It is not very well known however that Germany saw a much
more vigilant communism hunt at about the same time. While
in the US only about a dozen people ever went to prison
for being Communists, that same number runs in the
thousands in Germany. The communist party was forbidden by
the German high court, and party members who continued
their activities were arrested and sent to prison.
Need we forget that the Stasi of the hostile East German state were right next door?
The Stasi was headquartered in East Berlin, with an
extensive complex in Berlin-Lichtenberg and several
smaller facilities throughout the city. It was widely
regarded as one of the most effective and repressive
intelligence and secret police agencies in the world. The
Stasi motto was "Schild und Schwert der Partei" (Shield
and Sword of the Party), that is the ruling Socialist
Unity Party of Germany (SED). Now considered a criminal
organisation, several Stasi officials were prosecuted for
their crimes after 1990.
Lest we forget, the GDR was also a vassal of the nuclear-armed Soviet Union, and the KGB was not an imaginary entity. Communism was no joke. See "The Lives of Others" if you want to see what East Germany was like when this guy grew up:
yeah, reading him feels like he's been totally disconnected from reality or managed to forget the circumstances of that era in Europe, where fighting communism was real not just a propaganda witchhunt. hence my comment before, many of his observations are totally out of context.
Hm can you elaborate on that? In the US they teach that McCarthyism was an absurd witchhunt, but it seems to me that the Soviet Union and the US were pretty much just as much enemies as West Germany. Why is it so much different?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
Lest we forget, the GDR was also a vassal of the nuclear-armed Soviet Union, and the KGB was not an imaginary entity. Communism was no joke. See "The Lives of Others" if you want to see what East Germany was like when this guy grew up:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/
Incredibly, not a single mention of East Germany or the GDR in this entire document.