A Marxist-Leninist Approach to the Berlin Wall

IntroductionI wanted to leave a post on here that once and for all provides the facts and reasoning behind the German Democratic Republic's decision to build the Anti-Fascist Protection Wall, commonly known as the Berlin Wall. Ideally, this could be added to The Book thread of master posts. Please message if you have any clarifying questions or connecting a fact to a source. Some things I didn't link because they seemed to be an easy online search given their context in the post.Some points of information before going into postwar Germany history that is important to know:Capitalist West Germany did virtually nothing to denazify after the Nuremberg Trials, while the GDR executed and jailed thousands of Nazi war criminals and reactionaries that had shown sympathy for the Third Reich. By 1949 the West German government ended all investigations of past behavior of civil servants and military officers.It is important to remember that when Germany was divided into four administration zones, the city of Berlin was too. Only until 1949 did the East/West binary of both Germany and Berlin exist.West Germany/Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) can be used interchangeably in all dates after 1949. This is also the case for East Germany/German Democratic Republic (GDR).To many Marxist-Leninists, it can be hard to approach the wall. Ridiculous comparisons are made between it and the Apartheid Wall in Israel and the US-Mexico Border, even by supposed socialists. The Anti-Fascist Protection Wall has become of course the symbol of the "evil, bleak, authoritarian" supposed nature of Socialist states. Overall, these claims lack historical knowledge, and never take account of the crisis the GDR and the Socialist Unity Party (SED) faced in the first decade of the Worker's and Peasant's state's existence. In order for Marxist-Leninists to understand why the SED chose to build the wall, we must analyze the material conditions as any good Marxist should do.Before the Wall, 1945-1961Prior to 1961, Berlin was a physically unified city. Under the Allied administration, free movement across all four administrative sectors (American, British, French, Soviet) was not only permitted, it was common. This was due to the fact that the ultimate goal was reunification, or at least it was for the Soviet Union led by Stalin. From the end of WWII and until his death, Stalin offered several plans for reunification, all to be rejected by the Federal Republic of Germany.Before the establishment of the two Germanys, there was also a crisis regarding the currency, wherein 1948 the West German economy adopted a new currency, the Deutschemark, replacing the Reichsmark. This was explicitly forbidden in the Morgenthau Plan, which in 1947 banned any steps that could be taken by allied powers in the economic rehabilitation of Germany. Stalin followed these guidelines, assuming the other Allied powers would abide in good faith. They did not, and it led to immediate inequities between the now-wealthier West and the poorer East. This also should set straight the argument that capitalism creates more wealth. The West simply changed their currency so it was more valuable than the currency that Easterners earned.In addition to this, while reunification was the supposed goal of all parties present, the US, UK, and French zones disobeyed the Potsdam Agreement, creating the FRG and thus creating a hurdle against the possibility of a prompt German reunification. The FRG was established on May 23rd, 1949, while the GDR was formed in response on October 7th later in the same year. This ends the occupation zones and is the formation of two sovereign states.The mainstream argument for why the wall had been built of course is economic. At the time, the capitalist economy of West Berlin did outpace the East Berlin economy. While it was more lucrative to make an income in the West, this was also due to West Berlin receiving large subsidies by the FRG and NATO powers. As Florian Urban states, "West Berlin was the capitalist hemisphere's most socialist place". Cinemas showing American movies and stores with Western commodities would be advertised, in the effort to lure East Berliners away from their socialist city. While there were those who moved to the West pre-1961, it would be irresponsible to not consider the aforementioned currency manipulation by the FRG. Regardless, tens of thousands of Easterners who worked in West Berlin still happily returned every night to their Eastern homes.What is severely underreported in the history of the wall is the state security threat the FRG government posed to the Socialist GDR. Based in Bonn, the FRG government and NATO utilized West Berlin as a base deep inside enemy lines. Even worse and as stated before, the FRG had virtually no process of denazification, allowing many Nazi party members to work within the Bonn government. The head of the West German military at that time was, in fact, one of Hitler's top military men, Adolf Heusinger.The Pervasiveness of Nazism in the Federal Republic of Germany & NATOAs the first leader of the FRG Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was a centrist-collaborator during Nazi rule, in opposition to Nazis only seemingly because of their hostility to liberalism. Of course, he quickly entered a joint government with the Nazis in 1932, where he became a voice to anti-communism throughout the Nazi regime. Even in 1960, during the Eichmann Trial, he made attempts to influence the verdict, knowing that the trial would likely incriminate many of his allies in the Bonn government. In this instance, he paid Israeli prosecutors to ensure the prosecution would remain only on Eichmann. After the Nuremberg Trials, Adenauer quickly pivoted the newly-formed Bonn government's goals of denazification to anti-communist crusades. Anecdotally, it was said that he was mistakenly referred to as "Chancellor Hitler" during a celebration of Adenauer's birthday.Outside of West German leadership, however, Nazism remained pervasive in West Germany at-large. Here's a quote from a DEFA documentary on the subject:In West Berlin, there are over 100 revenge organisations, Wehrmacht veterans' clubs, leagues of formers SS men, et cetera. Every year, they hold thousands of rallies. High point of the year is the rally in the West Berlin [INAUDIBLE]. Propaganda against the socialist countries, the reawakening of feelings of revenge, territorial claims in Eastern Europe, psychological warfare in the middle of the GDR.To the fascist holdovers within Germany, the establishment of a Socialist State was indubitably the workings of the Soviets, and in no way the mandate of Germans (Within the GDR, the constitution was created by the SED, a party of Germans. The FRG's constitution was written by the US and UK, without German input). These calls for a reclamation of their homeland often were of course linked to antisemitic and anti-Slavic rhetoric borne from Nazi rhetoric.With these fascist calls for revenge came concrete plans by the Bonn government, aided of course by NATO and the CIA. What culminated is perhaps the most important (and most difficult to track) document: Operation DECO IILiberation of the Soviet occupation zone and the reunification of German by military occupation of the middle German area. West Berlin as advanced post. Originating in West Berlin, advance into East Berlin into the German Democratic Republic, and further to the east. (Much of the following comes from an aforementioned documentary simply called "Berlin Wall", released in 1961 by DEFA,The German Democratic Republic, an Anti-Fascist StateIf you have concrete evidence there was to be a full-scale invasion into your sovereign state, are you not entitled to defend yourself from such invasion? So, on August 13th, 1961, the National People's Army along with Worker Battalions marched out of their factories and set up a barricade around the perimeter of West Berlin. These organizations were composed of International Brigade veterans, concentration camp survivors, and Anti-Fascist Groups from across Germany and Europe. The workers and revolutionaries that built GDR planted their feet down, declaring NATO and the FRG will not pass. They would not sabotage any further in the building of socialism, and they will not invade it through an illegal invasion.The demand by East Berliners to the Bonn government: remove your tanks and guns and US Soldiers, and let West Berlin join Democratic Berlin as a free city. The GDR made the wall a statement for calling the FRG's bluff and asking the Bonn government to come to the table to negotiate reunification. Of course, the war criminals whose careers continued from the Third Reich to the Bonn Government, and refused to negotiate with the GDR government. Terrorist attacks and sabotage against the GDR were continually attempted. RIAS (essentially the precursor to anti-communist Radio Free Europe) continued their attempts to agitate Eastern workers against the Socialist government, spouting US propaganda with anti-communist rhetoric.Reunification, or die WendeOn November 9th, 1989, the wall came down. It marked the end of the people's project of building socialism within the German Democratic Republic.Victor Grossman, a Jewish American Communist that defected to East Germany in 1952, remarked on how the consumer in Berlin reacted after reunification.Most immediately, they found a very tangible goal in those first heady days. Every West Berlin bank awarded them “welcome money”—100 marks, West-marks at last, not the scorned East-marks! They could spend them freely for the bananas they had missed, like papayas and other fruits rare or unknown in Cthe East. There were Mars bars, Hershey bars (and even all-night bars), Big Whoppers, the latest fashionable shoes, blouses, dessous and dildos, they could admire crowded Ku’damm, West Berlin’s “Fifth Avenue” or the lone, widowed panda bear in the West Berlin zoo. Or see the latest Hollywood blockbuster and buy books by Tom Clancy (or Koestler), still unavailable in the East where, within a few months, any last faded slogans about peace, production, socialism—and our wise leaders—would disappear, replaced by glittering images of Marlboro cowboys, golden McDonald arches, sleek VWs or BMWs displayed by sleek female beauties. Above all, there were those West-marks, respected in all the world—and soon required in every purchase and payment.But alas, before long unexpected thorns were felt: unity brought rapid privatization, shutdown and abandonment of almost all East German industry, some of it decrepit, some of it state of the art, the lay-off of millions, the firing of nearly everyone in any form of administration, down to “ignorant eastern” traffic or sewage disposal managers, the silencing of teachers, professors, journalists, scientists, actors and musicians by the thousand.Reunification brought on the "freedom of choice" to those which are subservient to capitalism. However, the crackdown on those who still enjoyed their lives under state socialism, with its world-renowned healthcare, childcare, and education system, was required to stomp on the ideals and successes of the GDR.Reunification was never the issue, as the SED and GDR citizens would tell you. Easterners will retrospectively remark, "we didn't want to get rid of socialism, we just wanted the option to move freely". After 1990, homelessness reappeared in the East. Wages have stayed at the same rate while working hours have increased. Easterners cynically joke that they have the freedom to go wherever they want now, just not the wealth to do so. Unemployment has gone from around 0% to 21% among women and 11% among men. Deaths of despair, related to overdose and suicide, increased after reunification.If we only accept perfection in a revolutionary cause, we are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The German Democratic Revolution, with its inevitable imperfections, should be exemplary in a multitude of revolutionary challenges. This was a state that stood up to German transnational corporations such as Bayer and BASF, the private perpetrators of the Holocaust. As the West prolonged Nazi ideology and amassed billions, possibly trillions in war contracts, the GDR supported materially and ideologically Algerians, Palestinians, South Africans, Vietnamese and countless other movements in their liberation.The Wall, as a symbol, has been painted as a fascist continuation of Germany's past. If we closely observe post-war Germany, we find that the fascism resides further west. The collapse of the wall, and consequently, the Marxist-Leninist state, we realize Germans are still divided— in their wealth, access to healthcare/education, and quality of life. The wall was just a capitalist distraction.​Sources that weren't directly linked within the post, or Further Research:Film Documentary, DEFA. "Berlin Wall". 1961. Accessible through the Socialism on Film online database."Germany's Pyrrhic Victory over the Berlin Wall" by Victor Grossman in People's World"Stasi State or Workers’ Paradise" by Bruni de la Motte & John Green via /r/communism https://ift.tt/2ROhVeY