I was born in the GDR and came came down when I was just turning in a teenager. I am really thankful that I can watch a Dutchman in an open society nowadays making by far the best videos about this topic and still learning a thing or two. Many thanks; keep it up and Happy New Year!
Ditto. I am a half Cuban East German born Canadian. I love your channel. We managed to leave East Germany in 1985 so I do not have many memories, just some horrific stories which included a great deal of racism towards me. Perhaps that would be an interesting future video, children born in East Germany to foreigners. (My mother was East German).
in the early 1980s Honecker liked to go out on the streets in disguise and ask the citizens if they supported the government and the party , he asked one guy who looked around like he didn't want anyone else to hear his answer and whispered to Erich "I support the government and Honecker"
@@hydrolifetech7911 the punchline is that even in a totalitarian state like the GDR, the people were more embarrassed about supporting the government than they were afraid of it. It''s a subversion of the expected outcome that a guy whispering would be against the government and afraid of arrest.
Thank you for being honest about how “democracy” was in the DDR! A lot of people who make videos about the DDR will lie and pretend that it was actually democratic because of ideological reasons…
East Germany has always been one of my niche interests. Thank you so incredibly much for making such concise, well-researched, and informative videos without fluff. It’s refreshing to see your channel grow so much since I’ve subscribed awhile back. Keep up the good work!
Always a joy to discover a new East Germany Investigated video on my feed. I'd be curious to know if there were similar faux-democratic institutions on the municipal level also.
I live in China. The current government structure is almost exactly the same as this, just with slightly different names: National People’s Congress-NPC Standing Committee-State Council-Premier-President (same as party leaders)-CCP Party Congress-Central Committee of the CCP-Politburo-Politburo Standing Committee-General Secretary of the CCP. As an aside, the GDR’s secret police agency was called the Ministry for State Security while China’s is called the Ministry of State Security.
I have another take on this. Due to my profession at the time, I had the opportunity to visit the GDR quite often. "Minders" escorted me everywhere while I was working, but I was left alone (no doubt surveilled by the Stasi) during my off hours. Of all the eastern bloc countries I worked in, I found the atmosphere in the GDR by far the most oppressive. When I did meet ordinary GDR citizens privately, they didn't complain about the lack of democracy, they complained about the inability to travel to sunny places and beaches outside the eastern bloc. (They found Black Sea resorts inferior to what they imagined destinations along the Mediterranean to be). So, it was no surprise to me that when the Berlin Wall fell and the Iron Curtain breached, GDR citizens overwhelmingly voted with their feet...and 98% of the tally was against the SED.
I don't know about that. The GDR was the richest and most developed of all Eastern block countries, and had many major successful policies. People like to denigrate it endlessly without commenting on the many positives and innovations that came from there.
@@arbendit4348 True, the GDR had the highest living standard among eastern bloc countries, but there were still many shortages. Did you ever try that concoction they called coffee? The regime came up with that nightmare after they ran out of hard currency to import real coffee. Far worse were the doping scandals, intimidation of SED opponents, and shoot to kill orders at the border. If it hadn't been for the billions West Germany paid for transit highways and political prisoners, the GDR economy would have collapsed years prior.
East Germans were an exception behind the iron curtain as they were the only ones to receive West German television which showed them what life was like in the West. Many East Germans could still travel to the West during the 1950’s. That is why, is my guess, the people were far more conscious of the contrast with the West. I can imagine that after the Wall fell, people wanted something completely different and tried to forget everything that had to do with the GDR. Now, 35 years later, people become nostalgic and think the GDR wasn’t so bad. However, it was bad, although it did have some positive achievements.
To my disbelief, the first genuine non-forged elections in 1990 still saw 16.4% voting for the SED (albeit freshly renamed into PDS). So your 98% is a little optimistic. Stockholm syndrome in politics, I guess...
@@arbendit4348 The GDR was the richtest but also the porest. they traded heavy industrial equipment for banana's in the end. bullets for oranges. helmets for imports from africa. they where poor. they where opprest and they had a enemy that spoke the peoples language, culture, and lost because the state couldnt chill out of a bit with its oppressions. also my dad was former sovmix. so i know Themotz55 is close to the truth about this.
Even as a German who was born two years before reunification, your videos are very interesting, and I learned so much watching them. Thanks a lot for that! Have a good start to the new year, or like the Dutch say: Fijne jaarwisseling! 🎆
Ostdeutschland war der größte sowjetische Militärposten in Übersee - die DDR beherbergte bis zu 750.000 sowjetische Soldaten sowie ihre Angehörigen. (Übriggebliebenen) „sowjetischen“ Truppen verließen Deutschland erst Ende 1994 endgültig. Der einzige Grund wie Leonid I. Breschnew Erich E. P. Honecker erinnerte dass die DDR existieren konnte war das Vorrecht der UdSSR.
Great to see all the donations voming in to your channel. Your videos are excellent and are of very high quality. I wish i could contribute to your channel but im not really in the position to. I am subscribed and will always give your videos a thumbs up. I was born in Hanover in 1982 and remember the wall coming down when i was 7. I remember going across the border in 1990 and seeing East Germany for the first time. It always amazed me. I remember my parents taking us to Buchenwald concentration camp and still seeing the Soviet Army there in their bases. Some of the towns we deove through on the way there still had bullet holes in the walls of the buildings from the Second World War. We used to go up to the Harz mountains and we climbed up the old watch towers along the border that had only recently been abandoned. Such mysticism and wonder i had at such a young age, but i remember it vivdly to this day. I also remember seeing all the Trabants on the road in West Germany after the wall came down and my mother calling all the East Germans "Easty Beasties." Thank you for the quality content, it brings back alot of memories of my childhood in West Germany.
You content is so good and fascinating. More people need to be aware of the pitfalls of our past if we want to have a brighter future together. Keep up the amazing work!
Olaf, weer een fantastisch informatieve video. Door mijn eigen ervaringen blijven je DDR video's super interessant om te volgen. Voel nog de euforie uit mijn eigen studententijd hoe die Warschaupact systemen stuk voor stuk van hun voetstuk vielen. Helaas is deze geschiedenis niet voor alle huidige generaties bewaard gebleven als je kijkt naar huidige verkiezingsuitslagen als in Hongarije, Slowakije en diverse voormalige DDR deelstaten. Afgelopen zomer in Sachsen nog met walging diverse verkiezingsposters moeten zien. Geschiedenis is helaas nog te weinig overdraagbaar.
What does Hungary and Slovakia have to do with anything? Also East Germany has suffered much due to reunification. Industrially it was much stronger prior, so it is only natural that East Germans and Eastern Europeans who were sold lies during the 1980s to feel dissatisfied.
@@arbendit4348 reunification wasn't perfect, but people are feeding lies and fear and spread hate, dividing people, just like the in the last century... you cant excuse this behaviours we swore to do never again because last time millions died.
In West Europa en de VS is er ook een ruk naar Rechts, en sociaal-conservatisme, kijk maar naar Geert Wilders en Donald Trump. Maar het is wel interessant dat kiesgedrag in de voormalige DDR zo afwijkt van de rest van Duitsland, inderdaad.
@@arbendit4348 I really understand how a lot of East Germans feel after te reunification. A lot of promises made by Herr Kohl didn't come true. But why must a popular political alternative has to be like AfD with it's most despicable ideas and politicians?
The AfD is the only party that actually stands up and represents the people, not the United States of America. Don't get upset because the German people want politicians that actually represent them, instead of puppets that say alot but do nothing.
You could "escape" having to join the SED (de facto a necessity for some professions, especially teachers and jounalists) by joining one of the bloc parties. (This is at least the ad hoc rationalization a lot of former bloc party members bring up when people find that sus.) For example, after studying agricultural sciences, my grandfather, instead of joining the SED, joined the so-called Democratic Farmer's Party to get a job as Director of the LPG (agricultural production cooperative) in Jehserig from 1965-1969. Being a member of a bloc party was better in the eyes of the state than being independent, because bloc party members were way less likely to be oppositional. Also, being a bloc party functionary still could give you some perks. Being a member of the Volkskammer allowed you to use all trains and trams for free for example and leading the Bezirk-level party organisations was a full-time job.
@@MelindaSordinoIsLiterallyMe The Ost-CDU was allowed to not vote for the abortion rights in early 70s. And the LDPD minister of justice layed down his position in protest of the last phase of collectivization in the early 70s. Esp. in the 80s it was one of the rare possibilities in the GDR to show a little protest against the SED an join a Block-Party. The membership of the LDPD and NDPD rose in the 80s therefore, both parties got over 100.000 members in the 80s (from 60.000 in the 60s and 70s).
@@stirbjoernwesterhever6223 The CDUD was allowed to vote against the abortion legalization, but this was only after asking the SED Central Committee Department for "Friendly Parties" for permission. And while Minister Kurt Wünsche portested against the final privatization wave, he actually got fired for that if I remember correctly.
Excellent video as always! I can remember my father trying to explain to me why it was called the "German Democratic Republic" when it obviously wasn't. At least the joke about "paper folding" shows that the people didn't lose their sense of humour.
suggestion for a video topic, that might be a bit harder to research: How did people end up at various positions within the SED? We all know that the SED was formed by joining the communist and the social democractic parties, and we know that some of the members were already members of those parties in the early 1930's. But what happened then? In particular it would be interesting to know to what extent people ended up at higher positions as a career choice, and to what extent people where chosen due to their political actions/history from before the end of the war.
Thank you for another interesting and well presented video. Only one woman in that photo of the Ministerrat!! Wishing you a very happy and peaceful 2025 😊
And that woman was Margot Honecker, Erich’s wife, in her role of minister of education. That’s not to say there was much love between them by that time.
Appreciate the detailed breakdown! A bit off-topic, but I wanted to ask: I have a SafePal wallet with USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). Could you explain how to move them to Binance?
The video explains how East Germany was a dictatorship with the politburo exercising the power. However at 0:27, you state "But in today's eastern Germany many people doubt whether the current German democracy is better than the system in their country a few decades ago." Apart from this line, there is nothing in this video about this claim. I would be interested to hear/read to what extent it is the case, and perhaps why people feel this way.
I can answer it as succinctly as humanly possible. Living in a grim police state that maintains fake facade of a democratic system makes one deeply cynical about any political system. It is also a self-preservation mechanism: if one is locked in a mental asylum it helps to think the whole world is crazy. In addition, GDR propaganda saturated airways and newspaper pages with stories how Western democracy were in fact mirror images of GDR. They would point out to the supposed disaffection of working “masses”, supposedly free press in fact representing interests of corporations and ruling classes and so fit and so forth. So, for a citizen of the GDR it was beneficial to believe in all that as otherwise he/she would have to face the uncomfortable truth that he/she is a looser trapped in a nicely painted prison. Once GDR fell, all these propaganda claimed turned out to be true. There was no simple and direct way to influence political developments, practical mechanisms of Federal Republic democracy were incomprehensible, the system was dominated by encroached elites. At the same time, in GDR one could go to a Union rep and complain that after 10 years wait the desired Trabant was not yet delivered. Or soup served in factory cafeteria was too thin. And one was listened to and not persecuted for expressing these opinions. A real workers’ paradise!
If you live in a borgeous liberal democracy, how much of a say do you actually have over how your country is governed? Chances are, you get to vote to elect politicians every four years or so, and that´s it. Once the politicians are elected, the voters have no power over them and can not oust them until the next election. So there is not much you can do, if the politicians you voted for break their promises to you. Also, most of the economy is ruled in an even less democratic manner, by unelected rich owners. Rich owners which control the workdays of most people, and make profits from most people´s labour, money which is not used to the benefit of the workers, or for society at large. I do not try to make the case that Eastern Germany was better, the takeaway is rather that both suck.
Ostdeutschland war der größte sowjetische Militärposten in Übersee - die DDR beherbergte bis zu 750.000 sowjetische Soldaten sowie ihre Angehörigen. (Übriggebliebenen) „sowjetischen“ Truppen verließen Deutschland erst Ende 1994 endgültig. Der einzige Grund wie Leonid I. Breschnew Erich E. P. Honecker erinnerte dass die DDR existieren konnte war das Vorrecht der UdSSR.
@@whophd That one sentence is out of place i.e. given that the video is all about East German history (with East Germany no longer in existence). I suppose it is not a good sign but I would not let one sentence/claim... how to say it... keep me away from the channel. I thought the video was well done, informative. And who knows... perhaps people (some/many/one/most/a tiny minority/a large majority/a slim majority) do feel the old ways were somehow better? Hence why I am enquiring.
Yes. It was evicted from the Soviet block and “titoism” in communist propaganda was a curse word right after “Trotskyism”. Albania was Trotskyist and thus the embodiment of ultimate evil. En par wit American imperialists.
I know that it's not popular to redirect viewers to other channels, but I hope that this comment won't get eaten up: I strongly recommend a video called Slovenia: How to Get Rich Without Capitalism, by a channel called History Scope. It's about Slovenia in particular but it mentions a bunch of how Yogoslavia worked in general.
It's funny- Yugoslavia is more of a dictatorship than other Communist governed countries in Europe at the time, as Tito was not only head of the party and military, he was also the formal president of the country, making him the obvious supreme leader. However, Yugoslavia was much more socially liberal than other of those countries, as citizens were allowed to travel and work above, has strong passports, welcomed a lot of tourists, relatively inactive secret police, good economic policies, workplace democracy and so much on. This is why Tito is sometimes referred to as a benevolent dictator.
East Germany was the modern realization of Plato's Republic, with the Stasi filling the role of the Guardians, the key segment in the tripartite division of Plato's ideal society, keeping both the Philosophers (Politburo) and Workers to their role. The Greeks never said that democracy is the ideal state form, it was always a stopgap solution in turbulent times until a stable form of government was re-established, oligarchy or timocracy (the rule of the warrior class) - and that's what East Germany was.
Funny enough When I first study Eastern Bloc politics (Soviet and DDR mostly) the politics of DDR is looking to be more modern and more democrat than the most of Warsaw Pact, But as I grew up I can see the error. DDR politics made to look democratic work like it on paper but on pratice it is another story. I like the story about DDR and this one is very good video.
Interesting. By studying Soviet and GDR political systems you concluded that GDR was more democratic than say Poland. Excuse me if I do not follow your logic.
@@pawelpap9 I said "Mostly" when I studied the topic of Soviet politics back in 1st year college as part of the Russian studies program It is a part of my essay back than to studying some Warsaw pact political systems. I also said "grew up to see the error" as I can see more detail and more deep work of the system But I understand your comment, Being smart is not my strong suit back then and I made a lot of error by judging the system without thorough research.
@ I understand your point and I appreciate your honest assessment of your studies. However, I hope you can see how that sounded funny when you wrote that after studying A you passed judgment on B. It is more of a logical error than anything else. I apologize if my comment made you feel uncomfortable.
He kinda adressed that at 6:49 in the video. Basically any power that members theoretically could have wielded to elect the leadership and thus control the policy and direction of the party didn't exist in practice. The party committees, where representatives of the members periodically gathered, simply followed the directives of the existing central committee when they officially had the responsibility of appointing members to a new central committee. So in other words that made the system totally closed and self-replicating. And then the same inversion of power existed between the politburo and the central committee.
No, they couldn't. Even the SED Secretariats (the actual power base) at a district level were ultimately chosen by the Central Committee Secretariat in Berlin and its Cadre Affairs Commission. So, for example, if you finished your studies at the Party Academy in Berlin, the Central Committee Secretariat probably assigned you First Secretary of a SED Secretariat in bumfuck nowhere so you could prove yourself.
@@vallraffsNot really, and in many cases this has proven not to be the case. For example in the Soviet Union Khrushchev could not have been elected if Stalin loyalists fully controlled the politburo and committees, same thing with Brezhnev or Gorbachev. It's obvious that political power did shift and it was not dictated by the elite, but by the party members themselves.
@@arbendit4348Nonsense. Rank and file party members had next to nothing political power. In the USSR the system was controlled by a collection of elites or cliques. Sometimes military wing would prevail (army Marshalls, CEOs of military industries), sometimes stalinists (secret police, military police), sometimes liberals (party leaders from Leningrad and Moscow). For more you would have to read history books.
A fascinating analysis. It seems that elections and voting in the GDR were different to Cuba, which still has a system based no one party. A Cuban voter has a list of candidates on the ballot paper; If supports the official list, he puts one cross at the top of the paper. If he objects to one or more candidates, he crosses out their names. Submitting a blank ballot paper is regarded as "anti-Government". Voting takes place in completely private booths, and ballot papers are not index numbered, as in the UK. There is no way that a ballot paper can be later identified to a voter. The count takes place at the close of poll at 18800hrs at each polling station; the election count that i saw recorded all types of votes.
Is the "democratic" in the name of the GDR more a reference to the communist idea of democratic centralism, and not "democratic" as most people in the global West would think of it?
Ty Btw does somebody know the ca 1h long doku/report abot the exact moment when abc, cnn or some else network was there when Gunter Schabowski anaunced rhe fall of eat Berlin?
1:35 Isn't it the same in the UK where smaller parties are nominally independent but have to accept the predominance of the Tories or Labour? In theory, they can come to power, but they never will.
Why did the four block parties merge with the CDU and GDP and why were they allowed to join? If they were controlled by the SED, one would have expected them to merge with the SED after unification.
Because they were ideologically independent. The SED needed them to be "themselves" for the illusion that the national parliament, with its specified numbers of representatives from each party, was representative. They still vetted the candidates, but it was those parties proposing candidates from among their believers. It's like the Anglican Bishops in the UK House of Lords. No-one elected them, but they do serve a limited function of speaking for Christians.
They "emancipated" themselves during the Peaceful Revolution, throwing out their SED-loyal leaders (Gerald Götting for the CDU, Manfred Gerlach for the LDPD and some Noname for the NDPD and DBD).
The group A Spoonful Of Deutschland did a parody of the song from The Little Mermaid called ‘Under The Sea’ that went in part like this: 🎶Karl Marx, he was a German! It’s not just a Russian thing! A Central Planning Committee, is better than any king! It’s all very democratic! See, we have elections, too! You get to vote for one party, but it knows the best for you! Whoa, ho! East Germany! East Germany………🎶
If I can make a suggestion, is there any info on former state security officers? In other words, what became of people who had security positions, or military positions, in the GDR? By the way, this was a very good video. Danke Schoen...
The TV show “Deutschland 89” addressed some of this in fiction, particularly as far as members of the East’s foreign intelligence services are concerned. By all accounts, those really were in high international demand after unification. The rest of the Stasi was dissolved. Apparently, lots of personnel went into private security. I.M.’s (unofficial members) of course wanted their Stasi association kept quiet. A whole federal agency was founded to allow East Germans to view their own Stasi files. IM names were redacted to keep the peace, though for many citizens the identity of IM’s was easy to infer from circumstances reported in the files. The regular military was scaled down at all command levels and then merged into the Bundeswehr. In a history of military cartography of East Germany (highly useful to NATO after unification), I read an account how on Oct. 2 1990, units were released of their oath to the GDR, and the next day were to wear their newly issued uniforms. Katja Hoyer writes in her book “Beyond the Wall” (featured on this channel) that many officers chose a military career path out of interest in technical disciplines, not foremost out of ideological zest (though doubtless it helped to profess such).
Don’t forget that Russia had the last say within the GDR as did the UK, France and mainly the US had and still has in the FRG. Pius the joint allied question regarding Berlin
It's worth mentioning that the SED only got partially dissolved, they renamed into SED-PDS in December of 1989 and again to PDS in February 1990 and merged with the WASG (mostly former SPD members) in 2007 and renamed to "Die Linke" - "The Left", nowadays struggling for seats in the parliament (the last Bundestagswahl they got less than 5% but had three mandates so they still got into parliament but with some reductions, it wouldn't suprise me that they will fail now that they're weakened by the Exit of Sahra Wagenknecht who founded her own party the BSW). And it's unsolved to this day where some of that party's assets worth billions went. I see from where the criticism againt the European Parliament comes, they vote for or againt drafts(?) that were made by the Commission (its members were elected by the parliament), however that commission only has 27 members one per member country and having a certain task (like a minister of economy, transportation, etc.) some similarity to that GDR constellation. The Bundestag works different and has multiple work commissions "Arbeitsausschüsse" formed by their members and they're also often busy in working there (that's the reason why the debate chamber "Plenarsaal" has often a lot of empty seats) and have such commisions for outer affairs, defense, secret services, health, law, culture (current sizes are between 19 and 49 members).
It's worth noting that Die Linke got 22.6% of all the votes to the Berlin senate in 2001, and they got over 10% at every election since the reunification except the first one in 1990 (where they got 9.2%). Similarly they have got between 9% and 20% in the elections to the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern bundesland.
I have vague memories of the last visit to the DDR. That was when i was about five in 1981.. we went to Naumburg, not sure and also near templin.. my dad was caught speeding lol.. I did hear ask the stories about family stuck there after the war. Thank God my grandparents fled in the late 50s
Although seeming useless, it would be interesting to hear more about the other national front parties; Liberal Democrats, National Democrats, Agricultural... As maybe lacking political power, in the end I assume they had real membership, their own censored newspaper, but most importantly - they organized people who didn't necessarily label themselves as "Socialist", that would be interesting to hear more about.
GDR was a grim police state. I visited the country many times beginning from 1965 or so and based on my totally objective assessment it is the simple truth. I do not think one has to know much more. I should add that the political system described in the video was Soviet-imposed and with minor variation implemented in other countries of Soviet block: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and so on. The main difference was the zeal and seriousness with which ruling communist junta would implement Soviet directives. Suffice to say GDR communists were more often more Catholic than the pope. They were in the forefront of communist police state systems.
It's strange how they chose to take the form of democracy while the citizens knew that it was false. Makes me wonder if the people would have thought differently had the system been overtly dictatorial. There's probably some psychology PhD theses written on this subject.
From the little info I get about germany, seems that till this day eastern germany has a different outlook on the world compared to western germany. I get the feeling they're ess idealistic than their "western" borthers.
They didn't think it was democratic. It was simply a blatant lie that they fed to the people, who also knew they were being lied to. It's incredible that the system lasted as long as it did. The communist leaders knew that in reality they didn't have the people's mandate to rule, and this was demonstrated once East Germany had free elections and the communists were immediately thrown out. Nevertheless, while they were in power they tried very hard to present an illusion of democracy.
What makes you think so? Historically, Germany as a huge unified country is an oddity. For 95% of its history it existed as a collection of small states.
@@seneca983depends on how you define democratic. The democratic process existed within the party itself. If you were a party member you had a vote on who would represent you, and therefore who would lead the party and the nation.
@@seneca983GDR was for all practical purposes a Soviet republic. It existed as long as Soviets were willing to finance it and station an army there. There was nothing German about. If anything, Prussian.
@@pawelpap9 the GDR was a satellite state, not a republic, and it was very much german, the culture and language was german ... just that it was very much occupied and controlled by outside forces. because if we would follow your logic, the land that used to be poland weren't polish anymore after the partitions.... yet the very much are. also no, the prussian identify and spirit was crippled after WW1 and def ended with WW2
I was born in the GDR and came came down when I was just turning in a teenager. I am really thankful that I can watch a Dutchman in an open society nowadays making by far the best videos about this topic and still learning a thing or two. Many thanks; keep it up and Happy New Year!
Thank you!
You where lucky I guess. Can't imagine being over 30 when the wall came down.
I didn't know you were Dutch. I assumed you were German.
Ditto. I am a half Cuban East German born Canadian. I love your channel. We managed to leave East Germany in 1985 so I do not have many memories, just some horrific stories which included a great deal of racism towards me. Perhaps that would be an interesting future video, children born in East Germany to foreigners. (My mother was East German).
in the early 1980s Honecker liked to go out on the streets in disguise and ask the citizens if they supported the government and the party , he asked one guy who looked around like he didn't want anyone else to hear his answer and whispered to Erich "I support the government and Honecker"
He had recognized him 😅
@@birgitlucci9419its more like honecker was unpopular and the guy knew everybody would kick his ass for saying otherwise
@@hldavlkwhat??
@@hydrolifetech7911 the punchline is that even in a totalitarian state like the GDR, the people were more embarrassed about supporting the government than they were afraid of it. It''s a subversion of the expected outcome that a guy whispering would be against the government and afraid of arrest.
One of the consistently highest quality channels on this site. Thank you.
Thank you for being honest about how “democracy” was in the DDR! A lot of people who make videos about the DDR will lie and pretend that it was actually democratic because of ideological reasons…
East Germany has always been one of my niche interests. Thank you so incredibly much for making such concise, well-researched, and informative videos without fluff. It’s refreshing to see your channel grow so much since I’ve subscribed awhile back. Keep up the good work!
Babe wake up! A new East Germany Investigated episode dropped!
I woke up my wife at 1:00 am to tell her. She was very happy. 😂
Babe wake up, someone posted the same memetext again like on every video on UA-cam zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
@@ichibanmanekinekowas abt to say the same thing
"I'm leaving you."
Always a joy to discover a new East Germany Investigated video on my feed. I'd be curious to know if there were similar faux-democratic institutions on the municipal level also.
Thank you!
Yes, also on municipal level the SED was the ruling party.
I live in China. The current government structure is almost exactly the same as this, just with slightly different names: National People’s Congress-NPC Standing Committee-State Council-Premier-President (same as party leaders)-CCP Party Congress-Central Committee of the CCP-Politburo-Politburo Standing Committee-General Secretary of the CCP.
As an aside, the GDR’s secret police agency was called the Ministry for State Security while China’s is called the Ministry of State Security.
I have another take on this. Due to my profession at the time, I had the opportunity to visit the GDR quite often. "Minders" escorted me everywhere while I was working, but I was left alone (no doubt surveilled by the Stasi) during my off hours. Of all the eastern bloc countries I worked in, I found the atmosphere in the GDR by far the most oppressive. When I did meet ordinary GDR citizens privately, they didn't complain about the lack of democracy, they complained about the inability to travel to sunny places and beaches outside the eastern bloc. (They found Black Sea resorts inferior to what they imagined destinations along the Mediterranean to be). So, it was no surprise to me that when the Berlin Wall fell and the Iron Curtain breached, GDR citizens overwhelmingly voted with their feet...and 98% of the tally was against the SED.
I don't know about that. The GDR was the richest and most developed of all Eastern block countries, and had many major successful policies. People like to denigrate it endlessly without commenting on the many positives and innovations that came from there.
@@arbendit4348 True, the GDR had the highest living standard among eastern bloc countries, but there were still many shortages. Did you ever try that concoction they called coffee? The regime came up with that nightmare after they ran out of hard currency to import real coffee. Far worse were the doping scandals, intimidation of SED opponents, and shoot to kill orders at the border. If it hadn't been for the billions West Germany paid for transit highways and political prisoners, the GDR economy would have collapsed years prior.
East Germans were an exception behind the iron curtain as they were the only ones to receive West German television which showed them what life was like in the West. Many East Germans could still travel to the West during the 1950’s. That is why, is my guess, the people were far more conscious of the contrast with the West. I can imagine that after the Wall fell, people wanted something completely different and tried to forget everything that had to do with the GDR. Now, 35 years later, people become nostalgic and think the GDR wasn’t so bad. However, it was bad, although it did have some positive achievements.
To my disbelief, the first genuine non-forged elections in 1990 still saw 16.4% voting for the SED (albeit freshly renamed into PDS).
So your 98% is a little optimistic.
Stockholm syndrome in politics, I guess...
@@arbendit4348 The GDR was the richtest but also the porest. they traded heavy industrial equipment for banana's in the end. bullets for oranges. helmets for imports from africa. they where poor. they where opprest and they had a enemy that spoke the peoples language, culture, and lost because the state couldnt chill out of a bit with its oppressions. also my dad was former sovmix. so i know Themotz55 is close to the truth about this.
Back in 1985, I asked an English-speaking East German how things were there, he replied 'Well, I can't complain'.
😆😆
Sounds like a raegen joke lol.
He really couldn’t.
Or a cuban joke! @@gac9603
@@TheFrewah he could complain, he could walts into honneckers office and complain of the west germans.
Even as a German who was born two years before reunification, your videos are very interesting, and I learned so much watching them. Thanks a lot for that! Have a good start to the new year, or like the Dutch say: Fijne jaarwisseling! 🎆
The theme here is on the sensitive cusp between current politics and history. It was only 35 years ago. Millions of witnesses are still alive.
Ostdeutschland war der größte sowjetische Militärposten in Übersee - die DDR beherbergte bis zu 750.000 sowjetische Soldaten sowie ihre Angehörigen.
(Übriggebliebenen) „sowjetischen“ Truppen verließen Deutschland erst Ende 1994 endgültig.
Der einzige Grund wie Leonid I. Breschnew Erich E. P. Honecker erinnerte dass die DDR existieren konnte war das Vorrecht der UdSSR.
Thanks for the valuable history!
Great to see all the donations voming in to your channel.
Your videos are excellent and are of very high quality.
I wish i could contribute to your channel but im not really in the position to. I am subscribed and will always give your videos a thumbs up.
I was born in Hanover in 1982 and remember the wall coming down when i was 7. I remember going across the border in 1990 and seeing East Germany for the first time. It always amazed me. I remember my parents taking us to Buchenwald concentration camp and still seeing the Soviet Army there in their bases. Some of the towns we deove through on the way there still had bullet holes in the walls of the buildings from the Second World War.
We used to go up to the Harz mountains and we climbed up the old watch towers along the border that had only recently been abandoned. Such mysticism and wonder i had at such a young age, but i remember it vivdly to this day.
I also remember seeing all the Trabants on the road in West Germany after the wall came down and my mother calling all the East Germans "Easty Beasties."
Thank you for the quality content, it brings back alot of memories of my childhood in West Germany.
Another interesting episode! Thanks for the great content.
Thank you!
Thanks Happy New Year. Hope to see more of your work
I missed your content and I'm so happy this is what your new video is about, I was wishing you made it.
Thanks for the very well done and interesting coverage of East Germany.
You content is so good and fascinating. More people need to be aware of the pitfalls of our past if we want to have a brighter future together. Keep up the amazing work!
Thank you!
Outstanding video, thank you.
This channel is amazing ❤
Olaf, weer een fantastisch informatieve video. Door mijn eigen ervaringen blijven je DDR video's super interessant om te volgen. Voel nog de euforie uit mijn eigen studententijd hoe die Warschaupact systemen stuk voor stuk van hun voetstuk vielen. Helaas is deze geschiedenis niet voor alle huidige generaties bewaard gebleven als je kijkt naar huidige verkiezingsuitslagen als in Hongarije, Slowakije en diverse voormalige DDR deelstaten. Afgelopen zomer in Sachsen nog met walging diverse verkiezingsposters moeten zien. Geschiedenis is helaas nog te weinig overdraagbaar.
What does Hungary and Slovakia have to do with anything? Also East Germany has suffered much due to reunification. Industrially it was much stronger prior, so it is only natural that East Germans and Eastern Europeans who were sold lies during the 1980s to feel dissatisfied.
@@arbendit4348 reunification wasn't perfect, but people are feeding lies and fear and spread hate, dividing people, just like the in the last century... you cant excuse this behaviours we swore to do never again because last time millions died.
In West Europa en de VS is er ook een ruk naar Rechts, en sociaal-conservatisme, kijk maar naar Geert Wilders en Donald Trump. Maar het is wel interessant dat kiesgedrag in de voormalige DDR zo afwijkt van de rest van Duitsland, inderdaad.
@@arbendit4348 I really understand how a lot of East Germans feel after te reunification. A lot of promises made by Herr Kohl didn't come true. But why must a popular political alternative has to be like AfD with it's most despicable ideas and politicians?
The AfD is the only party that actually stands up and represents the people, not the United States of America.
Don't get upset because the German people want politicians that actually represent them, instead of puppets that say alot but do nothing.
As usual, fantastic video, well produced, researched and presented. Adore these videos
But why join a bloc party if they are subordinate? Was there any advantages given to bloc party members like there were for members of the SED?
You could "escape" having to join the SED (de facto a necessity for some professions, especially teachers and jounalists) by joining one of the bloc parties. (This is at least the ad hoc rationalization a lot of former bloc party members bring up when people find that sus.)
For example, after studying agricultural sciences, my grandfather, instead of joining the SED, joined the so-called Democratic Farmer's Party to get a job as Director of the LPG (agricultural production cooperative) in Jehserig from 1965-1969.
Being a member of a bloc party was better in the eyes of the state than being independent, because bloc party members were way less likely to be oppositional. Also, being a bloc party functionary still could give you some perks. Being a member of the Volkskammer allowed you to use all trains and trams for free for example and leading the Bezirk-level party organisations was a full-time job.
@@MelindaSordinoIsLiterallyMe The Ost-CDU was allowed to not vote for the abortion rights in early 70s. And the LDPD minister of justice layed down his position in protest of the last phase of collectivization in the early 70s. Esp. in the 80s it was one of the rare possibilities in the GDR to show a little protest against the SED an join a Block-Party. The membership of the LDPD and NDPD rose in the 80s therefore, both parties got over 100.000 members in the 80s (from 60.000 in the 60s and 70s).
@@stirbjoernwesterhever6223 The CDUD was allowed to vote against the abortion legalization, but this was only after asking the SED Central Committee Department for "Friendly Parties" for permission.
And while Minister Kurt Wünsche portested against the final privatization wave, he actually got fired for that if I remember correctly.
Excellent video as always! I can remember my father trying to explain to me why it was called the "German Democratic Republic" when it obviously wasn't. At least the joke about "paper folding" shows that the people didn't lose their sense of humour.
thank you for another excellent video, i was wondering if you could do a video on the Volkspolizei, as there arent any good videos on them on youtube
Can you make a video on the final year of the GDR? The period between the dissolving of the SED, the 1999 elections, and official reunification.
Großartiges Video. Die Informationsdichte ist wirklich beeindruckend.
Another great video!
Love this channel! Always fascinated by east germany and its history!
Endlich ein neues Video, vielen Dank! Fällt gar nicht auf, dass Du vom Teleprompter abliest.
suggestion for a video topic, that might be a bit harder to research:
How did people end up at various positions within the SED?
We all know that the SED was formed by joining the communist and the social democractic parties, and we know that some of the members were already members of those parties in the early 1930's. But what happened then?
In particular it would be interesting to know to what extent people ended up at higher positions as a career choice, and to what extent people where chosen due to their political actions/history from before the end of the war.
Sachliches Video, danke dafür.
Keep up the great work!
Could you make a video on Krenz and his part in the end of the country? I know too little about him and how he impacted the end.
He was like Admiral Donitz as the last head of the Third Reich. 😂
Er war ein langjähriger Protegé und enger Vertrauter von Erich Honecker. Er war ein loyaler, guter Mann. Er lebt noch heute.
@@reddykilowatt His career must be important since he was in the politbüro.
¡Gracias!
Thank you!
Tak!
Thank you!
Love it, thank you!
man its 3 am and i wanna sleep, but you just dropped a new vid so i guess not
Thank you for another really interesting video, Olav. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Happy New Year for 2025.
Thank you for another interesting and well presented video. Only one woman in that photo of the Ministerrat!! Wishing you a very happy and peaceful 2025 😊
And that woman was Margot Honecker, Erich’s wife, in her role of minister of education.
That’s not to say there was much love between them by that time.
This is an excellent video: extremely complex material is explained in a clear and interesting way.
I like that the retro microphone and the pop filter look la little East-German. Did you do this intentionally, or is it your German esthetics?
10:35 "From a distance" it looked like a dictatorship with Erich Honiker, surely.
Excellent channel
This is one of my favorite UA-cam channels.
Fascinating insight into the GDR system of government! Thank you for your excellent video!!
Appreciate the detailed breakdown! A bit off-topic, but I wanted to ask: I have a SafePal wallet with USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). Could you explain how to move them to Binance?
Thanks!
Thank you!
I went to East Berlin in 1988! I’m glad I saw it.
Me too.
I went in 1985 and returned this year..a lot changed...
Frohes Neues Jahr!
The video explains how East Germany was a dictatorship with the politburo exercising the power. However at 0:27, you state "But in today's eastern Germany many people doubt whether the current German democracy is better than the system in their country a few decades ago." Apart from this line, there is nothing in this video about this claim. I would be interested to hear/read to what extent it is the case, and perhaps why people feel this way.
I can answer it as succinctly as humanly possible. Living in a grim police state that maintains fake facade of a democratic system makes one deeply cynical about any political system. It is also a self-preservation mechanism: if one is locked in a mental asylum it helps to think the whole world is crazy. In addition, GDR propaganda saturated airways and newspaper pages with stories how Western democracy were in fact mirror images of GDR. They would point out to the supposed disaffection of working “masses”, supposedly free press in fact representing interests of corporations and ruling classes and so fit and so forth. So, for a citizen of the GDR it was beneficial to believe in all that as otherwise he/she would have to face the uncomfortable truth that he/she is a looser trapped in a nicely painted prison.
Once GDR fell, all these propaganda claimed turned out to be true. There was no simple and direct way to influence political developments, practical mechanisms of Federal Republic democracy were incomprehensible, the system was dominated by encroached elites. At the same time, in GDR one could go to a Union rep and complain that after 10 years wait the desired Trabant was not yet delivered. Or soup served in factory cafeteria was too thin. And one was listened to and not persecuted for expressing these opinions. A real workers’ paradise!
If you live in a borgeous liberal democracy, how much of a say do you actually have over how your country is governed? Chances are, you get to vote to elect politicians every four years or so, and that´s it.
Once the politicians are elected, the voters have no power over them and can not oust them until the next election. So there is not much you can do, if the politicians you voted for break their promises to you.
Also, most of the economy is ruled in an even less democratic manner, by unelected rich owners. Rich owners which control the workdays of most people, and make profits from most people´s labour, money which is not used to the benefit of the workers, or for society at large.
I do not try to make the case that Eastern Germany was better, the takeaway is rather that both suck.
Yeah this is giving me bad vibes about this channel. You can't just stab a knife in democratic norms and then shrug and walk away.
Ostdeutschland war der größte sowjetische Militärposten in Übersee - die DDR beherbergte bis zu 750.000 sowjetische Soldaten sowie ihre Angehörigen.
(Übriggebliebenen) „sowjetischen“ Truppen verließen Deutschland erst Ende 1994 endgültig.
Der einzige Grund wie Leonid I. Breschnew Erich E. P. Honecker erinnerte dass die DDR existieren konnte war das Vorrecht der UdSSR.
@@whophd That one sentence is out of place i.e. given that the video is all about East German history (with East Germany no longer in existence). I suppose it is not a good sign but I would not let one sentence/claim... how to say it... keep me away from the channel. I thought the video was well done, informative. And who knows... perhaps people (some/many/one/most/a tiny minority/a large majority/a slim majority) do feel the old ways were somehow better? Hence why I am enquiring.
Bedankt voor de steeds weer interessante en leerzame video's, en alle beste wensen voor 2025, Olaf!!
Is enough known about Guenther Schabowski (not just at the press conference) to do a 10-minute video?
11:09 Did Yugoslavia have a different system?
Tito. Yes.
Yes. It was evicted from the Soviet block and “titoism” in communist propaganda was a curse word right after “Trotskyism”. Albania was Trotskyist and thus the embodiment of ultimate evil. En par wit American imperialists.
I know that it's not popular to redirect viewers to other channels, but I hope that this comment won't get eaten up:
I strongly recommend a video called Slovenia: How to Get Rich Without Capitalism, by a channel called History Scope. It's about Slovenia in particular but it mentions a bunch of how Yogoslavia worked in general.
It's funny- Yugoslavia is more of a dictatorship than other Communist governed countries in Europe at the time, as Tito was not only head of the party and military, he was also the formal president of the country, making him the obvious supreme leader.
However, Yugoslavia was much more socially liberal than other of those countries, as citizens were allowed to travel and work above, has strong passports, welcomed a lot of tourists, relatively inactive secret police, good economic policies, workplace democracy and so much on. This is why Tito is sometimes referred to as a benevolent dictator.
@@j123-x2rEn RDA, c'était une dictature confortable qui garantissait un bon niveau de vie à l'ensemble de la population.
East Germany was the modern realization of Plato's Republic, with the Stasi filling the role of the Guardians, the key segment in the tripartite division of Plato's ideal society, keeping both the Philosophers (Politburo) and Workers to their role. The Greeks never said that democracy is the ideal state form, it was always a stopgap solution in turbulent times until a stable form of government was re-established, oligarchy or timocracy (the rule of the warrior class) - and that's what East Germany was.
Don't buy it.
interesting idea, but one needs independent confirmation
Thank you for your amazing content as usual! :D
Thanks
Thank you!
Funny enough When I first study Eastern Bloc politics (Soviet and DDR mostly) the politics of DDR is looking to be more modern and more democrat than the most of Warsaw Pact, But as I grew up I can see the error.
DDR politics made to look democratic work like it on paper but on pratice it is another story.
I like the story about DDR and this one is very good video.
Interesting. By studying Soviet and GDR political systems you concluded that GDR was more democratic than say Poland. Excuse me if I do not follow your logic.
@@pawelpap9 I said "Mostly" when I studied the topic of Soviet politics back in 1st year college as part of the Russian studies program It is a part of my essay back than to studying some Warsaw pact political systems.
I also said "grew up to see the error" as I can see more detail and more deep work of the system
But I understand your comment, Being smart is not my strong suit back then and I made a lot of error by judging the system without thorough research.
@ I understand your point and I appreciate your honest assessment of your studies. However, I hope you can see how that sounded funny when you wrote that after studying A you passed judgment on B. It is more of a logical error than anything else.
I apologize if my comment made you feel uncomfortable.
@@pawelpap9
Nah, It okay
I was sleepy when I wrote the comment tbh I miss a lot of info so it kinda look cringe to look at it as well.
I have a question? Could SED members change internal policy within the party?
He kinda adressed that at 6:49 in the video. Basically any power that members theoretically could have wielded to elect the leadership and thus control the policy and direction of the party didn't exist in practice. The party committees, where representatives of the members periodically gathered, simply followed the directives of the existing central committee when they officially had the responsibility of appointing members to a new central committee. So in other words that made the system totally closed and self-replicating. And then the same inversion of power existed between the politburo and the central committee.
No, they couldn't. Even the SED Secretariats (the actual power base) at a district level were ultimately chosen by the Central Committee Secretariat in Berlin and its Cadre Affairs Commission. So, for example, if you finished your studies at the Party Academy in Berlin, the Central Committee Secretariat probably assigned you First Secretary of a SED Secretariat in bumfuck nowhere so you could prove yourself.
@@vallraffsNot really, and in many cases this has proven not to be the case. For example in the Soviet Union Khrushchev could not have been elected if Stalin loyalists fully controlled the politburo and committees, same thing with Brezhnev or Gorbachev. It's obvious that political power did shift and it was not dictated by the elite, but by the party members themselves.
@@arbendit4348Nonsense. Rank and file party members had next to nothing political power. In the USSR the system was controlled by a collection of elites or cliques. Sometimes military wing would prevail (army Marshalls, CEOs of military industries), sometimes stalinists (secret police, military police), sometimes liberals (party leaders from Leningrad and Moscow).
For more you would have to read history books.
A fascinating analysis. It seems that elections and voting in the GDR were different to Cuba, which still has a system based no one party. A Cuban voter has a list of candidates on the ballot paper; If supports the official list, he puts one cross at the top of the paper. If he objects to one or more candidates, he crosses out their names. Submitting a blank ballot paper is regarded as "anti-Government". Voting takes place in completely private booths, and ballot papers are not index numbered, as in the UK. There is no way that a ballot paper can be later identified to a voter. The count takes place at the close of poll at 18800hrs at each polling station; the election count that i saw recorded all types of votes.
Hi there id like to ask about something important related to this
I open up UA-cam and BOOM. A new East Germany Investigated episode! dropped!!!!
Excellent
Is the "democratic" in the name of the GDR more a reference to the communist idea of democratic centralism, and not "democratic" as most people in the global West would think of it?
GDR government was much more sensate than today germany
Ty
Btw does somebody know the ca 1h long doku/report abot the exact moment when abc, cnn or some else network was there when Gunter Schabowski anaunced rhe fall of eat Berlin?
Donation to the politburo that is the algorithm
1:35 Isn't it the same in the UK where smaller parties are nominally independent but have to accept the predominance of the Tories or Labour? In theory, they can come to power, but they never will.
Thanks!
Why did the four block parties merge with the CDU and GDP and why were they allowed to join? If they were controlled by the SED, one would have expected them to merge with the SED after unification.
Because they were ideologically independent. The SED needed them to be "themselves" for the illusion that the national parliament, with its specified numbers of representatives from each party, was representative. They still vetted the candidates, but it was those parties proposing candidates from among their believers. It's like the Anglican Bishops in the UK House of Lords. No-one elected them, but they do serve a limited function of speaking for Christians.
A simple answer is they were needed to maintain the illusion of a multi-party democratic state for the consumption for naive Western well-wishers.
They "emancipated" themselves during the Peaceful Revolution, throwing out their SED-loyal leaders (Gerald Götting for the CDU, Manfred Gerlach for the LDPD and some Noname for the NDPD and DBD).
good video
The group A Spoonful Of Deutschland did a parody of the song from The Little Mermaid called ‘Under The Sea’ that went in part like this:
🎶Karl Marx, he was a German!
It’s not just a Russian thing!
A Central Planning Committee,
is better than any king!
It’s all very democratic!
See, we have elections, too!
You get to vote for one party,
but it knows the best for you!
Whoa, ho! East Germany! East Germany………🎶
It was the model T of regimes. You can have any color you want, as long as it was Red.
My great uncle used to say it was easy, Honecker was on the ballot, so you voted for Honecker
Nice video.
Wunderbare Präsentation Voller Erstaunlicher Informationen Und Fakten! Es Ist Wie Ein Stück Der Realen Welt. Danke, 🕊💜🌍
My pocketbook note on this: Any country that calls itself "Democratic" isn't. DDR, DRC, DPRK, and so on.
Awesome and informative vid, as usual 😊
If I can make a suggestion, is there any info on former state security officers? In other words, what became of people who had security positions, or military positions, in the GDR?
By the way, this was a very good video. Danke Schoen...
The TV show “Deutschland 89” addressed some of this in fiction, particularly as far as members of the East’s foreign intelligence services are concerned. By all accounts, those really were in high international demand after unification.
The rest of the Stasi was dissolved. Apparently, lots of personnel went into private security. I.M.’s (unofficial members) of course wanted their Stasi association kept quiet. A whole federal agency was founded to allow East Germans to view their own Stasi files. IM names were redacted to keep the peace, though for many citizens the identity of IM’s was easy to infer from circumstances reported in the files.
The regular military was scaled down at all command levels and then merged into the Bundeswehr. In a history of military cartography of East Germany (highly useful to NATO after unification), I read an account how on Oct. 2 1990, units were released of their oath to the GDR, and the next day were to wear their newly issued uniforms. Katja Hoyer writes in her book “Beyond the Wall” (featured on this channel) that many officers chose a military career path out of interest in technical disciplines, not foremost out of ideological zest (though doubtless it helped to profess such).
Don’t forget that Russia had the last say within the GDR as did the UK, France and mainly the US had and still has in the FRG. Pius the joint allied question regarding Berlin
It's worth mentioning that the SED only got partially dissolved, they renamed into SED-PDS in December of 1989 and again to PDS in February 1990 and merged with the WASG (mostly former SPD members) in 2007 and renamed to "Die Linke" - "The Left", nowadays struggling for seats in the parliament (the last Bundestagswahl they got less than 5% but had three mandates so they still got into parliament but with some reductions, it wouldn't suprise me that they will fail now that they're weakened by the Exit of Sahra Wagenknecht who founded her own party the BSW).
And it's unsolved to this day where some of that party's assets worth billions went.
I see from where the criticism againt the European Parliament comes, they vote for or againt drafts(?) that were made by the Commission (its members were elected by the parliament), however that commission only has 27 members one per member country and having a certain task (like a minister of economy, transportation, etc.) some similarity to that GDR constellation.
The Bundestag works different and has multiple work commissions "Arbeitsausschüsse" formed by their members and they're also often busy in working there (that's the reason why the debate chamber "Plenarsaal" has often a lot of empty seats) and have such commisions for outer affairs, defense, secret services, health, law, culture (current sizes are between 19 and 49 members).
It's worth noting that Die Linke got 22.6% of all the votes to the Berlin senate in 2001, and they got over 10% at every election since the reunification except the first one in 1990 (where they got 9.2%). Similarly they have got between 9% and 20% in the elections to the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern bundesland.
It reminds me a little of how the Iranians do things or the Vatican during parts of the renaissance. Or even the structure of ancient Sparta.
I have vague memories of the last visit to the DDR. That was when i was about five in 1981.. we went to Naumburg, not sure and also near templin.. my dad was caught speeding lol..
I did hear ask the stories about family stuck there after the war. Thank God my grandparents fled in the late 50s
I'm obsessed with everything DDR! I have some cool great commemorative coins from that period in my collection & some other militaria stuff. :)
Although seeming useless,
it would be interesting to hear more about the other national front parties; Liberal Democrats, National Democrats, Agricultural... As maybe lacking political power, in the end I assume they had real membership, their own censored newspaper, but most importantly - they organized people who didn't necessarily label themselves as "Socialist", that would be interesting to hear more about.
Fascinating
Walter Ulbricht, Erich Honeker, Egon Krenz, Jan Hoffmann, Katharina Witt.
GDR was a grim police state.
I visited the country many times beginning from 1965 or so and based on my totally objective assessment it is the simple truth. I do not think one has to know much more.
I should add that the political system described in the video was Soviet-imposed and with minor variation implemented in other countries of Soviet block: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and so on. The main difference was the zeal and seriousness with which ruling communist junta would implement Soviet directives. Suffice to say GDR communists were more often more Catholic than the pope. They were in the forefront of communist police state systems.
u r saying bullshit
The "Staatsraatsvorsitzender" was known as "Bandenchef der Ostzone" in West Germany.
Now show how democratic is Van der Leyen election to represent all Europe, or the diference between democrats and republicans about Israel.
It's strange how they chose to take the form of democracy while the citizens knew that it was false. Makes me wonder if the people would have thought differently had the system been overtly dictatorial. There's probably some psychology PhD theses written on this subject.
Very similar to how a corporation works
From the little info I get about germany, seems that till this day eastern germany has a different outlook on the world compared to western germany. I get the feeling they're ess idealistic than their "western" borthers.
Chilling insight into the organisation of a dictatorship. Excellent video as always.
I would like to hear more why the DDR thought this was democratic as this would help our understanding.
The answer is given at 0:36. Is that not enough?
They didn't think it was democratic. It was simply a blatant lie that they fed to the people, who also knew they were being lied to. It's incredible that the system lasted as long as it did. The communist leaders knew that in reality they didn't have the people's mandate to rule, and this was demonstrated once East Germany had free elections and the communists were immediately thrown out. Nevertheless, while they were in power they tried very hard to present an illusion of democracy.
The DDR continues to fascinate. Just crazy they could split a country and drop in two systems.
What makes you think so? Historically, Germany as a huge unified country is an oddity. For 95% of its history it existed as a collection of small states.
In the same way that the Holy Roman Empire was Holy, Roman, and an Empire
At least the German Democratic Republic was German and (a kind of) a republic even if it wasn't democratic.
@@seneca983depends on how you define democratic. The democratic process existed within the party itself. If you were a party member you had a vote on who would represent you, and therefore who would lead the party and the nation.
@@seneca983GDR was for all practical purposes a Soviet republic. It existed as long as Soviets were willing to finance it and station an army there. There was nothing German about. If anything, Prussian.
@vulpes7079 the HRE most definitely was an Empire and Holy, tho not roman, not really....
@@pawelpap9 the GDR was a satellite state, not a republic, and it was very much german, the culture and language was german ... just that it was very much occupied and controlled by outside forces. because if we would follow your logic, the land that used to be poland weren't polish anymore after the partitions.... yet the very much are.
also no, the prussian identify and spirit was crippled after WW1 and def ended with WW2
Very interesting video Olaf, thank you.
always the hot breath of Moscow in the neck. great video
Life expectancy is still not as high as it was during the GDR in East Germany today. Infant mortality is also higher than it was during the GDR.
this is just false, there is no source available online that doesn't show an increase of life expectancy
@@kaviarnonsmoker u r wrong