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By John Wojcik
This weekend, there are events in Germany commemorating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the pages of the press, prominent persons—from former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker to current German Chancellor Angela Merkel to former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev—are all weighing in with their commentaries on the significance of Nov. 9, 1989, all celebrating to a greater or lesser degree the demise of the former socialist state in the east.
As someone who traveled frequently to the German Democratic Republic when it existed and spent years involved in the movement for friendship and solidarity with that country, I offer here some thoughts that I hope will put these celebrations in balance.
The GDR, as the old East Germany was officially known, was a lot more than the totalitarian prop that gets paraded out during anniversaries to prove the supposed superiority of capitalism over socialism.
It was up against tough odds, right from the start—long before construction of the wall began in August 1961.
Why the wall went up
One big problem for the GDR from its beginning in 1949, was that it occupied the much weaker and war-torn eastern third of Germany. Compared with the money that was pumped into the western part of Germany by the U.S. for rebuilding, the GDR started out with almost nothing....
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