Posted on 06/21/2023 6:27:19 AM PDT by CheshireTheCat
The novel East German polity was coming in the late 1950s to a crossroads that saw security paranoia ratchet up dramatically.
Emigration to West Germany accelerated considerably as the 1960s began, eventually giving rise to the infamous Berlin Wall.
In the countryside, forced collectivization implemented in 1960 produced resistance all its own. Agricultural output plummeted (the knock-on effects of a 1959 drought helped too); according to Patrick Major’s Behind the Berlin Wall: East Germany and the Frontiers of Power, groceries and everyday household items became markedly more difficult to procure in the early 1960s, sapping productivity throughout the economy as city workers queued for hours and black-market exchanges proliferated.
Following the Soviet Union’s great tradition of attributing economic trouble to running-dog wreckers, East Germany introduced the death penalty for politically motivated economic sabotage* — for example, the 206 cases of arson it attributed among 862 rural fires in 1960. (Figures as per Major.)
Our figure today, Gottfried Strympe, fell foul of these laws. In reality, he was no cackling secret agent but a disturbed loner....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
Bautzen has been again in the news, as the "immigrants" issue boils over. The media is playing the AfD as the new Stasi-esque bad guys, while the dreaded "far-right" in Reuters parlance wants to paint a dreadful picture, which likely should be inverted. The state was the Stasi, and now the state still seems to demand Bautzen "knuckle under."
Now one reads:
--- Some AfD initiatives have won backing from mainstream voters on the more local level. In December, members of the CDU in the small town of Bautzen in Saxony voted in favour of an AfD proposal to cut some benefits, such as language courses for migrants whose asylum applications had been rejected.
--- "This dogmatic way in Berlin of excluding the AfD, saying they are all Nazis, is wrong," said Matthias Grahl, head of the CDU in the Bautzen district council.
--- Others say the AfD is riding a wave of discontent because of a confluence of crises that will not last. Inflation has already dipped from its peak and sky-high energy prices over the winter, fuelled by the Ukraine war, have eased."
Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germanys-far-right-rides-high-anti-immigration-anti-green-agenda-2023-06-07/
The economic and political mess in Bautzen, once upon a time, and the same sort of mess today is government-made. So naturally "Nazi" and the like accusations are "in the news."
A very good film about the rampant Stasi surveillance in E.Germany is ‘The Lives Of Others’. It focusing mainly on a small group of dissidents, but the Gov’t spying applies to the entire society.
At the time William Buckley called it the best film he had ever seen. It’s kind of slow moving to start, German with English subtitles, but well worth the effort, just a very fine film.
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