Comment by dudeism_est_03

I watched a documentary about this a few years ago and they spoke about this. At least this is what I seem to remember. The wall came down quickly and caught the Stasi out. Not sure if it was surprise or a desperate hope of holding onto their cushy spy jobs. Anyway, when they realised the consequences of all of their activities becoming public they started to panic. That’s the downside of spying on an entire country in such detail - they had enormous archives. Of course they had a process for deatroying documents but I think most of their business was hording :) All Stasi workers basically tried to destroy as much as possible and as quickly as they could. They specifically mentioned burning (I am fairly confident) - the Stasi people worried that the smoke would give their secret locations away and that the same people pulling down the wall would come for them too. That’s also the same reason they couldn’t drive all the documents away.

No references - this is just what I remember from that documentary.