East Germany thrived on snitching lovers, fickle friends and envious schoolkids

Everyone knows about the Stasi and the extent to which it spied on the East German populace. But that was only a small part of the informing that went on. New research shows that snitching was vastly more common than previously thought.

One day in September 1987, for instance, the phone rang at the headquarters of the Volkspolizei, East Germany's police force, in the town of Döbeln, not far from Dresden. On the other end of the line was the voice of an unknown man.

Der Spiegel