[From the Wikipedia entry, above and below.]

The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS), commonly known as the Stasi, was the main security service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany or GDR), and defined Zersetzung in its 1985 dictionary of political operatives as

… a method of operation by the Ministry for State Security for an efficacious struggle against subversive activities, particularly in the treatment of operations. With Zersetzung one can influence hostile and negative individuals across different operational political activities, especially the hostile and negative aspects of their dispositions and beliefs, so these are abandoned and changed little by little, and, if applicable, the contradictions and differences between the hostile and negative forces would be laid open, exploited, and reinforced.

The goal of Zersetzung is the fragmentation, paralysis, disorganization, and isolation of the hostile and negative forces, in order to preventatively impede the hostile and negative activities, to largely restrict, or to totally avert them, and if applicable to prepare the ground for a political and ideological reestablishment.

Zersetzung is equally an immediate constitutive element of “operational procedures” and other preventive activities to impede hostile gatherings. The principal force employed to implement Zersetzung are the unofficial collaborators. Zersetzung presupposes information and significant proof of hostile activities planned, prepared, and accomplished as well as anchor points corresponding to measures of Zersetzung.

Zersetzung must be produced on the basis of a root cause analysis of the facts and the exact definition of a concrete goal. Zersetzung must be executed in a uniform and supervised manner; its results must be documented.

The political explosive force of Zersetzung heightens demands regarding the maintenance of secrecy.^[12]

The term Zersetzung is generally translated into English as “decomposition”, although it can be variously translated as “decay”, “corrosion”, “undermining”, “biodegradation”, or “dissolution”. The term was first used in a prosecutorial context in Nazi Germany, namely as part of the term Wehrkraftzersetzung (or Zersetzung der Wehrkraft). In Western parlance, Zersetzung can be described as the active application of psychological destabilisation procedures by the State apparatus

[. . . . . . . ]

British journalist Luke Harding [. . .], writes in his book:

As applied by the Stasi, Zersetzung is a technique to subvert and undermine an opponent [all boldings in red are commonalities between the STASI and the NYPD, as I see them.  However these actions may be unknown to the commisioner (so called), more later]. The aim was to disrupt the target’s private or family life so they are unable to continue their “hostile-negative” activities towards the state. Typically, the Stasi would use collaborators to garner details from a victim’s private life. They would then devise a strategy to “disintegrate” the target’s personal circumstances—their career, their relationship with their spouse, their reputation in the community. They would even seek to alienate them from their children. […] The security service’s goal was to use Zersetzung to “switch off” regime opponents. After months and even years of Zersetzung a victim’s domestic problems grew so large, so debilitating, and so psychologically burdensome that they would lose the will to struggle against the East German state. Best of all, the Stasi’s role in the victim’s personal misfortunes remained tantalisingly hidden. The Stasi operations were carried out in complete operational secrecy. The service acted like an unseen and malevolent god, manipulating the destinies of its victims.

It was in the mid-1970 that Honecker’s secret police began to employ these perfidious methods. At that moment the GDR was finally achieving international respectability. […] Honecker’s predecessor, Walter Ulbricht, was an old-fashioned Stalinist thug. He used open terror methods to subdue his post-war population: show trials, mass arrests, camps, torture and the secret police.

But two decades after east Germany had become a communist paradise of workers and peasants, most citizens were acquiescent. When a new group of dissidents began to protest against the regime, Honecker came to the conclusion that different tactics were needed. Mass terror was no longer appropriate and might damage the GDR’s international reputation. A cleverer strategy was called for. […] The most insidious aspect of Zersetzung is that its victims are almost invariably not believed.^[21]

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Use against individuals

The Stasi applied Zersetzung before, during, after, or instead of incarcerating the targeted individual. The implementation of Zersetzung—euphemistically called Operativer Vorgang (“operational procedure”)—generally did not aim to gather evidence against the target in order to initiate criminal proceedings. Rather, the Stasi considered Zersetzung as a separate measure to be used when official judiciary procedures were undesirable for political reasons, such as the international image of the GDR.^[38][39] However, in certain cases, the Stasi did attempt to entrap individuals, as for example in the case of Wolf Biermann: The Stasi set him up with minors, hoping that they could then pursue criminal charges.^[40] The crimes targeted for such entrapment were non-political, such as drug possession, trafficking, theft, financial fraud, and rape.^[41]

“…the Stasi often used a method which was really diabolic. It was called Zersetzung, and it’s described in another guideline. The word is difficult to translate because it means originally “biodegradation.” But actually, it’s a quite accurate description. The goal was to destroy secretly the self-confidence of people, for example by damaging their reputation, by organizing failures in their work, and by destroying their personal relationships. Considering this, East Germany was a very modern dictatorship. The Stasi didn’t try to arrest every dissident. It preferred to paralyze them, and it could do so because it had access to so much personal information and to so many institutions.” —Hubertus Knabe, German historian^[42]

Directive 1/76 lists the following as tried and tested forms of Zersetzung, among others:

a systematic degradation of reputation, image, and prestige on the basis of true, verifiable and discrediting information together with untrue, credible, irrefutable, and thus also discrediting information; a systematic engineering of social and professional failures to undermine the self-confidence of individuals; … engendering of doubts regarding future prospects; engendering of mistrust and mutual suspicion within groups …; interrupting or impeding the mutual relations within a group in space or time …, for example by … assigning geographically distant workplaces.

— Directive No. 1/76 of January 1976 for the development of “operational procedures”.^[43]

Beginning with intelligence obtained by espionage, the Stasi established “sociograms” and “psychograms” which it applied for the psychological forms of Zersetzung. They exploited personal traits, such as homosexuality, as well as supposed character weaknesses of the targeted individual—for example a professional failure, negligence of parental duties, pornographic interests, divorce, alcoholism, dependence on medications, criminal tendencies, passion for a collection or a game, or contacts with circles of the extreme right—or even the veil of shame from the rumors poured out upon one’s circle of acquaintances.^[44][45] From the point of view of the Stasi, the measures were the most fruitful when they were applied in connection with a personality; all “schematism” had to be avoided.^[44]

Tactics and methods employed under Zersetzung generally involved the disruption of the victim’s private or family life. This often included psychological attacks, in a form of gaslighting. Other practices included property damage, sabotage of cars, purposely incorrect medical treatment, smear campaigns including sending falsified compromising photos or documents to the victim’s family, denunciation, provocation, psychological warfare, psychological subversion, wiretapping, and bugging.^[46]

It has been investigated, but not definitely established, that the Stasi used X-ray devices in a directed and weaponised manner to cause long-term health problems in its opponents.^[47] That said, Rudolf Bahro, Gerulf Pannach, and Jürgen Fuchs, three important dissidents who had been imprisoned at the same time, died of cancer within an interval of two years.^[22] A study by the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR (Bundesbeauftragte für die Unterlagen des Staatssicherheitsdienstes der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik or BStU) has meanwhile rejected on the basis of extant documents such as fraudulent use of X-rays, and only mentions isolated and unintentional cases of the harmful use of sources of radiation, for example to mark documents [microwave weaponry].^[48]

In the name of the target, the Stasi made little announcements, ordered products, and made emergency calls, to terrorize them.^[49][50] To threaten or intimidate or cause psychoses the Stasi assured itself of access to the target’s living quarters and left visible traces of its presence, by adding, removing, and modifying objects such as the socks in one’s drawer, or by altering the time that an alarm clock was set to go off.^[51][41]

Use against groups and social relations

The Stasi manipulated relations of friendship, love, marriage, and family by anonymous letters, telegrams and telephone calls as well as compromising photos, often altered.^[52] In this manner, parents and children were supposed to systematically become strangers to one another.^[53]  To provoke conflicts and extramarital relations the Stasi put in place targeted seductions by Romeo agents [elsewhere I’ve used the terms ‘lizard loverboys’, ‘Don Iguanas’, etc.  Currently I’m leaning toward ‘NYPD bonobo rat lizard alien hybrids’, or similar.].^[40] An example of this was of this was the attempted seduction of Ulrike Poppe by Stasi agents who tried to break down her marriage.^[54]

For the Zersetzung of groups, it infiltrated them with unofficial collaborators, sometimes minors.^[55] The work of opposition groups was hindered by permanent counter-propositions and discord on the part of unofficial collaborators when making decisions.^[56] To sow mistrust within the group, the Stasi made believe that certain members were unofficial collaborators; moreover by spreading rumors and manipulated photos,^[57] the Stasi feigned indiscretions with unofficial collaborators, or placed members of targeted groups in administrative posts to make others believe that this was a reward for the activity of an unofficial collaborator.^[40] They even aroused suspicions regarding certain members of the group by assigning privileges, such as housing or a personal car.^[40] Moreover, the imprisonment of only certain members of the group gave birth to suspicions.^[56]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung

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POSTED ON28TH NOVEMBER 2021 BY MAX HERTZBERG

Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung

[Excerpts from above follow, PW]

Zersetzung of individuals

As in the case of groups, the Zersetzung of individuals had the aim of ‘switching off’ that person’s efficacy by undermining their confidence and their belief in the value of their activities. The Stasi did not usually care whether an individual was switched off through disillusionment, fear, burn-out or mental illness: all outcomes were acceptable, and people’s mental health and social standing during or after an operation were of no concern to the officers involved.

Worrying about informants

The Stasi made little secret of the fact that they used informants, and in fact deliberately helped spread rumours about informants. This was the cheapest and most efficient way to incapacitate individuals and groups.

Find out more about the GDR: articles, tours around East Berlin and GDR music.

The Zersetzung of individuals was usually carried out by systematically undermining the target’s quality of life (both socially and in the workplace) with the intention of simply destroying the target’s confidence. The tactics took various forms, such as spreading slanderous rumours, causing trouble at work etc. Rumours and information (such as about unacceptable political viewpoints, inappropriate behaviour, the possibility they may be an informant etc) that were passed on to work colleagues, bosses and social circles might be based on true facts, but were often plausible untruths that were difficult or impossible to refute.

The first stage of Zersetzung was a comprehensive evaluation of state-held data and information, eg medical records, school reports, police records, intelligence reports, searches of target’s residence. At this point they were looking for any weak points (social, emotional or physical) that could be used to put pressure on the target, eg extra-marital affairs, criminal records, alcoholism, drug use, differences between the target and their group (eg age, class, clothing styles) that could be exploited to socially isolate them.

After this a detailed Zersetzung strategy was drawn up: What was the specific aim?What tactics should be used to exploit the target’s personal situation and character traits? What was the timescale?

The next stage was often to supplement covert surveillance with overt observation in order to communicate to the target that they were of interest to the Stasi and to create a sense of insecurity and paranoia. Tactics included questioning, repeated stop and searches, strange noises on telephone lines, conspicuous visits to the workplace so that bosses and colleagues were aware of the police interest etc.

The final stages entailed psychological and physical harassment: moving things around at home (one morning the alarm clock goes off at 5am instead of 7am, and the socks are in the wrong drawer, there’s no coffee left …); damage to bikes and vehicles (eg slashing tyres); the spreading of rumours as mentioned above; ordering goods and making appointments in target’s name etc.

Families were often used as leverage against activists at this stage – either as a method of blackmail (eg family members subjected to oppression as a way of putting indirect pressure on the activist), or persuasion (“your daughter will land in deep trouble if she remains involved in that group, can’t you make her see sense? It’s her career at stake …”).

Physical harassment often included repeated arrests, physical attacks on the street (eg by plain clothes officers), or abuse and assault could be incited by the rumours that had been spread (eg bullying at work, avoidance by neighbours).

Stasi Tactics – Zersetzung

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