DDR PROS/CONS THREAD

How prevalent was anti-communist propaganda in the media? Was the Cold War tangible in everyday life?
Was it at all acceptable to openly support the DDR?

Do you think many East Germans miss the DDR at all? Is there a taboo about wearing badges or openly supporting it in public?

Disclaimer, I am far from a perfect source, acadotal ect. Also I will use brd for pre-90 west, DDR for the east and Germany for the modern state or region as a whole.

Well the normies pretty much bought the prop, my parents and their friends were journos so traveled to the east a decent amount (my father played rugby in Czechia, for example). My dad always said that they had far fewer goods, but their social security was top tier (be it job security, or daycare or w/e). So those who had more contact with people in the DDR had a better idea (makes sense, you know), but likely would have prefered the higher standard of goods over the security.

Well for starters: most of the Ossies, even those that spoke well of the DDR, hated the Stasi. It is kind of an acab senseability of them but they had the chance to actually get revenge. However the stasi was a lot more complex than people outside Germany realise: it wasn't just people listening in on your á la Das Leben Der Anderen or Guards, but also big beefy security guards, record keepers, technicians, I mean if you worked in catering you were technically a part of the Stasi. So when the wall fell and reunification happened: a few things happened. First the German government basically never went after anyways after anyone in the DDR, they did a few show trails over "corruption" but either let them off, gave them a slap on the wrist or they happened to be too "old" or "sick" to go to prison. They also basically integrated the regular police into the state apparatus, however they made them use their DDR uniforms because they didn't want the bad PR of seeing ossie police in western uniforms. However the one thing they do was create an agency for storing the Stasi files. Now these files were pretty fucking damning for a lot of people: do not be under any illusion leftypol the Stasi did some fucking awful shit, and then tried to burn proof of it in the weird period between the wall falling and reunification itself. Yet, even with the files the gov did fuck all to stasi operatives: probs realising the shitstorm it would cause. What happened is that if you were found out to be an informer you were ostracised like nobody's business: a lot of them moved west because of this. HOWEVER, a lot of the Stasi informers (not agents, informers) actually were basically throwing Red Herrings all the fucking time at the agents. The irony was that the agents got away (mostly because they able to get away from where they worked) by the informers, a lot of him were saving their communities and not ratting out their mates for stupid stuff got a lot of shit from the people a lot of the time they were protecting. Oh also, a lot of the beef-bois I mentioned earlier would later find work for the German government: in 2009 it was discovered 89 former stasi members worked security for the Department containing the stasi files. In short, the Stasi agents were fucks, the informers actually saved people a lot of grief, the Stasi was way more than either of them and the entire situation is far more complex than people realise. As for the agent's motivations, some were sadistic, some were true patriots, some were true communists and some were in it for the career. I mention Das Leben Der Anderen because it is actually pretty damn accurate: the protagonist is a DDR patriot who just wants to serve is country, but corrupt members of the party elite throw him into a position where he is spying on an artist who is also a patriot. It shows a lot more comexplity than its supporters or detractors give it credit for.
Also as a side not, my father had a few run-ins with likely stasi agents when he was in the East once: in the DDR they had communal restaurant and cafe tables (a cultural thing, not some ideological meme). He would also be sat next to a lovely, chatty, charming young man. Who would probe him what he was doing. Since he would work out he was only covering the footie he would leave him be.

Depends what you define as anti-communism, I mean by the late 1980s (which is when my parents lived in bonn) things had eased off massively due to Gorby's detente Openly support before the wall fell? Nah. Yet, as I said by that time the feeling of reunification was more akin to the traditional German sense of bringing brothers back together than "WE MUST DEFEAT THE EVIL COMMIES": this is another thing non-Germans miss that in the West for most people it was about seeing family again and feeling whole as a nation, not to defeat the bogeyman to the east. If the DDR had joined with the brd but the eastern bloc had remained a lot of Germans would have been perfectly okay with that. You may have had some memers scream about Oder-Neisse but apart from that, yeah the Germans cared about national unity, not defeating the damned gommies.

My parents moved back to our native bongistan in 1996: and believe me open Ostalgie was around in 1992. Even those who moved west (which obs, living in the Rheinland my parents had the most contact with those who often left between the Wall falling and actually existing reunification) spoke fondly of a lot of aspects of the DDR, especially once the euphoria of reunification was done. One thing people forget about reunification is that it wasn't "Muh winds of change liberalisation" that people wanted, a lot of it had a nationalistic aspect: Wir Sind Ein Volk was a major slogan of the time. I say nationalist not in the reactionary sense, but more in the jacobin sense. So saying "yeah the economy was better in the DDR" was actually kinda okay for an ossie to say, they likely still would have supported reunification because they believed Germany would have a better future reunified. My dad, who is an old-school socdem who while not a meme anti-communist, certainly was not a soviet supporter, often says to me "the way they economically handled reunification was shit, a lot of eastern companies were just shut down for no good reason. If it had been done over a few years, things would be better now". Although, the reason reunification was rushed economically was because the DDR's Deutsche Mark was worth fuckall and with freemovement over the internal border they needed to trade with the west.
As for Ossies in the east, like hell do they miss the old days: one big thing for them is maintaining the ampelmannchen, which are the unique ossie traffic-light-men. When the German government, especially in berlin, tries to replace old broken ones with Wessie ones, people complained to keep the old ones so they did. It shows that Ossies liked the DDR as a concept, just less how it planned out. There is also a reason why Die Linke is popular in the east: implicitly they are the party of "The DDR had some shit parts but overall it was alright". Wagenknecht was an SED member herself who wrote a "Stalin did nothing wrong" essay iirc.

this kid here made a few videos on the DDR
they're not bad
he's not german so even he could learn a few more things but the language barrier will probably keep him from studying more, but it's a decent start
youtube.com/watch?v=zEm3e0Z00Jw

if you want to learn more maybe you can get your hands on works by Kurt Gossweiler, an east german historian that started his works on fascism but in the 90s began to analyze revisionism

i take back my video suggestion
must've been drunk back then, quality is shit and he talked some pretty retarded liberal shit

My family was from the DDR, nearly all of them did not want the reunificationa even less as it was done, and still think that Marxism-Leninism is the way (only my granpa is still a amemeber of a Communist party though)
Any question in particular?

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1. KPD or DKP?
2. Why aren't you a member?

are traps gay?

no

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I've been ignoring her notifications for a long time now. It almost seems like spam, plus the sponsors are annoying and reminds me I'm still in this capitalist shithole.

1.KPD
2.Not currently living in Germany but I'm a memeber of the SDAJ

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I'm pretty skeptical of that figure showing greater GDP growth on the part of the DDR. Soviet bloc and ML countries in general tended to have slower growth than capitalist countries, not faster, and West Germany was one of the primary recipients of Marshall Plan funds.

Also the source is in German so if any Krautbros are around here to translate I would appreciate it.

memo.uni-bremen.de/docs/m3309.pdf

First off, I doubt this claim.
Second, in case it's true, I'm 99% sure there was faster growth in purchasing power in those countries since GDP in capitalist countries is inflated by useless finance sector garbage.

How is SDAJ? Are they pro-Idpol like the Linksjugend [solid']?

Yeah basically, I think it is kinda non-evitable in German Communist parties.
Still there are some really good and prepared people here.
And TBH is one of the only ways of organizing were I live.

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Kraut here!

What exactly do you want to get translated?

Both are good but I would recommend the DKP since they are way bigger and not only exist in the east of germany.

Nice to see fellow SDAJler on Zig Forums

I would say no but some people are Idpolers. But the SDAJ in a whole is Anti Idpol.

I love this pic so much

Kraut here, it's legit. The guy wasn't only in the planning bureau of the GDR, he was also a economic planner in the FRG after reunification. This source is quoted by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, which is the offical German government institution for political education which provides materials for school books etc.

So even the German government admits these figures to be true.

That's flat out wrong. Compare any of the former Eastern Bloc countries with their modern capitalist counterparts. As for the second argument, the Marshall Plan wasn't that much in total, actually.

posting some saved info:

Reparations were taken from Germany because of the immediate needs of soviet society in risk of the large scale famine occurring and further consumer goods shortages. They were not taken after 1954 (before that allies were actively destroying FRG economy in an effort to neuter it, comparing to which reparations from GDR were relatively light). Instead USSR helped GDR to rapidly reindustrialize (10.1% gdp growth in 1954; credit from ussr of 485 million soviet rubles, 33 factories were transferred in 1954 alone, total worth of 2.7 billion ostmarks). Industry output growth in 1950-1958 240%, FRG - 210%. Starting conditions in 1950: GDR - 110.6% of 1936 gdp, FRG - 110.9%.

Berlin Wall: It was mined, there was a trench to block vehicles as well as a line of obstacles for APCs on certain strategic locations. Plus there were guard towers with armed guards and automatic rifles. Westerners claim that those were there solely to keep DDR citizens from fleeing to the west which is obviously bullshit, the main purpose was to block NATO spies and saboteurs from trespassing into DDR territory or out of DDR territory. Actually, nobody had to flee and risk his or her life on the border. You could legally leave the DDr for good and move to the West. In order to do that you would have to ask the authorities to get your citizenship removed. When the authorities approved of that request (process time could take years though) you could just pack your shit together, hop on a train and settle in the oh so free West. I think the process was called Ausreiseantrag or Übersiedlungsantrag.
the authorities had a reason for calling the border "Antifaschistischer Schutzwall", it may have prevented something awful. It was unpopular among the general population and made it easy for Western propaganda to portray the DDR negatively. The West attempted to lure people into working in the West by paying them higher wages than usual. However the closed border between the BRD and DDR was one of the most important if not the most important strategic frontlines during Cold War. Before it was built in the early 1960s the border was open and there was free movement between the BRD and DDR for all citizens of either the BRD and DDR, yet the majority of the 17 million DDR citizens felt no desire to move to the BRD for better wages or whatever

Reminder that Honecker's writings during his jailtime just after the fall of the Berlin wall, and ultimately of the Soviet block, are the best explanation on why and how this happened, from a person who tried to oppose it literallly to his last breath.
We really need this translated to English, as it is only benn translated to French and Spanish

French:pc-ge.org/blog/erich-honecker-notes-de-prison
Spanish:marxists.org/espanol/honecker/1993/notas.htm

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...

It was a Soviet satellite state.

- Soviets unscrewed too many factories after WWII which they couldnt even use
- Ulbricht was couped away by untalented Honecker with SU support when he tried to install a NEP-system which was highly successfull
- Too many resources went into the Stasi
- Too strict party line and intern struggles so they managed to quarrel even with socialists like Ernst Busch and others

Any more untrue stereotypes to share?

If the GDR was a soviet satelite, why was the Berlin Wall built, when the USSR asked Germany to NOT build the wall?

Unscrewed so many factories that the GDR's economy was only a step behind West Germany despite the fact that the GDR had a smaller population and wasn't nearly as industrialized as the West. The only reason the Anglos left the West its factories was because they lost almost NONE of their own and had little damage comparatively, and thus could use West Germany as the anti-soviet frontier they wanted, with military industry right behind it.

TL;DR
The USSR built more factories than it took, and it used them to prop itself up while it restored its own erased factories.

*looks at budget spending*… projecting much?
Because of the constant sabotage and subterfuge conducted by Western Alphabet Soup agencies.

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Short answer: yes

what book is this

it's funny how murritards to this day pretend that there was no attacks carried out against the SU or GDR. they literally bombed a fucking military airport and organized acts of sabotage and terror in the GDR.
that's even acknowledged by western media.
faz.net/aktuell/politik/amerikaner-bezahlten-anschlaege-in-der-ddr-13440897.html

Yep. The worst part is the for "proof" we have former dissidents who (having committed subversive actions and been punished for it) wail about unfair oppression "for no reason"
On Zig Forums there is a Why Did the USSR Fall thread and some ankid user claims to have lived in 80s Germany and keeps moaning about how the wall was used to cage people and how the evil stasi took away all the fun stuff from the capitalist west.

from what i get the KPD holds the opinion, based on works of Kurt Gossweiler, but their own experience too, that the whole fiasco of 89 in all the socialist nations of eastern europe was orchestrated by a highly organized gang of anticommunist traitors that long term prepared and had their agents in all branches of politics and all the armed forces of the working class under lockdown

people were protesting, but not for capitalism
these moves were entirely orchestrated by the inner circles of traitors that actively pushed for the destruction of the entire socialist block

if it had been any other way genuine socialists would've resisted far stronger and there'd have been armed resistance, either at the attacks against the walls took place or later on when people became disillusioned

they should've prepared, got arms and ammunition and spread them out to carry out attacks later on

there's a literal nazi getting his pension for being a "victim" selling books. or maybe that old fuck is dead, really disgusting looking scumbag.
any criminal declaring themself a victim does so for the money. this is similar to the paid horror stories in south korea by defectors that otherwise can't make a living wage.

today east german cities are dying, those who can afford left. they are trying to fish people back by having them live 2 months rent free in Görlitz. but at least there's a mc donalds probably somewhere, huh?
if there's evidence for the GDR being merciful with their opponents its that this faggot still lives to spout bullshit.

It's rather frustrating and sad that such revisionism exists despite the fact that information is all the more available today than ever before. allowing the truth on these subjects to be available.

Do y'know what that book is called? The text is familiar but I don't remember it.

What about you? You live in the GDR?

if you're german check out this guys works
kurt-gossweiler.de

I'll translate it slowly. I know a bit of German but I'm way rusty

I can't take anything in your post seriously when you say shit like this.

...

Care to enlighten us?

They were all roughly equal. DDR was no better than Czechoslovakia or Soviet Union.

Weren't you banned?
Also nothing wrong with GDR, Czechoslovakia and Soviet Union. Standards of living were good

I have been banned t least three times.

That's correct, I am just tired of 'GDR had the highest standarts of living'.

Were not the living standars constantly rising in the DDR?

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The same can be said about every other country.

Why is no one discussing the ebinest of all ebins? How was Trabant? My father says it was very spacious in the front

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My grands have a Trabant, and it still woks perefectly, consumes very little (does not run much though), same as their washing machine, like 40 years later

A serbian punk band made a song about pigs eating their blue trabant (which can actually happen since the chassis is made out of plastic)
Also in some Serbian movie (can't remember which) pigs eat a Traband as well.

That post is very correct, and it's killing me how modern things are made to brake, yet the internet is full of propaganda talking about 'inferiority' of unbreakable goods made in the east.

My friend grandfather still has a Zhigul and old Skoda car.

i have a marxist professor from germany, he is very young to be a graduate professor and a literal genius. like 33.
when i asked about the wall this one day he said "people in germany wanted the wall taken down because they thought it meant they would be able to travel to countries they haven't been before, but immediatly after the wall went down and the gdr was dissolved they wanted it back because no one had the money to travel"

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There is a 2017 documentary about a very robust GDR kitchen appliance: rg28.de/ (website is German). Haven't watched it myself because I don't have autism.

What does he teach?

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Only someone autistic would say quote weird like that.

A full professorship, in what discipline ? At his age, he better be a fucking genius.

Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti

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The car is not a sports car, but a true basic peoples car in many senses.

simple, made to be prefabricated. Body made of what was essentially waste wood pulp compressed into slabs (both conserving products and making it cheaply replaceable), had decent speed, carried a decent amount (for a family car), and was relatively good on gas mileage for the time.

It's ok that it was slow, it shouldn't have had such a bad design though.

The design was alright. Believe me, compared to some cars I've seen in the USA, its a stroke of genius.

the refueling methods, door locks, etc? pretty bad. Part of serving the people needs to be actually testing shit out and making sure it's ergonomic.

Bumperino

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