Book Recommendations on East Germany + Stasi

[MarxistRealism]

Recently I asked around for a list of book recommendations on East Germany + the Stasi. Here's the list of recommendations I got. I haven't had the chance to read any of these yet but feel free to sound off in the comments if you have, or if you have any to add.

Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? - John Green
East German intelligence and Ireland, 1949–90
Man Without a Face - Markus Wolf
A Socialist Defector - Victor Grossman
Der Klang Der Familie - Felix Denk and Sven von Thülen
The Red Army Faction: A Documentary History

[KronenbergTheDJ]

Nice! At least one of these will likely end up on my list. Curious on what you think when you read them.

[Destroy All Beers]

Would definitely add From My Life by Erich Honecker

[northwoods_memo]

EDIT: I just realized you were asking about East Germany specifically. Welp lol


Hidden History of 9/11, edited by Paul Zarembka. I have this book, still need to read the chapter on the Bukhari mix-up though. Talks about the military exercises on 9/11, body doubles of a couple of the alleged hijackers far as I recall it.

Imperialism in the 21st Century by Brian Becker for the PSL. I wouldn't endorse all of the themes in it, esp. the idea that China isn't imperialist. I think it can be very well argue that China is at least a sub-imperialist power, and fits Lenin's definition of imperialism. The security agreement it signed with the Solomon Island recently would be a good example of the subordinate status its ruling class wants to impose on weaker countries. The agreement was leaked by the The New York Times, but to my knowledge neither PRC nor Solomon Island has denied its authenticity.

But the point in me recommending that book is that I think, since dialectics teaches that things are in constant movement in a development of internal contradictions and in relations with other things, it is fair to say that Lenin's theory may be outdated for the 21st Century, and this book offers a starting analysis of what an updated theory of imperialism in the 21st Century may look like. For example, export of capital is one of the markers of imperialism, but the United States IIRC is a net capital importer now. There is also interesting idea that Lenin heavily relied on Hilferding's analysis of German bank capital and that Lenin's analysis ended up having some tunnel vision/lopsided, in addition to the fact that Lenin couldn't have had access to Volume 3 of Marx's Capital when "Imperialism" was written.

Hitler and Big Business by the French Canadian labour historian Jacques Pauwels. It explains how the German industrialists and monopolists 'hired' Hitler to crush the largest socialist party in Europe, the SPD, and how the Holocaust was a profitable endeavour for capitalists, in addition to being the poster child for capital's explicit violence. Later, I should share a lecture of sorts someone wrote about the idealism inherent in fascism and how it's cynically exploited by the haute-bourgeoisie to try and restore 'stability' in capital accumulation process during severe crises of profitability. It was a great systems-level analysis, and it could honestly go some way into explaining the occultism that's heavily associated with fascist cliques (I see occultism as a variant of petty-bourgeois mystification/reification of the accumulation process – the petty-bourgeoisie can see that the expansion of the commodity form debases all aspects of social life, but their outlook means that they reckon at the level of the superstructure e.g. family, religion, gender, and there is a very cynical right-Hegelian mediation of this reckoning in classical European fascism).

[bathsalts]

read a couple chapters from that red army faction book recently while looking some stuff up about psychological warfare within prisons, looks very official and readable.