The Grey Men, Ralph Hope
The Grey Men, Ralph Hope
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The Grey Men

Author: Ralph Hope

Narrator: B. J. Harrison

Unabridged: 11 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/10/2021

Synopsis

By 1990 the Berlin Wall had fallen and the East German state security service folded. During forty years, they had amassed more than a billion pages in manila files detailing the lives of their citizens. Overnight, almost a hundred thousand Stasi employees, many of them experienced officers with access to highly personal information, found themselves unemployed. This is the story of what they did next. Former FBI Agent Ralph Hope uses critical insider knowledge and access to Stasi records to track and expose ex-officers working everywhere from the Russian energy sector to the police and even the government department tasked with prosecuting Stasi crimes. He examines why the key players have never been called to account and, in doing so, asks whether we have really learned from the past at all. He highlights a man who continued to fight the Stasi for thirty years after the Wall fell, and reveals a truth that many don’t want spoken. The Grey Men comes as an urgent warning from the past at a time when governments the world over are building an unprecedented network of surveillance over their citizens.

About Ralph Hope

Ralph Hope was an FBI agent for more than twenty-five years. Much of that time was spent in America, investigating drug trafficking, violent crime, and terrorism. After 2001, he served for nearly a decade as an FBI representative in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and Africa. He was deputy head of the FBI office in the Baltic States, and head of FBI operations in eleven West African countries. He was later selected as liaison representative for the US Department of Justice to United Nations Peacekeeping forces battling Islamic extremists in Mali.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Alexander on April 23, 2021

I've been sitting on this review for months now, thinking how I should approach it. We're diving into politics here - not that strange, as it's a book about ex-Stasi officers trying to disappear into post-DDR society, but I specifically mean my personal politics, the perceived politics of the book an......more

Goodreads review by Translator on June 01, 2021

This was simply fascinating. Living in (West) Berlin for (6) 8 years, even with all the security briefings and warnings about the Stasi, I had no clue as to the depths to which their operatives descended to do their bidding. Reads like a novel, but carries all the putrescence of a 40-year-old state......more

Goodreads review by Studvet on September 13, 2021

A 3.5 for the historical detail, depth of study and anecdotes. However it is somewhat repetitive and not a little paranoid, giving the impression we are a helpless mass subject to the machinations of an evil network operating below the surface wanting to take over the world and most people don't see......more

Goodreads review by Ian Murray on May 24, 2021

Frightening expose into what really happened in East Germany Very interesting expose on what went on in East Germany after the wall went up and how the Stasi, like the KGB, continues to this day to influence German politics.......more

Goodreads review by Becky J on July 29, 2022

Really interesting but marred by constant reminders of the author's political opinions. It weakened much of the main thrust of the argument, at least to me - the Stasi and what they did are horrifying. But hyperbole about 'OMG the YOUTH want rent subsidies and therefore they're going to bring the St......more

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