Germany's Unlikely Diplomatic Triumph: Inside Look at Reunification Negotiations
spiegel.de
spiegel.de
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.
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.
People were welcoming Nazis as liberators back in the day, which should say a bit about how bad the soviets were.
Do you have a citation for that?
Core Russian regions (Volga river basin, for example) also had famines just as bad.
Same thing with Belarus.
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...
Man made famine in Ukraine should be more well known. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
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.
Not going to argue.
> We're all incredibly lucky that the soviet union folded into dust [...]
> People were welcoming Nazis as liberators back in the day
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Granted this is probably used as anti-communism propaganda, but author really means what he draws.. For the subject, http://redprimer.com/page35.php
As long as they were not in the Nazis' "don't belong on this planet" list.
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.
They had no Soviets to get rid of by the time they welcomed the Nazis.