusted one another in a way that they didn't trust outsiders. So obviously they were aware that the Stasi was keeping surveillance on them, but they didn't suspect that it might be the pastor himself who was reported to the Stasi. And so the way Department 420 Snash 4 did this was the appeal.

to these pastoral vulnerabilities. So some were very vain and they just wanted somebody to tell them how great they were or they wanted a little bit of a push in their career or they wanted goods from the West. The Stansi knew all of that. And when it came to times on the recruitment pitch or for the recruitment conversations, I should say, because it was a long-quoting process, they were then able to offer the sort of things. that particular person was interested in.

And so they had this core of really dedicated spies, pastor spies, who worked for them. And that's exactly how they knew what was going on in 1988 and 1989 as those peace prayers began to pop up in lots of churches and then grew larger and larger and larger. and coming back to your question, they knew exactly where this was heading and the director of the department, the protagonist of my book, who's called Joachin Vigand,

Colonel Vigant, told the government, the regime, repeatedly the intelligence they had, his department had, but here's the problem. What people wanted, the sort of ideas that were being expressed at these church service,

these peace prayer services, it was so different. from what the regime was willing to countenance. So no intelligence could have saved East Germany because the people were so far away from the government. And that's how they comprehend it. Do you mind if I ask you a little bit about the Stasi itself? Go ahead. Okay. I remember when the wall fell, because I'm old, and something like a third of the country was spying on another two-thirds of the country. Can you just talk a little bit about the scale of the organization?

Yes. So it was enormous. And there are all these figures floating around saying two out of 16 million East Germans spied on the, on the, others, it's very hard to estimate how many actually did it. So the way their Stasi operated was they had files for everybody they had ever interacted with. And so they could, so if you had a conversation with somebody who was a Stasi officer, he then not surprisingly would record that conversation and say, I spoke with such and such. And then people who are not that familiar with with how the Stasi operated, they may hear of that record or see it, and they will say, oh, such and such reported for the Stasi. That's not necessarily true.

The ones who reported for the Stasi who really were agents, or what you might call spies, are the ones who got codenames, and they signed on the dotted lines committing themselves to the Stasi. But even with that limitation, it was a very extensive surveillance operation. The thing is, we'll never know exactly how extensive, because as you recall, in those frantic months when East Germany was collapsing, Stasi officers popped and shredded lots of files. And they started, I found out from Colonel Vigand, they started with the current files, not surprisingly. So lots of people who were surveying or who were working for the Stasi by the time East Germany collapsed. their files are gone and we'll never know who they were. It's kind of a, there's a lack of justice, but also perhaps a clean slate that's needed to move a country forward when it's in that position, right?

Is it, it's like that level of surveillance feels like a madness that grips an area? Yes. So it's almost like they would have needed a truth and justice. is Truths and Reconciliation Commissioned. But they chose to do it differently so that everybody who thought they might have been targeted by the staff, they had the right to request their file, and they can see from spite on them. But the thing is, they will never know for sure because so many files were popped and shredded. So the people who have been unmasked now over the years since the end of the collapse of East Germany

are only the unlucky ones whose files were involved. And so, for example, one of the people who are featured in my book is a pastor called Jögen Kapiske, who was phenomenally successful as the Stasi Spine. He was so successful that East German Foreign Intelligence then recruited him to serve in Vienna. And so his misfortune was that when he left the domestic part of the Stasi to join the HVA, he was then taken over by the HVA and his new handler when East Germany came down and said, yeah, I've shredded all your files. But they forgot that there was a copy of his files still in the domestic part of Estabstia.

And that's how he was, how he was found out. But he was unlucky. There are many others like him whose files were shredded. And so I think East Germans will always have to lay. with the suspicion that people spied on them and the people who spied, including many, many, many pastors will wake up nervous every day worrying whether this will be the day that somebody finds out that, oh, those shreds that are still in the Stasi archive that somebody is piecing together, somebody has managed to piece them together and now they have been found out.

And that's 30 years later, the puzzle masters at the Stasi archive are still putting shreds together And so imagine that you did spy and imagine that you went on to serve as a pastor. You may not be a retired pastor and every day you have to wake up worrying that maybe they'll find out that I did work for the Stasi. Well, it's the same kind of stress that they were putting other people under when they were Stasi though, right? Yes, exactly. I mean, I'm not saying we should feel sorry for them at all. I mean, if you commit to spy on your fellow citizens for a secret police agent, you do deserve to be found out.

I don't think there's there's any, we should have any compassion for them. But I'm saying it must be incredibly nerve-wracking to know that you have that secret and that you have to worry every day that somebody will find you out. And I think, especially considering that most of the people who despise for the church department

were pastors, I think they should have the decency to come forward and say, forgive me, forgive me, I did this and it was a horrible thing I did and I just, I just have to confess, I did it. But in my, the only person I could, well, I could only find one pastor who had done that, which is, which is incredibly depressing. and nobody else volunteered that information. Everybody else just waited until others found them out. And of course, many still haven't been found out. Can I ask a basic question?

Yes. So we have this idea about communism that it's atheistic and wants to destroy the church, right? It's not allowed, you know, there's no gods, no kings, et cetera. But so why didn't, why, the truth is obviously a much more complicated, right, as your book gets to. Why didn't they just outlaw the church outright? Why choose to kind of go about it in this way? So East Germany was a proud country. It was part to be a civilized country.

I mean, it's a country that has enormous cultural history. It's home to Gertes, Sri Lanka. It's home to Bach, of course, the most famous composer-musician has ever lived. It's home to so much of the cultural history of the West. And for East Germany to go Albania and essentially put Christians in jail or ban religion altogether would have been unthinkable because it was proud of its cultural history. And we should remember that was also its calling card internationally. It got lots of visitors, including lots of visitors from America, who came to Leipzig,

because that's where Bach had served as organists for many years, who came to all those famous sites, and they brought, we should remember, Remember, they brought hard currency. And they gave that sort of international recognition also gave East Germany a higher standing internationally. So that was the reason. And it's East Germany benefited from it. We should remember, for example, 1983, which was the Luther anniversary. Lots and lots and lots of Western tourists came.

And again, brought hard currency. because in order to visit East Germany from the West, you had to bring hard currency. So I think it was both a matter of pride and frankly a matter of the economics. So what lessons do you see that we should be taking away from it for the current surveillance states that are being built now? I think the lesson is that we are all a little bit like Faust, if you remember, the story of Faust who sells his soul to the devil because the devil promises him something in return. In his case, the devil promises him essentially complete knowledge. And I think most of us, unfortunately, are easily sold or easily sell ourselves.

So we want something and we are happy to violate our integrity to get it. And without making any comparisons to current politics, I think there are lots of parallels between what those East German pastors did and what quite a number of people are doing today. And so we shouldn't look down on East Germany. say, oh, those terrible East Germans, they just signed up to work for the Stasi. I think we should think about what would we do ourselves in a situation like that. And I hope for myself that I wouldn't do it. And I think everybody, we all hope that we wouldn't sign up to work for the Stasi. But I don't think we should be so sure because a police agency, a successful police agency,

targets people's vulnerabilities. and that's what this part of the Stasi did so well. It didn't need to coerce. It didn't need to threaten. It just needed to appeal to people's valities and ambitions and grievances. And it was very successful in doing so. So what we should learn is to watch our integrity and maybe not to look down on people who live or have lived in authoritarian.

countries. No, I think that's an important lesson because sometimes these things happen slowly and a lot of times you have people have less control over the grand political machinations that are above their heads. They have, but they have control over what they do in their individual life. And it's sometimes people are just trying to survive, right, with as much dignity as they can. And sometimes that means making really hard choices, especially when you live in an authoritarian system. And part of how an authoritarian system works is it makes you sell off little bits of yourself

slowly, hopefully without you even, hopefully without you even noticing what's happening. And we shouldn't judge those people. Exactly. And we have had the enormous fortune of living in free countries that, those of us on this call have had an enormous fortune of living in free countries all our lives, but many others have not. And it's interesting to consider. So during the Cold War, Americans, especially Republicans,

were staunch defenders of dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. They were often baffled that not more people stood after the regime. But it's not that easy to stand up to the regime when you face the prospect of losing not just your job, but maybe your education, maybe your children won't be sent to university. And on the other hand, you can do what many of the pastors in my book did, which is to work with the Stasi,

that gets you a better job, a job that you may not deserve, but a better job. It may get your children a good education, and you may say, well, I did what I had to do. And you may feel a bit bad about it, but you may feel,

you may sort of justify it by saying, oh, it was the best I could do in that situation. So those of us who haven't faced that situation shouldn't judge those who have. And if I can just say one more thing about the officers, I found in writing this book and researching this book and speaking to a lot of people that the officers actually were surprisingly humane people. They were essentially like the confidants of these pastors. They listened to them. They listened to their problems. They dispensed the advice.

And after the collapse of East Germany, since then, they've stayed in touch with each other, the offices within this department, 20 slash four, which is remarkable. They get together several times a year. And I find that so touching somehow because we think of Stasi officers as the bilist creature, a bilous creature you could imagine. Actually, they were quite intelligent and clearly have very good interpersonal skills. Whereas the pastors, they are the ones who now exist in complete isolation because they sold out their friends to an organization that clearly nobody wants anything to do with anymore.

And to be in that position can be a certain kind of trauma. to be, and it's not a kind of empathy we like to practice or think about. But to be in the position of Astasi, to be doing that job, will mess with someone's head. Yes, yes, and I think if you're a Stasi officer, in fact, I know that if you're a Stasi officer, if you were a Stasi officer, you said, okay, I serve this country. There are people similar to me on the other side, and we, compete for two different systems. We work for two different systems.

We compete against each other. And I'm doing my work for my government, for the country. I want to win and survive and win. And the other guy on the other side of the border does the same thing for his country. Now, of course, the difference is that West Germany didn't have a secret police organization. But still, I think as a Stasi officer, you could justify or you did justify, your work by saying, I'm doing my part to help this country survive. This country that is under so much attack from what they would call imperialist forces.

So the West, with the West, using so many ways of trying to weaken our country, for example, by maintaining relations with our citizens. And I think if you feel that your country is under siege in that way, you will say, I am doing the right thing. I hate to say this. But for the last couple of years, I've been involved in Holocaust education. And, you know, I mean, just to point out, I mean, that is actually, that can be used in terrible ways as well. That, you know, most regimes that are the most aggressive sell themselves as defending themselves against an outside threat, perceived or real.

So, I mean, you know, I mean, I agree that there's, I don't know what I would do under a system like that either. I think that heroes are, as we qualify them, are rare. But there are limits to forgiveness, I guess, is what I'm thinking. Yes. And I think the people who deserve the most blame are the ones who are not upfront about what they are doing. So the people who secretly work for the other side, denouncing their fellow citizens, there is absolutely nothing redeemable about that. And only if they ask forgiveness, which, as I said, almost none have done.

And that is the depressing aspect of this. And then for the officers, of course, it's, we, as neutral observers can't ever justify working for a secret police agency. But I would say that the East Germans were mild compared to the Nazis. I mean, the Nazis were, it was many times more vile, atrocious, horrible than the East Germans. But still, there is no arguing, there is no disputing that the Ministry for State Security was an unethical. immoral organization that should not have existed in the first place.

And it will live in infamy for the rest of, well, I don't want to say for the rest of history because I hope it will be forgotten, but at least for the next few generations, it will live on in infamy because it was a horrible organization. But I think for the officers themselves, my point was just that that's how they just it. And as you said,

humans are being, human beings are capable of self-justification in almost any situation. So clearly, just because the stasi officer says that he feels justified having word to Estabstasi, it doesn't

mean that. So it was still a vile organization. Elizabeth Braud, the book, is God's spies, and the column is in foreign policy. Thank you, so much for coming on and walking us through a wide range of topics about policing

in Europe. Thank you very much and thank you for your interest in both of those aspects of policing. That's it for this week. War College listeners, War College is myself and Jason Fields and Kevin Nodell who's created by me and Jason. And we are happy to have him back. I've got a few more episodes that was recorded with just me that we need to burn through.

but we wanted to reintroduce Jason the show and welcome him back with open arms and he will be here from now on asking the hard questions about foreign words I don't understand and can't pronounce and history I've never heard of. Look forward to it.