Helmut Kohl 1930-2017

[pieter]

In this German documentary they probably left out Hannelore's rape, because it is still controversial, vulnerable and painful subject in the German society. Maybe also because relatives and friends still live, like her son.

Hannelore Kohl

Hannelore Kohl (7 March 1933 in Berlin – 5 July 2001) was the first wife of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. She met him for the first time at a prom in Ludwigshafen, Germany, when she was 15 years old. They were married from 1960 until her death in 2001, including during his entire political career. They were the parents of Walter Kohl and Peter Kohl. According to their sons she was an important adviser for her husband during his chancellorship, especially concerning the German reunification and in international relations. As the first lady of Rhineland-Palatinate (1969–1976) and later as the wife of the Chancellor (1982–1998) she undertook official duties, and was engaged in philanthropic work.



Hannelore Kohl was born in Berlin and christened Johanna Klara Eleonore Renner. Her father Wilhelm Renner was an engineer and business executive; he joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in 1933, was Wehrwirtschaftsführer at Hugo Schneider AG and also headed the employment office that developed the anti-tank weapon Panzerfaust. Later, she chose the portmanteau "Hannelore" to be used as her first name.

In the days following Germany's defeat in World War II, at the age of 12, Hannelore Kohl was the victim of child sexual abuse as she was raped by allied soldiers and subsequently “thrown out of a window like a sack of potatoes by the Russians.” In addition to the obvious psychological impact, the attacks left her with a fractured vertebra and back pain for the rest of her life. In order to help others with similar injuries, in 1983 she founded the Kuratorium ZNS, a foundation that helps those with trauma-induced injuries to the central nervous system, and became its president.



She was the de facto first lady during his 16 years as chancellor of West Germany (1982–90) and reunified Germany (1990–98). Trained as an interpreter in French and English, she used superb language skills as well as her personal warmth and charm to enhance the traditional role of political wife. Kohl elicited sympathetic public support as she stood by her husband during the difficult period before and after West German reunification with East Germany, the hard-fought national election he lost in 1998, and the financial scandal that engulfed him after he left office. In 1993 she was stricken with photodermatitis, a rare allergy to sunlight, and the escalating isolation and physical pain she experienced eventually led her to take her own life.

[pieter]

[pieter]

Jaga, look at page 1 for my reaction to Hannelore Kohl's rape case. I have experience with women who were victim of rape and what affect that had on their lives.

[karl]

Pieter

This was very interesting of your presented material of the Life of Hannelore Kohl, much of this I was not aware of until our presentation. And yes, the rape of Hannelore was very terrible and committed by such less then animals of those Russian solders. It is good she recovered to a great extent from that tramatic experience to go on in post war to contribute that what history has disclose.

Thank you for introducing

Karl

[pieter]

Dear Karl,

Thank Jaga for introducing it. I ad material to her original post. Like you I admid that I did not knew about Hannelore's war experiences until Jaga mentioned it today. But I knew about the 2 million German women and girls that were raped by red army soldiers. I wonder how much Germans have Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian, Kazakh or other Sovjet blood due to these war time rapes and pregnancies that came out of that. We talked about Latin America, Asia and Africa in other threads. I wonder how much people were born in these continents in colonial and war times after their mothers were raped by invading colonial soldiers. The Japanese raped an enormous amount of Asian and European women in China, Korea, Burma, Indonesia,
and other parts of Asia.

Wikipedia also writes about rapes by Nazi Germany forces:

Rapes were allowed in practice by the German military (officially forbidden, however) in eastern and southeastern Europe, while northern and western countries were relatively spared. In Occupied Denmark, which initially agreed to collaborate with Nazi Germany, rapes were not widespread, and German officials promised to punish them. By contrast thousands of Soviet female nurses, doctors and field medics fell victim to rape when captured, and were often murdered afterwards.

German soldiers used to brand the bodies of captured partisan women – and other women as well – with the words "sleeper for Hitler's troops" and rape them. Following their capture some German soldiers vividly bragged about committing rape and rape-homicide. Susan Brownmiller argues that rape played a pivotal role in Nazi aim to conquer and destroy people they considered inferior such as Jews, Russians, Poles An extensive list of examples rapes committed by German soldiers was compiled in so called "Molotov Note" in 1942. Brownmiller points out that Nazis used rape as a weapon of terror. (Comment Pieter: From a Nazi Social darwinist ideological race point of view -not from a human point of view- I doubt that Nazi leaders encouraged the rape of Jewish and Russian women and girls, because they considered them inferior as Untermenschen -Susan Brownmiller ignores notions as the Neurenberger race laws of 1935 and Rassenschande-. Poles were seen as inferior slavs too, but blond Poles could be aryanised and made German in the Nazi race theory and ideology.)

Examples of mass rapes in Soviet Union committed by German soldiers include:

- Smolensk: German command opened a brothel for officers in which hundreds of women and girls were driven by force, often by arms and hair.
- Lviv: 32 women working in a garment factory were raped and murdered by German soldiers, in public park. A priest trying to stop the atrocity was murdered.
- Borissov in Belarus: 75 women and girls attempting to flee at the approach of the German troops were captured by them. The Germans first raped and then savagely murdered 36 of their number. By order of a German officer named Hummer, the soldiers marched L. I. Melchukova, a 16-year-old girl, into the forest, where they raped her. A little later some other women who had also been dragged into the forest saw some boards near the trees and the dying Melchukova nailed to the boards. The Germans had cut off her breasts in the presence of other women.
- Kerch:imprisoned women were raped and tortured;breasts were cut off,stomachs ripped open, limbs cut off and eyes gouged out. A mass grave full of mutilated bodies of young women was found after Germans were driven out of town.
- Lviv-Germans soldiers raped Jewish girls, who were murdered after getting pregnant[83] It is estimated that over a million children were born to Russian women, fathered by German soldiers.
- Warsaw: The rape and murder of Polish women and girls by the SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger, Ukrainian and Russian SS forces like the Rona-Brigade of

Occupation of Poland

On 1 August 1940, the SS-Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger was assigned to guard duties in the region of Lublin (site of a Nazi-established "Jew reservation" established under the Nisko Plan) in the General Government territory of occupied Poland. According to journalist and author, Matthew Cooper, "wherever the Dirlewanger unit operated, corruption and rape formed an every-day part of life and indiscriminate slaughter, beatings and looting were rife". The General Government's Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer (HSSPF) Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger was disturbed by the unlawful behaviour of the Dirlewanger. His complaints resulted in its transfer to Belarus in February 1942.


Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer (HSSPF) Friedrich Wilhelm Krüger

If you open this link you read very disturbing (disgusting) accounts of the rape and abuse by men of the criminal the criminal Dirlewanger Brigade, the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS
Karl, I know from a direct Dutch Neo-Nazi source who had connections with Dutch and German Waffen-SS soldiers, that men of the infamous Nazi SS penal unit "Dirlewanger" were feared and loathed even by the German and Austrian Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS men who were not part of Oskar Dirlewangers unit. The other German and Austrian soldiers and officers hated these criminals. Oskar Dirlewanger was an extremely cruel person, "violent fanatic", "a psychopathic killer and child molester", "a violent sadist and necrophiliac" and "an expert in extermination". Karl, this Neo-nazi source with old nazi Waffen-SS connections (I know him due to my journalistic work) told me that Waffen-SS men or Wehrmacht soldiers wouldn't hesitate to kill Dirlewangers men. The 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS was composed of criminals expected to die fighting in the front-line. During its operations it engaged in the rape, pillaging and mass murder of civilians. In contrast to those who served in the German penal battalions for committing minor offences, the recruits sent into Dirlewanger's band were convicted of major crimes such as premeditated murder, rape, arson and burglary. Dirlewanger provided them with an opportunity to commit atrocities on such a scale that even the SS executioners complained. (Read my comment above here. From a first source Neo-Nazi connection with old Nazi connections I heard first hand that fellow Germans and Austrians didn't trust Dirlewanger and his men, were repulsed by their behavior, hated them and monitored them closely. Many German soldiers and officers didn't like the atrocities, the murders, mass murder, pillaging and rapes committed by armed bands of German and Austrian criminals, fanatic ideological nazi's, and Ukrainia, Russian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Latvian, Hungarian and Croatian beasts.

Warsaw Uprising:

When the Armia Krajowa began the Warsaw Uprising on 1 August 1944, Dirlewanger was sent into action as part of the Kampfgruppe formation led by SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth; once again serving alongside Kaminski's militia (now named Waffen-Sturm-Brigade RONA). Acting on orders that came directly from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, Kaminski's and Dirlewanger's men were given a free hand to rape, loot, torture and butcher. Over the following days, the troops indiscriminately massacred Polish combatants along with civilian men, women and children in the Wola District of Warsaw. The Dirlewanger's fight against the resistance in Warsaw saw it suffer extremely high losses. Although the regiment arrived in the city numbering only 865 soldiers and 16 officers it soon received reinforcements of 2,500 men, including 1,900 German convicts from the SS military camp at Danzig-Matzkau. During the course of the two-month urban warfare Dirlewanger lost 2,733 men. Thus, total casualties numbered 315% of the unit's initial strength. While some of the regiment's actions were criticized by von dem Bach (who after the war described them as "a herd of pigs") and the sector commander, Generalmajor Günter Rohr;


SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth


The beast, rapist, murderer, subhuman, vicious psychopath, SS-Oberführer Oskar Dirlewanger (26 September 1895 – 7 June 1945)

Of the more than 17 million Wehrmacht soldiers until 1944 just 5349 were punished for "moral crimes". Overall, however, military sentences were passed against some 1.5 million members of the Wehrmacht for desertion or self-mutilation. The small number of sanctioned sexual offenses provides little information about the actual extent. Rather, rape was either not displayed, or they only played a "minor role" in the eyes of the military judge.

Red Army Winter Offensive of 1945

Cases of mass rape occurred in major Polish cities taken by the Red Army. In Kraków, Soviet entry into the city was accompanied by the wave of rapes of women and girls, and the widespread theft of personal property. According to Prof. Chwalba of Jagiellonian University, this behavior reached such a scale that the Polish communists installed in the city by the Soviet Union, composed a letter of protest to Joseph Stalin himself. At the Kraków Main station, Poles who tried to rescue the victims of gang rape were shot at. Meanwhile, church masses were held in expectation of the Soviet withdrawal.

Polish women in Silesia were the target of mass rape along with their German counterparts even after the Soviet front moved much further west. In the first six months of 1945, in Dębska Kuźnia 268 rapes were reported. In March 1945 near Racibórz, 30 women captured at a linen factory were locked in a house in Makowo and raped over a period of time under the threat of death. The woman who gave her testimony to the police, was raped by four men. German and Polish women were apprehended on the streets of Katowice, Zabrze and Chorzów and gang raped by drunken soldiers, usually outdoors. According to Naimark, the Red Army servicemen did not differentiate along the ethnic lines, or between victims and occupiers.

Polish and German women in Warmia and Masuria endured the same ordeal, wrote Ostrowska & Zaremba. One letter from the Recovered Territories claimed that in the city of Olsztyn in March 1945, practically no woman survived without being violated by the Soviet rapists "irrespective of their age". Their ages were estimated to range from 9 to 80. Sometimes, a grandmother, a mother and a granddaughter were among the victims. Women were gang raped by as many as several dozen soldiers. In a letter from Gdańsk dated 17 April 1945, a Polish woman who acquired work around the Soviet garrison reported: "because we spoke Polish, we were in demand. However, most victims there were raped up to 15 times. I was raped seven times. It was horrible." A letter from Gdynia, written a week later, said that the only resort for the women was to hide in the basements all day.

Now unfortunately on all fronts war crimes took place and probably the Americans, British, Canadians and other allied troops will also have raped women and girls. Not on such a large scale, but in every army you have bad apples. Also in the colonies of the Dutch, British, Belgians, Portugese, Spanish and French rapes took place by Colonial forces. www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/01/84093-2/

Imagine Karl and Jaga and others, that some people experienced the brutal war battle front, that often destroyed their environment, hamlets, urban agglomerations, villages, towns and cities, and after that came the Sovjet and Nazi occupations, NKVD and Gestapo terror, sometimes attrocities commited by some Red army, Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS, SA military batallions, Selbstschutz self-protection units of the Volksdeutsche behind the front and various guerilla and partisan Units like Tthe Ukrainian Insurgent Army UPA, OUM (the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists), the Sovjet Partisans, the Polish communist (Stalinist) Armia Ludowa and Gwardia Ludowa (GL/AL was much better armed than the Armia Krajowa (Home Army, AK); thanks to Soviet air drops, and it might have even had a surplus of weaponry. It also had less strict discipline than the Armia Krajowa.)

If we look at more recent conflicts in the world after the Second World War rape sadly was also an instrument of power, domination, abuse, lust, sadism and psychopathic elements in various armies.

During eleven months of 1952 in the 110,000-man logistics branch of Chinese Volunteer Army, there were 41 men charged with rapes, also there were adultery, sodomy, murder and traffic accident killings.

There were rapes and sexual atrocities conducted by American servicemen in Vietnam war. North Vietnamese Communists forcibly recruited "comfort girls" from the indigenous Montagnard peoples of the Central Highlands and murdered those who didn't comply, inspired by Japan's use of comfort women.

Indonesian invasion of East Timor and West Papua (1961-1962) caused the murders of approximately 300,000 to 400,000 West Papuans and many thousands of women raped.

During the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, numerous women were tortured and raped.

1974 to 1992

In 1974 during the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey, Greek victims of rape were treated and received abortions at the Sovereign British RAF bases at Akrotiri. Other documented instances of war rape include the First Liberian Civil War, and in East Timor during the occupation by Indonesia in 1975.

It has been reported that in Peru, throughout the 12 year internal conflict, women were frequent victims of sustained war rape perpetrated by government security forces and the Shining Path. It has also been reported that during the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, an estimated 5,000 Kuwaiti women were raped by Iraqi soldiers.

Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan

The Soviet forces abducted Afghan women in helicopters while flying in the country in search of mujahideen. In November 1980 a number of such incidents had taken place in various parts of the country, including Laghman and Kama. Soviet soldiers as well as KhAD agents kidnapped young women from the city of Kabul and the areas of Darul Aman and Khair Khana, near the Soviet garrisons, to rape them. Women who returned home were considered 'dishonoured' by their families. Soviet soldiers raped entire villages of Afghan women to crush the Afghan resistance. The use of rape by Soviet soldiers against Afghans was widely reported by Amnesty International and other human rights groups.

Mass rape in the Bosnian War

During the Bosnian War, Bosnian Serb forces conducted a sexual abuse strategy against thousands of Bosnian Muslim girls and women which became known as a "mass rape phenomenon". No exact figures on how many women and children were systematically raped by the Serb forces in various camps were established, but estimates range from 20,000 to 50,000. Mass rape mostly occurred in eastern Bosnia (especially during the Foča and Višegrad massacres), and in Grbavica during the Siege of Sarajevo. Numerous Bosnian Serb officers, soldiers and other participants were indicted or convicted of rape as a war crime by the ICTY and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The events inspired the Golden Bear winner at the 56th Berlin International Film Festival in 2006, called Grbavica.



Rwandan genocide

Although the Rwandan genocide was a black African against black African conflict, it has Colonialist, racist and nazi elements in it, because the Hutu paramilitary organisation Interahamwe of the Hutu majority looked like Nazi Einsatzgruppen, Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass killings, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–45). The Interahamwe carried out the Rwandan Genocide acts against the Tutsis in 1994.

The Rwandan radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) projected racist propaganda against Tutsis, moderate Hutus, Belgians, and the United Nations mission UNAMIR. During the Genocide, the RTLM incited hatred and violence against Tutsis, against Hutus who were for the peace accord, against Hutus who married Tutsis, and advocated the annihilation of all Tutsis in Rwanda.

Here you see the Hutu radio station inciting the genocide against the Tutsi minority



During the Rwandan genocide, from April until July 1994, hundreds of thousands of women and girls were raped and/or became the victims of other forms of sexual violence. Although no explicit written orders to commit rape and other acts of sexual violence have been found, evidence suggests that military leaders encouraged or ordered their men to rape the Tutsis, and they also condoned the acts which were already taking place, without making efforts to stop them. Compared to other conflicts, the sexual violence in Rwanda stands out in terms of the organised nature of the propaganda that contributed significantly to fuelling sexual violence against Tutsi women, the very public nature of the rapes and the level of brutality towards the women.

Other cases of rape during war times were during the Sri Lanka civil war, Moro insurgency in the Philippines (rape of Moro Muslim girls by Philippinian soldiers), Bangladesh (In the Chittagong Hill Tracts Bengali settlers and soldiers have raped native Jumma (Chakma) women "with impunity" with the Bangladeshi security forces doing little to protect the Jummas and instead assisting the rapists and settlers.), the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the Darfur region in Sudan, during the Iraq War (rape of Iragi man by allied guards in the Abu Ghraib prison and in other Iraqi prisons by Iraqi guards), in the 2011 Libyan civil war, Afghan Taliban raped Afghan women in territories they conquered, and in in contemporary peace operations by UN peacekeepers there were cases of rape by UN military in African nations. Forced prostitution and sexual slavery in war is a huge problem in the world and should be condemned and fought in all cases. The abuse, mistreatment and sexual harassment of women and girls threatens the health and balance of the world community, because if we treat our mothers, sisters, wives, colleages, and strangers (women we don't know and who are the wives, grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters and cousins of others) badly this world will be and is a bad place for us, our children and grandchildren. No human being should be abused or raped, no child, no woman and no man. We often forget that men and boys are victims of rape too. Raped by straight guys, and bad gays and bi-sexuals. (the majority of gays and bi-sexuals are good people, but amongs them and amongst hetrosexual men you have beasts, preditors and psychopaths).

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has employed sexual violence against women and men in a manner that has been described as "terrorism". ISIL has utilized sexual violence in order to undermine a sense of security within communities, as well as to raise funds through the sale of captives into sexual slavery.

Unfortunately rapes comes with killing, murder, mass murder, torture, pillaging, the chaos and anarchy, lawlessness and inhuman conditions during wars, civil wars, crazy lunatic regimes and in unstable, poor, disrupted and exploited countries.

We started with the case of Hannelore Kohl and the mass rapes of the Red army against German women. I expanded the topic to all cases of rapes as a war crime, because until today that is a problem.

Cheers,
Pieter

[Jaga]

Pieter, it is awful what you wrote and posted about a friend of yours who has to hurt herself.

[karl]

Pieter

I do understand your presentations as includant of most armies and associated sexual crimes committed by those of low brow intent. My self perhaps from too long past out dated moral reserved people, simply do not understand this type of behavour that should never occur{ed} under proper supervision.


Karl

[pieter]

Jul 2, 2017 15:33:25 GMT -7 Jaga said:

Pieter, it is awful what you wrote and posted about a friend of yours who has to hurt herself.

Dear Jaga,

It is a very tragic family history Jaga. She has a Dutch mother, a quite blunt and simplistic woman, and had a Polish father, he passed away. A tough, abusive and difficult man with a tragic war past. He survived Neuengamme concentrationcamp, murdered his Nazi SS guard with fellow Polish inmates after their liberation by the Americans and moved to the Netherlands where he stayed. We can't judge people like her Jaga. Their self esteem is destroyed by the abuser. But she came over it, and with a lot of self disciplin, a close circle of therapists and friends she manages to survive. She stopped that self mutilation, but will continue to struggle with mental problems for the rest of her life, like other women who were the victim of incest and rape will.

If you are abused as a small child, you will never come over it. I know more incest victims for some reason Jaga. These other women also have mental scars and each of them struggles with different problems and challenges. Each of them told me their story, because they trusted me as a man and a friend. I have the habit of being able to listen, to be quiet, and take time to listen to people. After long listening I try to analyse the story and try to ask relevant questions, but never to much questions. I prefer to hear as much from the person herself and feel and see that it relieves them that they can tell their story and that someone takes time to listen. I somehow felt that it helped them that they could share their story.

In the same time I know that I am not a pscychiatrist and can't help them in a therapeutical, professional academic medical way. I had medication of this friend in my home, and if she needed me or the medication she could call me day and night. For instance if she had a panic attack, or feared that she might have taken an overdose. That's why part of her medication was in my home. The fact that I was there for her was comforting and the fact that she could reach me 24 hours a day.

A lot of these women and girls have lost confidence, trust in fellow human beings completely. They often distrust men. But also distrust women, because they often feel that their mother and sister (in my friends case didn't stop the sexual abuse). The toughness and indifference of other fellow female family members alienated her from them. Women in these cases often feel abandoned by other girls and women and feel alone in the world. Every male can be a predator. I first had to gain her trust before she trusted me. That took time. I hope these girlfriends saw in me that not all men are psychopaths, sicko's, perverts and rapists.

Jaga, I had experience with female victims of rape in Amsterdam and Arnhem for almost three decades now. Unfortunately a lot of women have bad experiences in their lives with boys, young adolescents and adult men. It is good if young girls learn to defend themselves for instance with kick boxing, kung fu, Karate or Krav Maga.

These women in Arnhem do kick boxing as self defense training and sport in Arnhem

The women in the back who is blurred lives in a Women's shelter in Arnhem for women escaping domestic violence and intimate partner violence of all forms. She didn't wanted to be filmed so I blurred her image in the back.

Pieter

[kaima]

Jul 1, 2017 20:32:35 GMT -7 Jaga said:

US mass media completely ignore Kohls' passing, but focus on Trump and his unfortunate twitter remarks

I was living in Germany when Kohl governed and when the Wall came down. As I remember it, Europe rather held its breath and speculated about Germany re-uniting or not, and the effect it would have on Europe, stability and peace. This dragged on for four months with Europe waiting, as usual, for the US to take the lead. George H.W. Bush sat on his hands and did nothing, proposed nothing, for four long months. Finally he started to take the lead and came up with the 2 + 4 Talks that led to unification of Modern Germany.

There is a rather poorly written explanation on 2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/pcw/108224.htm
that contains this paragraph:

"Although the German people pushed for immediate reunification, other governments expressed deep concern about the security implications of a return of a strong, unified German Republic to Europe. The four powers that had engaged in the postwar occupation of Germany expressed varying degrees of apprehension, although the United States was relatively quick to overcome its objections and support the Bonn Government. For Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, however, the wounds inflicted on their countries by the First and Second World Wars were not so easily forgotten, and all three states required reassurances that a reunited and remilitarized Germany would not pose a threat. The collapse of the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe also meant that at the same time that the German question reemerged, the balance of power in Europe underwent a massive change. To address all these concerns, the six countries engaged in a series of negotiations that became known as the "2+4 Talks," involving the two Germanys plus the four occupying powers."

and in another paragraph
"One of the most difficult questions facing the negotiators was the question of the German relationship to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) after reunification. The United States was anxious to ensure German involvement, which would provide an avenue for continued U.S. engagement in Western Europe and ideally keep a united Germany from pursuing expansionist goals. At first, Gorbachev opposed German membership in NATO. However, as German Reunification began to appear inevitable in mid-1990, he eventually agreed to a compromise in which the unified state would become a member of NATO, but would also agree to sharp reductions in the size of its combined military forces and to refrain from engaging in military exercises in eastern Germany. These conclusions, along with a German commitment to refrain from developing weapons of mass destruction and to respect the border with Poland (established after the Second World War and codified in the 1975 Helsinki Final Act), proved sufficient for the Soviet Union and the rest of Europe to accept the reunification of Germany."

there are also comments, missing here, that part of the agreement was that NATO would not expand eastward or encroach toward Russia. That would be an interesting point to research and nail down in the original. If it exists, this would give Russia good reason to be nervous at the Baltic States now being NATO members, directly on Russian borders.

"In the end, the drive behind reunification came from the people of Germany, not from the diplomatic process that surrounded the issue."
... the U.S. decision to support Kohl and commit all the powers to the 2+4 negotiations served to encourage the process of uniting Germany. The United States also played an important role in building a common position on unification by advancing a solution agreeable to both East and West that would keep Germany in NATO."

Adding to the poor writing is a confusion of facts, when the author states "the United States was in a position to support German integration into the European Economic Community and other existing institutions in the region.". Germany was one of the original 6 founding members of the EEC. What the author is trying to express is a bit muddled, and this on an official Department of State webpage!

As I saw it on the ground, Germany, under Kohl, had to take the lead in reunification when the USA defaulted through inaction. Through his strength of leadership, he does seem to have been the Man of the Hour.

Kai

[pieter]

Excellent reply, very good text. I remember that era well Kaima, the process of reunification. The objections and fears of other European states and even Germans.

It was not an easy process due to the fact that more than 40 years of separation and two system had created two kind of Germans, Wessi's and Ossi's.

Treuhandanstalt



The Treuhandanstalt ("Trust agency") was established by the government of the German Democratic Republic to privatize East German enterprises, Volkseigene Betriebe (VEBs), prior to the German reunification. Created by the Volkskammer on June 17, 1990, it oversaw the restructuring and selling of about 8500 state-owned companies with over four million employees. At that time it was the world's largest industrial enterprise, controlling everything from steel works to the Babelsberg Studios.

During the nineties there was a huge unemployment in Germany and a lot of East-Germans had Ostweh, they were home sick for their East-German DDR state, because many of them had lost their jobs. Other East-Germans took opportunities to move to West-Germany and settled there.
Also West-Germans moved East and settled in former DDR territory, working and living there. Cultural and political differences were deep. I wonder how the situation is today. Maybe Karl, could enlighten us.

[pieter]

Dear Kai,

Several times the Americans came to Europe to help us (Western-Europeans, the allied) out of trouble. The First World War, the Second World War, the Cold War (Marshall plan), and after the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall in the new Post-Communist huge continental Europe, which faced new threads like the Yugoslavian crisis (Bosnian, Croatian and Kosovo wars), the international terrorism and organised crime that settled in Europe and new Nationalist and Populist movements that seem to divide Europe. Brexit, and the huge popularity of hard right, Nationalist, Populist movements in Europe. We face migration problems and clashes of cultures the USA doesn't have because Northern-America is more homogenous, politically, culturally and social-economically united. In Europe we have different kind of Europe's, different regions, different countries, different languages, different political cultures and etc.

Karl and Pieters North-West Europe is completely different in political culture, economical sense and linguistically than latin and romanesque Southern-Europe, which has some latin-American elements, and some elements which are closer to states like Israël, Argentina and for instance Texas than with states like Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. Greece is a completely different world than the Netherlands. Poland and Hungary are also completely different societies and cultures than the Netherlands and Germany. Europe is still united, but very pluriform, it has a great variety. The EU receives huge opposition, aversion and Eurosceptiscism in Continental Europe. The Nationalist Populists of the continent are Pro-Brexit and Pro-Trump. And many of them are Pro-Putin too. I mention our Geert Wilders, the French Marine Le Pen and the Austrian Heinz-Christian Strache.

We are in a different era now than in the Post Communist Helmut Kohl years. But the conclusion of your post is right. It was like that, and the Americans again had to act to safeguard the German reunification.

Cheers,
Pieter

[JustJohn or JJ]

Jul 2, 2017 15:34:28 GMT -7 karl said:

Pieter

I do understand your presentations as includant of most armies and associated sexual crimes committed by those of low brow intent. My self perhaps from too long past out dated moral reserved people, simply do not understand this type of behavour that should never occur{ed} under proper supervision.


Karl

Pieter, Karl and Jaga,

   During my time in Vietnam I did not hear of any instances of rape of women. I don't mean that it didn't happen but simply it didn't happen in my unit.

When we turned VC women over to the South Vietnamese forces we didn't follow up on them.

[pieter]

End-of-Season Sale of the GDR - History of the Trust Company

The End-of-Season of the GDR is the first comprehensive documentary about the history of the trust company on TV, an explosive mixture of politics, human fates and economic crime story.

1st part:
July 1990. Wellguarded money transporters bring the hot goods from the last corner of the GDR scarcely still existing in reality. The German mark (DM) comes overnight and with it market economy. The trust company seated in Berlin shall regulate it and control the restructuring from a planned to a market economy. Its task is to privatize 8,000 formerly
nationally-owned enterprises. Modernizing of thousands of enterprises and closing down of thousands of others, from gigantic combines
comprising a staff of umpteen thousands up to small family enterprises. Yet, the state of the enterprises in the east of Germany is dramatic. Irrespective of the fact that the eastern markets disappear the heritage of GDR economy is a heavy load. 500 billions of Eastern marks of national debts, the productivity totals just fifty per cent, as compared with West Germany, the concealed unemployment is about fifteen per cent. So far the balance at the time when the GDR collapsed.And thus news of success from the trust company managers are ever rarer. The "raisins" are quickly sold, already soon it is more talked about scandals and collapses than about flourishing industrial landscapes.
In March 1991 2.7 million people are jobless in the new Federal laender. The trust company becomes the synonym for an economic descent of the east, the scapegoat for raging unemployment, destructors and
gamblers this was the concept of the enemy. The films by Michael Juergs and Axel Grote do not hide that they the destructors and gamblers existed in reality. But the authors draw, at the same time, a
differentiated picture of the work accomplished by the Berlin authority. They furnish proof of which glaring wrong assessments politicians were subjected to and which difficulties the responsible people in the trust company had to fight against. The protagonists of our first part are managers from the west such as Dr. Otto Gellert, member of the
governing board and member of the supervisory board at EKO Stahl and factory committee member Peter Schaaf from the Hartmetallwerk Immelborn in Thuringia. Others are the former prime minister of the GDR Lothar de Maizière and the PDS member of the Bundestag Christa Luft. Both of them were cofounders of the first trust company after the political change. Yet, one person determined, in particular, the course of the first part: the president of the trust company Detlev Rohwedder who had been paying a contribution to the construction of this biggest industrial holding of the world which is historically not to be underestimated. His death was a break in the complicated process of German reunification. The first part of the documentation ends with his murdering on April 1, 1991.

script: Axel Grote, Michael Jürgs
direction: Axel Grote
camera: Niels Bolbrinker, Uli Köhler
sound: Gerd Jäkel
editing: Dominik Busch
production: Ingrid Günther, Peter Felger, Annette Rupp

Produced by Tele Potsdam for ZDF / 3sat
© 1999, License Ventana Film- und Fernsehproduktion mbH



The End-of-Season of the GDR is the first comprehensive documentary about the history of the trust company on TV, an explosive mixture of politics, human fates and economic crime story.

2nd part:
It begins with a funeral service. Detlev Rohwededer was shot by the RAF (the far left terrorist Red Army Fraction), as is assumed. A woman, Birgit Breuel, so far as a member of the board responsible for branches becomes the new president. The woman at the top enters upon a severe inheritance. Ever bigger regions in the former GDR are threatened by deindustrialization. Here, Chancellor Kohl exercises his authority: the chemical triangle will survive even if this will cost further millions. More than 30 billions of marks are pumped to Leuna and Bitterfeld.
International combines such as Elf Aquitane and Dow Chemical commit themselves and where at the time when the GDR existed whole areas were contaminated one of the most uptodate refineries in Europe is
developed. A further example of French investment is the media town Babelsberg. Yet, besides the activities of reconstruction there were innumerable cases of criminality. Solely the examples Halle and WBB meant a loss of more than 240 million of German marks. At the end the protagonists of the film strike the balance: What was the benefit of the trust company?

script: Axel Grote, Michael Jürgs
direction: Axel Grote
camera: Niels Bolbrinker, Uli Köhler
sound: Gerd Jäkel
editing: Dominik Busch
production: Ingrid Günther, Peter Felger, Annette Rupp

Produced by Tele Potsdam for ZDF / 3sat
© 1999, License Ventana Film- und Fernsehproduktion mbH

[pieter]

Good Bye, Lenin!

Good Bye Lenin! is a 2003 German tragicomedy film, directed by Wolfgang Becker. The cast includes Daniel Brühl, Katrin Saß, Chulpan Khamatova, and Maria Simon. Most scenes were shot at the Karl-Marx-Allee in Berlin and around Plattenbauten near Alexanderplatz.

Plot

The film is set in East Berlin, from October 1989 to just after German reunification a year later. Alex lives with his sister, Ariane, his mother, Christiane, and Ariane's infant daughter, Paula. It appears that his father abandoned the family and fled to the West in 1978. In his absence, Christiane has become an ardent supporter of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (the Party) (SED). On the other hand, Alex takes part in an anti-government demonstration. There he meets a girl, but they are separated by the Volkspolizei. When Christiane sees Alex being arrested, she suffers a near-fatal heart attack and falls into a coma. While visiting his mother in the hospital, Alex encounters Lara, a nurse from the Soviet Union who is now caring for his mother. Alex and Lara soon begin dating and develop a close bond.
Shortly afterward, the Berlin Wall falls, Erich Honecker resigns from office, and capitalism comes to East Berlin. Alex loses his job as a TV repairman, but is hired by a West German cable company. Alex is paired with Denis Domaschke, an aspiring filmmaker with whom Alex quickly becomes good friends. Ariane leaves university to work at a Burger King drive-through. After eight months, Christiane awakens from her coma, but she is severely weakened and her doctor warns that any shock might cause another, possibly fatal, heart attack. Alex realises that the discovery of recent events would be too much for her to bear, and decides to maintain the illusion that things are as before in the German Democratic Republic. In order to do so, Alex, Ariane and Lara revert their West decor to the decor they previously had in the bedroom of their now bed-ridden mother in the family apartment, dress in their old clothes, and repackage new Western products in old East German jars. Their deception is successful, though increasingly complicated as Christiane occasionally witnesses strange occurrences, such as a gigantic Coca-Cola advertisement banner. With Denis's help, Alex edits old tapes of East German news broadcasts and creates fake reports to explain these odd events.
Christiane eventually gains strength and wanders outside one day while Alex is asleep. She sees all her neighbours' old furniture piled up in the street, advertisements for Western corporations, and a statue of Lenin being flown away by a helicopter. However, Alex and Ariane quickly take her home and show her a fake report that East Germany is now accepting refugees from the West following a severe economic crisis there. Soon after, the family decides to go and inspect their dacha in the countryside at Christiane's suggestion. While they are there along with Lara and Ariane's new Western boyfriend, Rainer, Christiane reveals her own secret; her husband had fled because the Party had been increasingly oppressing him, and the plan had been for the rest of the family to join him. However, Christiane, fearing the government would take Alex and Ariane away from her if things went wrong, chose to stay. As she regrets the decision, Christiane relapses and is taken back to the hospital.
Alex meets his father, Robert, and convinces him to see Christiane one last time, stating he should say he was moved to return East to see his dying wife. Under pressure to reveal the truth about the fall of the East, Alex creates a final fake news segment, convincing a taxi driver to act in the false news report as the new leader of East Germany and to give a speech about opening the borders to the West. However, it is suggested that Christiane already knows the truth (Lara tried to convince her about the real political developments earlier the same day). Nevertheless, she reacts fondly to her son's effort, without mentioning anything. Christiane dies two days later: she outlives the GDR, passing away three days after full official German reunification. Alex, Ariane, Lara, Denis, and Robert scatter her ashes in the wind using an old toy rocket Alex made with his father during his childhood.

This both comical and dramatic movie shows very much the confusion of the German reunification and is a metaphor for how Ossi's cooped with their transformation of the Marxist-Leninist, Prussian communist plan economy into a West-German free market economy and democracy.

[pieter]