• ArchimedesTesseract@lemmy.ml
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    3 years ago

    So the where did the East Germans recruit their completely de-Nazi’d secret police? Pretty much everyone left in Germany at the end of WWII was in the party. The Soviets managed to create the foremost modern police state in East Germany from a blank slate? That’s pretty hard to believe. It’s entirely plausible and consistent that the SS that got caught behind the Iron Curtain cut a deal and suddenly became fervent communists.

    • gigamo@lemmy.ml
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      3 years ago

      The fact you claim East Germany started out as a “police state” tells me you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Undoing decades of Western liberal bias and propaganda is pretty difficult, but if you’re actually interested in history, there’s plenty of literature available.

      • ArchimedesTesseract@lemmy.ml
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        3 years ago

        Riiiiight. How do you explain all those bullet holes on the eastern part of the Berlin Wall? We’re a little far removed from then for you to cling to Soviet propaganda. There’s way too much testimony and the Stasi’s own files were released in the 90s. Are you going to tell me Saddam Hussein didn’t model his secret police on that brutal inhuman efficiency? Next, you’ll tell me Saddam was just misunderstood? What are you on?

        • gigamo@lemmy.ml
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          3 years ago

          Lmao, where does Saddam fit in to this? As I said before, you should probably study slightly more about the subjects in which you pretend to be an expert – the Berlin wall wasn’t even built until 11-12 years into the GDR’s existence. And I’ll leave it up to you to try and figure out why it was.

    • nachtigall@feddit.de
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      3 years ago

      So the where did the East Germans recruit their completely de-Nazi’d secret police?

      In the early phase it consisted mostly of NKVD members from the SU and KPD members that were part of the antifacist resistance.

      Pretty much everyone left in Germany at the end of WWII was in the party.

      The NSDAP had 7-8 million members in 1945 whereas the population had a size of 70-80 million people. So 90% of Germans were not members of the party by the end of the war.

      It’s entirely plausible and consistent that the SS that got caught behind the Iron Curtain cut a deal and suddenly became fervent communists.

      That’s true. However, former SS members were usually recruited as unofficial collaborators and not into positions of power. Furthermore they were often sent to western Germany as spies.

      Therefore it is rather unlikely that Putin was in touch with Nazis during his time in Dresden.

      • ArchimedesTesseract@lemmy.ml
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        3 years ago

        Thank you for an actually informative reply. Although, if the former SS weren’t officially attached, it is still possible that Putin handled them. Look how expertly he handled Trump as an asset. He’s definitely able at the task.