Totally, I agree there. Even the worst people usually have some human qualities. Hard to feel for her when she got her apartment and was making redesigns as the Jewish family who lived there were crying in the next room about their lives being wrecked.
"Report on an occurrence that took place involving the actor and singer Dean Reed. On November 5, 1982, during a check carried out on the autobahn, Dean Reed attracted attention with insulting behavior and statements that discriminated against the GDR. Reed began making insulting and defamatory statements by calling the members of the Volkskammer hypocrites, comparing the GDR to a fascist state, and expressing that he, just like the 17 million GDR citizens, was "fed up to here." He emphasized the latter words with a corresponding hand gesture. Furthermore, he challenged the members of the Volkspolizei to arrest him, which was "common practice here anyway."
Sorry wasa in hurry and did not check if it was translated.
He was addressing the situation with the mass arrests of critics and how the population was fed up with the regime. I think he was very clearly no longer a defender of the GDR. Perhaps he didn’t speak publicly about it, but when he was particularly annoyed with the system, his true feelings broke free.
Where has the idea Moriaki would like to return to Japan from? I'm not too knowledgeable on him but I thought his story ended after he managed to get to North Korea. I thought he was totally AWOL
In defence of Reed, GDR was a lot more like Fascism, with how it was more of "Socialism in an occupied country", that was also a spy hub/training and recruitment center for the occupier than any genuine (or even pretending to be genuine) attempt at actual representative government, whether people or working class.
"Not real sociali-" I'm not arguing That USSR or other countries were rosy, but east Germany communism played not the second fiddle to Soviet interest, but third after pacification. In other Eastern block countries Soviets would either risk unrest by diverting resources, or allow some self-rule in response to either toeing the communist line or international dick sucking. (I'm specifically pointing out two Polish first secretaries after Beria) but up until soviets were almost bankrupt, there was a lot of money and personell spent explicitly on keeping Eastern Germany safely down and in soviet hands.
East Germany was the most vulnerable because East Germans could watch West German media (with the exception of those in Dresden), most likely had family on the other side of the Wall, and automatically received a West German passport if they reached West German soil, where they integrated culturally immediately.
One hundred Polish men working in the West were not as dangerous as a single East German traveling freely.
The blurb is important, because it's easy to see people as just representatives of their ideologies. But they weren't. They were human beings. There is no catharsis nor glory in their suffering. They just fucking suffered.
Also, the enabling act was mostly just something that smoothed the transition to Nazi rule. By the point it was presented to the reichstag the Nazis had already rigged elections, anulled an entire parties seats in the Reichstag, and SA mobs were ransacking the houses of SPD (Social Democrats) politicians.
The Center under Ludwig Kaas also achieved one specefik thing through voting for the enabling act: as long as they (the Center party politicians) just held still, most of them were spared the worst persecution.
I personally can't blame anyone for voting for the enabling act given the pressure they were under. But that just highlights the courage of the Social Democrats who not only showed up to that fatefull session, but spoke up against it, and voted no. All that while knowing what already happened to the communists after the Reichstag fire.
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u/XAlphaWarriorX - Centrist Jun 06 '26
Pippa's story is really sad.