The Rise of the East German Economy

[@dreamyrhodes]

11:52 I think you had a wrong picture here. The protest banner says "Our response to the provocateurs: Firm trust in our government!", so it's probably not a protest against the SED but a counter-protest against the uprising, probably organized by the SED.

[@rarbiart]

defintly correct, this picture depicts a state organized march, supporting the ruling SED.

[@SianaGearz]

With most of the economy consisting of state-employed workers, SED didn't have much difficulty manning such a counter-demonstration, under implied threat of withdrawing the wage bonus or disciplinary action that can lead to termination.

[@kkndzocker]

Yes

[@Canonfudder]

@@rarbiart You either go there or lose your job in the combinat! Also free drinks! Horray!

[@linkergenosse363]

@@Canonfudder since unemployment was abolished they could not fire people. They could only remove you from a job if they offered you a new position at the same time.

[@prieten49]

I lived and worked in the Eastern part of Germany about ten years after reunification. The office where I received my assignments still had a plastic toilet in the bathroom. I really had to go one day and after I had done my thing, I turned to get some toilet paper which shifted all my weight to one side of the toilet seat. There was a loud crack as the plastic broke at the base of the toilet where it was connected to the floor. Fortunately, it didn't leak all over the floor when i flushed it. I had to sheepishly announce my "accident" to my boss who said not to worry about it. It needed to be replaced anyway.

[@robertsaget6918]

Big boy

[@Tacidian-o1r]

Big boy

[@RK-cj4oc]

Big Boy

[@tovarishchmartins4999]

3:36 West Germany also had to pay war reparations, which it did until it introduced the Deutsche Mark in 1948. The declared exchange rate was 1 Deutsche Mark per 10 AM Mark ("Allied Military Currency" a.k.a. the previous money coined by the ocupation forces), effectively canceling 90% of the remaining war debt to be paid. This move was a breach of international agreements signed between the allied powers and was the major reason for the Soviets blockading West Berlin.

[@tonycosta3302]

Here’s an interesting factoid. The dividing line between East and West went down a street that went through the middle of the Zeiss company buildings. This ended up creating two separate companies that competed with each other. They operated separately until they merged once Germany reunified.

[@ryanschrum9872]

That’s very interesting

[@CoronaTwerking]

They actually have a full video about thos exact topic lol

[@Moonstone-Redux]

Both Zeiss companies were equally respected in their respective zones for their excellence in optics and developed their own lenses.

[@billguncrash]

Asianometry has actually done a 3 part series on Carl Zeiss, one of which covers how the company was split in two post war.

[@stavas05]

I don't know if the first part of your story is true, but the second part about the eastern and western Zeiss merging is just not true. Jenoptik is the name of what used to be the East German Zeiss and the west German one still operates as Zeiss. Where are your sources

[@centuriomacro9787]

As someone born in 1998 in former east Germany and raised by east german parents and grand parents I appreciate this video very much. My family has mostly positive memories of the GDR despite being economically objectively worse compared to "golden west" as they called it. Since everybody had equally less compared to the west, it was not so bad. It also resulted in a culture of helping each other out. My grandpa tells me that he build seven garages together with his coworkers, so that in the end each of them had one. Besides that he worked as a sales engineer for cranes. In the 70s and 80s he went to west germany for several times to offer their products. He remembers west germans as arrogant and looking down upon the GDR, their technology and lacking productivity. My parents, who in 1990 when reunification happened just turned 18, always tell me they got the best of both worlds. They had a happy childhood and than could explore the world. So at least my family was, as long as it lasted, satisfied with the GDR.

[@iche9373]

Blame it on the patriarchy that some West Germans are so arrogant to East Germany

[@Thecaptainblackadder]

I think there could be 3 reasons why your parents were happy in a socialist/communist system. 1. Nostalgia. I.e there weren’t really happy with it but humans have a tendency to think things were better in the past when they objectively weren’t. 2. They were lazy and unambitious. 2. They sought happiness in the fact that others were equally miserable.

[@TrailBlazer5280]

Very touching story and interesting too. Its too bad there will always be elitists who look down on others like they did with your grandfather, but it sounds like they were able to make a happy life none the less. At least as much as possible at that time. Family and community are what holds us together

[@TrailBlazer5280]

@@Thecaptainblackadder You are wildly out of touch with humanity.

[@Thecaptainblackadder]

@@TrailBlazer5280 no, I have suffered the socialist system for over half my lifetime and understand very well what kind of people thrive in it.

[@cogoid]

2:40 There was a story about a particular vacuum tube factory in Germany. After the war, Soviets came and told the managers to make the copies of all equipment, so that a similar factory could be built in the USSR. After the equipment had been replicated, packed and sent out, the Soviets also packed the originals. The whole factory together with the key personnel were transplanted to the USSR.

[@lisette2060]

Only happened in DDR. RuZZians always looted everything available wherever they came! Notice how modern industrialised Ukraine are efficiently looted from all basics in our time. A rotten culture, which also influenced parts of Warsaw block societies (E.G todays Poland and Slovakia...)

[@lembitmoislane.]

16:42 I believe that’s Nikita Khrushchev in Finland, not East Germany because the army uniforms and helmets look to be finnish. East Germany never used the classic looking stahlhelm. Also the man with Khrushchev looks to be finnish president Urho Kekkonen.

[@NickBurman]

The locomotive behind is Finnish, VR class Dr12.

[@ChairmanMo]

Mark Felton has a very good video about the East German army.

[@Broken_robot1986]

Nerds

[@dixztube]

@@Broken_robot1986😂

[@markosluga5797]

You heard "the crown jewel of ComicCon" didn't you?

[@EyesOfByes]

Yes.

[@drsunshineaod2023]

Hmm, what *would* be the crown jewel of Comic-Con, then? 🤔

[@raf.b]

CommieCon

[@thisiskevin1000]

COMECON, a Soviet Union-led economic bloc

[@danielk934]

In Russian COMECON abbreviation was SEW.

[@cartmann94]

We definitely need to see the part 2 covering the GDR from 1971 until its end. I'm reading "Beyond the Wall" by Katja Hoyer and it's such a good read. There's the story of how the GDR nurtured Vietnam's coffee industry to try to provide decent quality coffee for its own citizens. Unfortunately, due to the time coffee takes grows, the first exports to the GDR happened in 1990... far too late for the regime

[@benjaminkrala3047]

Sorry to tell you but "Beyond the wall" is just DDR propaganda. Many opposition people from the time don't like the book.

[@lisette2060]

😂 Please don't be fooled to believe DDR dictatorship ever cared for its oppressed citizens! Why do you think they had to build a f**king wall to hinder those ooh so lucky peasants from fleeing daily communist oppression?? You are truly ignorant ...🤡 🤣😴😴

[@maximmatusevich3971]

@@benjaminkrala3047 "everything I don't like is propaganda" - muh opposition (current regime)

[@ChairmanMo]

Unfortunately when Vietnam started growing more coffee; the IMF/World Bank encouraged many other 3rd world countries to grow coffee as a cash crop to pay off their debts. All of this in turn created a massive glut of coffee that lasted the entire 1990s and most of the 2000s.

[@benjaminkrala3047]

@@maximmatusevich3971 I read DDR opposition's who were jailed for their opponion and not people from privileged families

[@tdb7992]

You always cover the most fascinating subjects. I really cannot thank you enough for always providing such intelligent, high-quality videos that make my Monday mornings much more enjoyable (they always appear at about 7am Western Australian time). Yours newsletters are great too; just don't tell my boss I spend work time reading them ;)

[@lunarlake1]

I lived in East Germany my whole life and feel very honored you took a look at our relatively small region. Something really interesting you might take a look in for a future video is the current very bullish outlook for east Germany. Our economy is actually booming here contradictory to the West German economy that is shrinking. The semiconductor industry alone will contribute thousands of new jobs in the coming years.

[@marco21274]

East Germany is booming? The population is heavily shrinking. It is plagued by political movement which hates immigration. How can that economy booming?

[@ah-64apache84]

It sounds great when talking about investments and new jobs, but in the end the semiconductor companies will hire some experienced workers from taiwan, cash the insane government checks, grab their water permits and automate the jobs. The old ideas of a big company setteling in a region and generating wealth for everyone is dated in times of heavy automation. The problem is that politicians dont really care about that as long as they get nice steak dinners and can sell the ideas to their voters by spnning it. In some sense its the opposite compared to the DDR: The companies dont need to confrom to the athoritarian political ideas but the politicians conform to the companies profit driven visions. In both cases the people living there are seen as human capital that can be managed, rather than actual people. Anyway, im going to order a book on foraging...

[@caezar55]

Yes but it's outside capital coming in and owning the production. You are missing one major thing in East Germany - capitalists.

[@viperwizard491]

russia took best part of germany and fell behind

[@bunnystrasse]

Vote AFD!

[@anush_agrawal]

12:41 It always irked me that communism which was founded by protests, after coming in power, suppress other protester for demanding what they themselves had demanded.

[@ΣτελιοςΠεππας]

That's not the worst. The worst are the tankies in the West that will tell you how good communism is while also telling you that worker strikes are an unalienable right.

[@be12]

Because moral consistency is for filthy capitalists, amirite?

[@dannyzero692]

This is why I never believed in Socialism or Communism, it was never about equality but rather who gets to be in charge.

[@TioDeive]

@@dannyzero692 Sure, is just about power.

[@TioDeive]

As they do with everything else.

[@Sedna063]

My grandmother was born in 1934 in what is now Poland but now lives in West Germany as she did since the beginning of West Germany. Granny always stated that the hardest year was 1946 and the winter of 1947. No transport, no fertilisers made for poor harvests. Greatgranddad died three days before the end of the war leaving her and her brother fatherless. No food. In the winter of 1947 she and her brother scavenged for the potato greens on the barren fields covered in snow so they had something to eat. Never had she been more grateful than for a Care Packet. Had she not received this generous aid it may have been her death and I wouldn’t be here. Contrasting that with the complete destruction of Germany in the four years after the war. Never has a country been cured faster of an ideology after the total defeat and annihilation of the state and society. Granny is 90 years old now and still going on strong It was unreal for those children that 10 years afterwards there was no shortage of anything anymore. My granduncle stayed in East Germany and despite being generally poorer than West Germany; all basic necessities were available at all times in good enough quality and quantity, safe for housing maybe.

[@Waccoon]

My mother grew up in Frankfurt after the war, and she's told me endless stories about the scarcity of food. That was just in the West. It's an alien idea among people today that starvation can suddenly be possible in a 1st-world nation. I've taken to heart that basic necessities should never be taken for granted.

[@BrandnyNikes]

What are you talking about? Everything was scarce in East Germany. Perhaps if you are fine with eating potatoes and cabbage everyday you could say "all basic necessities were available". Source: Both grandparents and parents.

[@germansnowman]

@@BrandnyNikesIndeed. We grew our own fruit in our garden to supplement what was available. You had to wait 15 years for a Trabant car. To be fair, we weren’t North Korea, but there is a bit of naïveté going on.

[@royalwins2030]

Ask her as many questions as you can while you still can. What incredible and momentous times she lived through.

[@JSK010]

@@germansnowmanppl idealize the DDR-experience, esp bsc there is no taboo on rehabilitating communism in Western Europe (as opposed to facism or nazism).

[@perfectlyfine1675]

I like your videos. You neither blame everything blindly on "le bad and inefficient planned economy", as a classical liberal cliché, nor do you simply and mindlessly praise eastern bloc economies when you cover them. You actually look at specific issues, solutions, and the upsides and downsides of those solutions in the economies. Rather than saying "Planned economy inefficient, therefore underproduction", you point towards a labor shortage, exacerbated by the regime. A breath of fresh air.

[@gabagooom]

indeed, seems like one of the only channels that could be considered actually unbiased

[@lisette2060]

😂😂 Oh the unlucky Communist system? Sugar coating reality never helped anything, except the lost Ossi and your stubborn fantasy world.. 🤡😴 Millions were forced to live out of touch with basic economic reality! That was the reason for the most brutal dictatorship in Europe finally collapsed, leaving a gigantic burden to efficient(!) working Capitalist taxpayers! Who actually paid your daily infrastructure and modern living standard? Western Capitalists!

[@ChairmanMo]

@@gabagooom The gift that Asianomtry has is that he can maintain composure in talking about the subject at hand.

[@XmarkedSpot]

"Die Partei, die Partei, die hat immer recht!" - Excerpt from "The Party Song" of a _democratically_ unrivaled party. EDIT ~ "The party, the party, she is always right!"

[@gbcb8853]

🎶“St Trinian’s, St Trinian’s, our battle cry”🎶

[@lisette2060]

Such a pleasant dream 🤗🤡 Unbelievable that brutal and fake dictatorship are still romanticised.. Like RuZZia in our time ☠️🤮

[@henrywhyte]

Eins Zwei Drei die beste Partei

[@gbcb8853]

@@henrywhyte "Don't be stupid, be a smartie, come and join the xxxx Party"

[@cv990a4]

In the reunification treaty in the 1990, the Soviets made land reforms in East Germany irreversible. It is written into this treaty that Germany cannot undo this. This, and the fact that a lot of the old Prussian heartland ended up in Poland, can be seen as part of a determined effort to ensure that the old Prussian noble families, the Junkers, were never again able to regain power in Germany. And of course, modern Germany is politically and legally simply an extension of West Germany, where the political heritage was somewhat different from pre-WWI or WWII Germany.

[@TheLumpipumpi]

its not only to keep down those families. soviets had further motivation because they moved poland before to west to gain additional territories. this way they secured this gain as well to themself.

[@TheRezro]

@@TheLumpipumpi The goal of Stalin was to create division between Germany and Poland. The irony is that Stalin by coincidence solve the problem.

[@lisette2060]

​@@TheLumpipumpiRuZZians has always mercilessly moved millions of innocent people to other regions, to create conflict with original people while having future ignorant supporters. Just like in our days Ukraine, Germany and Baltics with reactionary RuZZian minorities busy creating conflicts and division.

[@blackoutboy030]

As born in 1979 in the GDR, i really like to thank you for given such interesting insight, part of who i am and where i come from... I feel like a lucky child of history, i have my own experiences, but as a child you don't feel being locked up in an authoritarian state... But i asked myself many times, what would i be if the wall never came down. i would have failed to join the system and would end up locked in this country, wich was grey, the air polluted and no one to fully trust around. who imprisoned the ppl who spoke up and shoot those, who wanted to leave... November 9th in 1989 is my second birthday, from there things always got better and better, what lucky child of history i am...

[@unitedfront9717]

10:39 small correction: Laveenty Beria never was the leader of the soviet union, he was the head of the Interior Ministry and Nkvd under the Malenkov Goverment not the Leader himself.......(also fun fact: he advocated for an reunification of germany and against the gdr)

[@FreeOfFantasy]

Also advocating for reunification was one of the last things he did. The politburo accused him of that this initiative to further his own power. 24 days later he was arrested and a few months later executed.

[@nvelsen1975]

Naah, that's one of the charges they accused him of because if they said "You're corrupt, molested little children and raped women constantly while having your enemies murdered", like twothirds the politburo would've felt attacked. 😉

[@ChairmanMo]

There was a collective leadership. But amongst that group the fought amongst themselves. Beria lost Khrushchev won.

[@andreypetrov4868]

​@@FreeOfFantasyCorrect, Beria was working on the plan of Germany reunification. He signed an order to let hundreds of thousands prizoners to be released. He wasn't an angel but he wasn't a hidden Trockist like Khruschev who focused on communism expansion rather than on development of its own country.

[@johannesstabe9959]

slight correction: rhe reparation the soviet union transported east in large parts wasnt put to good use - they often were not able to reassamble the factories. railways etc of course were, but most of the more complex structures were simply never operationally again. thanks for the vid, anyways!

[@kiblerjuergen5247]

Very interesting video. There was one technology which the GDR did better than the GFR: Printing presses. The Planeta Printing Machine Factory near Dresden manufactured highly advanced printing presses. They were so good, that a Swiss company that specialized in the manufacturing of paper money presses bought units from Planeta to be modified and sold in the West. Rumor has it that the Department of Treasury in the US bought some of those machines. If true, this would mean that the almighty US dollar used to be printed using communist presses.

[@hansburger285]

😮 Just wow!

[@valicourt]

I visited East Germany about one year after the fall of the wall. What really struck me was the total absence of colour. Every house was grey. Some houses still had bullet holes in them. I suppose still from the war. Extremely friendly people there by the way, always happy to help.

[@mrtnsnp]

If you ever have the chance, visit the Stasi museum in Berlin.

[@bobflatman278]

A few stasi retired to deep sea fishing after 91. Enjoy it so much they stayed.

[@tdb7992]

I've been there. Incredible modern furniture and design, but a frightening history.

[@mansurtxafapapaias3517]

​@@bobflatman278Angela Dorothea Kreshner & pathnerts... ist not gone

[@ChristophBackhaus]

@@tdb7992 the NSA is well and alive.

[@ilyatsukanov8707]

The Stasi's spying capabilities are just child's play compared to modern intelligence agencies.

[@MarkusDanielSukramLeinad]

I grew up in East Germany. In my opinion, apart from fundamental political perspectives, the East had far less human capital, access to natural resources and technology than the West. Its insistence on competing in conventional warfare sealed its failure because it simply could not afford to do so. Of course, we do not know whether we would all still be here if the East had chosen to rely exclusively on nuclear deterrence instead.

[@nvelsen1975]

The Russians never wanted a defense, they wanted offense. Their goal was to subjugate the world into a grand 'Russian world' (russky mir), which is their state ideology and the manifest destiny of Russians as taught to Russians in school. For a while they worked with the equivalent of manifest destiny that Marx put forward 'class war' that teaches you must wage war on everybody and keep destroying and killing until the whole is subjugated into socialism, but the core ideology of Russia existed before Marx nevermind marxism, and continued the whole time until the present day.

[@irispaiva]

There is no way the soviets would allow the GDR to have nukes of it own

[@lisette2060]

What nonsense...! The entire Communist block were economical broke because of hopeless inefficiency based on crazy political decisions out of contact with reality! Alone your tremendous pollution left for future generations to handle is a gigantic burden! No Nuclear threat were capable of keeping that failed crap system floating! Are you from MeckPom with such narrow minded perception?

[@bolengerin]

​​@@irispaiva That is not the implication; it means relying on a Warsaw Pact nuclear umbrella

[@PeterBaumgart1a]

Jena = "Yena," not "Genna." But other than these types of nitpicks, excellent research and video! (Reunification of Germany is another juicy topic. But maybe covered enough elsewhere? The political part probably so, but the technological angle behind it and because of it might be worth exploring further.)

[@stanleysmith7551]

East Germany, the richest among the poor.

[@ilyatsukanov8707]

Poor compared to what? Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Uganda?

[@timavoievodin3255]

@@ilyatsukanov8707 very, very poor compared to south Germany or the Netherlands

[@ilyatsukanov8707]

@@timavoievodin3255 So compared to 5% of the population of the capitalist world?

[@timavoievodin3255]

@@ilyatsukanov8707 compared culturally similar areas

[@jonarthritiskwanhc]

I think Czechoslovakia had the highest standard of living in the Eastern Bloc, not the DDR

[@fensoxx]

As a certified crane operator from a past life, the bird caged lifting cables at 2:50 scare the hell out of me.

[@lisette2060]

Any daily practical and industrial DDR standards would have scared or perhaps amused you ... Worked as experienced Craftsman in the leftovers. Everything practical seemed from a long past parallel reality! Cardboard and low quality synthetics wherever possible 😐

[@gbcb8853]

Viewers may be interested in Katja Hoyer’s book ‘Beyond the Wall’ which gives background to the history of the DDR.

[@herpderp3131]

Great talk and interesting delivery! Always enjoy your vids!

[@pranavmanie1479]

as always, lovely video Jon. would love for you to cover Poland and Czechoslovakia as well, and see how their economic growth spurts came about.

[@lisette2060]

Came about?? Czech ingenious mentality paired with modern Western capitalism saved the broke Communist system from a worse fate! Try read a book or just some quality articles relevant to this topic ... There's also several documentaries available on this media.

[@pranavmanie1479]

@@lisette2060 chill bro, when I say "came about" I mean how they bounced back post their economic transition

[@NikolausUndRupprecht]

11:39 There appears to be a confusion of images. The banner held up by the marchers reads: "Unsere Antwort an Provokateure: Festes Vertrauen zur Regierung" = "Our answer to provocateurs: firm trust in the government". This is hardly a demonstration against the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) as suggested above.

[@ChristophBackhaus]

most people were fine with the government. The protests were done by a small mostly Christian minority.

[@prohacker5086]

... who happened to be starving.

[@tulippasta]

For anyone interested in what it was like to live in east germany, I recommend Beyond The Wall by Katja Hoyer. She blends facts and character studies in a way that shows real empathy for the people of the former DDR

[@edward9674]

When you build a wall to keep people in

[@detectiveofmoneypolitics]

Economic investigator Frank G Melbourne Australia is following this informative content cheers Frank 😊

[@thomasstufe1676]

excellent. I would love it if you could follow with a video about later economic history

[@comentedonakeyboard]

Abreviations soon became one of the main products of the GDR.

[@legatemichael]

Good indepth video. Nice details. Keep up the good work.

[@paulmattt]

3:20. Most of the equipment taken to the USSR was destroyed as the Soviets didn’t know how to use it or, simply, didn’t care.

[@baldi7757]

Love these vids!

[@puckhockey4733]

I always feel smarter and more knowledgeable when I've watched one of your videos. Thanks for the hard work!

[@Sacto1654]

Interestingly, several brands of East German consumer goods that started during this time have actually survived and are now enjoying success across Europe. Nudossi, a competitor to Nutella, is enjoying a resurgence of popularity since 1999.

[@Eddies_Bra-att-ha-grejer]

"Across Europe"? Are you sure? Pretty sure it's only Germany. Many Germans are obsessed with the concept of "Europe", but it often seems like it's because they assume the entirety of Europe is just like Germany.

[@Rupiee]

Great video, would love to see videos on the economic situation in the other warsaw pact countries if you get the chance!

[@ninupimps007]

Seemed like this ended suddenly. Was hoping for connection to be made to unification & what happened after ... May be part 2?

[@rustix3]

17:02 SO I am right that the Berlin wall wasn't just between West and East Berlin, but actually around the entire West Berlin? Otherwise people can simply go around. Also what about the East and West Germany, was there a wall too all the way from north to south?

[@HeadsFullOfEyeballs]

Well, yeah.

[@TajiriOli]

Very interesting video ! Thank you!

[@SuperYTPmaster]

You should make more history videos!

[@k-c]

Before the Marshall Plan, the West had intended to "pasteurize" Germany into an agricultural economy. However, after observing the post-war developments, they decided to re-industrialize Germany to counterbalance the Soviet Union. NATO and the European Union fulfilled their roles, but after 1991, their purposes as institutions became more ambiguous.

[@Justjunniee]

Wrong the Rosenthal plan was never intended to be implemented and was highly disliked in the government

[@少康战情妇]

德国与中国一样，全球大国都想掌控这个国家，如果全球大国感受到德国脱离掌控，这些大国就想毁灭他，原因在于德国是欧洲地缘的心脏，谁掌控了德国谁就掌握了欧洲。不同的是德国很小，中国很大。

[@tykjpelk]

Organizing your whole foreign export on trading within ComicCon while neglecting trading cards is awfully misguided. They could have even created their own games and cartoon industry like Czechoslovakia. Friedrichshain could have been the Akihabara of the Eastern Bloc!

[@jkobain]

Folks, he did the Check Losovakya thing again.

[@micgalovic]

Ta čo už, keby som robil video o Taiwane tak tiež by som skomolil všetky názvy

[@goldnutter412]

"unvealed" unVALEd as far as I have ever heard ser !!

[@electrolytics]

This place only lasted 45 years. As soon as it was able to reunite with West Germany it did.

[@notenoughmemes1847]

And then West Germany stripped it for parts

[@lisette2060]

​@@notenoughmemes1847😂 Which parts?? Cardboard Trabi and endless pollution costing billions? Who paid your survival(!) and today's modern(!) living standards? Ossi Nutcase.. 🤣🤡😴😴

[@sal-z3q]

What a shame 😢

[@rarbiart]

9:06 thank you for NOT attributing the uprise of West German economy in the 1950ies to "work ethics" or "Ludwig Erhard" (how it's mistakenly done often, to please a narrative). the economical boom of the 1950ies in the west was profit from the Korean War, where West German coal and steel of the "Montan"-industry had their peak growth.

[@tr808q]

Totally agree with you on these points. Whats also an important point is, all german companies in the west could keep their profits from the predatory war and the exploitation of slave labour. So they reinvested those profits after the war into new capital stock, while the funds from the marshall plan went into rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure. Mercedes-Benz cleaned so much money from these illicit earning through their subsidiaries in Argentina, that they owned large parts of the Argentinian economy in the 1950s. At some point the Argentinian Government intervened and forbid Mercedes-Benz to further invest this money in the country. Later West Germany romanticized this as "Wirtschaftswunder". There were never any wonders involved. It was just keeping and reinvesting the spoils of the nazi war under new preferential economic terms.

[@tami6867]

​​@@tr808q"Wirtschaftswunder" basically used the same framing as "Exportweltmeister" today. Back then it was benefits from slave labor. Nowdays its benefits from Agenda2010/Harz4 which created europes biggest low wage sector which basically is almost slave labour. Adding today, the Agenda2010/Harz4 Reforms combined with the euro lead to deinstrustrialisation of our neighbors France and especially Italy as they coulndt adjust their currency value anymore to the localy lower inflation in germany (bc of low wage sector) making german products cheaper on the world market compared to france (2%) or italy (4%) who had double or quadruple the inflation of germany (1%). 2% is btw the inflation goal of the ECB. We germans are good in playing not fair and then patting our own shoulders for beeing so good and productive.

Other western countries also benefited from the Korean war boom, but they did not grow as quickly as West Germany.

[@rarbiart]

other western countries did not have the potential of coal mines and steel mills ready. Germany took illegitimate profit out of WW2, despite all reparations and bombed cities... and romanticized it as "Wirtschaftswunder".

[@TheWizardGamez]

>liberalizes the economy >economic conditions improve >confused communist face

That makes for an inspiring story. Alas, they didn't manage to repeat the same feat in the 1990s when they unified the two Germanies. So it's slightly more complicated.

[@robertkalinic335]

Are you implying that communists dont understand how capitalists creates wealth? Communism exists entirely as reaction to capitalisms tendency to ruthlessly optimize for profit above everything else. Your joke only works if u have skin deep understanding.

[@be12]

Who's "they"

[@shlokvaibhav]

Can you do a video on evolution of press freedom and freedom of expression in China? Reading post 1949 history gives me an idea that press freedom was greatest in early 1950s and early 1980s and has been down continuously deteriorated since 1989. Will be happy to do some groundwork for it as well.

[@Anti-CornLawLeague]

16:00 He’s talking about bunkers.

[@massafelipe8063]

Amazing piece, joy to watch

[@fredo1070]

West Germany had Volkswagen, BMW, Porsche and Mercedes, East Germany had Trabant.

[@germansnowman]

And Wartburg. But to be fair, the Horch company started there as well, which eventually turned into Audi.

[@barreiros5077]

DDR had rusian ZIL ... not for ALL.

[@germansnowman]

@@barreiros5077 There was also Dacia (Romanian) which built a Renault clone, Mazda 323 for the well-connected, as well as Lada and Moskvich (Russian).

[@matneu27]

Short before of the GDR was ending, they planned a "modern" version of the Trabant with a 4 stroke engine from Volkswagen. Then the wall was tear down and no one was interested on the Trabants because used western cars flooding the market.

[@AC-jk8wq]

Nice work again Jon… 😃

[@nneeerrrd]

With ton of the factual errors, nice work indeed 😂

[@normanknutsen8253]

Very good video, as normal. Thank you very much.❤

[@frankb1]

Good video.

[@Vegemeister1]

"such land reforms usually do quite well" \*record scratch\*

[@der.Schtefan]

Yes. Thank you so much for correctly pronouncing Zeiss. Thank you!

[@robertomanz6399]

that was the only german word he ever got right, r

[@Ilia-ul1pz]

When your economy and ideology are so successful, you have to build a wall to prevent people from living. 😂

Officially, the wall was there to keep out the 'fascists'. Not (officially) to keep anyone in.

[@belstar1128]

an east German man born in 1910 could have lived under 5 different types of governments without ever moving. the original German empire in his early childhood. Weimar Germany in his teenage years and adolescence the nazi period in his 20s and 30s. then communism for most of his life and then the last years of his life would be under the modern Germany .you could also have Germans that were born in the 1860s in small city states living before the foundation of the unified German empire still being alive in the time of east Germany .but they wouldn't make it until the end of the communist period unfortunately .

[@glps6167]

The GDR was not occupied by "the Allies", just by one of the ally. This video omits the impact of socialist policies on individual enterprises. Such enterprises with facilities in both East and West Germany brought over their management, their engineers to the west, if appropriate, moved theiur headquarters. Hannover Messe took over the function of the Leipzig Fair. Images shown often do not match the narrative (narrative on the early 1950s, image shows Berlin Wall (1961) or Palace of the Republic (1976).

[@goldnutter412]

You are a legend already bro Papa will be very proud and already back here winning

[@-gg8342]

Very interesting topic!

[@DipakBose-bq1vv]

In 1981 while I was lecturing in the Oxford University, I made a comment that East Germany had on that year the highest rate of growth of its economy. One of the mature student who was in my class said, West Germany is doing its gas out. This is the psychology of the British people, who could not see anything good in the Soviet Union and East European countries.

[@AlexRoivas]

It's funny because I a big chunk of the British people are leftist

[@goldnutter412]

Control control control :-( Control is an illusion.. the best thing we can do is GIVE.. thanks bro you are doing great things here. Amazing content.. Conclusion is perfect.. that's all I needed.. the details are frustrating to acknowledge

[@zour2361]

Danke!

[@winj3r]

I'm so glad I wasn't born in the Soviet Union, or anywhere near it. What a dystopian nightmare.

[@peternagy7026]

You have a grossly distorted image of the era, the countries and their nations. Actually most of the Soviet-controlled part of the world underwent a huge development (for their past) while they preserved a lot of the social fabric. People were living the same lives like their counterparts in the west - learning, loving, dying -, the only difference being the nuances like which type of car were they driving.

[@bigmedge]

@@peternagy7026you have a grossly distorted & naive view of socialist life . Sure, people lived & loved, but those days were filled with shortages of damn near everything you take for granted. What’s worse, almost all buildings’ exteriors as well as their electrical/plumbing systems received minimal maintenance, so everything was very run down just a few years after being built

[@peternagy7026]

@@bigmedge I have never experienced shortages throughout those years. My mother told me that right after the conclusion of WW2 there were some hard years. But hey, they still had food stamps in the 60s in the UK… Actually the prefab homes you are talking about - while not particularly nice - are adequate quality and after 50 years of their construction they’re still perfect if maintained well. I have such a flat here at Budapest - come and visit us if you want some real life experience instead of the propaganda.

[@9TXONE]

I just want to namedrop the "Monster" manga series here. Ok, bye now.

[@HighWealder]

Glad that i saw West Berlin in 1988, amazed when the wall fell only a year later.

[@klauszinser]

Well done (as I grew up in the West, served 15 months at the West German army and remember both states very well). 'Personal consumption as quota of national income'. Never heard, more used to state quota which could be the delta.

[@klauszinser]

I am very fascinated as you go fully into technology e.g. ASML, Olivetti in Computers, etc. but you also investigate and present economic issues in communism as Albania, the region in Czechoslovakia, GDR etc.

[@wertywerrtyson5529]

The wall was bad for those wanting to leave but the ones that stayed did get it better because the brain drain stopped. Even the symbol of the Cold War wasn’t as black and white as most people think of it.

[@AnoNym-bd7jt]

German here. In detail there are many errors, but in all you are correct. thx.

[@SianaGearz]

If you'd like to elaborate in detail, it would be much appreciated.

[@koralgol777]

fun fact: German economy was already socialist during the Nazi rule companies were either directly nationalized or taken over by nazi officials, standards were lowered (that's when they banned stopwatches because workers didn't like the pressure etc.) price controls were introduced and numerous factory owners got sent to concentration camps or otherwise removed from their business.

[@notenoughmemes1847]

privatization increased under nazi rule what are you on about

[@SinclairA]

It's pronounced "Shtah-zi" not "Stasi", Jena is pronounced something like "Yiena" and not "Gena".

[@ThomasWangenheim]

At the end of the war "the Reich was very behind the rest of the world in terms of technological innovation". What a joke! The Reich was the technologically most advanced war participant: Rockets, Jet-Airplanes, missle guiding etc.

[@werre2]

the first finnish female president thought of DDR as the perfect country. Explains why Finland is now in ruin

[@jcmorellana]

Such a neutral perspective taking US sources.

[@russrh]

They removed duplicate rail lines turning the east German network into mostly single track!

[@Vlaaadify]

Do Yugoslavia?

[@JanVP1]

3:40 I wonder how long and how much reparations Russia will pay Ukraine.

[@ronaryel6445]

Very nice video. While East Germany was the most advanced of Soviet satellite states, when NATO won a strategic victory over the Warsaw Pact and East Germany's economy was exposed to the west, the inferior quality of East German goods led to widespread collapse and job losses. As Germany reunified, the government became too generous in handing out welfare benefits and did not pay attention to reinvestment, leading to the rise of resentment, violence against immigrant and white supremacy in the East.

[@ilyatsukanov8707]

That is absolutely untrue. East Germany was gutted economically by design, not due to "inferior quality" of goods. Look up Treuhandanstalt and how West German companies systematically destroyed the GDR's economy to get rid of potential competition. East Germans' resentment toward the FRG authorities isn't the result of generous welfare benefits, but the fact that the FRG has spent thirty years looking down on them after destroying their economy and distinct identity (East Germans, unlike West Germans, never had it instilled in them that they were forever responsible for the crimes of Nazism, for example). Regarding quality of goods, this is anecdotal evidence, of course, but I have an East German radio, electronic wristwatch and excellent old Carl Zeiss Jena microscope lenses that still work perfectly to this day.

[@ronaryel6445]

@@ilyatsukanov8707 Not all goods were inferior, but heavy items like locomotives were. There was some chauvinism shown by West German industry, but no, they did not destroy East Germany's economy. There's no evidence of that.

[@maximmatusevich3971]

Why are piece-work wages a bad thing? If anything you want that (or the percentage revenue/contribution approach) since your rewards are tied to productivity as opposed to a salary or hour rate where you feel contribution means nothing.

[@hyperion3145]

It's historically led to sweatshop scenarios where workers would need to produce more if a good cannot sustain them, producing more may affect quality, low quality produce affects pay and the worker will be forced to produce even more goods of even poorer quality. This means they are producing more for the same pay (or less) due to their decreasing production quality. Sweatshops and piece work aren't one and the same but sweatshops do tend to start off as piece work like situations.

[@alexanderswift6362]

The hard-won experience of labor is that, in a capitalist system, management and owners rule. And they rule to profit themselves. If labor accepts piece-work today, tomorrow the price per piece, controlled as that is by management, will fall. This will happen until enough people raise enough stink. This is what happened in "socialist" East Germany. Management, just this time in the form of the Party, first set piece-work rates, then adjusted them to suit themselves and their plans rather than worker happiness or even realities, until enough people raised enough stink. Remember how the end of Animal Farm goes: "Four legs good! Two legs BETTER!"

[@ADSLPL]

Let me explain it as simply as possible - today's piecework pay will become tomorrow's norm.

[@markusgreger]

Western german pharmaceutical companies could perform their medical trials in the east.

[@jaimeortega4940]

The DDR created some great, well built, metal and easily serviced machines, engines and devices. They maybe weren't "as top of the line" or "modern" but they still worked. Many of the DDR devices work to this day, showing the difference in quality from then to now.

[@cv990a4]

There's a KZbin channel where the youtuber repairs equipment, some of which is East German equipment. www.youtube.com/@ThePostApocalypticInventor

Well, there's a clear survivorship bias here. All the crap that has since broken down, you don't see anymore.

[@mansurtxafapapaias3517]

What about electronic warfare...?

[@hikarikaguraenjoyer9918]

Actually quality was better, because in East Germany there was no planned obsolescence. Whereas products in the west are designed to break invetually so consumers would buy new ones, East Germany didn’t design consumer products like that.

[@stevengill1736]

Everybody raced to get the weapons of war - the Soviet's got the nerve gas plants and the US got the rocket scientists... But the area was helped by the Marshall Plan, even East Germany to a minor extent. (I believe there was a black market even there??) ....and the uprising in East Germany started as I was born...all my fault no doubt.

[@jimmy21584]

One other factor: East Germany was held up by the USSR as a poster child of communism. They received beneficial treatment and a relatively light hand, compared to other states closer to Moscow.

[@Nic_Holas]

Czechlosovakia baby!

[@chrisschaeffer9661]

I thought more of Berlin wouldve bombed out. Amazed at the Industry still intact. Sad part is that in the End Hitler wanted Germany too suffer for what He percieved as them letting Him down. He let Himself down trying to Play Army Man. And He let the World down by trying to Play a Human. Peace

[@pastasauce99]

Another Banger

[@EyesOfByes]

Comicon

[@davianoinglesias5030]

😂So the Communists had to plunder whatever the market system had built in East Germany to support their own economy.

Well, they had just come out of WW2, too. (I agree that socialism ain't great, but your argument isn't a good one.)

[@HeadsFullOfEyeballs]

Well, their capitalist neighbour had just invaded them, devastating their most economically productive regions and cities and killing tens of millions of their workers. And Russia was very poor and underdeveloped before the communists took over. So they had a lot of fixing-up and catching-up to do no matter their economic system. It's not like the average Russian is wealthy today, after 30 years of capitalism.

[@briansmith1633]

Ah, they were socialist before the war.

[@zkol3287]

"Forced labor" were jews, Soviet and french prisoners, and other types of prisoners of war and "non desirables". They were very poorly treated, abused in many ways for entertainment, and slaughtered with no remorse, and with a lot of joy. These are things we must always remember as well.

[@Kennon959]

What about operation paperclip?

[@RoxannSnyder]

It’s not socialism, that was communism!

[@AlexWatson-t1f]

You must be running out of topics if you have to talk about a EUROPEAN country on a channel called ASIAN-ometry

[@4lpha0ne]

The East German semiconductor and electronics industry would also be an interesting topic.

[@germansnowman]

He’s already done one.

[@4lpha0ne]

@@germansnowman Oh, thanks! Need to check the channel then.