How Germany Forgot the Horrors of Communism

Germany recently celebrated 25 years of reunification with a beautiful art installation retracing the path of the Berlin Wall and educational exhibits of its Cold War history. For many Germans, it was a rare moment of reflection on the horrors perpetrated by the German Democratic Republic (a.k.a. GDR, East Germany, DDR).

The phenomenon known as Ostalgie, or nostalgia for the East, along with favorable views of socialism, have led to a curious whitewashing of the GDR's legacy. Particularly among young Germans, the GDR is seen as a quirk of history, a strange but charming place with campy state-manufactured products and a culture of nude beaches and enthusiastic collectivism, rather than a monstrous police state which imprisoned, murdered, tortured, and spied on its own people.

Reason TV visited Berlin and spoke with DDR Museum Scientific Director Dr. Stefan Wolle, Students for Liberty's Frederik Cyrus Roeder, Prometheus think tank founder Clemens Schnieder, and Lichtgrenze artists Mark and Christopher Bauder about why Germans are so skittish about confronting the country's dark communist legacy.

About 4 minutes.

Produced by Anthony L. Fisher.

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[LibertyEver]

After the fall of East Germany, the citizens overran the Stasi buildings.  They had lived their entire lives believing that the Stasi had a thick dossier on each of them.  They had restricted their movements, their speech, their actions, based on the belief that the state security apparatus was collecting a mountain of data on each of them.  But government bureaucracies are very inefficient, and that's no less true of totalitarian communist governments.  The East Germans were shocked at how little their government knew about them.  The control was maintained by fear of the all knowing government, and not the data collection itself.

Fast forward to post-9/11 USA.  The NSA and other alphabet groups have leveraged technology to their benefit, to overcome the inefficiency of government bureaucracies.  Data collection is automated, and it is very widespread.  I think most Americans would be shocked at how much data our government has collected on us.  Corporations such as Google and Apple have also gathered an enormous amount of our personal data.  They probably know us better than we know ourselves.  The analysis of the data is now largely automated as well.  Just as Google can perform speaker independent voice recognition from your Android smart phone, allowing you to tell your phone to set an alarm for 3PM tomorrow, the NSA computers can analyze your phone conversations listening for anything they think is interesting.  Yet most Americans still don't seem to care.  They have done nothing wrong, so they don't mind government spying on them if it might stop a terrorist.  :-/

[fcb]

Make a document about how Indians forgot horrors of Winston Churchill

[TheySchlendrian]

My Parents quite enjoyed the ''horrors'' of no unemployment...

[julaer]

The history of Eastern Germany doesn't teach us the horrors of communism but authoritarianism. Especially considering it wasn't communism. It was socialism. But the biggest problem wasn't a socialist economy but thhe infringement on human rights due to authoritarianism.

[Prfactist]

Forgetting is how we allow history to repeat itself. 

[nrxzionistlibertarian]

The problem is that most Germans do not regard totalitarianism as a necessary consequence of socialism/communism. Also, the socialist agitators developed a new terminology, e.g. basic income, social human rights, cooperative economy etc.

[angus]

The “horrors” of free education, free healthcare, summer camps, no homelessness, and everyone with a job and food to eat.
Now look at the USA today. Covid running rampant, racist militarized police attacking citizens, armies of homeless people, and a government that doesn’t give a shit. Basically a collapsing third word country with a thin veneer of glitz.
No wonder people in Germany and throughout the former Soviet bloc are nostalgic.

[johnnyscifi]

I think communism is just as important to Germany's past as national socialism. Karl Marx was German after all!!

[problemsolver]

maybe that was because there was not holacost

[rubbersole]

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

[bobegnopsfpokmmawhcs]

The GDR was the only German state, wich fell to revolution.

[karlfelix]

I think you can compare Stalin with Hitler, but not the GDR with Nazi-Germany. It is tragic that a thousand people died trying to escape, but the Nazis systematically murdered millions of people. You can not compare these to things. Doing so, I think, actually plays down what the Nazis did.

[riparbelligiorgio]

DDR (or DDR) was a great experience of freedom and Social justice .

[PHRCpvh]

“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.” ― Edmund Burke

[gringotroller]

Maybe try talking to some people who actually lived through it next time. Would that be to.. unreasonable?

[redgreekrevolution]

How Germany Forgot the Horrors of Communism?
Mainly by experiencing the Horrors of Capitalism.

[major]

"Freedom is slavery. Slavery is freedom." George Orwell

[elijahkearney]

"How did Germany forget it's Horrors of its Communist past" Oh wait maybe three where never any in the first place

[cringemania]

the stasi isnt an idea of socialism wtf

[DMH-btzo]

All of Germany was under Nazism, and mass atrocities and suppression were induced on the German populace, but I feel more sympathy and gratitude for the Germans who lived in East Germany, who endured 12 years of Nazi rule and 40 years of Communist rule, two regimes that suppressed religion, faith, media, political and social freedoms in many ways. As an Indonesian in which my country managed to squash communism in ways that East Germany couldn’t, I pay my respects and condolences to you. “An das Deutschen Volke, Mögen Sie immer Hoffnung und Frieden finden, und möge Ihr Land für immer vorankommen” 🫡🙏🏻🇮🇩🇩🇪