The goal of Operation Enduring Freedom, On this day in , a steamboat with a design that will soon prove ideal for western rivers arrives at the docks in New Orleans. The Washington was the work of a shipbuilder named Henry M.
Shreve, who had launched the steamboat earlier that year The poem was an immediate success that rocked the Beat literary world and set the tone for confessional poetry of the s and later. Ginsberg was born in to a high The most devastating fire in United States history is ignited in Wisconsin on this day in Over the course of the next day, 1, people lost their lives and 2 billion trees were consumed by flames.
8 Things That Were Better in East Germany*
Despite the massive scale of the blaze, it was overshadowed by the Great Four Palestinian terrorists board the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauroshortly after it leftAlexandria, Egypt, in order to hijack the luxury liner. Soviet leader Josef Stalin died in March Though powerful Soviet politician Lavrenty Beria briefly pursued the idea of German unification once more following Stalin's death, he was arrested and removed from office in a coup d'etat in mid His successor, Nikita Khrushchev , firmly rejected the idea of handing eastern Germany over to be annexed, marking the end of any serious consideration of the unification idea until the resignation of the East German government in On June 16, , following a production quota increase of 10 percent for workers building East Berlin's new boulevard the Stalinallee, today's Karl-Marx-Allee , demonstrations by disgruntled workers broke out in East Berlin, the first popular uprising in the postwar Soviet bloc.
The next day the protests spread across East Germany with more than a million on strike and demonstrations in communities. Fearing revolution, the government requested the aid of Soviet occupation troops and on the morning of the 18th tanks and soldiers were dispatched who dealt harshly with protesters.
Soviet troops killed 21 people, wounded hundreds of others, and were jailed. The Socialist Unity Party announced the New Course which aimed at improvement in the standard of living, stressed a shift in investment toward light industry and trade and a greater availability of consumer goods. The party relaxed pressure on farmers to enter collective farms. Agricultural yields improved, and the last food rationing ended in By this time, reparations payments had been completed. In , East Germany became a charter member of the Warsaw Pact , the Soviet bloc's military alliance.
President Pieck died in , and Ulbricht became head of a newly created Council of State, entrenching a totalitarian communist dictatorship. Due to the lure of higher salaries in the West and political oppression in the East, many skilled workers such as doctors crossed into the West, causing a 'brain drain' in the East. By , three million East Germans had fled since the war.
The Berlin Wall: The Partitioning of Berlin
However, on the night of August 13, , East German troops sealed the border between West and East Berlin and started to build the Berlin Wall , literally and physically enclosing West Berlin, first with barbed wire and later by construction of a concrete wall through the middle and around the city. East Germans could no longer go through the heavily guarded crossing points without permission, which was rarely granted.
Those who tried to escape by climbing over the wall risked being shot by East German guards under orders to kill. With a captive population, the East German economy stabilized to become the most prosperous in the Soviet bloc but behind that of West Germany. A highly effective security force called the Stasi monitored the lives of East German citizens to suppress dissenters through its network of informants and agents. The annual industrial growth rate declined steadily after In , Ulbricht adapted the theories reforms of Soviet economist Evsei Liberman, and introduced the New Economic System NES , an economic reform program providing for some decentralization in decision making.
East Germany
Under the NES, The central planning authorities set overall production goals, but each VVB determined its own internal financing, utilization of technology, and allocation of manpower and resources. The NES brought forth a new elite in politics as well as in management of the economy, and in Ulbricht announced a new policy regarding admission to the leading ranks of the SED.
Ulbricht opened the Politburo and the Central Committee to younger members who had more education than their predecessors and who had acquired managerial and technical skills. From until , real wages increased, and the supply of consumer goods, including luxury items, improved. It was the most common vehicle in East Germany, and was exported to other countries in, but also outside, the communist bloc. The main selling points were that it had room for four adults and luggage, and was compact, fast, light, and durable.
Despite its poor performance and smoky two-stroke engine, the car has come to be regarded with affection as a symbol of the more positive sides of East Germany. It was in production without any significant change for nearly 30 years. Since it could take years for a Trabant to be delivered from the time it was ordered, people who finally got one were very careful with it and usually became skillful in maintaining and repairing it. The lifespan of an average Trabant was 28 years. Used Trabants would often fetch a higher price than new ones, as the former were available immediately, while the latter had the aforementioned waiting period of several years.
Where as under the Hallstein Doctrine, West Germany had refused to recognize the existence of the East German government, the Brandt administration opened direct negotiations with East Germany, in , to normalize relations. Meanwhile, in , Erich Honecker replaced Walter Ulbricht as head of state. At the Eighth Party Congress in June , he presented the political program of the new regime. In his reformulation of East German foreign policy, Honecker renounced the objective of a unified Germany and adopted the "defensive" position of ideological Abgrenzung demarcation or separation.
Under this program, the country defined itself as a distinct "socialist state" and emphasized its allegiance to the Soviet Union. The Basic Treaty effective June politically recognized two German states, and the two countries pledged to respect one another's sovereignty. Under the terms of the treaty, diplomatic missions were to be exchanged and commercial, tourist, cultural, and communications relations established. In September , both countries joined the United Nations, and thus, East Germany received its long-sought international recognition.
East Germany gained the international acceptance that it had long sought, and trade between the two German states increased, earning West German currency for East Germany, as well as income from fees paid by West Germany for use of the highways through East Germany to Berlin, and from ransoms paid for the release of political prisoners.
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However, the material gap between the two parts of Germany widened. As East Germany focussed on industrial production for export, the country's roads, railways, and buildings deteriorated, while a housing shortage persisted. Waiting periods of years were still required for the purchase of major consumer items such as automobiles, which continued to be crudely manufactured according to standards of the early postwar period, while those of West Germany ranked high in the world for quality and advanced design.
Nevertheless, a critical Marxist intelligentsia within the SED renewed the plea for democratic reform. Among them was the poet-singer Wolf Biermann, who with Robert Havemann had led a circle of artists and writers advocating democratization; he was expelled from East Germany in November , for dissident activities. Following Biermann's expulsion, the SED leadership disciplined more than dissident intellectuals. Despite the government's actions, East German writers began to publish political statements in the West German press and periodical literature.
The publication led to the author's arrest, imprisonment, and deportation to West Germany. The league, consisting ostensibly of anonymous middle- to high-ranking SED functionaries, demanded democratic reform in preparation for reunification. Even after an exodus of artists in protest against Biermann's expulsion, the SED continued its repressive policy against dissidents. The state subjected literature, one of the few vehicles of opposition and nonconformism in East Germany, to ideological attacks and censorship. This policy led to an exodus of prominent writers, which lasted until Although in , the SED intensified its censorship of church publications in response to the Polish Solidarity movement, it maintained, for the most part, a flexible attitude toward the church.
By , nearly , East Germans were visiting West Germany each year, although only one family member at a time was permitted to go. The East German government also began granting permission for some to emigrate. In the German Democratic Republic, the state established production targets and prices and allocated resources, codifying these decisions in a comprehensive plan or set of plans. The means of production were almost entirely state-owned.
In , for example, state-owned enterprises or collectives earned To secure constant prices for inhabitants, the state bore 80 percent of costs of basic supplies, from bread to housing. Agricultural land was 95 percent collectivized, and financial institutions, transportation, and industrial and foreign trade enterprises are state owned. The republic was the most industrialized country in Eastern Europe , with over half of its GNP generated by the industrial sector.
The inflation rate consumer prices was 0. There were no figures for unemployment. Trade was characterized by exports of manufactured goods and imports of basic raw materials lignite is the only important natural resource found in the GDR.
East Germany relied on forced labor
During the period , overall economic growth slowed to 1. The GDR faced numerous economic problems that included low hard currency earnings, stagnating living standards, shortages of energy and labor, and an inadequate level of capital investment. For the West, the motive was humanitarian, for the East, economic. GDR chief Erich Honecker was often considered unemotional and humorless. Now, 23 years after East Germany's collapse, his bodyguard and butler Lothar Herzog reveals other sides of him in a memoir and a DW interview.
For photographic artists from the GDR, it was often difficult and dangerous to take photographs or even exhibit their works. A new show honors the work of these artists, exploring 40 years of photography in East Germany. A new exhibition in Berlin documents over four decades of art photography as it developed in the German Republic. Including works by over 34 different photographers, it is the most comprehensive show of its kind.
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Communist East Germany was pretty much the exact opposite of California. But skateboards were popular in both places. A documentary on the East German skating scene is now playing in German cinemas. The Rolling Stones are turning In Germany, the band had fans from the very beginning on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In communist East Germany, though, the fans had a somewhat more difficult time. For decades, artworks seized by East German authorities have been housed in national museum collections in the former East.
Now questions are being asked over compensation and the museums' right to display the works. A memorial to the Peaceful Revolution of is planned for Leipzig. But residents and politicians are divided over whether or not the city needs such a memorial and, if so, how it should look. Today, he lives in the German capital with his interrogators. He believes Germany needs 'Berlin trials. While the Berlin Wall remains a symbol of German division and the brutal former East German regime, a new project aims to focus attention on the many victims of the equally forbidding East-West German border zone.
The history of East Germany | German history | DW |
The former East German states have been subsidized to the tune of billions of euros - not always successfully. Struggling regions in the west now want a share of the financial support. The German-Russian friendship is about more than pipelines.