The Race Against the Stasi (Herbie Sykes)

Herbie Sykes

The Race Against the Stasi: The Incredible Story of Dieter Wiedemann, the Iron Curtain and the Greatest Cycling Race on Earth

An interesting and horrifying account of an East German cyclist who defects to West Germany for love. Mainly. I don't think that's a particular spoiler. The book is half comments made during interviews by a variety of people including the cyclist himself. The other half is news reports from the state newspaper and Stasi files. The book goes through a logical sequence so you can follow the thread of both the cyclist before defection, why he did that and the impact on his family back in the east and their relationships. The interesting bit is his cycling life and subsequent marriage and family relations. The horrifying is just how detailed the Stasi information gathered was even whilst he was a top cyclist in East Germany with very little indication that he would defect. It brings home just how many informants must have been working for the Stasi (170,000 regular?) and just how big the Stasi must have been (90,000) to collect all that information and act on it. Files were kept current on about a third of the population and possibly one in six people were informers at some time. Everyone expected that someone they knew well would be an informer. I can't quite imagine that. Not being able to trust your closest friends, or at least having some doubt about them. Or even your family. Even your spouse. There again the British police seem to think it's legitimate to have affairs, polygamous marriage and babies with those they have targeted as dissenters including fairly innocuous environmental activists. Maybe our security forces are just a little less obvious but just as all encompassing. If so... just take heed that the revolution is an inevitability so choose your side wisely. I digress from the book though as it's not about the Stasi as such but about Dieter with the Stasi files on him being somewhat incidental to his story. As it's snippets of interviews, state news reports and Stasi files it is not an easy flow to read but I guess that's the manner of such stories. A very irritating point is that the Stasi files are redacted (I think either at source or by the author) and therefore when referring to people there are a lot of "(?)" even though often you can tell who it refers to - or at least you're pretty sure. A good description of the now defunct Peace Race which was run between various eastern bloc capitals but attracted a fair few riders from western Europe and north Africa. Enjoyable.