The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #166878 Message #4018228
Posted By: michaelr
09-Nov-19 - 07:25 PM
Thread Name: BS: The Checkpoint Charlie Reunion Book?
Subject: RE: BS: The Checkpoint Charlie Reunion Book?
Today is the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the more momentous occurrences of the post-WWII era. If you had asked me a year previous if such a thing was possible, I would have said, "Not in my lifetime."
The event was hailed as the end of the Cold War and led to the reunification of Germany after more that forty years of partition. But reunification did not heal the schism between Eastern and Western Germans.
Easterners, who had lived under a communist satellite regime since the Soviet Army occupation after WWII, had had guaranteed housing and guaranteed jobs, and were thrown into the deep end of West Germany's capitalist system without much support from Bonn. Many could not adjust to the change, and the former East is still noticeably poorer now - a situation that has led to the rise of nationalist, anti-immigrant political parties and neofascist groups.