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April 07, 2014

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koogleschreiber

Remember West Germany 20 years after WW2: Justice, police, secret services, armed forces etc. etc. etc.... Unlike the infrastructure democracy wasn't rebuilt from scratch, it was imposed, but the regime change would have been impossible without those then quickly and often lightly denazified ranks, officials and experts of the former state. During WW2, police units from Hamburg for example murdered tens of thousands of people, has anyone been put on trial and found guilty? There was a wall of silence versus the "Nestbeschmutzer": Unter den Talaren der Muff von 1000 Jahren!

In the GDR, things were different and perhaps easier to adopt. One dictatorship was replaced just by another, they didn't even try denazification: Nazi Germany, that was West Germany, the former Nazi ranks then mercenaries on the US payroll. It was West Germany that has lost the war, East Germany has rather won it shoulder to shoulder with Russia's red army. The dictatorship had changed from brown to red, but for the ordinary people life didn't change dramatically. No questions, only orders, the beauty of militarized life.

The people in East Germany 'enjoyed' almost 60 years of dictatorship until 1989, much, much longer than the people in West Germany. We can't be surprised about some Ostalgia here and there. All in all, I suppose phenomena like these would be found in any post-dictatorship society on ths planet - unless any person found on the wrong side of history had been executed. But surely no democracy would arise from such a blood bath.

David

"I suppose phenomena like these would be found in any post-dictatorship society"

Poland, Spain, Brazil?

Seems to be particularly pronounced in east Germany.

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