How legitimate was the 'reunification' of Germany, legally speaking? Doesn't it still exist in some Cuban island somewhere? There was a legitimate reason for Germany to be split in two, you know, the Nazis and all. How did the events take place exactly that led to the fall of the wall? Was it a early CIA/NATO backed color revolution or were Soviet Intelligence elements also involved? If the dreaded Stasi was so ebul, why didn't they intervene against them? What if DDR continued to exist today and went full Juche, somehow and like North Korea, aquired nuclear weapons? Would they be a rouge state? Even today, East Germans seem to be vastly different from West Germans, both culturally and even in ethnic/state terms if we want to get in the specifics and seem to be a lot closer to Eastern Europe then the West. There's even a quite large Russian minority present. The post-SED Die Linke Party and the far-right AfD are mostly popular in the former GDR which seems to lead me to believe most of the revolutionairy potential against Neoliberalism is in Eastern Germany. Does all this mean East Germany a victim of Western Imperialism from West Germany? Can National Liberation and East German Seperatists be memed into a reality, could it even spark a Donbass-style situation that Russian ☭TANKIE☭s could get involved in in case of a civil war? It seems like the only way to promote Communist political feelings again, a lot of West Germans, both Liberal and Reactionary look down on the East as da west german man's burden. There is even a term for pro-GDR feelings, Ostalgie.
Pic related, the far-right Chemnitz protests in Eastern Germany.
Another thing, unlike a lot of other post-communist societies ala Poland or Czech Republic, DDR seems to be poorer.
Cameron Ramirez
the DDR got the short straw during reunification, just like they did after WWII when they had to pay the most war reparations. it's been hard for them to properly reunify and to adjust to capitalism, and is why i fear the same thing happening if the DPRK ever reunifies with the ROK.
Ian Russell
I don't think the DPRK will ever truly reunify with ROK, simply because of geopolitics. Unless maybe the PRC collapses or something. None of the powers in East Asia want a strong re-united Korea under Socialism or Capitalism. The U.S bases in Korea would probably be put into question.
Mason King
A lotta questions there bucko. German reunification happened acutely because people kept on going to holiday in Czechslovakia and then entered into the BRD embassies. What the Issue government decided was "we will let some more people go but we will control it", those that couldn't get a visa to the west just continued doing the aforementioned thing. So one day, the SEE decides it will let far more people go. There is a press conference. They ask the bloke making it if they will need visas, he says no. They ask when it will start, he says "immediately". People are like WOAH that's pretty radical. 30 minutes later they realise "FUCK THE WALL IS MEANINGLESS NOW". The rest is history recorded up in shitty camcorders. My father worked a newsroom floor in the west (he isn't German, no) and saw the ticker come in with the press conference before he headed home. It was only when he was in the car he realise that the Berlin wall was about to come down. He knows the bloke that first reported it as such. Now all this occured due to increasing protests: especially in Saxony. However these protests weren't driven ideologically by anti communism (at a load of these marches one could see PRO SOCIALIST banners attacking the SED for not being socialist enough), nor by liberalism, nor by capitalism: but by nationalism, and by nationalism specifically cultivated by the SED. One of the common protest slogans was "Deutschland Einig Vaterland": a line lifted directed from Auferstanden aus Ruinen. The more I study the protests in the late 1980s, the more I realise that the people didn't want to kill socialism: they wanted to improve it. It is perhaps the great tragedy of the 20th century that it came to collapse rather than improvement. Regardless, socialism isn't tarnished in Germany like it is in other eastern bloc states: mostly since the Ossies still kinda support it. You see the DDR is remembered by most there as something positive, just with bad foundations. It echoes back to the reformist nature of many of the protest movements, the Ossies didnt hate the DDR, just its leadership. Wagenknecht was an SED member, she literally wrote a pro Stalin thesis and is pretty damn ossie, yet she is one of the most liked political leaders in Germany. You wouldnt see that in Poland.
Slightly more complicated than that: the East has had more investment, but not much economic restructuring. As such, all the buildings are nice and done-up and the transport links are great but unemployment is at 10% in some states. The only "success story" is Berlin itself but that has lots of different things going for it.
Henry Thompson
Why did they want to keep going to Czechslovakia for Holiday? Was it because it was a socialist paradise or because they liberalized and you could go to the west there by proxy? Also, the Nationalism you're refering to is German Nationalism, right? I think if East German Nationalism was promoted by the hardliners, the state could of survived. Did the DDR Establishment just get out of work after this shitshow? Continued to work for the Russians as agents in Germany? Like the CEO Nord Stream AG*, or maybe part of them just integrated in the new system.
They went to Czechia as a means to get to the west, sorry should have clarified. I mean German nationalism: Wir Sind Ein Volk was another major protest slogan. Ossie nationalism was a joke: literally the Westerns trying to take down old traffic lights did more to create and sense of common eastern identity than the SED ever could. Most of the SED establishment got let off the hook. Honnecker was done for corruption but was let off because he was basically dying. No one got done for "crimes against humanity", the only thing that came out were the STASI files but that was about it. A lot of former issues went into politics, as I mentioned a young Wagenknect (she was in her early 20s when the wall fell). What do you mean keep working for Russia though?
David Rivera
Tbh I wouldn't mind reviving it, they kept homosexuality out and allowed for the formation of beautifull families that followed a strong tradition shaped by the catholic catechism.
I should have said christian, you would be correct , still they provided a great foundation for a traditional lifestyle away from the decadence of the west.
Damn this really sounds like a place I would love to be in.
