History lesson here for shallow, reality-TV-generation
'progressive' idiots who think socialism's cool
(no worries- there's pictures)
blamed capitalists for everything,
nationalized industry,
suppressed dissent,
glorified a (paranoid) leader,
and did it all the name of the 'common man'
-sound familiar, Obammunist tools?
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| All was dreary and gray- except for the propaganda posters |
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| Caught at the border... and in BIG trouble |
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| Greatly feared Ministry for State Security (the Stasi): 'The shield and sword of the Party' |
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| Stasi chief Erich Meilke (center) oversaw 1M full-time officers and 500K part-time informants. Their loyalty lay 100% with the Communist Party, and the utterly ruthless and unaccountable organization had it's tentacles stuck-into every element of society: it was said one in every 63 DDR citizens was a Stasi informant... in other words, you couldn't afford to trust anybody. |
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| Officially atheist East Germany destroyed Christian faith in their people- today only 5% attend church in the former DDR |
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| The country was basically run by a gang of communist thugs- and they ran it like a prison |
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| Youth group FDJ encouraged 'sacrifice' for the regime |
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| Shot DEAD for attempting to escape the workers' paradise |
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| Ubiquitous in the DDR: Erich Honecker portrait |
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| Living in charmless, dingy mediocrity |
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| National People's Army more a tool of USSR than 'the people' |
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| Propaganda was everywhere |
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| The government kept files on millions of their own citizens... |
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| Getting over the wall wasn't enough- you still had to make it through a daunting 'no-man's land' death-strip to get to the west. |
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| Captured while attempting a dash to the west: a grim fate awaited those who failed while seeking freedom... |
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| 'People's car' Trabant was a 2-stroke (oil smoker) P.O.S w/ 26 hp |
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| Housing projects no more appealing than in the US... more like concrete 'rabbit huts' for the un-free socialist masses |
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| Oblivious to the will of the people, East German leadership put on an ostentatious 40th Anniversary celebration -even as the regime was collapsing- in late 1988... note Gorbachev next to DDR's Erich Honecker |
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| What a dump: East Berlin 1979 |
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| No shortage of military parades, tho |
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| That cool white guy Frank Marshall Davis was always talking about |
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| Most pre-war buildings simply left to crumble in the DDR |
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| 1990: Good riddance sozialismus |
Any protesting the putrid East German regime often paid with their lives or served long sentences while being tortured daily by twisted Stasi guards in filthy political prisons.
Appallingly, over 100 East Germans were shot dead while attempting to flee the glorious 'workers' and peasants' state'.
By any measure, once proud and world-beating German workers in Soviet Zone were reduced to uncompetitive socialist serfs with little to show for their efforts but a 500 sq. ft. concrete apartment in a high-rise block with a lovely view of... all the other concrete high-rise apartment blocks.
So why do so many Americans feel an ongoing desire for Obama's reckless socialist experiment when the German example should be all any thinking person would ever need?
The saying in the Soviet-dominated eastern block used to go
'If anybody can make socialism work, it's the Germans!'... well, that depends on your definition of 'work': by the 1980s -after four decades laboring for sparse reward- the German people of the DDR only made 40% of West German GDP per person... or, meaning a German in the west averaged 250% of what was earned in socialist East Germany- not to mention the almost complete lack of freedom, human rights, and opportunity.
And despite $1.2 TRILLION spent since unification to try and get the former DDR up to speed- some see the societal and economic damage done to eastern Germany as permanent.
East Germany was heavily subsidized by the Soviets for 40 years, and was long known as the 'leading' economic performer of the COMECON communist trading block... in other words, well supported by foreign aid, and the best the socialist world had.
Alas, the DDR was still a joke...
Socialism sucks... plain and simple