Considering our discussions from last week and the importance of recognizable leadership for a movement, Ch. 4 “Political Skirmishing”, provides a relevant continuation. As the chapter introduces the two respective sides of East and West Germany during the Cold War, the author makes a particularly interesting claim about the degree of effect leadership had on each side. The line reads, “the leaders who emerged in both East and West Germany rendered unification less likely,” (71). Which circles me back to my first concern of how necessary or effective it really is to have a singular leader to establish a certain political ideology?
Would one side have had an advantage over the other in spreading and maintaining its ideologies if they would have chosen a more ambiguous form of leadership? Then more specifically, based off of what we know about the U.S. and the Soviet Union at this time- who had the most realistic plan of reaching a unified Germany (whether under capitalism or Soviet Union communism)? Would you argue for Adenauer’s focus for the Federal Republic on market driven expansion? The text also notes that the Federal Republic in the West aimed to integrate with other Western societies.
While keeping Germany’s somewhat recent past in mind (Nazi Germany) and its geographical proximity to the Soviet Union, was this even a reasonably possible thing to attempt? Is there any evidence to suggest this strategy actually served as a counter measure against Western Germany? In other words, was capitalism and concepts pertaining to Western society so forced upon that it actually turned people away instead. Or on the other hand, at least for practicality and realism’s sake, did East Germany and Ulbricht have the superior approach? Even though ethically it is more than questionable, could you see the use of political repression and the formation of the MfS to be more well suited in this case?
Oppositely then, do you find it ironic or paradoxical at all that the East attempted to establish a five year centralized economic plan based off of Stalin’s ideology of “socialism in one country” within divided Germany? Or did it even matter in the long run? Then in closing, how did each sides’ approach to policing the divide directly influence respectively their broader political agendas? Relative to the amount of actual soldier or guard presence and the type of or degree of forced used in maintaining the separation. Lastly, how can we see as historians the idea of the “German question” being applied to the U.S. or other nations presently? Is it all fair to say that the U.S. and the Soviet Union viewed East and West Germany as some form of large scale political experiment? If so, I believe this opens up a whole new conversation about the past and present foreign policies of the U.S. government.
You raise some really important points and questions here! To respond to one of your first questions, though the chosen leaders in East and West Germany certainly made unification less likely, I don’t believe choosing a more ambiguous form of leadership was desired by the powers of either side. Both Neustadt and Sonneberg were areas where Nazism flourished – support was well over the national average in both areas, and both Neustadt and Sonneberg emerged from WW2 with little impact. Free from the suffering of the war that many Germans experienced, it was the aftermath rather than the war itself that hurt them the most. Coupled with the fact that the Soviet Union or the United States were willing to install entirely inexperienced people as government officials, this resulted in two outcomes. For the East, this distrust for the “common man” to be given a position of great leadership resulted in Wilhelm Pieck elected. Given Pieck’s experience serving the Communist Party in Moscow, he was an easy and trusted choice for the Soviet Union. On the other hand, in the Nazified community of Neustadt in the West, there was simply a lack of “clean” people to stand up against Nazism in trial let alone operate a new government. Ultimately, this and the laissez-faire approach of the Americans led to former party members being voted into positions of power. Though a more ambiguous form of leadership may have allowed for an advantage in theory, I am hesitant in thinking this was possible in these areas given the heavily Nazified areas of Neustadt and Sonneberg, the strong ideology the Soviet Union wished to establish in the East, and little interference by the US (at least as it appears in the local government) in the West.