Great article about one of the amazing moments in modern world history. It does not go enough into detail, but it is already a thrilling read:
A country that was to be the conventional and possibly nuclear battleground between NATO and Warsaw Pact reunited in a moment of amazing timing.
"Wir sind ein Volk!" .. what a powerful slogan, given Germany century old struggle for its definition and borders. I still remember those cheap east german Trabant cars suddenly invading West Germany, and people not believing that the decade old separation was gone.
With unification, the border between the two superpower blocks moved further east, and the power of balance changed in Europe. And the notion of Germany being a battlefield like Tom Clancy sketched it in one of his books faded away.
The sad part these days was the conflict in the Balcans. I hope that these documents will be published as well, revealing some of the politcal game making in that time.
> A country that was to be the conventional and possibly nuclear battleground between NATO and Warsaw Pact reunited in a moment of amazing timing.
On both sides, generations of German soldiers were trained to shoot nuclear missiles on each other to turn all of Central Europe into a glass desert. The reunification was one hell of a culture shock for both sides.
On neither side, German soldiers had direct access to a nuclear arsenal, however. There were missile bases in West Germany alright, under control of American forces. And there were mobile soviet bases in the eastern part, under control of Russian forces. Only a small subset of german soldiers had training in the operation of nuclear weapons, mainly parts of the air force (plans were that nuclear bombs would have been given to them in the case of a conflict).
Western German rocket artillery units (150th-650th battalion) were equipped with nuclear-tipped Lance/Sergeant SRBMs. The American forces only had control over the warheads (and "control" usually meant "were responsible for patrolling the storage shed holding the warheads, while being surrounded by several German mechanized divisions").
The Prora museum on the island of Rügen (the Kraft durch Freude Hotels) is worth visiting in that regard. It illustrates war planning (tactical and strategic nuclear strikes) in the case of a soviet attack and the projected civilian losses.
On the surface it was nice and shiny - friendship of the nations. In the core it was the same Russian chauvinism that obsessed all the non Russian nations.
Russians do not understand it till today and are today more and more willing to execute the genocide against their neighbours when given the change (source: following the Russian media) due to aggressive xenophobic media campaign.
Wat? USSR had "reverse colonialism" where outskirts siphoned resources from Russian center. Compare standards of living in Georgia or Estonia to those of central RSFSR.
If you look at nationality of USSR leaders, they are overwhelmingly not Russian. Even when they were, they had neither possibility nor intent to spend resources on Russian people.
Yes, I know. The international imperialism and four seasons is the cause of all the misfortune, and fascist from Baltic states and Georgia. This is what stops a common Russian to live in prosperity. Did I cover all the bases?
I could give you my understanding about the root cause of Russian misfortune, but if you happen to be Russian (as it seems to be the case), you would probably not appreciate it. You would probably think that I try to insult you while it is just not true. Just some bits of history hurt. I know it from my own experience.
But I think that there is a deep historical reason why your named countries are doing in much sense better that Russia despite the lack of natural resources or endless fields of fertile soil.
Not anymore they don't. Georgia and Armenia were the richest as parts of USSR, but then they became independent and suddently needed to support themselves - they're pretty poor countries now.
Independent Ukraine failed to catch up with its 1990 GDP/person, as far as I know. I of course understand that direct comparsions between socialist and free-market countries are flawed.
Now, Baltic states fared better, but they got onto EU, making it not a fair comparsion.
You are trying to sell me the futility of argument on HN? Why bother writing anything then?
Actually, Russia feeds countries around it, not "brings them down".
Russia has oil to sell; most of ex-USSR countries don't. Nevertheless they enjoy priority in trade and immigration with Russia. They get investements, price cuts and sometimes direct monetary support from Russia.
Note, I'm not talking about Russia, the current somewhat democratic country, but the USSR.
The oil and gas trade is good for both sides. It's not like Russia is some benevolent country that provides for others, they sell resources for money and influence.
But soviet rule was shit. It institutionalized a system and a whole kind of thinking that was unsustainable, which then devolved into chaos.
Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavian states and Hungary all welcomed the Nazis at first, hoping to get rid of the soviets. Of course they realized they were just as bad or worse (also Germany and USSR had a secret pact)...
This is completely incorrect. All of these countries were monarchies leading to the WW2, and all of them, except Yugoslavia, had fascistic tendencies. While they did welcomed the Nazis (again, Yugoslavia is an exception, it was invaded, not just by the Nazis, but by the surrounding countries as well, who were by that time Nazi puppet states), that was not to "get rid of the soviets". I am not trying to absolve Stalinist regime of it's atrocities, or that these countries didn't see Soviets as a threat, but this is just wrong.
Also, they didn't "realized" that Nazis were "just as bad or worse", they were on the losing side of the war (again, exception is Yugoslavia, although there was a Nazi puppet state in Croatia), and their regimes were subsequently defeated by the USSR, which then included them in their sphere of influence (Warsaw pact, etc.), and yes, from that point on, effectively ruled them (Yugoslavia had it's on independent dictator, Tito). But to claim "welcoming the Nazis to rid of Soviets" is just factually wrong.
What is puzzling for me, is that all of this is readily available on the wiki pages of these respective countries. It seems that relying on "common narrative" is all too great.
Probably not in Poland (because it was attacked by Germany and SU simultaneously), but elsewhere where Soviets (I am kind here towards Russians) where able to implement, or tried to implement their regime, it was very plausible.
I start with Finland, this was a mixed bag, they were attacked by SU in Winter War and while Finns had allied relations with Germans after that, they kept the promises made in the peace treaty in Moscow and not did help to make Leningrad to surrender (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War).
Baltic states were forced to accept SU military bases right before the start of WWII (as it was later discovered, there was agreement between SU and Germany called Molotov-Rippentrop Pact that divided the countries between SU and Germany in Europe).
Accepting military bases leaded to SU military backed coup d'état in all Baltic states that lead to political murders and repressions (10s of thousands people murdered, 100s of thousands deported (men into labour camps where most of them died and women and children with into Siberia (with 1/2 death rate)). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_occupation_of_the_Balti...
I do not think that you could find any poll from that period, but I believe that you can imagine that this is highly likely that any force that managed to end the horrors was welcomed at least in the beginning.
As you can see, the political situation was favouring the Germans but they managed to turn it around.
For example Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder. Especially in Ukraine starting in the early '30ies, but also in eastern Poland from '39 onwards, the NKVD had a quite horrendous human rights record. So the Nazi troops were greeted at liberators when they arrived in '41. At that point the Nazi atrocities had not reached the heights they are infamous for.
Depends on your favorite measure for atrocities, there was a civil war in Russia, there were the Stalinist purges all over the Soviet Union, there was the colonization of the Asian part of Russia and there was Holdomor. Each of these are among the worst human rights abuses, but actually I am not sure if you can really argues which one of them was worse.
I'm not a historian, but if 10-20% of the population in my state died of famine and persecution like it happened in Ukraine, then I would not be surprised if anyone taking over the reins would be welcome.
Ukraine was mostly created by early USSR. Many of regions with famine were "assigned" to Ukrainian SSR after revolution. They were not officially considered Ukraine before the revolution.
Core Russian regions (Volga river basin, for example) also had famines just as bad.
A good, if brief, book on the lead-up to reunification is "The Fall of the GDR: Germany's Road to Unity". The biggest takeaway for me was how incredibly rapidly the collapse progressed once it began - effectively, no one stepped in to stop it and feedback loops took over.
A country that was to be the conventional and possibly nuclear battleground between NATO and Warsaw Pact reunited in a moment of amazing timing.
"Wir sind ein Volk!" .. what a powerful slogan, given Germany century old struggle for its definition and borders. I still remember those cheap east german Trabant cars suddenly invading West Germany, and people not believing that the decade old separation was gone.
With unification, the border between the two superpower blocks moved further east, and the power of balance changed in Europe. And the notion of Germany being a battlefield like Tom Clancy sketched it in one of his books faded away.
The sad part these days was the conflict in the Balcans. I hope that these documents will be published as well, revealing some of the politcal game making in that time.