Crossposted from https://thebrainbin.org/m/germany@feddit.org/t/1945027
A small town in eastern Germany banned the installation of new Holocaust memorial plaques that mark the last known residence or workplace of Jews and other victims of the genocide.
The motion was proposed by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)…
I would reccomend Chapter 8 of Killing Hope by William Blum. It’s all very interesting reading but this ads some complexity to the point you bring up. It’s fair to say the Soviets were harsh on the Germans with their reparations, for good reason and to the detriment of realpolitik. However when we see this as an internal failure brought on by essentially internal fuckups, we miss the external and the fact that there’s no distance between the two when you’ve been under siege since 1917. The other chapters of this book explain what happened to the other underdogs when they couldn’t keep things in perfect order.
Was it cheap l just chapter 8 I should read? Thankfully it was only 3 pages and it was a slow day at work.
I understand the desire for reparations especially after WWII (or the Great Patriotic War if you prefer), but in contrast to the US Marshall plan it seems very short sighted.
The author then mentions that East Germany had social services on par or in excess of West, but “the sex appeal” of higher salaries and more consumer goods in West Germany led to a brain drain in the East. To prevent this (and cross border raids) border crossings were prohibited. None of which to my western eyes make the Eastern Germany a nice place to live
Taking all this into account it seems obvious why the the East struggled to keep up with the West and why even now, there’s an infrastructure gap between the two sides of Germany