I like how 90% of the comments criticizing the videos are just ignoring everything he said and are just "If DDR so good, why did people leave and why wall? Hmmmm???"
Genuinely makes you think just how pervasive and prevalent the propaganda rabbit hole is. Gonna be a long time before we're past that phase of red scare propaganda.
Ever since bad mouse removed his video of east Germany, it was hard to find another that actually defends it. Many Others (not all) are completely one sided against the country and not allowing any opposition in the arguments. This is refreshing to see.
I mean there’s Viki1999 video on East Germany but certainly, Fellow Traveler has a more positive view on East Germany then her. Correct me if I am wrong.
@@real_yunicellular Kentler had placed neglected children in foster homes run by pedophiles. The experiment was authorized and financially supported by the Berlin Senate. In a report submitted to the Senate, in 1988, Kentler had described it as a “complete success.” Nentwig had assumed that Kentler’s experiment ended in the nineteen-seventies. But Marco told her he had lived in his foster home until 2003 Shortly afterward, Kentler’s father was called back to active duty. He rose to the rank of colonel, and moved his family to Berlin, where he worked at the High Command of the army of Nazi Germany. University of Hildesheim concluded that “the Senate also ran foster homes or shared flats for young Berliners with pedophile men in other parts of West Germany.” The fifty-eight-page report was preliminary and vague; the authors said there were about a thousand unsorted files in the basement of a government building that they had been unable to read. No names were revealed, but the authors wrote that “these foster homes were run by sometimes powerful men who lived alone and who were given this power by academia, research institutions and other pedagogical environments that accepted, supported or even lived out pedophile stances.” The report concluded that some Here us the total article www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-experiment-that-placed-foster-children-with-pedophiles
Important to note about the disadvantage east Germany was in, during the interwar period, it is usually mentioned that the Weimar Republic struggled economically and one of the reasons cited is the French occupation of the main industry centers of Germany in the west, but suddenly after the war, east Germany is just supposed to succeed without access to industry it was previously dependent on. Not only that but the fighting on the eastern front was among the most devastating in human history and somehow it’s socialism’s fault that east Germany had economic issues?
What nonsense is being spread here! The CoCom embargo has been in effect against the GDR and other Eastern Bloc states since 1949. The Eastern Bloc did not receive any “advanced” goods. This became noticeable in the 80s due to the lack of microelectronics. And after the war, the Soviet Union took the non-broken German machines in retaliation. The GDR had to gradually rebuild its economy. It even had the advantage over the Soviet Union of having newer production facilities. Until the mid-1960s, the GDR was even able to keep up with some Western countries. The GDR had many contracts (exports) with West Germany. The GDR became increasingly indebted. The Soviet Union didn't make things easy for the GDR either. Although some Eastern Bloc countries were the best suppliers to the USSR. The Weimar Republic no longer played a role... Where could there have been a problem in the East in the interwar period? BMW, Jena Glas/Optik and many other companies were successful in the East in the interwar period and after the war the companies went to the West.
I agree with you. America main land did not get almost any of damage from the war, so it has a lot of money to help its Alies, even helps USSR. But Soviets take a huge damage by German, so why should soviets help East German to develop stronger a country that was invading them during WW2. And also Soviet itself doesn't have enough money for redevelopment to rebuild itself, how can them help other countries.
Yugoslavia was Socialistic country and if you ask people that lived in Yugoslavia at those times you will hear 95% only good stuff and nostalgia compared to now. Yes people didn’t drive BMWs or Audi’s but some Yugoslavian made cars instead. They also got either money to build their own house or if you were employed you would get a free apartment. People were much happier then now.
Although Yugoslavia was Revisionist, at least it was a bit better than my country Poland, which became Revisionist in 1956 and later when Market Socialism came (in the Gierek era) to Poland. Everything went to shit, and the Revisionist era led to poverty, etc.
@@MarxistStaffy People always bring up Hungary as an example where people want communism back. Well guess what, all of those people are nostalgic for the time after 1956. The revisionist government was so reform-minded that even Brezhnev told Kadar to stop the reforms. By the 80s the party was basically social democratic, without the democratic part of course. But it didn't take long for elections to be held in 1989 were they ran as a social democratic party, and when they got into power in 1994 they had neoliberal policies.
Apart from the death of my family members during my life, the fall of the Soviet Union was the saddest, most tragic day of my life. We live in a nightmare. The USSR gave us hope. Now, we live in darkness. Apart from the community of online socialists, life is completely alienating. Thank you again for such a fantastic video.
@jayd5715 travel was allowed in the socialist countries. Many people even left to visit western countries. The DDR also was not part of the USSR. West Germany was a us puppets, but East Germany was independent.
I love this video! As a US citizen, it took me 30 years to see the GDR clearly as it was. We need to learn from the good things the GDR offered. Thank you!
this video gives a good impression, how indoctrination and propaganda in est germany ( and foremost in east german schools by a dayli routine) looks like. But it didn't gives you the truth about east germany at all. It scares me, to see this long forgotten propaganda shit again.
@@steffimaier7297 Indeed the best thing is to ask those who lived there about the pluses and minuses of East Germany. For they are the only ones who really experienced it.
Even as a communist I hadn't wrapped my head around the East/West German situation and how the Berlin Wall came to be. Thanks for making such a well-researched, clear and concise video covering the topic as well as for all the historical context. Your analysis of the factors contributing to the fall of the USSR was also really good and much appreciated; truly one of, if not the greatest, tragedies of human history.
"Thanks for making such a well-researched, clear and concise video covering the topic as well as for all the historical context." You made my day! Thanks for giving such an iconic joke :)) ! More irony isn't possible! btw: more non sence and agit- prop in such a short video isn't also possible! Actually the video is taken from a east german propaganda movie. if you want, we can go through step by step. But i ashure you, you need a lot of time. In every minute of the video there are such a lot of lies and half-truths... unbelievable but pls! open your eyes! greetings from east germany!
@@metus_kbsmetus8312 You're welcome 😁 I get that this video is intentionally biased, but as a westerner I can tell you NONE of what I knew about the DDR before becoming a commie was even remotely unbiased. Most of it was outright anti-communist propaganda. If there are better, less biased sources you know about let me know. The fact that someone has take the time to present an alternative narrative of your homeland that isn't the generic Good West vs Evil East is, to me at least, a refreshing change.
@@changing_thoughts80 ok, i can't give you a link to source, you wouldn't denie but i can provide you my experiences and thoughts. But give me a little bit time to answer. At the moment I'm a little bit bussy. That doesn't mean, that i don't want to answer you.
@@metus_kbsmetus8312 Sounds good, very interested to hear about your experiences, happy to wait. Feel free to send me anything you think has merit, I might disagree, but I'm willing to take a look.
-Claims the video is biased and calls it a “joke” -Claims having infinitely more reliable sources -Fails to provide sources, but claims having personal experience -Disappears and never narrates personal experiences Average right-wing advocate
I always thought all this happened in the sixties or something. Kind of scary to know that I wasn't just alive at the time, but lived nearby and was old enough to almost understand. No wonder we took souvenirs of the wall.
The greatest thing about East Germany was perhaps the culture of snitching on one's comrades. If we all snitched on each other for the benefit of the state this world would be a better place.
"We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality"-Mikhail Bakunin
The East German economy only grew for its first 20 years. In the 1970’s it went stagnant and in the 1970’s it went into massive decline and the country no longer had the funds it needed to keep itself going any longer.
In the Capitalist world there were also a heavy economic crisis in the early-mid 70s, the oil-crisis being one major example. So it might be that things were connected
For anyone interested you can the book:The Triumph Of Evil:The Reality of the USA Cold War Victory by Austin Murphy. It has a chapter on the East West divide and how the East got poorer than the West
East Germany was NOT by any means a multiparty democracy. Politics in the DDR took a similar model to China, in which there were a number of minority puppet parties part of a ruling coalition. The parties under that coalition were more or less the same in ideology with different names to give the illusion of a democracy when it really wasn't.
Seeing these first worldists celebrate the fall of the wall that was made to keep the people in the GDR safe from merciless Nazis and agents lead by the imperialist West. Then after the fall they stole the people's houses and destroyed their jobs!
lol same can be said about the US 2 party system both are pretty much the same with capitalist, corporate friendly and imperialist. Just an illusion of democracy while they even make voting tough af to do. And Chinese parties are not a decoration, they have their own differences but a lot of westerners stereotype it while they have no clue of the Chinese local level politics, for them all them are the same cuz communism, never see capitalism like that tho lol.
there's a reason the top comment is an actual guy who lived in east germany telling you this channel is an echo chamber, you are in a cult, you are being lied to
As a fan of UA-cam soviet apologia, I have to say this is a fine example. It is satisfyingly one-eyed, its knowledge of history is delightfully partial. I mean 14:32 'if the DDR had.. been able to take this funding and devote it to reinvestment in their economy, given an average rate of return of 18%, they would have had an income per capita about 15 times higher than the west by 1989" and if a frog had wings it wouldn't bump its ass a-hoppin'. 18% per annum average from 1953 to 1989? Get outta here! That has literally never happened in history. Anyway, keep fighting the good fight comrade, the revolution depends on it.
I had a great uncle who was some sort of government functionary during those times. He was rare for having the best available automobile. It wasn't much. He had horror stories to tell about everyone spying on everyone else. Nobody could be trusted according to him.
@@ninyaninjabrifsanovichthes45 The greatest crime against humanity is what is taking place today - with people dwelling in carboard boxes and plastic bags under bridges and on sidewalks.
@@stock2896 That is not the 'capitalist' world for me.....but for those who are concerned. You simply ignore it ??? How bad ! I never knew it was part of 'freedom and democracy'.
a country with barbed wire all around, that's the truth. The GDR had increadible enviromental destruction (Wismuth, Leuna, open pit mines, smog, poisoned rivers, ...). It never could feed itself, after they expropriated the family farmers. Most of those farmers emigrated to the West and in the state run LPG farms, productivity was always lower than in the West (but with more pollution, chemical fertilizer, pesticides, etc.). That's why they had to export consumer products to the West, to cover their trade deficit and for the own population only the low quality stuff remained. Also remember: in a country with 17 million inhabitant, about 100.000 were working just for the secret police MfS (ministery for state security). Of course all those spies, policemen, prison wards, informal informants, etc. didn't produce anything, but had to be fed by the working people on who they spied on. If there are about 8 million people in working age, letting more than one percent of those work just for the security apparatus is quite a luxury for such a small country, that is more than 1 % GDP. Military is extra, another one hundred thousand permanent employees plus drafted recruits (that lack in the factories, while they serve). And remember: officers retired with 45 years and didn't work after retirement at all. No free speach, repression all around, closed borders (for the own population), low quality products in the stores, unfriendly unmotivated employees in the stores, everybody was trading stuff on the black market (which meant you had to steal from your workplace, the have something to barter). But they had cheap rents and enough kindergartens ... and low income inequality!
Income inequality is a dog whistle the ultra rich use to get the peasants to knock their lower level competitors out of the running so they can keep their market share. The real problem is when people work hard and still can’t survive. As long as working people can have a decent living standard, it’s not a problem if some have more.
THIS! A thousand times this. The German Democratic Republic, like all socialist dystopias, was a murderous, an anti-human, self-consuming cancer that ultimately collapsed in on itself. Never again!
the stasi only operated within the political aspect, a person in these comments who lived here for 35 years speaks of never once meeting a so called spy or government intelligence agent
@@robertclarke6081 the viewpoint of a tourist is different than one of someone who actually lives there, for example Saudi Arabia form a viewpoint of a outsiders it seem to be a ‘ Totalitarian’ and a strict conservative society with no freedom but from a viewpoint which f a local it’s different he gets free education and healthcare and country like Saudi Arabia are allows considerd the best drone a living standard is of living etc etc all I’m saying that of course you being a tourist will see the country from his own standards and judgement and someone living in it would have a different perspective . Also when did you visit East German?*
@@unitedfront9717 When the Trabant made its first appearance it was indeed way ahead of even many cars made in West-Germany - just remember the ridiculous "bubble" cars they made by Heinkel and BMW etc. The Trabant (500) had many design features even modern mini cars still share today: front wheel drive, horizontal positioned engine / gearbox block, self-carrying body (no frame), four full seats, plenty of boot capacity, synchromesh 4-speed gearbox and a decent speed for its time. Remember, it was designed in the 1950s! However, the further development was then hampered by multiple factors including Western embargos but also the stupidity of some leading local politician figures like Günther Mittag. However, claiming that the GDR produced only inferior products is arrogant and ignorant. I am an engineer and I know what I am talking about. I.e. the West-German department store chain Quelle was more than happy to sell all these "white" household machinery, vacuum cleaners and kitchen appliances (under the brand name "Privileg") "Made in GDR". Plenty of those machines and household helpers are still doing their jobs in East-German households until today. And if they break most of it is repairable due to the use of standard parts. Only one example. The small 50 ccm motorbikes (Simson S50 and S51 series) are the most powerful ones ever built in mass production, running up to 70km/h as stock with two persons riding. They are incredible reliable and if they break everyone can repair them. Standard tools, standard knowledge and many standard parts. They run forever and are now a real cult even in West-Germany. I travelled the world on all continents for more than 30 years as a German engineer and was impressed on the many household goods and industrial machinery "Made in GDR" I found all over the world. Not too bad for a small 17-Million nation with a West-instigated trade hampered economy, who started their industry in 1945 from scratch. Peace! from Dresden / Germany
Wrong, my childhood was in a very nice very modern apartment block, as more and more citizens were assigned to. And the pollution until the 1980s was almost the same as in the West. Peace! from Dresden / Germany
I like this essay, it also affirms things I’ve said in the past. Where the government is on the political compass has little to do with economic prosperity. In American Politics there’s this perpetual argument of red vs blue states. A blue state like California is not prosperous because of its liberal policies, it’s prosperous because of the climate and resources. Meanwhile a poor red state like West Virginia is not poor due to Republican leadership, more so the decline of the mining industry and overall lack of a diversified economy. For a global example, China is not prosperous from the CCP, it’s prosperous because of the hoards of money from western investors exploiting cheap labor. I agree if the Soviets had invested into East Germany rather than pillaging it for the sake of Moscow they would’ve had similar success to West Germany. When people from Balkan states or Eastern Europe talk about “missing communism” what they really miss is their weak economy being propped up by the wealthier Soviet states. The fatal flaw in capitalism is that in order for there to be winners, there has to be losers. The fatal flaw in communism is the only winner is the state. If your only argument to support communism is that everyone gets three hots and a cot, it makes the second world sound like a first world prison.
Capitalism is nothing but consumerism , it’s empty as fuck. But unfortunately everyone is a sell out , that’s the reason communism fell, imagine selling out your entire country to be raped and pillaged just so you can own nikee and you think you’re gonna be the one who gets rich under capitalism like some delusional asshole , people want to always say well I lived under communism , ok well I lived in America my whole life so I can tell YOU about capitalism, you work 24/7, nobody cares about anyone, everyone is addicted to drugs and sex , guns and mass shooters all the time but hey I can buy the latest Nike sneakers for one hundred times what it costs to make !! Freedom baby !
I don’t think it would’ve been a bad place if it weren’t for for the Stasi coercing everyone to spy on each other and the inability to say what one thinks, unless it fits the narrative they demand. The restrictions they placed on freedom of movement were also quite repressive and no one wants to have to wait 10-15 years to get a car when they already have the money to pay for it on the spot.
I mean, a lot of East German cities had such good public transit that a car was hardly even needed and more of a luxury than anything. God help you if you lived in a rural area though.
5:48 This means absolutely nothing, most men HAD to be members of the Nazi party if they wanted to properly participate in daily life, if they had joined before Hitler took power or were in some paramilitary (like some were) you'd have a point, but just mentioning that many were party members is absolutely worthless info and doesn't help your point. There were definitely actual (former) Nazis in the west German government, and you could've highlighted that properly but this is just a misrepresentation of history.
I'm aware of that I didn't do a very good job presenting that point during the segment (mainly because it's not what the videos about). It's a mistake I've been made aware of by plenty of people. Regardless, the rest of my arguments still stand.
Unlike the west, the east had numerous former NSDAP members in government. And also supported Remer's Socialist Reich Party in the BRD before it was banned. This is a good thing.
@@jagd7102 the DDR punished the twice amount of Nazis than the BRD, and also far more harshly. The DDR was also many times smaller. In the BRD Nazis were put in integral parts of society, as heads of industry, NATO, Operation Paperclip and Government, for example in the CDU, FDP and CSU, including some Chancellors. One German Chancellor was Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU/CSU), who was a member of the Nazi Party (1933-1945). He had also close connections to Joachim von Ribbentrop and Joseph Goebbels. Helmut Schmidt (SPD) (even though he had German Jew ancestry) was a group leader (Scharführer) in the Hitler Youth until 1936. He was demoted for "Anti-Nazi views", which contradict documents from 1942, which praise his "impeccable national socialist [Nazi] behaviour" and in 1944 his superiors mentioned that Schmidt "stands the ground of nationalist socialist ideology, knowing that he must pass it on." And then there's Walter Scheel (FDP), who became a member of the Nazi party in 1942. Source: Wikipedia 5th of August 2024
Hello, comrade. I'd like to point out that when you state facts please cite them directly on the video instead of listing out all the sources in the description. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where your sources came from, but overall this video is excellent! Stay vigilant in this capitalist hellscape brother!
This YT feature undoubtly does defend the communism and condemn the captitalism correspondingly. And an argument used to defend the just the comnunism is the following: In the world of communism everybody wakes up every singe morning to another day of 100% safety and 100% predictability. Still the communism coliapsed in eastern Europe and Soviet Union, end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s respectively. Why?. And if the communism is such a blessing with a 100% "fantasticly happy" population - then a possible unification on the Korean peninsula, should change SouthKorea to a communistic society like NorthKorea of today. And NOT the other way around. Kind regards A rather more ANTI- than pro communist
Well, it went relatively well until 28:18 and “booth germanys were multiple party democracies” 😂😂😂 No, one Germany was a democracy, the other one was a dictatorship disguised as a democracy with “multiple” parties all under total control of SED.
You can make history look good or you can ruin yourself by telling the wrong story...a lie... The report here is a defeat... But the person who made it and his supporters simply no longer notice it...
West Germany was a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with a few far-right oligarchs in charge of everything. East Germany was a dictatorship of the proletariat with the workers controlling everything. Additionally, no countries have ever implemented democracy. It is always a republic. Even the USSR with some of the most democratic policies was a republic.
@@kitler1940 The video doesn't change kryddnisse's statement at all! The GDR was not democratic - there was only “one” party, the SED. A party democracy? Then with surveillance, travel bans and not being allowed to say everything...
Cause the United States was having an economic boom, meanwhile the Soviet Union has lost millions of soldier from carrying the bulk of the war. When countries struggle in war they take it out on weaker nations, it's a shame.
Because the US wanted West Germany as an ally/sattelite in the fight against the Soviet Union, same reason why they pardoned Nazi war criminals and put them in charge of the West German government and NATO.
@@randombs3385 BRD is the german name. Bundesrepublik Deutschland, which translates to Federal Republic of Germany, FRG. Federal Republik Deutschland is like saying United Estados of America.
Weird facilitating good trade might mean dealing with or trading with countries that might or have resources, goods or services you might want but dont agree with their government. WILD
22:36 'while only 20% of East German police... were clad in riot gear... ALL of West Germany's military formations were clad in heavy armour... and had borrowed heavily from the Gestapos and their methods' I mean, this sentence is nonsensical.
At 22:20 I'm a lil confused cause you started to use the german accronym for the gdr, but the english acronym for the frd? Idk not a huge thing but I wouldve called them ddr and brd at that point
Dear fellow traveller! I have watched your video to the end. Which means I have respect for it. However: you didn't deal with the issue of Stalinism, in the USSR, and the Stalinist system, as it was present in the DDR. What about such key terms as "nomeclature"? What about its privileges? What about its real turn towards restoration of capitalism? As someone, who left the USSR at the age of 12, and now living in the USA, I can say that your esay has a lot of good points about the DDR, and the USSR. However, you should undestand that the fall of the USSR, and the DDR, is first of all an internal problem, not due to the propaganda imposed by the capitalist West.
The USSR was illegally dissolved by three guys at a table, and was being attacked in one way or another the entire time of its existence, how can you say it was “primarily internal”?
I had to laugh at the "equal education for all". You forgot to mention that this was only the case if you were a member of the SED. My mother was extremly good at school and her grades only consisted of 1's and 2's (the two best grades in Germany) but when she wanted to go to university, she wasn't allowed to. She, my grandparents and the entire rest of my east German family weren't members of the SED and were also openly religious. This was the reason she got declined. You weren't treated equally if you weren't a party member. I have never even met a person from eastern Germany who said that their life was better in the DDR. There was no freedom of the press, free speech, freedom of travel, fair elections. The DDR was an oppressive dictatorship in which people who disagreed with the state lived in fear of the STASI. Videos like this try to tell people that them being oppressed was actually pretty good because socialism.
Ich ahne schon was "openly religious" bedeutet. Jedes mal verbirgt sich dahinter stumpfer Antikommunismus. Und dann wird rumgeheult, dass man nicht bevorzugt behandelt wird von dem Staat, den man doch sowieso hasst. Wenns viele Schüler mit sehr guten Noten und nur begrenzt Studienplätze gibt, warum sollten diese ausgerechnet Staatsfeinde bekommen? (Ich würde aber durchaus anmerken, dass auch Arschkriecher, Ja-Sager und Karrieristen gute Chancen hatten, was man zurecht kritisieren kann/muss und definitiv aufzeigt, dass in der späten DDR vieles grundsätzlich schief lief.) Sorry, wenn ich mich irre, aber ich hab genau das schon so oft festgestellt...
Ah, finally, another german who actually knows people that lived in the GDR. It's quite a good joke that people who never lived there are now defending it or wishing it back
Why not just join the party? And maybe try to be a positive influence on decisions. It isn't that hard. You on the other hand can not choose your family, economic background, skin color. I would prefer getting a party booklet over being born at exactly the right time in exactly the right place.
Very very well done, however, you mentioned briefly “iron clad” prices due to zero inflation in east Germany. Zero inflation is not necessarily a good thing given a global economy based on markets. Some slight inflation is usually a sign of a healthy economy meaning the East German economy was pretty stagnant. Red flag from the start for them for their long term prosperity
Socialism 4 All left a link in his recent video which brought me here to watch. I did not know this channel existed. You made a very good video which actually gave me more pieces to the puzzle on the history of East Germany. Thank you for your research and presentation.
@@1.lhr_nr1 he was sent to Bautzen 1. East of Dresden in DDR. Then sent to a labor camp to finish his term. To my knowledge he stayed in DDR for his sentence. Sorry, I speak and understand German, but I don't spell it very well anymore.
@@blitz8221 uuuh no? the stalin purges killed 30 million, stalin starved 14 million in ukraine, and mao killed 60 million i only 2 years. you are the greatest mass murderers in history
DDR was the display window of socialism/communism. Soviet union and all countries from eastern block pumped money and resources here to show the west how marvellous the socialism is. DDR was a monument of inefficiency. Industry, agriculture, everything was not sustainable. Inexorable came the downfall.
The USSR gave money to the GDR. Not at all... They even disrupted the economies of the allies in the East. The USSR turned off the oil tap in 1982. Thanks to the friends in Moscow, the GDR was on the brink of the abyss. It's not for nothing that in 1983 a billion Western money came from rich uncles from the West. PM of Bayern Strauss provided loans.
Everything in this great expose is very substantial and well argued, great job writing this Comrade! The only thing I have to disagree and share with others is my critique of your conclusion. The tendency of your writing is to take up and defend the first-worldist position, to speak from it's perspective. Unfortunately this is also the case when you speak about China and it's role in the Great Split. You argued that the Chinese abruptly initiated it, and then, quite ironically, did the same some 10 years later. To know the truth, we need the context to this. The Soviet leadership, at the same time certain right elements in the party rose to power positions, drastically reduced aid, military advising and technology transfer at a very critical time in Chinese history -- The Great Leap Forward, which along with other factors such as drought season, and distortion of reported output values in the agricultural sector, caused a famine in that country. The Chinese recognized this fact along with the reintroduction of reactionary elements in the Soviet Union: it's tiptoeing around the imperialists, the halting of class struggle (Bureaucratic encumbering and the reintroduction of the law of value) and the peaceful coexistence policy. They quite rightly saw a historical scission being created in the Eastern European Bloc and criticized it. The Great Split was not a Chinese invention, it was a response to a perceived policy change that subordinated the People's Republic of China and the Third World to the whims of Soviet revisionist gradualism. The Sino-American Thaw was therefore an end to the perceived and real isolation that the Soviet Union imposed on the People's Republic of China, a historical opportunity and a gambit against an Eastern Bloc more and more ideologically and economically alienated from the People's Republic of China, a beacon of Third World Communist development. Not a peaceful coexistence between two super-powers but a tactical retreat that allowed the Communist Party of China and the government of that country to bid it's time and gather forces. It is ignorant to compare the position the Maoists were in the 1970s to the position the Soviets were in the 1960s, and more so to equate them. To compare a super-power to a Third World Country. This feeds into my last observation: The Chinese (perceived) Problem. If the portrayal of the national rejuvenation of China as a return to capitalism is to be believed, then we are left with a problem. Communists worldwide are stuck with the position they were after the advent of neoliberalism in the Eastern European Bloc, that is, historical nihilism. This is to say that the Communist Parties of the world didn't learn from this process and that we should we start anew, that we should resort to Ostalgia and long to times when things were better. This is to disregard history and to think it moves non-linearly, rather than linearly, at incremental paces in each epoch. That communism ebbs and to borrow Lenin's metaphor, the movement has to go back to the start of the trail and erase the progress made thus far. This is not how history has worked out; the Communist Party of China being a prime example of a working class organization adapting and fighting against incorrect tendencies in it's midst, biding it's time and avoiding the same pitfalls the Soviets and the Eastern Bloc once made, such as bureaucratisation, chauvinism and it's patches of semi-imperialist behavior. This is important for the Third World project, because we have a beacon and an ideal of how development and the transition to communism might look like for us. If we were to disregard that history we have like you suggest us to do, then, we would be aimless once again. All serious communist parties nowadays in our countries take this principled and modern road.
I remember in the early 80s, when I was in my 20s, we in the Philippines looked at the Scandinavian countries as the ideal socialist countries. We felt the communist party of the USSR acted more like Czarist Russia than a socialist country.
If socialism had better results a reasonable democratic society would have enacted it. Otherwise you’d have to argue capitalist propaganda is just that much better than socialist. Which doesn’t really hold water. People aren’t that dumb.
And East Germany likes me. The GDR preserved much of the German identity whereas this became redundant and got diluted in the West. But the country was left to make a living by itself. The fact that the East Germans originally wanted the reform of the socialist system instead of the dissolution of the GDR on behalf of German reunification proves that a national identity had been making up since 1949. The East German hymn is a worth remembering testimony of a collective will. At the end, all went wrong. People got seduced by the euphoria after the fall of Berlin Wall.
If gorby wasn't working for the cia he was doing their work for free. A curious fact about gorby is that he went to a "new age" facility in California called Esalen. What happrned to him there? It's the same place where Yeltsin had his come to capitalism moment in a hot tub.
Here's an honest question. Why didn't the GDR let their malcontents leave? Michael Parenti made a comment, that a fair number of those who fled to the West came back. Many of the malcontents might have come back after discovering, the West wasn't what they expected.
Thank you so much for your research and uploading of this eye opening documentary. Let's hope more and more people will become aware of this and demand change; otherwise, the people will rise up and one day, revolution will be thrust upon our governments!
Capitalism is very cynical. For it to work, it postulates that a few percent are unemployed. If not, high inflation is the result. This is one of the big disadvantages of capitalism.
What was the advantage of the GDR? So to counteract “capitalism”? The problem with the GDR was that it was dependent on capitalism. They had to supply products for export. Not just simple things that you could order from West German catalogs. There was a lack of high-tech in the GDR and, like all Eastern Bloc countries, there was an embargo on microchips. In the 80s, CNC machines came onto the market and data processing was also based on microelectronics. Some people probably don't know that a Mr. Strauss (Prime Minister of Bavaria) helped the GDR with billions in the 80s. Capitalism was also helpful for the GDR... Lies and deception were carried out against the people!
@@tobiasmuth2372 Capitalism was helpful because majority of the world was aligned more with the US due to their economic power. Let us not forget that the USSR was built on rubble in a part of the world which saw lots of wars, while the US was very peaceful compared to almost all other nations. The USSR had to rely on capitalism to an extent, you wouldn't call out a vegan for eating meat if that was the only source of food would you?
@@saladcat8305 It was not for nothing that the USSR concluded gas contracts with the West in the 1970s. Was that a must? The socialist states could be self-sustaining and profit is not necessary under socialism - sarcasm. Everything that is earned is “national property”. That was the doctrine of the GDR. It was and remains a lie. Russia would never want to return to the USSR of the 50s or 60s. Then a vegan like that isn't convincing enough for me. Or the other way around, when is the limit for a vegan reached? Severe hunger or very severe hunger... For the USSR it was the 70s and for the GDR it was much earlier... There are lied to the own people... gave pamphlets and speeches... lied to people about life and lived in luxury in Wandlitz like in the West...
@@saladcat8305 It was not for nothing that the USSR concluded gas contracts with the West in the 1970s. Was that a must? The socialist states could be self-sustaining and profit is not necessary under socialism - sarcasm. Everything that is earned is “national property”. That was the doctrine of the GDR. It was and remains a lie. Russia would never want to return to the USSR of the 50s or 60s. Then a vegan like that isn't convincing enough for me. Or the other way around, when is the limit for a vegan reached? Severe hunger or very severe hunger... For the USSR it was the 70s and for the GDR it was much earlier... There are lied to the own people... gave pamphlets and speeches... lied to people about life and lived in luxury in Wandlitz like in the West...
The truth is there isn't a single person that lived or was raised in East Germany that wouldn't have given their legs to be able to live in West Germany East Germany was a shit hole when the wall fell and they finally went in and looked the place was like decades behind West Germany and the United States
I funny this should come out as I storm the Reichstag as a member of the Red Army in Call of Duty! Onwards comrades! ✊🚩 Though I think its also important it be pointed out that Eastern Germany was historically and still is the more agricultural and poorer part of Germany anyway, most of Germany's industry is in the far west near the Rhine river.
Ah, the good old "east Germany was agricultural before the war" revisionist. It wasn't. Berlin, West Saxony/east Thuringia and the Halle-Leipzig had developed Industry before the war. It was just de- industrialized by the Soviets and the newly formed SED governments between 1945 and 1949 when they pushed away all capable people away with their policies.
@@Txm_Dxr_Bxss Is that true? I thought most of German's industry was in the West near the Rhine. I think that's a fair criticism that after the west Partitioned Germany and such the Soviets should have forgave the GDR's WW2 reparations. What do ya think they could have done better?
@@jmagowan12 I -as a former east german citicen- totally agree with Txm_Dxr_Bxss. "What do ya think they could have done better?" -> nearly everything.... beside, that the content of this video is just the rebirth of the long forgotten stalinistic propaganda shit show ( (i know very well from my youth/ school time in east germany) and is anything but the truth about east germany.
I think people should actually talk to Germans that lived in east Germany ? I think y’all Should talk to the Bulgarians , Romanians , Czechs , Hungarians , polish , Estonians , Lithuanians , Latvians , Cubans , Venezuelans etc and ask why they fled there countries in the in the thousands every year while living under socialism ? I find it astonishing that outsiders as in people who have lived in the west all there life and have had it easy compared to the victims of socialism calls socialism a great system !
Exactly! As someone who grew up in East Germany it is always fascinating how spoiled young people (usually from America) glorify this sort of stuff and weirdly you don't see them moving to any country that supports their values.
there is a person in the comments who lived there for 35 years and only speaking well of it maybe you're just a young idiot who "grew up in it" but in reality you weren't actually old enough to remember or comprehend the world around you so your opinion of it is like that of someone who is an amateur compared to a professional.@@steffimaier7297
I did, actually. And it repeated the same old garbage that I heard direct from "DDR" apologists when I lived in Germany in the late 1980s. @@fkboyStalin
Oh yeah the brutal stlinistesce dictatorship that was indebted to the west was „based“. Besides the brutal imprisonment of family members (one just for liking Punkrock and party) and employing n*zis and using uniforms inspired by theirs I gues our hymn and the felling of comradeship (because of the hardships we endured in this god awful and incompetent regime) were the only good things. Yes some of our inventions were great and you know for the simple people (most often of Russia) but they were getting outdated and in the end just expensive prestige projects. Oh yeah did I forgot the invasion of Poland and the brutal suppression of harmless revolts? Seriously f u for saying it was based. It was scary. Livable but also depressing. Like birds in a big cage. All that while the elites feasted and had a grand old time until they completely bankrupted the nation beyond possibility of sovereign rule wich is sad we would have liked to remain independent as a true socialist nation.
Same dudes never see the American capitalist economy have a recession every 5 years and the homeless but easy to stereotype another country, communist and capitalist cuz you want to see them as foe anyways.
God, this gets better and better. Yes, non-existent consumer goods were priced extremely cheap, so apparently the SU was part of the First World, aka the West. This video is satire, right?
I haven't fully watched the video and I'm sure it makes a valid, reasonable points that highlighted the wonderful aspects of East Germany. But I just have this feeling of if someone had the free time, knowledge, that person could make a 10 hour respone video to this 1 hour video. That video would highlights the disadvantages of East Germany which led to it's downfall, the superior advantages of West Germany with it's drawbacks. But since we already live in a world where the West Germany succeeded, there's no point for that type of video to exist in the first place. Before you attack me with false claims, I came from a former communnist nation and have fresh memories of it. Therefore, make a better, believable false narratives of me to attack my comment.
In capitalism is no product shortage for the consumers, in capitalism a shortage of goods for the consumers won't make them form lines infront of the store, the poorer consumers simply won't go to the store because they can't afford it. But such a system of not fighting g the deficit but reducing demand doesn't function in necessary things like Housing.
I like how 90% of the comments criticizing the videos are just ignoring everything he said and are just "If DDR so good, why did people leave and why wall? Hmmmm???"
DDR bad, vuvuzuela iPhone 😼
100000 morbillion dead @@blitz8221
Let's forget the raping and pillaging of Germany and other states the soviets invaded...
well everything he says is a lie i mean why DID they have a wall hmm? to keep people IN
Genuinely makes you think just how pervasive and prevalent the propaganda rabbit hole is. Gonna be a long time before we're past that phase of red scare propaganda.
Ever since bad mouse removed his video of east Germany, it was hard to find another that actually defends it. Many Others (not all) are completely one sided against the country and not allowing any opposition in the arguments. This is refreshing to see.
I mean there’s Viki1999 video on East Germany but certainly, Fellow Traveler has a more positive view on East Germany then her. Correct me if I am wrong.
I can only hope this video goes viral like Badmouses video of old. Boy did he make rightist NPCs mald with his content.
@@fellowtraveler2251
I agree, our movement really needs that.
THERE ARE ALSO SOCIALIST SWANN VIDEOS ON EST GERMANY
Pillowguy productions has a pretty good video on east germany, here’s the link:
ua-cam.com/video/Wnjj808WZJA/v-deo.html
Never ask a woman, her age
A man, his salary
The West Berlin Government, what it did to homeless children
West Berlin, what did you do to homeless children
@@real_yunicellular Kentler had placed neglected children in foster homes run by pedophiles. The experiment was authorized and financially supported by the Berlin Senate. In a report submitted to the Senate, in 1988, Kentler had described it as a “complete success.”
Nentwig had assumed that Kentler’s experiment ended in the nineteen-seventies. But Marco told her he had lived in his foster home until 2003
Shortly afterward, Kentler’s father was called back to active duty. He rose to the rank of colonel, and moved his family to Berlin, where he worked at the High Command of the army of Nazi Germany.
University of Hildesheim concluded that “the Senate also ran foster homes or shared flats for young Berliners with pedophile men in other parts of West Germany.” The fifty-eight-page report was preliminary and vague; the authors said there were about a thousand unsorted files in the basement of a government building that they had been unable to read. No names were revealed, but the authors wrote that “these foster homes were run by sometimes powerful men who lived alone and who were given this power by academia, research institutions and other pedagogical environments that accepted, supported or even lived out pedophile stances.” The report concluded that some
Here us the total article
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/07/26/the-german-experiment-that-placed-foster-children-with-pedophiles
@searuler6140 The "Kentler Project," which placed homeless children in the care of pedophiles.
@@real_yunicellulargave them to pedophiles
what did they do?
Important to note about the disadvantage east Germany was in, during the interwar period, it is usually mentioned that the Weimar Republic struggled economically and one of the reasons cited is the French occupation of the main industry centers of Germany in the west, but suddenly after the war, east Germany is just supposed to succeed without access to industry it was previously dependent on. Not only that but the fighting on the eastern front was among the most devastating in human history and somehow it’s socialism’s fault that east Germany had economic issues?
What nonsense is being spread here!
The CoCom embargo has been in effect against the GDR and other Eastern Bloc states since 1949. The Eastern Bloc did not receive any “advanced” goods. This became noticeable in the 80s due to the lack of microelectronics.
And after the war, the Soviet Union took the non-broken German machines in retaliation. The GDR had to gradually rebuild its economy. It even had the advantage over the Soviet Union of having newer production facilities. Until the mid-1960s, the GDR was even able to keep up with some Western countries. The GDR had many contracts (exports) with West Germany.
The GDR became increasingly indebted. The Soviet Union didn't make things easy for the GDR either. Although some Eastern Bloc countries were the best suppliers to the USSR.
The Weimar Republic no longer played a role... Where could there have been a problem in the East in the interwar period? BMW, Jena Glas/Optik and many other companies were successful in the East in the interwar period and after the war the companies went to the West.
I agree with you. America main land did not get almost any of damage from the war, so it has a lot of money to help its Alies, even helps USSR. But Soviets take a huge damage by German, so why should soviets help East German to develop stronger a country that was invading them during WW2. And also Soviet itself doesn't have enough money for redevelopment to rebuild itself, how can them help other countries.
@@ussr-91126not our problem. This was a trash state
Yugoslavia was Socialistic country and if you ask people that lived in Yugoslavia at those times you will hear 95% only good stuff and nostalgia compared to now. Yes people didn’t drive BMWs or Audi’s but some Yugoslavian made cars instead. They also got either money to build their own house or if you were employed you would get a free apartment. People were much happier then now.
And not to mention it was probably the only time in Balkan history where the various ethnicities didn't start wars with each other.
Although Yugoslavia was Revisionist, at least it was a bit better than my country Poland, which became Revisionist in 1956 and later when Market Socialism came (in the Gierek era) to Poland.
Everything went to shit, and the Revisionist era led to poverty, etc.
@@MarxistStaffy People always bring up Hungary as an example where people want communism back. Well guess what, all of those people are nostalgic for the time after 1956. The revisionist government was so reform-minded that even Brezhnev told Kadar to stop the reforms. By the 80s the party was basically social democratic, without the democratic part of course. But it didn't take long for elections to be held in 1989 were they ran as a social democratic party, and when they got into power in 1994 they had neoliberal policies.
@@Ferenc.Hungary didn't have communism. In fact no country ever had communism.
@@Wok_Agenda Communism's goal is to create a communist society.
Apart from the death of my family members during my life, the fall of the Soviet Union was the saddest, most tragic day of my life. We live in a nightmare. The USSR gave us hope. Now, we live in darkness. Apart from the community of online socialists, life is completely alienating. Thank you again for such a fantastic video.
If they were communists like you, they had it coming.
I'm glad to finally hear another side to the story. Very interesting. About 35 years after I should have.
you know not getting shot for visting family in west germany makes me think that the ussr falling wasnt all that bad
Long live the DDR and the USSR in our hearts. The BRD should have been absorbed into the DDR, not the other way around.
@jayd5715 travel was allowed in the socialist countries. Many people even left to visit western countries. The DDR also was not part of the USSR. West Germany was a us puppets, but East Germany was independent.
I love this video! As a US citizen, it took me 30 years to see the GDR clearly as it was. We need to learn from the good things the GDR offered. Thank you!
it literally did nothing good? they had to build a wall to keep people in? no the video doesn't dispute this
this video gives a good impression, how indoctrination and propaganda in est germany ( and foremost in east german schools by a dayli routine) looks like. But it didn't gives you the truth about east germany at all. It scares me, to see this long forgotten propaganda shit again.
You are being misled.
You Seppos, that never experienced this first hand, have no clue what you are talking about! - Greetings; someone that grew up in East Germany.
@@steffimaier7297 Indeed the best thing is to ask those who lived there about the pluses and minuses of East Germany. For they are the only ones who really experienced it.
Even as a communist I hadn't wrapped my head around the East/West German situation and how the Berlin Wall came to be.
Thanks for making such a well-researched, clear and concise video covering the topic as well as for all the historical context.
Your analysis of the factors contributing to the fall of the USSR was also really good and much appreciated; truly one of, if not the greatest, tragedies of human history.
"Thanks for making such a well-researched, clear and concise video covering the topic as well as for all the historical context."
You made my day!
Thanks for giving such an iconic joke :)) ! More irony isn't possible!
btw: more non sence and agit- prop in such a short video isn't also possible! Actually the video is taken from a east german propaganda movie.
if you want, we can go through step by step. But i ashure you, you need a lot of time. In every minute of the video there are such a lot of lies and half-truths... unbelievable
but pls! open your eyes!
greetings from east germany!
@@metus_kbsmetus8312 You're welcome 😁
I get that this video is intentionally biased, but as a westerner I can tell you NONE of what I knew about the DDR before becoming a commie was even remotely unbiased. Most of it was outright anti-communist propaganda.
If there are better, less biased sources you know about let me know.
The fact that someone has take the time to present an alternative narrative of your homeland that isn't the generic Good West vs Evil East is, to me at least, a refreshing change.
@@changing_thoughts80 ok, i can't give you a link to source, you wouldn't denie but i can provide you my experiences and thoughts. But give me a little bit time to answer. At the moment I'm a little bit bussy. That doesn't mean, that i don't want to answer you.
@@metus_kbsmetus8312 Sounds good, very interested to hear about your experiences, happy to wait. Feel free to send me anything you think has merit, I might disagree, but I'm willing to take a look.
-Claims the video is biased and calls it a “joke”
-Claims having infinitely more reliable sources
-Fails to provide sources, but claims having personal experience
-Disappears and never narrates personal experiences
Average right-wing advocate
I always thought all this happened in the sixties or something. Kind of scary to know that I wasn't just alive at the time, but lived nearby and was old enough to almost understand. No wonder we took souvenirs of the wall.
The greatest thing about East Germany was perhaps the culture of snitching on one's comrades.
If we all snitched on each other for the benefit of the state this world would be a better place.
What banger introduction music
It's titled "arbeiter von wien" if you wanna check it out
"We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality"-Mikhail Bakunin
Good thing socialism has liberty.
@@TrueSpace61ok buddy
Glad I found this channel
This is great stuff
The East German economy only grew for its first 20 years. In the 1970’s it went stagnant and in the 1970’s it went into massive decline and the country no longer had the funds it needed to keep itself going any longer.
In the Capitalist world there were also a heavy economic crisis in the early-mid 70s, the oil-crisis being one major example. So it might be that things were connected
For anyone interested you can the book:The Triumph Of Evil:The Reality of the USA Cold War Victory by Austin Murphy.
It has a chapter on the East West divide and how the East got poorer than the West
thanks bro
So the book recognizes that the us was evil? And that East Germany had to rebuild from nothing with no help? Interesting.
Finally!
Puts cookies by my side&tea and comfy on my Couch
Great job - highly informative and well balanced. Congratulations from an American who has lived in the GDR and knows the score.
East Germany was NOT by any means a multiparty democracy. Politics in the DDR took a similar model to China, in which there were a number of minority puppet parties part of a ruling coalition. The parties under that coalition were more or less the same in ideology with different names to give the illusion of a democracy when it really wasn't.
Seeing these first worldists celebrate the fall of the wall that was made to keep the people in the GDR safe from merciless Nazis and agents lead by the imperialist West. Then after the fall they stole the people's houses and destroyed their jobs!
@@spaghettimon3851 bullshit. The DDR used the wall to keep their own citizens in.
@@redcar9949 God bless the GDR and long live and long live Comrade Erich Honecker! 🇨🇺❤🇩🇪 ☭
Pity that's those criminals got away!
@@spaghettimon3851 it's a pity that people from free and democratic countries are so easily fooled by such a failed ideology as communism
lol same can be said about the US 2 party system both are pretty much the same with capitalist, corporate friendly and imperialist. Just an illusion of democracy while they even make voting tough af to do. And Chinese parties are not a decoration, they have their own differences but a lot of westerners stereotype it while they have no clue of the Chinese local level politics, for them all them are the same cuz communism, never see capitalism like that tho lol.
When the wall came down, which side did the people run to?
watch the bloody video mate
West
Neither. Look at the pictures: East Germans are chilling and going about their day.
Great video!!!
Thanks comrade for this vital history lesson. I've always respected East Germany.
there's a reason the top comment is an actual guy who lived in east germany telling you this channel is an echo chamber, you are in a cult, you are being lied to
@@007kingifrit probably not
As a fan of UA-cam soviet apologia, I have to say this is a fine example. It is satisfyingly one-eyed, its knowledge of history is delightfully partial.
I mean 14:32 'if the DDR had.. been able to take this funding and devote it to reinvestment in their economy, given an average rate of return of 18%, they would have had an income per capita about 15 times higher than the west by 1989" and if a frog had wings it wouldn't bump its ass a-hoppin'. 18% per annum average from 1953 to 1989? Get outta here! That has literally never happened in history.
Anyway, keep fighting the good fight comrade, the revolution depends on it.
Yes as opposed to literally every other type of perspective which is way
More biased lmfao
I had a great uncle who was some sort of government functionary during those times.
He was rare for having the best available automobile.
It wasn't much.
He had horror stories to tell about everyone spying on everyone else.
Nobody could be trusted according to him.
Maybe in west Germany, but in East Germany people were free.
The worst thing that came out of reunification is that it wasn’t called Weast Germany
Perhaps the greatest crime against humanity.
@@ninyaninjabrifsanovichthes45 The greatest crime against humanity is what is taking place today - with people dwelling in carboard boxes and plastic bags under bridges and on sidewalks.
@@henryseidel5469 That's the capitalist world for you, we simply ignore it but point it out in poorer post colonial socialist countries lol.
@@stock2896 That is not the 'capitalist' world for me.....but for those who are concerned.
You simply ignore it ??? How bad ! I never knew it was part of 'freedom and democracy'.
a country with barbed wire all around, that's the truth. The GDR had increadible enviromental destruction (Wismuth, Leuna, open pit mines, smog, poisoned rivers, ...). It never could feed itself, after they expropriated the family farmers. Most of those farmers emigrated to the West and in the state run LPG farms, productivity was always lower than in the West (but with more pollution, chemical fertilizer, pesticides, etc.). That's why they had to export consumer products to the West, to cover their trade deficit and for the own population only the low quality stuff remained. Also remember: in a country with 17 million inhabitant, about 100.000 were working just for the secret police MfS (ministery for state security). Of course all those spies, policemen, prison wards, informal informants, etc. didn't produce anything, but had to be fed by the working people on who they spied on. If there are about 8 million people in working age, letting more than one percent of those work just for the security apparatus is quite a luxury for such a small country, that is more than 1 % GDP. Military is extra, another one hundred thousand permanent employees plus drafted recruits (that lack in the factories, while they serve). And remember: officers retired with 45 years and didn't work after retirement at all.
No free speach, repression all around, closed borders (for the own population), low quality products in the stores, unfriendly unmotivated employees in the stores, everybody was trading stuff on the black market (which meant you had to steal from your workplace, the have something to barter). But they had cheap rents and enough kindergartens ... and low income inequality!
Income inequality is a dog whistle the ultra rich use to get the peasants to knock their lower level competitors out of the running so they can keep their market share. The real problem is when people work hard and still can’t survive. As long as working people can have a decent living standard, it’s not a problem if some have more.
i couldn`t agree more
THIS! A thousand times this. The German Democratic Republic, like all socialist dystopias, was a murderous, an anti-human, self-consuming cancer that ultimately collapsed in on itself. Never again!
the stasi only operated within the political aspect, a person in these comments who lived here for 35 years speaks of never once meeting a so called spy or government intelligence agent
"How do we make wage equality for women?"
"We pay the men peanuts and the women think its progress!"
I will now tell everybody about this excellent film. Let's boost the views!
Absolutely amazing work ! Keep it up comrade
Absolute fantasy having been to East Germany it was not a place I would want to live.
@@robertclarke6081 the viewpoint of a tourist is different than one of someone who actually lives there, for example Saudi Arabia form a viewpoint of a outsiders it seem to be a ‘ Totalitarian’ and a strict conservative society with no freedom but from a viewpoint which f a local it’s different he gets free education and healthcare and country like Saudi Arabia are allows considerd the best drone a living standard is of living etc etc all I’m saying that of course you being a tourist will see the country from his own standards and judgement and someone living in it would have a different perspective . Also when did you visit East German?*
Thanks for this. Awesome info.
"Eliminate Economic inequality" = "everyone lives in some shitty apartment and lives in one of the most polluted country that ever existed " 😂
No. The goods in the DDR were much higher-quality than in the west. The DDR was awesome.
@@TrueSpace61 trabi sagt was anderes
@@TrueSpace61haha would you rather drive a Mercedes or a Trabant? You’re smoking pure retardium my dude
@@unitedfront9717
When the Trabant made its first appearance it was indeed way ahead of even many cars made in West-Germany - just remember the ridiculous "bubble" cars they made by Heinkel and BMW etc.
The Trabant (500) had many design features even modern mini cars still share today: front wheel drive, horizontal positioned engine / gearbox block, self-carrying body (no frame), four full seats, plenty of boot capacity, synchromesh 4-speed gearbox and a decent speed for its time. Remember, it was designed in the 1950s!
However, the further development was then hampered by multiple factors including Western embargos but also the stupidity of some leading local politician figures like Günther Mittag.
However, claiming that the GDR produced only inferior products is arrogant and ignorant. I am an engineer and I know what I am talking about.
I.e. the West-German department store chain Quelle was more than happy to sell all these "white" household machinery, vacuum cleaners and kitchen appliances (under the brand name "Privileg") "Made in GDR". Plenty of those machines and household helpers are still doing their jobs in East-German households until today. And if they break most of it is repairable due to the use of standard parts. Only one example.
The small 50 ccm motorbikes (Simson S50 and S51 series) are the most powerful ones ever built in mass production, running up to 70km/h as stock with two persons riding. They are incredible reliable and if they break everyone can repair them. Standard tools, standard knowledge and many standard parts. They run forever and are now a real cult even in West-Germany.
I travelled the world on all continents for more than 30 years as a German engineer and was impressed on the many household goods and industrial machinery "Made in GDR" I found all over the world.
Not too bad for a small 17-Million nation with a West-instigated trade hampered economy, who started their industry in 1945 from scratch.
Peace! from Dresden / Germany
Wrong, my childhood was in a very nice very modern apartment block, as more and more citizens were assigned to.
And the pollution until the 1980s was almost the same as in the West.
Peace! from Dresden / Germany
I like this essay, it also affirms things I’ve said in the past. Where the government is on the political compass has little to do with economic prosperity. In American
Politics there’s this perpetual argument of red vs blue states. A blue state like California is not prosperous because of its liberal policies, it’s prosperous because of the climate and resources. Meanwhile a poor red state like West Virginia is not poor due to Republican leadership, more so the decline of the mining industry and overall lack of a diversified economy.
For a global example, China is not prosperous from the CCP, it’s prosperous because of the hoards of money from western investors exploiting cheap labor.
I agree if the Soviets had invested into East Germany rather than pillaging it for the sake of Moscow they would’ve had similar success to West Germany. When people from Balkan states or Eastern Europe talk about “missing communism” what they really miss is their weak economy being propped up by the wealthier Soviet states.
The fatal flaw in capitalism is that in order for there to be winners, there has to be losers. The fatal flaw in communism is the only winner is the state. If your only argument to support communism is that everyone gets three hots and a cot, it makes the second world sound like a first world prison.
When you realize that communism has no strong central state and society is the big winner.
Capitalism is nothing but consumerism , it’s empty as fuck. But unfortunately everyone is a sell out , that’s the reason communism fell, imagine selling out your entire country to be raped and pillaged just so you can own nikee and you think you’re gonna be the one who gets rich under capitalism like some delusional asshole , people want to always say well I lived under communism , ok well I lived in America my whole life so I can tell YOU about capitalism, you work 24/7, nobody cares about anyone, everyone is addicted to drugs and sex , guns and mass shooters all the time but hey I can buy the latest Nike sneakers for one hundred times what it costs to make !! Freedom baby !
I don’t think it would’ve been a bad place if it weren’t for for the Stasi coercing everyone to spy on each other and the inability to say what one thinks, unless it fits the narrative they demand. The restrictions they placed on freedom of movement were also quite repressive and no one wants to have to wait 10-15 years to get a car when they already have the money to pay for it on the spot.
I mean, a lot of East German cities had such good public transit that a car was hardly even needed and more of a luxury than anything. God help you if you lived in a rural area though.
@@ninyaninjabrifsanovichthes45Nope, I like my car.
I came to the conclusion that the Stasi was necessary when you have foreign agents in your territory trying to destabilize your country.
@@sal-z3q The Stasi was literally run by a vain geriatric murderer.
@@sal-z3qseek mental help
5:48 This means absolutely nothing, most men HAD to be members of the Nazi party if they wanted to properly participate in daily life, if they had joined before Hitler took power or were in some paramilitary (like some were) you'd have a point, but just mentioning that many were party members is absolutely worthless info and doesn't help your point.
There were definitely actual (former) Nazis in the west German government, and you could've highlighted that properly but this is just a misrepresentation of history.
I'm aware of that I didn't do a very good job presenting that point during the segment (mainly because it's not what the videos about). It's a mistake I've been made aware of by plenty of people. Regardless, the rest of my arguments still stand.
@@fellowtraveler2251 Complete fantasy
Unlike the west, the east had numerous former NSDAP members in government. And also supported Remer's Socialist Reich Party in the BRD before it was banned.
This is a good thing.
@@jagd7102 the DDR punished the twice amount of Nazis than the BRD, and also far more harshly.
The DDR was also many times smaller.
In the BRD Nazis were put in integral parts of society, as heads of industry, NATO, Operation Paperclip and Government, for example in the CDU, FDP and CSU, including some Chancellors.
One German Chancellor was Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU/CSU), who was a member of the Nazi Party (1933-1945).
He had also close connections to Joachim von Ribbentrop and Joseph Goebbels.
Helmut Schmidt (SPD) (even though he had German Jew ancestry) was a group leader (Scharführer) in the Hitler Youth until 1936. He was demoted for "Anti-Nazi views", which contradict documents from 1942, which praise his "impeccable national socialist [Nazi] behaviour" and in 1944 his superiors mentioned that Schmidt "stands the ground of nationalist socialist ideology, knowing that he must pass it on."
And then there's Walter Scheel (FDP), who became a member of the Nazi party in 1942.
Source: Wikipedia 5th of August 2024
Hello, comrade. I'd like to point out that when you state facts please cite them directly on the video instead of listing out all the sources in the description. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where your sources came from, but overall this video is excellent! Stay vigilant in this capitalist hellscape brother!
It’s finally here. Can’t wait to watch it.
This YT feature undoubtly does defend the communism and condemn the captitalism correspondingly.
And an argument used to defend the just the comnunism is the following:
In the world of communism everybody wakes up every singe morning to another day of 100% safety and 100% predictability.
Still the communism coliapsed in eastern Europe and Soviet Union, end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s respectively.
Why?.
And if the communism is such a blessing with a 100% "fantasticly happy" population - then a possible unification on the Korean peninsula, should change SouthKorea to a communistic society like NorthKorea of today. And NOT the other way around.
Kind regards
A rather more ANTI- than pro communist
your voice is very nice, and speaking based things helps that, keep up that good work brother! 🚩
I just love all the hater’s in the comments who clearly haven’t watched the video
the video does not make any good argument for the fact that the communists need walls to keep people in. nobody else does
@@007kingifrit Then you didn't watch the video. It's explained less than ten minutes in.
@@kaboon3489 no , you religious fanatic communists just think it does
I love watching internet weirdos stan failed ideologies
Does leave out some things imo like the rebellion in the 50s and the police state which left many people in fear of political dissent.
He did mention the uprising 10:40
There were numerous strikes and walkouts until Mielke got the MfS up to speed
East Germany was much better.
Well, it went relatively well until 28:18 and “booth germanys were multiple party democracies” 😂😂😂
No, one Germany was a democracy, the other one was a dictatorship disguised as a democracy with “multiple” parties all under total control of SED.
You can make history look good or you can ruin yourself by telling the wrong story...a lie...
The report here is a defeat... But the person who made it and his supporters simply no longer notice it...
West Germany was a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie with a few far-right oligarchs in charge of everything. East Germany was a dictatorship of the proletariat with the workers controlling everything. Additionally, no countries have ever implemented democracy. It is always a republic. Even the USSR with some of the most democratic policies was a republic.
apparently you didn't watch the video well
@@kitler1940 The video doesn't change kryddnisse's statement at all!
The GDR was not democratic - there was only “one” party, the SED. A party democracy? Then with surveillance, travel bans and not being allowed to say everything...
the truth is that MOST democracies are not at all democracies but oligarchies themselves
I thought this was a joke initially and gradually realized this guy is serious. Seems to me you should consider Cuba or North Korea as a home now.
Cuba is pretty neat actually, you really should go visit some time.
@@ArtemSayapovI'd rather not get murdered for disagreeing with the great leader.
@@ArtemSayapovIf its so good why can't the people criticise their own government.
Mind I point something out
You said NATO was the North AMERICAN treaty organization
The actual name is North ATLANTIC treaty organization
NATO = Nazi Atlantic Terrorist Organization
Of course NATO in the '50s included Malta, Italy, Greece and Turkey. They are no more the North Atlantic than they are North American.
A book on this is "Stasi State or Workers’ Paradise - by Bruni de la Motte & John Green" Most of his claims are explained in depth there.
I prefer those who have lived in both German post war systems because they are the ones that are able to really compare them.
@@henryseidel5469 I prefer data
@@jackieAZ What data ??
@@jackieAZ yea boy what could possibly constitute better data than someone's actual experience?
3:43 if civilians were hiding in American factories as bomb shelters then it’s undeniable that the civilians killed were not collateral damage
The question is why did Soviet Union take reparation from East Germany while USA didn't from West Germany!
Cause the United States was having an economic boom, meanwhile the Soviet Union has lost millions of soldier from carrying the bulk of the war. When countries struggle in war they take it out on weaker nations, it's a shame.
Because the US wanted West Germany as an ally/sattelite in the fight against the Soviet Union, same reason why they pardoned Nazi war criminals and put them in charge of the West German government and NATO.
The USSR needed them more than the US
There are two reasons:
The USSR actually had more than a port destroyed
The USSR didn’t ally with nazis
@@gonozal8_962 Well the USSR did work hand in hand with Nazi Germany until 1941.
Excellent video 👏🏻
Minor pet peeve, but the west german abbreviation is either FRG or BRD , not FRD. Sorry for being pedantic.
It's the german names. Federal Republik Deutschland FRD, same for DDR instaid of GDR
@@randombs3385 BRD is the german name. Bundesrepublik Deutschland, which translates to Federal Republic of Germany, FRG. Federal Republik Deutschland is like saying United Estados of America.
@@KRSKonig ah, apologies, I'm not fluent in German, I just know it's (as far as I know) litteral translation, so maybe they had the same idea.
After the Wall fell, I visited East Germany. It was heap of rubble that took trillions to repair. Everything was run down into the ground.
What repair ? All the west did was suck all the wraith out of it
*wealth
It's sad, Since in WW2 The allies were bombing a lot in later East German Territory, and nothing there was paid for.
Wow the word "based" has been overused by tankies and normies but thank God ive started using "gem" instead the coally "based".
Weird facilitating good trade might mean dealing with or trading with countries that might or have resources, goods or services you might want but dont agree with their government. WILD
22:36 'while only 20% of East German police... were clad in riot gear... ALL of West Germany's military formations were clad in heavy armour... and had borrowed heavily from the Gestapos and their methods'
I mean, this sentence is nonsensical.
It was so good they had to build a wall to keep the people in. Do you know how many died trying to leave?
At 22:20 I'm a lil confused cause you started to use the german accronym for the gdr, but the english acronym for the frd? Idk not a huge thing but I wouldve called them ddr and brd at that point
Dear fellow traveller! I have watched your video to the end. Which means I have respect for it. However: you didn't deal with the issue of Stalinism, in the USSR, and the Stalinist system, as it was present in the DDR. What about such key terms as "nomeclature"? What about its privileges? What about its real turn towards restoration of capitalism? As someone, who left the USSR at the age of 12, and now living in the USA, I can say that your esay has a lot of good points about the DDR, and the USSR. However, you should undestand that the fall of the USSR, and the DDR, is first of all an internal problem, not due to the propaganda imposed by the capitalist West.
The capitalist West imposed more than just propaganda.
The USSR was illegally dissolved by three guys at a table, and was being attacked in one way or another the entire time of its existence, how can you say it was “primarily internal”?
Stalinism was perhaps the greatest development in the socialist movement, even greater than the contributions of lenin.
I had to laugh at the "equal education for all". You forgot to mention that this was only the case if you were a member of the SED. My mother was extremly good at school and her grades only consisted of 1's and 2's (the two best grades in Germany) but when she wanted to go to university, she wasn't allowed to. She, my grandparents and the entire rest of my east German family weren't members of the SED and were also openly religious. This was the reason she got declined. You weren't treated equally if you weren't a party member. I have never even met a person from eastern Germany who said that their life was better in the DDR. There was no freedom of the press, free speech, freedom of travel, fair elections. The DDR was an oppressive dictatorship in which people who disagreed with the state lived in fear of the STASI. Videos like this try to tell people that them being oppressed was actually pretty good because socialism.
Ich ahne schon was "openly religious" bedeutet. Jedes mal verbirgt sich dahinter stumpfer Antikommunismus. Und dann wird rumgeheult, dass man nicht bevorzugt behandelt wird von dem Staat, den man doch sowieso hasst. Wenns viele Schüler mit sehr guten Noten und nur begrenzt Studienplätze gibt, warum sollten diese ausgerechnet Staatsfeinde bekommen? (Ich würde aber durchaus anmerken, dass auch Arschkriecher, Ja-Sager und Karrieristen gute Chancen hatten, was man zurecht kritisieren kann/muss und definitiv aufzeigt, dass in der späten DDR vieles grundsätzlich schief lief.)
Sorry, wenn ich mich irre, aber ich hab genau das schon so oft festgestellt...
Ah, finally, another german who actually knows people that lived in the GDR. It's quite a good joke that people who never lived there are now defending it or wishing it back
Why not just join the party? And maybe try to be a positive influence on decisions. It isn't that hard.
You on the other hand can not choose your family, economic background, skin color.
I would prefer getting a party booklet over being born at exactly the right time in exactly the right place.
Very very well done, however, you mentioned briefly “iron clad” prices due to zero inflation in east Germany. Zero inflation is not necessarily a good thing given a global economy based on markets. Some slight inflation is usually a sign of a healthy economy meaning the East German economy was pretty stagnant. Red flag from the start for them for their long term prosperity
The real goal is to have purchasing power outgrow economic inflation, the obvious opposite of what’s happening in America! 😂
Socialism 4 All left a link in his recent video which brought me here to watch. I did not know this channel existed. You made a very good video which actually gave me more pieces to the puzzle on the history of East Germany. Thank you for your research and presentation.
Ich frage mich ob Sie je ein Stasi Gefängnis gesehen oder mit einem der ehemaligen Insassen gesprochen haben?
just ignore the fact more people die in US prisons every year than people who died by the Stasi throughout the entire existense of the DDR
This.
My grandfather was thrown in prison for trying to feed his family.
@@kevinnickel7529 in welchem land?
@@1.lhr_nr1 he was sent to Bautzen 1. East of Dresden in DDR. Then sent to a labor camp to finish his term. To my knowledge he stayed in DDR for his sentence. Sorry, I speak and understand German, but I don't spell it very well anymore.
@@blitz8221 uuuh no? the stalin purges killed 30 million, stalin starved 14 million in ukraine, and mao killed 60 million i only 2 years. you are the greatest mass murderers in history
this is a really good video historically accurate and very good perspective of our Eastern Europe perspective
DDR was the display window of socialism/communism. Soviet union and all countries from eastern block pumped money and resources here to show the west how marvellous the socialism is. DDR was a monument of inefficiency. Industry, agriculture, everything was not sustainable. Inexorable came the downfall.
The USSR gave money to the GDR. Not at all... They even disrupted the economies of the allies in the East. The USSR turned off the oil tap in 1982. Thanks to the friends in Moscow, the GDR was on the brink of the abyss.
It's not for nothing that in 1983 a billion Western money came from rich uncles from the West. PM of Bayern Strauss provided loans.
Go visit the political prison in Berlin - tell what they did to their own people with USSR pulling strings.
Huh, I’m a communist now. Neat.
Welcome to the club tovarisch.
Everything in this great expose is very substantial and well argued, great job writing this Comrade! The only thing I have to disagree and share with others is my critique of your conclusion. The tendency of your writing is to take up and defend the first-worldist position, to speak from it's perspective. Unfortunately this is also the case when you speak about China and it's role in the Great Split. You argued that the Chinese abruptly initiated it, and then, quite ironically, did the same some 10 years later. To know the truth, we need the context to this. The Soviet leadership, at the same time certain right elements in the party rose to power positions, drastically reduced aid, military advising and technology transfer at a very critical time in Chinese history -- The Great Leap Forward, which along with other factors such as drought season, and distortion of reported output values in the agricultural sector, caused a famine in that country. The Chinese recognized this fact along with the reintroduction of reactionary elements in the Soviet Union: it's tiptoeing around the imperialists, the halting of class struggle (Bureaucratic encumbering and the reintroduction of the law of value) and the peaceful coexistence policy. They quite rightly saw a historical scission being created in the Eastern European Bloc and criticized it. The Great Split was not a Chinese invention, it was a response to a perceived policy change that subordinated the People's Republic of China and the Third World to the whims of Soviet revisionist gradualism.
The Sino-American Thaw was therefore an end to the perceived and real isolation that the Soviet Union imposed on the People's Republic of China, a historical opportunity and a gambit against an Eastern Bloc more and more ideologically and economically alienated from the People's Republic of China, a beacon of Third World Communist development. Not a peaceful coexistence between two super-powers but a tactical retreat that allowed the Communist Party of China and the government of that country to bid it's time and gather forces. It is ignorant to compare the position the Maoists were in the 1970s to the position the Soviets were in the 1960s, and more so to equate them. To compare a super-power to a Third World Country. This feeds into my last observation: The Chinese (perceived) Problem.
If the portrayal of the national rejuvenation of China as a return to capitalism is to be believed, then we are left with a problem. Communists worldwide are stuck with the position they were after the advent of neoliberalism in the Eastern European Bloc, that is, historical nihilism. This is to say that the Communist Parties of the world didn't learn from this process and that we should we start anew, that we should resort to Ostalgia and long to times when things were better. This is to disregard history and to think it moves non-linearly, rather than linearly, at incremental paces in each epoch. That communism ebbs and to borrow Lenin's metaphor, the movement has to go back to the start of the trail and erase the progress made thus far. This is not how history has worked out; the Communist Party of China being a prime example of a working class organization adapting and fighting against incorrect tendencies in it's midst, biding it's time and avoiding the same pitfalls the Soviets and the Eastern Bloc once made, such as bureaucratisation, chauvinism and it's patches of semi-imperialist behavior. This is important for the Third World project, because we have a beacon and an ideal of how development and the transition to communism might look like for us. If we were to disregard that history we have like you suggest us to do, then, we would be aimless once again. All serious communist parties nowadays in our countries take this principled and modern road.
I remember in the early 80s, when I was in my 20s, we in the Philippines looked at the Scandinavian countries as the ideal socialist countries. We felt the communist party of the USSR acted more like Czarist Russia than a socialist country.
this is my new favorite alternate history channel
Alternate from capitalist propaganda maybe
@@jackieAZ get well soon 😔🙏
If socialism had better results a reasonable democratic society would have enacted it. Otherwise you’d have to argue capitalist propaganda is just that much better than socialist. Which doesn’t really hold water. People aren’t that dumb.
People are that dumb.
@@ArtemSayapovnope and communism is trash .
You're literally spouting capitalist propaganda in this comment. You are ,in fact, that dumb.
And East Germany likes me. The GDR preserved much of the German identity whereas this became redundant and got diluted in the West. But the country was left to make a living by itself. The fact that the East Germans originally wanted the reform of the socialist system instead of the dissolution of the GDR on behalf of German reunification proves that a national identity had been making up since 1949. The East German hymn is a worth remembering testimony of a collective will. At the end, all went wrong. People got seduced by the euphoria after the fall of Berlin Wall.
Greetings from Brazil
First watch the video and then start commenting
If gorby wasn't working for the cia he was doing their work for free.
A curious fact about gorby is that he went to a "new age" facility in California called Esalen. What happrned to him there? It's the same place where Yeltsin had his come to capitalism moment in a hot tub.
Here's an honest question. Why didn't the GDR let their malcontents leave? Michael Parenti made a comment, that a fair number of those who fled to the West came back. Many of the malcontents might have come back after discovering, the West wasn't what they expected.
How can you paint an offer of a better paying job as a bribe?
Idk if this guy is an internationalist cuck, but it's a bribe because it means betraying your country for money.
Because these offers were made with malicious intent; you have to look at actions in their context
@@jackieAZ They weren't free to live in another part of their own country? WTF is wrong w you? Brains aren't owned by a government.
Because else it sounds a lot like communism wasnt so good afterall😂
@@jackieAZ or because the west worked better and ther for could give more money
i tend to think that "taking care of one's own does not require socialism"
but maybe that is a cope
Thank you so much for your research and uploading of this eye opening documentary. Let's hope more and more people will become aware of this and demand change; otherwise, the people will rise up and one day, revolution will be thrust upon our governments!
You made a very valuable video. Thank you.
The GDR was based but it became just as revisionist as USSR in the Honecker era.
One Question why is "Arbeiter von Wien" playing in the first Min?
Capitalism is very cynical. For it to work, it postulates that a few percent are unemployed. If not, high inflation is the result. This is one of the big disadvantages of capitalism.
What was the advantage of the GDR? So to counteract “capitalism”?
The problem with the GDR was that it was dependent on capitalism. They had to supply products for export. Not just simple things that you could order from West German catalogs.
There was a lack of high-tech in the GDR and, like all Eastern Bloc countries, there was an embargo on microchips. In the 80s, CNC machines came onto the market and data processing was also based on microelectronics.
Some people probably don't know that a Mr. Strauss (Prime Minister of Bavaria) helped the GDR with billions in the 80s.
Capitalism was also helpful for the GDR... Lies and deception were carried out against the people!
@@tobiasmuth2372 Capitalism was helpful because majority of the world was aligned more with the US due to their economic power. Let us not forget that the USSR was built on rubble in a part of the world which saw lots of wars, while the US was very peaceful compared to almost all other nations. The USSR had to rely on capitalism to an extent, you wouldn't call out a vegan for eating meat if that was the only source of food would you?
@@saladcat8305 It was not for nothing that the USSR concluded gas contracts with the West in the 1970s.
Was that a must? The socialist states could be self-sustaining and profit is not necessary under socialism - sarcasm.
Everything that is earned is “national property”. That was the doctrine of the GDR. It was and remains a lie.
Russia would never want to return to the USSR of the 50s or 60s.
Then a vegan like that isn't convincing enough for me. Or the other way around, when is the limit for a vegan reached? Severe hunger or very severe hunger... For the USSR it was the 70s and for the GDR it was much earlier...
There are lied to the own people... gave pamphlets and speeches... lied to people about life and lived in luxury in Wandlitz like in the West...
@@saladcat8305 It was not for nothing that the USSR concluded gas contracts with the West in the 1970s.
Was that a must? The socialist states could be self-sustaining and profit is not necessary under socialism - sarcasm.
Everything that is earned is “national property”. That was the doctrine of the GDR. It was and remains a lie.
Russia would never want to return to the USSR of the 50s or 60s.
Then a vegan like that isn't convincing enough for me. Or the other way around, when is the limit for a vegan reached? Severe hunger or very severe hunger... For the USSR it was the 70s and for the GDR it was much earlier...
There are lied to the own people... gave pamphlets and speeches... lied to people about life and lived in luxury in Wandlitz like in the West...
Im swiss and it's fake
"independent east German government" of course with candidates cherry picked by the USSR.
DDR was the Soviet Union in all but name. All calls were made in Moscow.
If not then America would be picking it
LOL....Nice video comrade.
Would you do a similar video about the koreas? It would be a nice watch too.
I'm planning on it.
Lmao the Koreas are just bad
@@jaguar2594 ratio
If North Korea doesn't reunify with South Korea and change its name to Nouth Korea or Sorth Korea, then Communism truly has fallen.
The truth is there isn't a single person that lived or was raised in East Germany that wouldn't have given their legs to be able to live in West Germany East Germany was a shit hole when the wall fell and they finally went in and looked the place was like decades behind West Germany and the United States
That's not the truth tho lmao
I funny this should come out as I storm the Reichstag as a member of the Red Army in Call of Duty! Onwards comrades! ✊🚩
Though I think its also important it be pointed out that Eastern Germany was historically and still is the more agricultural and poorer part of Germany anyway, most of Germany's industry is in the far west near the Rhine river.
Ah, the good old "east Germany was agricultural before the war" revisionist. It wasn't. Berlin, West Saxony/east Thuringia and the Halle-Leipzig had developed Industry before the war. It was just de- industrialized by the Soviets and the newly formed SED governments between 1945 and 1949 when they pushed away all capable people away with their policies.
@@Txm_Dxr_Bxss Is that true? I thought most of German's industry was in the West near the Rhine. I think that's a fair criticism that after the west Partitioned Germany and such the Soviets should have forgave the GDR's WW2 reparations. What do ya think they could have done better?
@@jmagowan12 I -as a former east german citicen- totally agree with Txm_Dxr_Bxss.
"What do ya think they could have done better?" -> nearly everything....
beside, that the content of this video is just the rebirth of the long forgotten stalinistic propaganda shit show ( (i know very well from my youth/ school time in east germany) and is anything but the truth about east germany.
Communism is gone an all I am left with is a broken heart and a hopeless future.
This is the first video about East Germany i've seen that's not biased by US propaganda.
I mean offering better livingstandards is not really a bribe
Offering higher wages clearly understanding the East German government can not afford to pay due to their plethora of handicaps is though.
living standards as what?
@@stock2896 citizen
I think people should actually talk to Germans that lived in east Germany ? I think y’all
Should talk to the Bulgarians , Romanians , Czechs , Hungarians , polish , Estonians , Lithuanians , Latvians , Cubans , Venezuelans etc and ask why they fled there countries in the in the thousands every year while living under socialism ?
I find it astonishing that outsiders as in people who have lived in the west all there life and have had it easy compared to the victims of socialism calls socialism a great system !
Exactly! As someone who grew up in East Germany it is always fascinating how spoiled young people (usually from America) glorify this sort of stuff and weirdly you don't see them moving to any country that supports their values.
there is a person in the comments who lived there for 35 years and only speaking well of it maybe you're just a young idiot who "grew up in it" but in reality you weren't actually old enough to remember or comprehend the world around you so your opinion of it is like that of someone who is an amateur compared to a professional.@@steffimaier7297
To say that the DDR "thrived" under Socialism is simply idiotic.
bro didn't watch the vid
I did, actually. And it repeated the same old garbage that I heard direct from "DDR" apologists when I lived in Germany in the late 1980s. @@fkboyStalin
It did though. It rebuilt from nothing with no help. Something the capitalists could never do.
Oh yeah the brutal stlinistesce dictatorship that was indebted to the west was „based“. Besides the brutal imprisonment of family members (one just for liking Punkrock and party) and employing n*zis and using uniforms inspired by theirs I gues our hymn and the felling of comradeship (because of the hardships we endured in this god awful and incompetent regime) were the only good things. Yes some of our inventions were great and you know for the simple people (most often of Russia) but they were getting outdated and in the end just expensive prestige projects. Oh yeah did I forgot the invasion of Poland and the brutal suppression of harmless revolts?
Seriously f u for saying it was based. It was scary. Livable but also depressing. Like birds in a big cage. All that while the elites feasted and had a grand old time until they completely bankrupted the nation beyond possibility of sovereign rule wich is sad we would have liked to remain independent as a true socialist nation.
Source: trust me bro
Lol this is just wrong. Watch the video.
A good giggle. Almost Monty Python. You obviously never visited the country.
no arguments?
And you did. Right.
Argument I have not , Insult I must send
Same dudes never see the American capitalist economy have a recession every 5 years and the homeless but easy to stereotype another country, communist and capitalist cuz you want to see them as foe anyways.
You got NATO wrong
Kek
DDR did as well as it did because they were Germans not because they were communists
Great video
God, this gets better and better. Yes, non-existent consumer goods were priced extremely cheap, so apparently the SU was part of the First World, aka the West. This video is satire, right?
I am NOT a communist or socialist,but it seems that the old Soviet Union should have modeled it's self after East Germany.
@Dennis The Red Menace In fact EVERY communist country at the time and the two remaining today should have modeled themselves after East Germany.
idk... i think they should have modelled after us... Yugoslavia
@@kajmak64bit76 You are absolutely right.I have been reading about Josip Broz Tito.
I haven't fully watched the video and I'm sure it makes a valid, reasonable points that highlighted the wonderful aspects of East Germany.
But I just have this feeling of if someone had the free time, knowledge, that person could make a 10 hour respone video to this 1 hour video. That video would highlights the disadvantages of East Germany which led to it's downfall, the superior advantages of West Germany with it's drawbacks. But since we already live in a world where the West Germany succeeded, there's no point for that type of video to exist in the first place.
Before you attack me with false claims, I came from a former communnist nation and have fresh memories of it. Therefore, make a better, believable false narratives of me to attack my comment.
If it was good why did east germans flee to west germany and not the opposite?
In capitalism is no product shortage for the consumers, in capitalism a shortage of goods for the consumers won't make them form lines infront of the store, the poorer consumers simply won't go to the store because they can't afford it. But such a system of not fighting g the deficit but reducing demand doesn't function in necessary things like Housing.
There are shortages under capitalism, you just don't notice them unless you're poor.
@@fellowtraveler2251 exactly
Katia Hoyer paints a much more illuminating picture in her book "Beyond the Wall"
Though she has quite a few different opinions than our host.
Man sounds so salty😂