Great video

I was born shortly before the fall of communism and have no memory of it. I love learning about former communist states like the GDR and USSR. Your channel is very informative and very well done! Thank you for sharing the history of the GDR with the world!

Net het boek 'het dossier'(roman) gelezen, gaat ook o.a. over activiteiten van de KoKo, een aanrader.

Your conclusion is not very convincing. Of course the lesser country that would eventually collapse did not fully succeed in denazification. But compared to the West, it put infinitely more effort into doing so. That some CDU-cretin (some source criticism from your end would have been welcome) published a Brown book only AFTER the revelations of the original makes Kappelt's aims rather questionable. He is not a trained historian and when he wrote the book he was a founder of the anticommunist protestant group called "Christlich-Paneuropäisches Studienwerk". Nowadays he is a member of AFD, which is kind of ironic given the topic of your video. Maybe he was projecting some of his own sympathies to far-right nationalism.

I live in a modernized Plattenbau. 45m² nice cut, good insulation. Like that flat.

I don't think it was ever possible to complete in any way in the east or west, however I believe the USSR did a better job than the US, not saying much as anyone could do a better job than the US, operation paperclip much?

I served in the Soviet Army in DDR and we once visited with the "brothers-in-arms" visit barracks of the NVA military unit, kind of military police or whatever. It was Sunday and we, Soviet soldiers, were shocked that nearly all the staff was absent except for those on duty. We were told that German soldiers are allowed to leave the barracks for their homes for weekends and gather later on Sunday for the evening roll call. It was in 1985 so there were not any signs of the "Constant Combat readiness" which was supposedly cancelled only in 1989 as it is said in the video. Within the Warsaw Pact the NVA was considered nearly the most battleworthy and reliable army among its members after the Soviet Army (to say frankly I doubt it much as the Soviet Army was very big but very ineffective and fraud with the formal combat training and busy with the lots of work not connected to the military training or service. For example our officers often sold us soldiers as slaves to the German civilians for the most hard and dirty works- dig tree holes, dig trenches for cable, loading-unloading works etc.). The proper routine combat training was conducted mostly by the commanders- enthusiasts, and they looked like black sheep. Like the commander of my signal corps battalion, lieutenant colonel of Ukrainian descent, he was a keen fan of combat training and combat readiness. We were drilled in our military professions until we were like the automats. Actually he made his job as it must be done. And all the other commanders of battalions and regiments and the commandment of the division hated him. In comparison with him they looked like losers and senseless lazy bones. I know that he was forced to retire immediately after reaching age. So I think the NVA was a sort of the main combat power of the Warsaw Pact.

Why his religion not surprises me?

Should we demolish the temples in Egipt cause the Pharaoh was a tirant ? absurd . Architecture is architecture , art . Nothing to do with politics .With political mindset they build that pastiche they now have .

What's "fidio"?

The tragic of tyrants: He really believed to be the best because everybody flattered him (sycophants and lickspittles), sometimes out of sheer fear sometimes to ingratiate. "Comrad Mielke, that's a brilliant idea!" When he was tipsy they encouraged him to play accordion and listened to his boring monologs in feignet adoration. Nobody dared to criticize him. Like many other leading politicians in the GDR he was old in 1989 and overchallenged when people confronted him with the harsh reality. After two years in prison he was pardoned because of his age. I think it's something, a liberal, democratic and constitutional state should be proud of because it shows the superiority regarding human rights. But of course I can understand when victims of him have another opinion on this one.

"Who was Erich Mielke?" A Communist = Criminal (1st degree Murderer). As if we didn't know that. As to his character: always a willing asocial executioner of innocent people, the worst of his kind, and even in that no leadership whatsoever. Had he not been a Communist, he most certainly would have enslaved himself to any other totalitarian regime such as the Nazis, who shared essential Socialist ideas with the Communists such as antisemitism and a pervert bestial or brutish sense of "solidarity" (with the exception of anti-capitalist exproprietations): as a matter of fact, the Nazis were much more of a leftwing extremist movement than any sort of rightwing conservative movement, a fact that mostly has been ignored until now (see Sebastian Haffner on this very point). Under the Nazis Mielke would have had the "choice" of several "careers": torturer of political opponents (same post as he held in the soc. ""GDR""), concentration camp director or Gestapo executioner of the Nazi shoah. That was Erich Mielke.

There are still nazis in the former east germany - the whole place is a hotbed for far right activity.

Thank you kindly for your work, sir.

Hey hello, I have recently been researching into East Germany and it's history when this channel just stumbled across my recommended. Could have not come at a better time for my research. Many thanks.

Who is going to tell this guy that "V" isn't pronounced as "F"

All the post WWII trials were show trials.

Interesting history. Thanks for posting this content.

I remember very well the 9th November 1989, the night when the wall came down, ending this criminal regime. Later that "Palast" came down as well, finally.

ERICHS LAMPENLADEN

they only had 24 chairs. True fact.

Much appreciated, brother! It seems both sides of Cold War Germany should have done a more thorough job to purge, imprison (I am opposed to the State to impose the premeditated death penalty for any reason! No one is beyond redemption!), as well as, denounce Nazis and their crimes against humanity! Despite a recent AfD official's opinion, the SS were denounced as a criminal organization (here in Canada that means organized crime organizations like the Mafia, along with outlaw motorcycle gangsters like Hells Angels, Bandidos and Outlaws) and they were!!! Both sides Germany it seems, could have done a much better job of incarcerating and rehabilitating those former Nazis who showed true repentance! Sadly, the AfD and other Fascist parties in France and Italy are resurgening! We are all in serious trouble! Fascists must be opposed by all means necessary (as per Malcolm X)!

Would you rather fly in a capitalist, profit-hungry, cost-shaving Western airline? Or a nice socialist, government-owned airline, run for the benefit of the proletariat?

I wish the video would have described how the politicians were transported to their offices and back each day….routes, travel time, how early did they leave their homes and return, etc.

But the key question is: Did anyone ever call him "Milk Man!" to his face?

14:18 The look on his face when he gets booed... I can't tell if he is being stoic, disappointed, or doesn't give a damn what they think, or maybe all three.

It should make us wonder why we call the DDR evil for giving injections to children without knowing the long term effects. Yet, we in the west have been doing it on a larger scale since 2019. Great video as usual.

But always that unmistakeable Polder-and-Windmolen-accent. Or Tulip-Schiedam if you prefer. Philips-Gouda maybe ? DAF-Golden Earring anyone ?

Deze gast klinkt zo Nederlands

Wo ist Leckermäulchen?

I visited briefly East-Berlin in the eighties , I was appalled by the East-German police and military uniforms , they had not changed them since the nazi period . By the way I have read that in the first time of the french occupation in Germany , when a german policeman would enter the office of a superior authority of the occupation force , they sometimes would made the nazi salute as a pavlovian reflex ! Denazification needed !😡

Very nice video, it's surprising how little luxury thes people were afforded compared to modern day dictators

Thank you so much for the video, helped me so much with my research. (where I live, in Italy to graduate middle and high school you have to do a state exam and in some schools like in mine you can choose and argument and you have to choose a topic and talk about something related in every subject. I choose communism/socialism and in P.E. I'll talk about doping in the GDR. thank you sm again)

INteresting to learn more about history of rather recent times. I visited DDR in 1988, and still then I couldn´t imagine what was going to happen the year after. I remember when leaving DDR that the passport controller very carefully looked at me and my passport to make sure I wa not a DDR-citizien trying to deffect claiming to be a Swede.

I served on a GDR Navy warship for a few years in the 70s. It was a hard time. I have experienced several times at sea (Baltic Sea) how our ships were provoked by the Federal Navy with direct maneuvers. I also saw the then US Navy destroyer "Contz" off the island of Moen - it targeted our ship with its missile ramps. Anything but peaceful maneuvers.

Easy, the French, Brits and Yanks threw money at West Germany until the problem as solved. The Soviets in East Germany just kept executing people until everyone fell into line, as was the policy in all their satellite states.

Good video sir, thank you

I'm scared of DDR to this day!

Thanks

If you happen to wonder what a typical Dutch accent sounds like, spoken by a middle aged person from the Netherlands, this is it ;)

It is interesting that a classless society made a street for the elite.

Great channel. Can you please do a piece on the East German film "Pilots in Pajamas" about American POWs in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. It can be found in its entirety here on You Tube.

I listened to a podcast with a German who served in both the East German army and the unified German army. He said the conditions of the west Germans were better and more "human", but in an actual war between the two states (ignoring potential involvement of NATO/Warsaw Pact) East Germany almost certainly would have won. They were tougher, more disciplined, more combat ready. The west German soldiers lived a lot more comfortably in their barracks, but were softer. The podcast was called Cold War Conversations if I'm not mistaken

When the thugs take over, society becomes horrible

Excellent video, good questions and you took the time to hear the answers. Thank you.

💯

I like it how the party of the working class decided to segregate its leaders housing from the workers who took care of them. It's like they could simply mingle with the workers of the world, they needed their own private space so the unwashed public didn't get their filth on them. That and they had 650 employees for 23 homes, over 28 employees per home. Man East German communist leaders really like to rough it and live a humble lifestyle.

Stasi Univ 7:20 PhD still have legal standing

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Mielke

Compared to the residences and lifestyles of the average East German at the time, the elite were literally living the life equivalent of today's billionaires. Personal computers was a serious privilege which if an average East German had somehow been able to get one and if caught would have resulted in charges of western espionage. I do wonder if the Stasi had bugged these homes during construction.