Comments
Loki-L t1_iy38zwv wrote
By the time they came up with that idea it was arguably already too late.
Had they cracked down on the first Monday protests at the beginning, things might have gone differently.
Each week people saw that the protests were not violently crushed and more decided to take the risk to join the next Monday.
The more people joined the harder crushing the protest became and the safer protesting became.
The safer the protests appeared the easier it was for people to decide to take the risk to join.
They couldn't prevent their people from learning about the movement because radio and TV broadcast from west Germany and West Berlin reached much of East Germany. They couldn't pretend the protest weren't happening and were to afraid to violently crush them.
It didn't help that the whole apparatus of the GDR discouraged people at the bottom of the hierarchy from showing imitative and that people at all levels had the impression that if push came to shove their superiors wouldn't have their backs and they would need to get everything in writing and look out for themselves first.
This is how it ended too.
On November 9th Günter Schabowski was announcing new travel regulations that he had not really been briefed on in detail at an international press conference. What was meant as a one-way safety valve to get rid of the worst trouble makers in a last ditch effort. Was misinterpreted as a free for all abolishing of all travel restrictions and when one reported asked when this would come into effect he simply said "As far as I know immediately, without delay".
Nobody in power was able or willing to correct that mistake and the low level soldiers manning the border checkpoints and their superiors knew they were fucked. Nobody in power would go on record to issue any orders. If they tried anything not only would they receive violence from the mob that wanted to pass though, but they would also be thrown to the wolves by the rulers for having acted without orders.
Even if orders had come down at that point, they might not have been followed. The people didn't necessarily want to shoot their fellow citizens after all.
That is the problem with the whole only following orders mentality. Without orders there were precious few willing to show any kind of initiative that would put them at risk.
herbw t1_iy3v32t wrote
The exact same process is ongoing in Iran and Chung Hua today on the streets. Over 75% of the people of teheran hate their gov. Now that same gov is slaughtering their own daughters.
there is NO future in that. Either.
ShalmaneserIII t1_iy3g1mh wrote
> Had they cracked down on the first Monday protests at the beginning, things might have gone differently.
This seems to be a frequent miscalculation of authoritarian regimes- the idea that if they let the boot up for a while it'll be okay and let some pressure off. It does not- it only aggravates the situation.
Once you put the boot down, you must forever keep it down.
herbw t1_iy3vavb wrote
Once they "put the boot down", the outcomes of self destruction are fore-ordained.
Their FIRST & Last miscalculation is their very existence.
herbw t1_iy3u5tn wrote
To make a long story short, the inevitable fall of the corrupt , evil and inefficient USSR, extended to their vassal states.
Look at the Ceauscescu's as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu
Then the remnants of Serbia's Slob-odan Milosevic gov, ended up the same way. Kosovo's genocide his last aberrancy of a totally evil and corrupt system.
MinnesotaMiller t1_iy3okv0 wrote
The Chad West German Capitalists vs. the Virgin East German Communists
Xizorfalleen t1_iy3hs6g wrote
Interesting that there is not a single word about this "Plan X" in the German version of the article.
COMPUTER1313 OP t1_iy3t1yv wrote
I looked at the references and it seems all of the Plan X stuff came from this book: https://www.amazon.com/Stasi-Untold-German-Secret-Police/dp/0813334098/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
herbw t1_iy3tqpj wrote
We might say their attempts at arresting were Arrested. Most ended up in jail for crimes against their own people. Or fled to South Am with their Nazi acquaintances.
litux t1_iy3z3gm wrote
>Most ended up in jail for crimes against their own people.
I don't think that's true.
herbw t1_iy4k2pd wrote
Not citing the facts is also not a reason.
litux t1_iyaaukl wrote
> Egon Krenz, East Germany’s last hard-line Communist leader, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison after 115 days of testimony and evidence in what has come to be known here as “the Politburo trial.” >; > “The defense of the border was placed above human life” in Krenz’s system, presiding Judge Josef Hoch said in a verdict that took two hours to read. > > Two other former Politburo members, Guenther Kleiber and Guenther Schabowski, received sentences of three years each, as Germany continues the slow and difficult process of sorting out blame and punishment for the woes and crimes of the former East Germany. > > Although the Politburo, once the most powerful body in the East German system, consisted of 22 members, few of those have stood or probably will stand trial. Some have been deemed too old or too sick; for others, there has been a lack of admissible evidence. The Politburo trial started out with six defendants, but three were allowed to drop out because of frailty and ill health. > > To further frustrate justice-seekers in Germany’s post-Cold War era, other top Eastern officials have been tried but acquitted because their activities, however inhumane, were legal under East German law. > > https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-aug-26-mn-26083-story.html
COMPUTER1313 OP t1_iy2ifk6 wrote
And the Stasi (East Germany's version of the KGB) took a tall glass of nope when given that order.
> On 8 October 1989, Erich Mielke and Erich Honecker ordered the Stasi to implement "Plan X"—the SED's plan to arrest and indefinitely detain 85,939 East Germans during a state of emergency. According to John Koehler, Plan X had been in preparation since 1979 and was, "a carbon copy of how the Nazi concentration camps got their start after Hitler came to power in 1933."[65]
> By 1984, 23 sites had been selected for "isolation and internment camps." Those who were to be imprisoned in them ran into six categories; including anyone who had ever been under surveillance for anti-state activities, including all members of peace movements which were not under Stasi control.[66]
> According to Anna Funder:
> "The plans contained exact provisions for the use of all available prisons and camps, and when those were full for the conversion of other buildings: Nazi detention centers, schools, hospitals, and factory holiday hostels. Every detail was foreseen, from where the doorbell was located on the house of each person to be arrested to the adequate supply of barbed wire and the rules of dress and etiquette in the camps..."[67]
> However, when Mielke sent the orders, codenamed "Shield" (German: Schild),[65] to each local Stasi precinct to begin the planned arrests, he was ignored. Terrified of an East German version of the mass lynchings of Hungarian secret police agents during the 1956 Revolution, Stasi agents throughout the GDR fortified their office-buildings and barricaded themselves inside.[68]
Some of the hardliners wanted a Tiananmen Square style crackdown in an attempt to stop the fall of East Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_inner_German_border#Refugee_crisis_of_September%E2%80%93November_1989
> Honecker's more fundamental miscalculation was the presumption that by closing East Germany's last open border he had finally imprisoned his country's citizens within their own borders and made it clear that there would be no reform whatsoever – a situation that most East Germans found intolerable. Small pro-democracy demonstrations rapidly swelled into crowds of hundreds of thousands of people in cities across East Germany. The demonstrators chanted slogans such as Wir bleiben hier! ("We're staying here!") – indicating their desire to stay and fight for democracy – and "Wir sind das Volk" ("We are the people"), challenging the SED's claim to speak for the people. Some in the East German leadership advocated a crackdown, particularly the veteran secret police chief Erich Mielke. Although preparations for a Tiananmen Square-style military intervention were well advanced, ultimately the leadership ducked the decision to use force. East Germany was, in any case, in a very different situation from China; it depended on loans from the West and the continued support of the Soviets, both of which would have been critically jeopardised by a massacre of unarmed demonstrators. The Soviet army units in East Germany had reportedly been ordered not to intervene, and the lack of support from the Soviet leadership weighed heavily on the SED leadership as it tried to decide what to do.[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_Revolution#Tiananmen_Square_protests
> The Neues Deutschland, the official newspaper of the SED, supported the crackdown by the Chinese authorities. The German People's Congress proclaimed it was "a defeat for counter-revolutionary forces." Sixteen civil rights activists in East Berlin were arrested for protesting against the actions of the Chinese government.[49]
...
> Officially Honecker resigned due to ill health, but he had been sharply criticized by the party. Although Krenz, 52, was the youngest member of the Politburo, he was a hardliner who had congratulated the Chinese regime on its brutal crushing of the Tiananmen Square demonstration. The New Forum were doubtful about his ability to bring about reform, saying that "he would have to undertake 'tremendous efforts' to dispel the mistrust of a great part of the population."[54]
It would be a very different timeline (and a cursed one) if East Germany's government went forward with the 86,000 arrests or a Tiananmen Square style crackdown in an attempt to stop the reunification with West Germany. Maybe Nuremberg Trials 2.0 with Stasi and military officers trying the "just following orders from Honecker and Mielke" defense argument?