The one thing that I can still see in my mind today, as clearly as the day I laid eyes on it was; I was standing on the East-West border and pulling patrol in two jeeps. I was the lead jeep and I stopped at one of our check points where we were to stop and get out and starting "glassing" the eastern side of the border. This was in a rural area of both sides of the border. I looked into the east side and watched men plowing the fields, using tractors that looked like they were made in the 1920s (this was 1971 or 72). They were ancient machines. Rusty color, with medal wheels on all four. The back two were larger than the front and had like spikes on the back ones to dig into the ground for traction.
I turned around and was looking back into the west and saw a couple of West Germans doing the exact same thing, plowing their fields, driving 1970s model tractors. Nice and new. Modern for the times. I looked back and forth at each side and I knew why the east was in the shape it was in. The west was in the 1970s and the east was still in the 1920s. 50 years behind. (Kinda like Islam is still in the 700s AD while the rest of the world is in the 2020's.) But, it shows just how broke socialism/communism was and remains today. North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, etc., all broke and the people living in abject poverty. It took the wall falling and the west bringing the east back into Germany to start rebuilding the east. The stinking Russians didn't!!!
Ask any soldier or marine that has stood a post that deals with the communists and they will tell you the same thing. The elites of the left, socialists, commies, all have the best in those societies. Only in capitalism can we all have a chance to improve ourselves. Not in socialism.
I lived in Berlin in 1985, so I saw quite a bit of the Wall. I went into East Berlin a few times. It was like going from color to black and white. The camera store didn’t have any cameras, but they did have a zillion of these cheesy flash unit that you would put on your camera and then plug it into the wall. The appliance store has these little dorm sized refrigerators that cost 1000 marks, which was like a months pay for those guys. Hardly anyone on the streets except VoPos. On the other hand, West Berlin, Kudamm, that was a great place. There was never any better place than Berlin to compare the two systems. And this completely ignored by our allegedly most learned people.