Comments on: Putting History Back Together…One Little Piece At A Time

By: Wendelin

Wendelin — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 23:26:11 +0000

Michelle, I hope more comes out about the lives of East Germans who lived on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall.
Many of us who have survived can provide a chilling reminder of how the Stasi stalked, persecuted, imprisoned and tortured those suspected of subversion.

I live for the punishment of those guilty of infringing the petty and oppressive restrictions of a state dominated by bigoted control freaks.

By: Kristin

Kristin — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 23:22:56 +0000

Thank you Michelle for recognizing a time that needs to be remembered. The extent to which the lies, deceit and gross corruption of the Stasi regime managed to all but destroy tens of millions of lives while destroying millions.

By: Alexksandr

Alexksandr — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 23:17:55 +0000

Michelle, I have been an avid reader of your blog for 4 years. This is my first post. I served in forming and running the Stasi.

It is too easy simply to deplore the human consequences of this system, without adequately explaining why it came into being and took on the characteristics it did.

A functioning post-Nazi society needed to be built in the war-ravaged eastern part of Germany, with scant resources, acute external threats, continuous attempts at economic and political subversion, and a highly compromised population which was also depleted of the many committed communists and socialists who had been murdered by the Nazis.

Sometimes the only options which historical circumstances permit are almost equally bleak ones. We had to use the resources we had to control a race of people who had no moral what so ever.

This was a race that exterminated, tortured, and experimented on the other races without a minuscule of concern. We had to take extraordinary measures to control those animals.

Now they weep as if they were the victims. Hypocrisy flows easiest from the lips of the vile and evil, witness the oration of your race of whites conservatives.

If I had to do it all over again, I would without hesitation.

Alexksandr

By: Viktor

Viktor — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 23:05:25 +0000

I am part german and russian. I was a russian intelligence officer assigned to police the GDR. We were attempting to rebuild a bombed-out economy on a shoestring budget at the very time when the unscathed USA was pouring huge amounts of investment into the much more heavily industrialised western sector of Germany.

This was done to take advantage of the technological advancement of Germany and to tempt scarce skilled personnel to weaken the GDR by quitting it for better living conditions in the west.

Inevitably the GDR was preoccupied with preventing such defections and detecting possible enemies within, and therefore developed elaborate systems of surveillance and control of its population. That included raising a wall to prevent the loss of key personnel.

By: VS

VS — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 22:59:22 +0000

I, too, served the USSR in that dung hole called GDR. We russians operated within a background of very considerable continuing support for Nazism by the defeated Germans, and economic subversion by the West.

It was inevitable that the GDR should become a highly authoritarian state, with a highly managed political system.
When the enemy is both at the gates and massively represented within the walls, democracy is not a realistic option.

Recall that even in Britain democracy was put on hold during the Second World War: elections were suspended, inconvenient newspapers banned, and even such dangerous enemy aliens as the members of the Amadeus String Quartet were locked away in internment camps.