|
Post by karl on Jun 18, 2024 15:53:53 GMT -7
Pieter
Once again I must commend for your professionalism and approach in this you have authored. My self was a bit surprised with that bit of sickness the Ossie seem have with," Ostagie or Nostalgie", these folks must by reality stick with the present and live with it, that is just the way it is in life.
Oh yes, the Trabie {Trabant} that thing was simply junk, but it served a designed purpose for the time and place, and very well. How so true the following that is still valid at present.
{Much of Germany’s post-World War II success has been the result of the renowned industriousness and self-sacrifice of its people, about which novelist Günter Grass, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, remarked, “To be a German is to make the impossible possible.” He added, more critically,
"For in our country everything is geared to growth. We’re never satisfied. For us enough is never enough. We always want more. If it’s on paper, we convert it into reality. Even in our dreams we’re productive."}
Karl
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Jun 19, 2024 8:28:00 GMT -7
Folks,
Some aspects of Germany and the German past I didn't mention here and I will show it you now!
Pieter
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Jun 19, 2024 8:32:29 GMT -7
Folks,
Both Germanies had the heritage of das Heiliges Römisches Reich (lateinisch Sacrum Imperium Romanum oder Sacrum Romanum Imperium; 800/962–1806), das Deutsches Reich (1871-1945), the horrors of the First World War (1914-1918), the instability, unrest, hungar, unemployment and Extreme left and Extreme Right bloody rebellions and street terror of the Frei Corps Units, Revolutionary Spartakists and, SA and Roter Frontkämpferbund, and the strong suppression of the SA and Roter Frontkämpferbund by the Prussian and Bavarian authorities and police forces. The division between Far right (NSDAP, DNVP, Stahlhelm [1918-1935]) on one side and the extreme left(KPD/Roter Frontkämpferbund) on the other side, and the division between the SPD (Social Democrats) on one side and the KPD (Communists) on the other side. Of course the SPD and Zentrum and German Liberals weren't Nazi's nor communists either.
In the DDR you saw elements of the Spartakusbund) (a Marxist revolutionary movement organized in Germany during World War I), the Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (USPD), ommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), tAntifaschistische Aktion (a militant anti-fascist organisation in the Weimar Republic started by members of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) that existed from 1932 to 1933.he ommunistische Partei Deutschlands), the Rote Kapelle (After June 1941, all German Communists were expected to throw themselves into resistance work, including sabotage and espionage where this was possible, regardless of risk. A handful of Soviet agents, mostly exiled German Communists, were able to enter Germany to help the scattered underground KPD cells organise and take action. This led to the formation in 1942 of two separate communist groups, usually erroneously lumped together under the name Rote Kapelle ("Red Orchestra"), a codename given to these groups by the Gestapo).
Under the password or search name Rote Kapelle, the Gestapo investigated groups that resisted National Socialism in the Second World War. “Red” stood for communist, “chapel” for radio operator. These included German circles of friends around Harro Schulze-Boysen, Arvid Harnack, Ilse Stöbe and others in Berlin/Brandenburg, as well as, independently of these, intelligence resistance groups in Paris and Brussels, which Leopold staircase had set up on behalf of the Soviet military intelligence service (GRU). Contrary to the legend invented by the Gestapo, the “Red Orchestra” was neither communist-controlled nor under uniform leadership, but rather a network of individual groups and people from different regions. Around 400 people from the “Red Band” are known by name to this day. They printed illegal leaflets, helped Jews and members of the opposition, and documented the crimes of the Nazi regime.
In West Germany from the allied Entnazificierungs policy, from non-Nazi circles new political organs, media and political parties were established in the American and British occupation Zones. The pre war SPD was lead by the fierce anti-Nazi and anti-communist Kurt Schumacher (13 October 1895 – 20 August 1952), the CDU came to existence and was lead by the other non-Nazi Konrad Adenauer (5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967), Franz Blücher (* 24. März 1896 in Essen; † 26. März 1959 in Bad Godesberg) one of the founders of the FDP was also not a Nazi (he kept himself far away from the NSDAP and Nazism during the Third Reich). Other founders of the FDP were Hans-Wilhelm Beutler (* 5. September 1897 in Düsseldorf; † 11. September 1966 in Baden-Baden) and the deutscher Politiker (FDP) und Unternehmer deutscher Politiker (FDP) und Unternehmer. The curious and strange thing is that in the CDU and CSU former German resistance members and old-Nazi's cooperated. The same to a lesser extend in the FDP. Of course as you and I know that there were old Abwehr, Gestapo and SD leute in the Gehlen organisation and thus the BND. Also many police officers, doctors, entrepreneurs, army officers and scientists of course were old NSDAP members, Old Hitler Jugend and Bund Deutscher Mädel members, old SA and SS men, old Wehrmacht soldiers and officers, old Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine men, Nationalsozialistisches Kraftfahrkorps (NSKK) leute, members of the old Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF), the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Ärztebund (NSDÄB or NSD-Ärztebund), the Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund (NSLB), the Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD), the Reichskolonialbund (RKB), Technische Nothilfe (abbreviated as TN), the Reichsbund der Kinderreichen (RDK or RdK), the Reichsluftschutzbund (RLB), the Bund Deutscher Osten (BDO; an anti-Polish German Nazi organisation. The BDO promulgated the idea of the "German East", an irredentist concept that attempted to deny the very existence of Poland and the Polish people's right to live there) and many other Nazi organisations.
So in my opinion West-Germany in advance was stimulated and helped by the American and British occupation forces with the Marshall help plan, and then West Germany was build by former anti-Nazi's I mentioned above here with the help of former old Nazi's, because you could not build West-Germany without the support of millions of old Nazi's. In my opinion these old Nazi's being clever or opportunistic gave up their old Nazi ideas and pasts, and kept silent about it like the rest of Germany in the early decades after the War. And from old oponents of the Nazi's and Old Nazi's became the New West-German people whom enjoyed their new life and accepted West Germany and their wealth, new houses, luxery, Volkswagens, Mercedez Benzes, BMW's, Opels, Porches, Audi's and for the Germans with a foreign taste their Citroën, Renault, Peugeot, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Seat, Jaguar or Mini Morris cars.
From parias and hostilities in neighboring countries and stereotypes of German Nazi Barbarians, Huns, savages and murderers in decades the image of the West-Germans and Germans in general started to change due to West-Germany and East-Germany and because West-Europeans and East-Europeans alike (anti-communist populations and dissidents in Communist states) started to see that West-Germany was a good country and that there were good, hard working and Freedom loving Germans were living there. Today many Germans are supporters of Democracy and do not want to give up their Democracy, Rechtsstaat, Verfassung, Freedom and wealth for despotism, authoritarianism or totalitarianism. But there are forces that threaten that Freedom and Democracy in Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Belgium and other European countries. During election day (6 June 2024) in the Netherlands a large Russian cyber attack attacked the websites of Democratic Durtch political parties.
Pieter
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Jun 19, 2024 8:37:37 GMT -7
Folks,
This all said, the silence of the old generation after the war had good sides and shadow sides. The good side is that the West-Germans which were grandsons and granddaughters of 'Nazi' parents, and next to that grandparents, older brothers, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces, cousins, acquaintances of their parents, Nazi neighbours, Nazi teachers on German (and Austrian-) primary schools and highschools, Nazi professors on University Colleges, older family friends were not infected by 'Nazi indoctrination', 'simplistic Nazi thinking with a distorted worldview based on pseudo science and a mixed ideology (of Ultra-nationalism, a vicious murderous antisemitism, German socialism -The Socialist part of National Socialism, Nazism-, and a blunt Totalitarian, Authoritarian and Dictatorial collectivism)', nor were they hindered by the suffering of the war generation, the death, losses and and heavily wounded and cripled of the Western and Eastern fronts and the mass bombardments on German cities and towns during the Second World War. Many Germans (like our Karl) lost family members due to the War (fallen Wehrmacht soldiers) and the mass bombardment and the rape of German women by Russians, but also French, American, British and other soldiers. Ofcourse in the latter case there were less rapes by the Werstern allied forces, but there were. The Soviet Russians, Ukrainians, Belarussians, Tartars, Azebajiani, Kazakh, Uzbek, Georgian, Tadzjik, Turkmen, Siberian soldiers and officers were savages and the German female childs, little girls, young girls, teenage girls and women had no protection against this horde of savages, thugs and wild animals. These so called liberators? The Soviet Bolshevic, Hard Core Marxist-Leninist, Stalinist, Homo Sovieticus was a brutal human being, not only shaped by Lenin, Trosky's Red Guards, Felix Dzerzhinsky's Cheka-OGPU (predecessors of the NKVD and KGB) (Dzerzhinsky lived from 30 August] 1877 until 20 July 1926)), his successors Vyacheslav Menzhinsky (19 August] 1874 – 10 May 1934; Menzhinsky worked to crush resistance in the countryside during Joseph Stalin's forced agricultural collectivization), Genrikh Yagoda (7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938; Yagoda supervised arrests, show trials, and executions of the Old Bolsheviks Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, climactic events of the Great Purge); Yagoda, Menzhinsky, Dzerzhinsky, 1920, SovjetUnion Yagoda on police information card from 1912 in Czarist Russia Yagoda and his wife Ida Averbakh, deputy prosecutor of Moscow, 30 September 1922, in happier times. He was executed on orders of his successor Nikolai Yezhov in 1938The purges were largely conducted by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs), which functioned as the interior ministry and secret police of the USSR. Starting in 1936, the NKVD under chief Genrikh Yagoda began the removal of the central party leadership, Old Bolsheviks, government officials, and regional party bosses. Soviet politicians who opposed or criticized Stalin were removed from office and imprisoned or executed by the NKVD. Eventually, the purges were expanded to the Red Army and military high command, which had a disastrous effect on the military. Later the German and Austrian Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS would benefit from that during their invasian of the SovietUnion, during Operation Barbarossa (German: Unternehmen Barbarossa (22 June 1941 – 5 December 1941 (5 months, 1 week and 6 days), the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies (Romania, Finland, Italy, Hungary and Slovakia).
The campaigns also affected many other categories of the society: intelligentsia, peasants—especially those lending out money or wealth (kulaks)—and professionals.[19] As the scope of the purge widened, the omnipresent suspicion of saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries began impacting civilian life. Yagoda at his desk in 1930 at the Joint State Political Directorate OGPU (Russian: ОГПУ), in the OGPU headquarters in Moscow in the Lubyanka building, a large Neo-Baroque building on the Lubyanskaya Square along the Ulitsa Bolshaya Lubyanka (street) in Moscow. Later he became a victim of the 'Great Purges' he instigated himself when he was executed in 1938.Arrest, trial and executionIn March 1937, Yagoda was arrested on Stalin's orders. Yezhov announced Yagoda's arrest for diamond smuggling, corruption and working as a German agent since joining the party in 1917. Yezhov even blamed Yagoda for an attempt to assassinate him by sprinkling mercury around his office. He was accused of poisoning Maxim Gorky and his son. It was discovered that Yagoda's two Moscow apartments and his dacha contained, besides a large collection of female clothing and apparel, 3,904 pornographic photos, 11 pornographic films, 165 pornographically carved pipes and cigarette holders, one rubber dildo, the two bullets that killed Zinoviev and Kamenev and 549 books—some of which were trotskyist works. Yezhov took over the apartments. He had spent four million rubles decorating his three homes, boasting that his garden had "2,000 orchids and roses".
Yagoda was found guilty of treason and conspiracy against the Soviet government at the Trial of the Twenty-One in March 1938. He denied he was a spy, but admitted most other charges. Solzhenitsyn describes Yagoda as expecting clemency from Stalin after the show trial: "Just as though Stalin had been sitting right there in the hall, Yagoda confidently and insistently begged him directly for mercy: 'I appeal to you! For you I built two great canals!' And a witness reports that at just that moment a match flared in the shadows behind a window on the second floor of the hall, apparently behind a muslin curtain, and, while it lasted, the outline of a pipe could be seen."
Yagoda was summarily shot after the trial. During the execution, Yagoda and Bukharin were seated on chairs and forced to watch the execution of others sentenced to death; they were last to be shot. Before the execution Yagoda was also beaten by Izrail Dagin by the order of Yezhov. In 1988, on the 50th anniversary of the trial, the Soviet authorities belatedly cleared all of the other 20 defendants of any criminal offence, admitting that the entire trial was built on false confessions. Yagoda was the only defendant not to be posthumously rehabilitated. The Gulag newspaper, Perekovka ("Reforging"), front page announcing the replacement of Genrikh Yagoda by Nikolai Yezhov in 1936 Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (Russian: Николай Иванович Ежов, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈɫaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪt͡ɕ (j)ɪˈʐof]; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940) was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the height of the Great Purge. Yezhov organized mass arrests, torture and executions during the Great Purge, but he fell from Stalin's favour and was arrested, subsequently admitting in a confession to a range of anti-Soviet activity including "unfounded arrests" during the Purge. He was executed in 1940 along with others who were blamed for the Purge. Ofcourse Yezhov was replaced by Stalin, by a fellow Georgian, like Stalin the brutal NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria was responsible for for millions of deaths.
![https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Lavrentiy_Beria_portrait.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/Lavrentiy_Beria_portrait.jpg) Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (/ˈbɛriə/ BERR-ee-ə; Russian: Лаврентий Павлович Берия, IPA: [lɐˈvrʲenʲtʲɪj ˈpavləvʲɪdʑ ˈbʲerʲɪjə]; Georgian: ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია, romanized: Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria; 29 March [O.S. 17 March] 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph Stalin's secret police chiefs, serving as head of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) from 1938 to 1946, during the country's involvement in the Second World War (1939-1945). Over the course of his political career Beria was responsible for millions of deaths, and was a prolific sexual predator who serially raped scores of girls and young women; there is evidence he murdered some of his victims.
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (/ˈbɛriə/ BERR-ee-ə; Russian: Лаврентий Павлович Берия, IPA: [lɐˈvrʲenʲtʲɪj ˈpavləvʲɪdʑ ˈbʲerʲɪjə]; Georgian: ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია, romanized: Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria; 29 March [O.S. 17 March] 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph Stalin's secret police chiefs, serving as head of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) from 1938 to 1946, during the country's involvement in the Second World War. Over the course of his political career Beria was responsible for millions of deaths, and was a prolific sexual predator who serially raped scores of girls and young women; there is evidence he murdered some of his victims.
An ethnic Georgian, Beria enlisted in the Cheka in 1920, and quickly rose through its ranks. He transferred to Communist Party work in the Caucasus in the 1930s, and in 1938 was appointed head of the NKVD by Stalin. His ascent marked the end of the Stalinist Great Purge carried out by previous chief Nikolai Yezhov, whom Beria purged. After the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, Beria organized the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia, and after the occupation of the Baltic states and parts of Romania in 1940, he oversaw the deportations of hundreds of thousands of Poles, Balts, and Romanians to remote areas or Gulag camps. In 1941, Beria began a new purge of the Red Army. After Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union later that year, he was appointed to the State Defense Committee, overseeing security. Beria expanded the system of forced labour, mobilizing millions of Gulag prisoners into wartime production, and acted as the de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of NKVD units responsible for barrier and partisan intelligence and sabotage operations on the Eastern Front. In 1943–1944, Beria oversaw the mass deportations of millions of ethnic minorities from the Caucasus, actions which have been described by many scholars as ethnic cleansing or genocide. Beria was also responsible for supervising secret Gulag detention facilities for scientists and engineers, known as sharashkas. From 1945, he personally oversaw the Soviet atomic bomb project, which Stalin gave absolute priority to; the project was completed in 1949.[1] After the war, Beria was made a Marshal in 1945, and promoted to a full member of the Politburo in 1946.
After Stalin's death in March 1953, Beria became head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers. In this dual capacity, he formed a troika with Georgy Malenkov and Vyacheslav Molotov that briefly led the country in Stalin's place. The Gulag system was transferred to the Ministry of Justice, and a mass release of over a million prisoners was undertaken. In June 1953, a coup d'état by Nikita Khrushchev, with the support of Marshal Georgy Zhukov, removed Beria from power. He was arrested, tried for treason and other offences, and executed in December. The emblem of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, the Soviet NKVD. The NKVD, was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. It was established in July 1934 to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) secret police agency, and thus had a monopoly on intelligence and state security. The NKVD is known for political repression and for carrying out the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin, as well organizing counterintelligence, barrier, and sabotage operations during World War II. The head of the NKVD was Genrikh Yagoda from 1934 to 1936, Nikolai Yezhov from 1936 to 1938, Lavrentiy Beria from 1938 to 1946, and Sergei Kruglov in 1946.Folks,
You understand that forces of such a crual regime, system, state, ideology and military might had little empathy with Germans and Austrians. There is only one element of the Nazi propaganda of Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) which I agree with and which was true. The Nazi News real showed the brutality of the advancing Soviet Red Army forces and NKVD troops of Lavrentiy Beria. For maybe the First time next to some real Eastern Front and Western Front combat images, the German Nazi cinema showed the 'Real Brutality' of mudered, mutilated and raped German citizens, women and girls. That was not a lie like many Goebbels Propaganda Ministry Fake News about the Eastern Front.
Unfortunately it was real. And while I greatly detest the German, Austrian, Dutch, Croatian, Serbian, Hungarian, Romanian, Italian, Ukrainian, Russian, Baltic, Slovak Nazi, Fascist and Collaborationalist attroctities, the Holocaust (Shoah), ethnic cleansing and suffering brought upon Europe, I can not forget nor ignore the suffering the Soviet Stalinist thugs brought over millions of Soviet citizens, Poles, Tartars, Chechens, Volksdeutsche and others, and the fact that Stalinist antisemitism also killed many jews and tortured many jews as well. Especially since Polish family members of mine suffered under the Stalinist Soviet terror in Eastern Poland from 1939 until 1945, before the other terror of the German and Austrian Nazi forces arrived when the Nazi's attacked the SovietUnion in 1941..Gestapo–NKVD conferences Location of the 3rd Gestapo–NKVD conference inside the German torture house in the Polish mountains, the 'Palace' villa in Zakopane todayThe Gestapo–NKVD conferences were a series of security police meetings organised in late 1939 and early 1940 by Germany and the Soviet Union, following the invasion of Poland in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The meetings enabled both parties to pursue specific goals and aims as outlined independently by Hitler and Stalin, with regard to the acquired, formerly Polish territories. The conferences were held by the Gestapo and the NKVD officials in several Polish cities. In spite of their differences on other issues, both Heinrich Himmler and Lavrentiy Beria had similar objectives as far as the fate of pre-war Poland was concerned. The objectives were agreed upon during signing of the German–Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty on 28 September 1939.
The attack on Poland ended with the Nazi–Soviet parade in Brześć, which was held on 22 September 1939. Brześć was the location of the first Nazi-Soviet meeting organised on 27 September 1939, in which the prisoner exchange was decided prior to the signing of mutual agreements in Moscow a day later. In the following month, the Gestapo and the NKVD met in Lwów to discuss the fate of civilian populations during the radical reorganisation of the annexed territories. They met again in occupied Przemyśl at the end of November, because Przemyśl was a border crossing between the two invaders. The next series of meetings began in December 1939, a month after the first transfer of Polish prisoners of war. The conferences were held in occupied Kraków in the General Government (Nazi territory) on 6–7 December 1939; and continued for the next two days in the resort town of Zakopane in the Tatra Mountains of southern Poland (100 km from Kraków) on 8–9 December 1939. The Zakopane Conference is the most remembered. From the Soviet side, several higher officers of the NKVD secret police participated in the meetings, while the German hosts provided a group of experts from the Gestapo. German troops passing the platform with the officers on September 22, 1939 German officers Generalleutnant Mauritz von Wiktorin (left), General der Panzertruppe Heinz Guderian (centre) and Soviet Kombrig (Commanding officer of the brigade) Semyon Krivoshein (right) standing on the platform![https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-121-0012-30%2C_Polen%2C_deutsch-sowjetische_Siegesparade%2C_Panzer.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-121-0012-30%2C_Polen%2C_deutsch-sowjetische_Siegesparade%2C_Panzer.jpg) Kraków–ZakopaneThe best known conference took place in Zakopane, in the villa "Pan Tadeusz", located at the Droga do Białego street close to the Dolina Białego valley. The German side was represented by Adolf Eichmann.[better source needed] The Soviet delegation was headed by Grigoriy Litvinov.
According to several sources, one of the results of this conference was the German Ausserordentliche Befriedungsaktion (see: German AB Action operation in Poland), elimination of Kraków intelligentsia Sonderaktion Krakau and the Soviet Katyn massacre In his 1991 book Stalin: Breaker of Nations, British historian Robert Conquest stated: "Terminal horror suffered by so many millions of innocent Jewish, Slavic, and other European peoples as a result of this meeting of evil minds is an indelible stain on the history and integrity of Western civilization, with all of its humanitarian pretensions". Also, Professor George Watson of Cambridge University concluded in his "Rehearsal for the Holocaust?" commentary (June 1981) that the fate of the interned Polish officers may have been decided at this conference. This is however disputed by other historians, who point out that there is no documentary evidence confirming any cooperation on that issue, that the existing Soviet documentation actually makes such cooperation improbable and that it is reasonable to say that Germany did not know about the Katyn massacre until the mass graves were analysed by the Katyn Commission.
![https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Die_%27gro%C3%9Fz%C3%BCgigste_Umsiedlungsaktion%27_with_Poland_superimposed%2C_1939.jpg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Die_%27gro%C3%9Fz%C3%BCgigste_Umsiedlungsaktion%27_with_Poland_superimposed%2C_1939.jpg) Dark gray: the Third Reich in 1939 after the conquest of Poland, with the German-Soviet demarcation line (centre), and locations of ethnic Germans brought Heim ins Reich from the Soviet "sphere of influence" to the annexed territories of Poland. Nazi propaganda poster, superimposed with red outline of Poland omitted in the original.
The fourth and last meeting took place in March 1940 in Kraków. According to some historians, it was part of the Zakopane Conference. This event was described by General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, commander of Armia Krajowa in his book Armia Podziemna (The Secret Army). In it, he describes how a special delegation of NKVD came to Kraków, which was going to discuss with Gestapo how to act against the Polish resistance. The talks lasted for several weeks.
Russian historian Alexandr Nekrich describes formal military cooperation agreement signed on 20 September 1939 where both sides committed to "cleansing of hostile population" and "liquidation" of Polish resistance.
Historian Wojciech Materski points out that there is evidence of clandestine murder operations conducted by both Soviet and German forces in 1939–1940 across occupied Poland, however, there is no evidence of direct connection between the NKVD prisoner massacres and the German AB-Aktion in Poland leading to the massacre of several thousand prominent Poles in the same time-frame. OTD in 1940, the third methodical conference NKVD-Gestapo began in Zakopane. The secret protocol of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty declared German-Soviet cooperation in combating Polish independence organizations.
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Jun 19, 2024 9:45:31 GMT -7
The Communist opression and totalitarian oppression and dictatorship in the Prussian state socialist Marxist Leninist East-German DDR was based on that Stalinist tradition of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Felix Dzerzhinskyk, Lavrentiy Beria, Ernst Thälmann, and a far-left paramilitary organization Roter Frontkämpferbund ("Alliance of Red Front-Fighters" or "Red Front Fighters' League") affiliated with the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Over the years the RFB engaged more and more in violent street fights with the police, the SA, and other political rivals. After World War II, former RFB members such as the Rast-German communist leaders Erich Honecker and Erich Mielke were actively involved in the creation of the first police and military units of the German Democratic Republic (GDR; Communist Pro-Soviet East Germany). The Arbeiterkampfgruppen (English: Combat Groups of the Working Class) and the Nationale Volksarmee (English: National People's Army) claimed to carry on the traditions of the RFB, while the Federal Republic of Germany in West Germany enforced the ban of 1929 and prosecuted former Red Front fighters who admitted to their RFB activities.
Auferstanden Aus Ruinen - DDR Anthem English Translation - East-German anthem
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Jun 19, 2024 9:53:00 GMT -7
The film is set in East Berlin, in the period from October 1989 to a few days after German reunification in October 1990.
Alex Kerner lives with his mother Christiane, his sister Ariane, and Ariane’s infant daughter Paula. Alex's father purportedly abandoned the family for a mistress in the West in 1978. His mother joined the Socialist Unity Party and devotes her time to advocating for citizens. Alex is disgusted with the celebration of East Germany's 40th anniversary and participates in an anti-government demonstration. There he meets a girl, but they are separated by the Volkspolizei before they can introduce themselves.
Christiane, seeing Alex being arrested and beaten, suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma because nobody initially comes to her aid. Visiting his mother in hospital, Alex finds that her nurse, Lara, is the girl from the demonstration. She (an exchange student from the Soviet Union) and Alex begin dating shortly afterwards.
Erich Honecker resigns, Egon Krenz takes over, the borders are opened, the Berlin Wall falls, East Germany holds free elections, and capitalism comes to East Berlin. Alex begins working for a West German firm selling and installing satellite dishes. He befriends a Western colleague, aspiring filmmaker Denis Domaschke. Ariane's university closes and instead of studying economic theory, she now works at Burger King, and is dating its manager (Rainer, who moves into their apartment).
After eight months, Christiane awakens from her coma. Her doctor warns her family that she is still weak and any shock might cause another, possibly fatal, heart attack. Alex resolves to conceal the profound societal changes from her and maintain the illusion that the German Democratic Republic is just as it was before her coma. He, Ariane, and Lara retrieve their old East German furniture from storage, dress in their old clothes, and repackage new Western food in old East German jars. The deception is increasingly complicated as Christiane witnesses strange occurrences, such as a gigantic Coca-Cola banner on an adjacent building. Denis and Alex create fake news broadcasts from old East German news tapes to explain these odd events. Alex and Ariane fail to find where Christiane keeps her life savings (in East German marks) in time to exchange them for West German marks before the deadline.
Christiane gets stronger and one day wanders outside while Alex is asleep. She sees her neighbours' old East German furniture stacked in the street, new West German cars for sale, advertisements for Western corporations, and a statue of Lenin being flown away by helicopter. Alex and Ariane take her back home and show her a fake newscast explaining East Germany is now accepting refugees from the West following an economic crisis there.
At the family dacha Christiane reveals her own secret: her husband had fled not for a mistress but because of the difficulties he faced for refusing to join the ruling party. The plan had been for the rest of the family to join him. Christiane, fearing the government would take her children if things went wrong, decided to stay. Contrary to what she had told her children, their father wrote many letters that she hid. As she declares her wish to see her husband one last time to make amends, she relapses and is taken back to hospital.
Alex meets his father, Robert, who has remarried, has two children, and lives in West Berlin. He convinces him to see Christiane one last time. Under pressure to reveal the truth about the fall of the East, Alex creates a final fake news segment, persuading a taxi driver (who ambiguously either is or strongly resembles cosmonaut Sigmund Jähn, the first German in space and Alex's childhood hero) 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, unbeknownst to Alex, Lara had already recounted the true political developments to Christiane earlier that day.
Christiane dies two days later, outliving the German Democratic Republic by three days after German reunification. The family and friends scatter her ashes in the wind using a toy rocket Alex made with his father during childhood.This movie shows a typical German sense of humor. Who said that Germans do not have a sense of humor. ![;)](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/wink.png)
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Jun 19, 2024 10:03:09 GMT -7
East German police state Stasi techniques to control critical minds
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Jun 19, 2024 10:11:51 GMT -7
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Jun 19, 2024 10:12:28 GMT -7
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Jun 19, 2024 10:13:05 GMT -7
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Jun 19, 2024 10:14:10 GMT -7
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Jun 19, 2024 10:15:01 GMT -7
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Jun 19, 2024 10:16:51 GMT -7
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Jun 19, 2024 10:22:45 GMT -7
The West-Germany and Germany that I like in cultural sense
Kristallnaach
"Kristallnaach" (Colognian for Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass) is a political song by Colognian rock group BAP. It was released on their 1982 album Vun drinne noh drusse [de] (From the Inside to the Outside). The track was the album's only single and reached number 25 on the German charts. The song was meant to raise awareness of the resurgence of right-wing populism in Europe and critique Germany's Vergangenheitsbewältigung of the Nazi era. "Kristallnaach" regularly features in the band's live sets and is its second most frequently played live song.
Development and background
In the summer of 1979, during a trip through Greece, only a few years after the country had rid itself of its military dictatorship, BAP's lead singer Wolfgang Niedecken worked on a set of lyrics about neo-fascism, choosing the November Pogrom as its theme. In their early years, BAP drew heavily on the culture of political folk songs in the tradition of Bob Dylan. The motivation for the track was to raise awareness of the resurgence of right-wing populism in Europe and critique (West-) Germany's insufficient Vergangenheitsbewältigung of the Nazi period.
Lyrics
Niedecken's lyrics are as political as they are poetic, with references to Bruegel, Hieronymus Bosch and Franz Kafka. This is also evident in the booklet accompanying the album, with the painting Christ Carrying the Cross, formerly attributed to Bosch, used as background for the song's lyrics. The lyrics feature emotional imagery and are accompanied by somber music. The main theme deals with Germany's Vergangenheitsbewältigung at a time when right-wing conservative tendencies were resurging throughout Europe. Unusual for a single release, the song does not feature a catchy chorus; only the word "Kristallnaach" is repeated in each of the six verses.
Niedecken did not situate his lyrics in the Pogrom Night of 1938, but in the present, in order to raise awareness of the looming threat of crimes being committed against marginalized communities like gay people or immigrants, originating from the same social conditions and psychological processes that led to the November Pogrom.
But those who feel disturbed by anything that's "different"
Swimming with the tide, the way they're supposed to
Those to whom gays are criminals
To whom foreigners are scum
They need someone to seduce them
When that happens, no cavalry's there to save the day, no Zorro will manage
He merely pisses his Z in the snow
And falls over, babbling with laxity "So what?"
In the 1990s, Niedecken drew on the themes of the third verse once again—incendiary slogans, the public's feigned ignorance of assaults and the propagation of racist and sexist prejudices—when he contributed the eponymous song to the Arsch huh, Zäng ussenander! (Ass up, teeth apart!) initiative, encouraging people to not look away but to stand up, speak out and take action against racism and injustice.
In retrospect, Niedecken voiced concern over coupling the lyrics of "Kristallnaach" with catchy music. "Everybody sings along and nobody reflects on what the song is actually about. But I can't begrudge anyone for doing so, because people come to see a concert, not to think about the pogroms with me." In his book Catastrophic State Germany: National Socialism in Popular Songs of the Bundesrepublik, German cultural historian Ole Löding points out that the song's lyrics, aside from highlighting political activities in the right-wing spectrum, include a strong critique of the capitalist system, particularly in the two final verses, which suggest that the danger of the society's renewed fascistization arises from a submissive-aggressive personality structure of the German people. According to Löding, the song equates the November Pogroms of 1938 with burned syngagogues, snashed shops and abused German Jews all over Nazi Germany and Austria with a number of contemporary social issues, thus turning the November Pogroms into a metaphor of all kinds of inhuman behavior. In doing so, Löding argues, the song contributes to a historicization of national socialism and fails to fully reflect the root causes of the pogroms. Stil I Pieter finds it an excellent, important and warning song from West-Germany and one of the best pop and rock songs of West-Germany and United Germany. It made a great impression on me during the eighties as a teenager and stayed with me all these years. These kind of songs matter and are important.
|
|
|
Post by pieter on Jun 19, 2024 10:37:23 GMT -7
Pieter
Once again I must commend for your professionalism and approach in this you have authored. My self was a bit surprised with that bit of sickness the Ossie seem have with," Ostagie or Nostalgie", these folks must by reality stick with the present and live with it, that is just the way it is in life.
Oh yes, the Trabie {Trabant} that thing was simply junk, but it served a designed purpose for the time and place, and very well. How so true the following that is still valid at present.
{Much of Germany’s post-World War II success has been the result of the renowned industriousness and self-sacrifice of its people, about which novelist Günter Grass, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, remarked, “To be a German is to make the impossible possible.” He added, more critically,
"For in our country everything is geared to growth. We’re never satisfied. For us enough is never enough. We always want more. If it’s on paper, we convert it into reality. Even in our dreams we’re productive."}
Karl
|
|