The wall had two sides
Monday 09 November 2009The orgy of self-congratulation in Berlin by Western leaders to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall is hypocritical and designed to encourage the myth that no valid alternative exists to crisis-riddled capitalism.
Their condemnation of the 40 years of the German Democratic Republic as a brutally repressive state in comparison to enlightened Western democracy in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) is, at best, an oversimplification.
The GDR came into being during the cold war. It was never the intention of the Soviet Union, which liberated eastern Germany from nazi dictatorship, to set up a separate state.
Moscow intended that Germany should be united along the lines of Austria, which adopted military and diplomatic neutrality.
It gave force to this intention by allowing US, British and French forces to share the occupation of Berlin even though the Red Army alone had captured the German capital.
But the Western allies had different plans for West Germany, triggering division by their imposition of the deutschmark and, throughout the period of the open border until 1961, sabotaging and undermining the new GDR economy.
The US gave massive economic aid to the FRG, intending its success to be a source of propaganda against the less dramatic gains in the underdeveloped East, but that was not the only difference between the two states.
Whereas denazification was systematically carried out in the East, former Nazi Party members were allowed to continue in the FRG as government ministers, teachers, judges, prosecutors, military officers and diplomats.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/82997