The armed forces of East-Germany

[pieter]

[pieter]

And about the DDR economy and society









Volks Eigener Betrieb (VEB)

The Publicly Owned Operation (German: Volkseigener Betrieb; abbreviated VEB) was the main legal form of industrial enterprise in East Germany. They were all publicly owned and were formed after mass nationalisation between 1945 and the early 1960s, and the handing back in 1954 of some 33 enterprises previously taken by the USSR as reparations.

The managing director of a VEB was called a plant or works manager (German: Werkleiter, Werkdirektor or Betriebdirektor). He was assisted in his tasks by the first secretary of the factory party organisation (Betriebsparteiorganisation) of the SED, and the chairman of the factory trade union (Betriebsgewerkschaftsleitung). Subordinate to them were roles such as "Chief Accountant" and "Technical Director".

VEBs were initially vertically integrated into units called Associations of Publicly Owned Operations (Vereinigung Volkseigener Betriebe) or VVBs. A VVB existed in most major industries, to consolidate production and reduce waste. They had all been replaced by 1979 with the VEB Kombinate, or VEB Group, which integrated the VEBs much more closely than the largely administrative VVBs. Under this system, the term 'Kombinate' was frequently dropped and the term "VEB" usually implied the group rather than the individual factory. The organisation of all state enterprises was the responsibility of the State Planning Commission.

VEBs often had company sports teams, and played an important role in the promotion of sports.

In 1989, VEBs employed 79.9% of the East German workforce. After German reunification and the introduction of the market economy in 1990, the ownership of around 8000 publicly owned operations passed to Treuhand; the trust agency which oversaw the privatisation of GDR state property.

An honorary name was frequently added to the firm's actual name, for example, VEB Kombinat Chemische Werke "Walter Ulbricht" Leuna. This was an incentive towards fulfillment and overfulfillment.

[pieter]

[pieter]

East-Germans speaking on an opposition demo in the final year of the DDR.

[pieter]

[pieter]

[Jaga]

Some of these movies show the propaganda machine in Eastern Germany which was much worse than in the other countries of the communistic system.

[pieter]

Dear Jaga,

You are right about that. I think that the 'Prussian communist' East-German propaganda machine was much worse than other countries of the so called Peoples Republics, because they -believe it or not- learned from the Nazi propaganda of Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany. Many former Nazi's became communists, SED party functionaries, Stasi agents and probably also involved in the DDR propaganda. Merge that with the perfect trained 'real' German stalinists (former KPD, communist party of Germany, members), who were trained in Moscow (like Marcus Wolf, Erich Mielke (Stasi chief) and others. So the DDR propaganda was a vicious mix of Stalinist Sovjet style propaganda, merged witht the best elements of Nazi propaganda. Look at the style, look at the uniforms and look at the way they speech or the voice overs. There are a lot of similarities with the Nazi propaganda.

Cheers,
Pieter

[pieter]

Stasi



The East-German Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS), commonly known as the Stasi (Staatssicherheit) under it's chief Erich Mielke has been called the "most pervasive police state apparatus ever to exist on German soil." In a 1993 interview, Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal has said that, if one considers only the oppression of their own people, the Stasi under Mielke, "was much, much worse than the Gestapo."


Erich Fritz Emil Mielke (December 28, 1907 – May 21, 2000), Minister of State Security of the German Democratic Republic. He was in office from 11 December 1957 until 18 November 1989, the longest serving secret police chief in the Soviet Bloc.


Simon Wiesenthal, KBE (31 December 1908 – 20 September 2005) was an Austrian writer and Nazi hunter. He was a Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter.



1945 the KGB established an underground interrogation prison in Berlin - Hohenschoenhausen, Germany. 1951 it was turned over to the notorious STASI. It was called the "U-Boot" and became for thousands of their victims the place of no return or the beginning of their road to one of the Gulags inside the "Evil Empire" or the Guillotine, the execution instrument of the GDR - German Demokratic Republik, - for their political opponents.

Wiesler as a ruthless and efficient Stasi operator and uses recording of interrogation of suspect to form Stasi trainees

Look at the uniform of the Stasi officer and look at the Nazi uniforms below.

Stasi humor at the Stasi headquarters at Berlin Hohenschönhausen, also Stasi prison.


Another fragment of the same movie in which the Stasi is bugging the apartment of a East-German dissident

As you see the dissident leaving the Stasi officers immediately enter the building of the apartment

Here you see the dissident finding out the bugs in his house, experiences the death of his girlfriend (lover) (in front of his appartment where she jumped in front of a truck after she was forced to have an affair with a high rankinkg Stasi officer, to rescue her carreer as a DDR theatre actress) and checks his stasi files after the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the DDR.

His former Stasi observer (whom he doesn't know) buys his book about the Stasi officer who worked on his case (meaning listening to his private conversations at home and his phone calls.) The dissident writer found out he didn't had a private life and that the Stasi knew everything about him. He tought that he was protected by the fact that he knew Eric Honeckers wife.


A clip from the German movie 'Das leben der Anderen' - In this clip, Wiesler, disgruntled by the abuse of power by his superior decides to play him at his own game and warn Dreymann as to what is going on. You see that the actress/girfriend of the dissident writer is brought back home in the car of the Stasi general or high ranking officer/state official.

When the actress is confronted with the harsh truth of the Stasi finding out the secret hiding place of her lovers red typing writer under the carpet, she runs outside and commits suicide.

But the type writer is gone, and she didn't knew it was replaced. She feels guilt while she didn't betrayed him in the political (dissident) sense. She was forced to betray him in love. But that was another thing. Later he finds out that she didn't betray him and he is sad.


Gestapo officer uniform


SD officer uniform


German Wehrmacht officer, the uniform looks almost identical to the one of the Stasi officer Wiesler in the movie 'The Lives of Others'.

Vopo, the Volkspolizei, the East-German version of the Polish Milicja Obywatelska was founded after World War II, taking the East German remnant of the Nazi Ordnungspolizei (Orpo) and Kriminalpolizei (Kripo).

At the close of the Second World War, the Nazi Orpo (Ordnungspolizei) ceased to exist; but many of its personnel continued with business as usual, performing police services for the Allied occupation forces. The traditions of the Orpo continued in East Germany (Deutsche Demokratische Republik/German Democratic Republic), which maintained a state police force (Volkspolizei) designed after the SS structures, being based on a centralized system. In West Germany, the police were decentralized again, as they had been before 1936, with each of the new federal states (called Bundesländer) establishing its own police force, the Landespolizei, each of which survives to this day. Many Landespolizei regulations, procedures, and even some uniforms, which are green, and insignia, can be traced back to the pre-1936 forces.

Following the end of the Second World War, the phrase Sicherheitspolizei appeared in East Germany as a title for some components of the East German secret police forces.

Stasi activity after 1989

The organisation Gesellschaft zur Rechtlichen und Humanitären Unterstützung, consisting of Stasi veterans defends the communist regime of the German Democratic Republic (DDR) and the Stasi. On March 14, 2006, a discussion of the future of the Stasi museum Gedenkstätte Berlin-Hohenschönhausen was massively disturbed by Wolfgang Schwanitz, the last head of the Stasi, and 200 Stasi veterans, who attacked victims of the communist regime, mocking them and describing them as "criminal elements". The incident caused a political scandal, and led to harsh criticism against the responsible senator, Thomas Flierl, who had remained silent after the attacks.

Links:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_collaborators_(East_Germany)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Zaisser
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Mielke
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Wolf
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Schwanitz
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Guillaume
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Directorate_for_Reconnaissance

[pieter]

German comedian plays former East-German leader Erich Honecker



He uses the typical East-German saxon dialect Honecker spoke.

Another German comedian plays Honecker

[pieter]

www.airfox.de/ddr/Uniformen.htm