In 1952 Stalin offered a neutral, reunited Germany, and the West declined
Three years after East Germany was founded, Joseph Stalin proposed reuniting the country as a neutral state, promising free speech, free assembly and democratic parties. The Western powers refused, wanting Germany free to join NATO. Within a year Stalin was dead, his successor dropped the idea, and the division lasted until 1990.
The German Democratic Republic grew out of the Soviet occupation zone, made up of five states including Saxony, Brandenburg and Thuringia. Its ruling Socialist Unity Party was created in 1946 by merging the eastern Communists and Social Democrats, long bitter rivals. Official histories called it a voluntary union, but there is much evidence of heavy Soviet pressure on the Social Democrats, with the Communists effectively in control. The state was formally founded on 7 October 1949, with Wilhelm Pieck as president and Walter Ulbricht holding most executive power.
Even names became weapons. West Germans at first avoided the official title, speaking instead of the 'Eastern Zone' or the 'so-called GDR', and referred to the leadership by its East Berlin district, Pankow. East Germany, for its part, treated West Germans as foreigners after its 1968 constitution, and in 1974 it removed the goal of reunification from its constitution altogether. Before the war, 'East Germany' had meant something else entirely: all the land east of the Elbe.
Its centrally planned economy became the most successful in the Eastern Bloc despite heavy reparations to the Soviet Union, yet it kept losing people. Many who fled westward were young and well educated, so in 1961 the government fortified the border and built the Berlin Wall, and many would-be escapees were killed. Between 180,000 and 250,000 people are estimated to have been imprisoned on political grounds over the regime's life.
The end came quickly. Peaceful protests that began in Leipzig helped bring down the Wall in 1989, a free election followed, and the four wartime Allies negotiated a treaty with both German states. On 3 October 1990 the five eastern states joined the Federal Republic and East Berlin merged with West Berlin. Russian forces remained on former East German soil until 1994.
Source: East Germany
