Abstract
The German Democratic Republic (GDR) is doubly penetrated: politically, militarily, and economically by the Soviet Union, but also economically, culturally, by the mass media, and through them politically as well by West Germany. The GDR is neither democratic nor a republic, but it is as German as it dares and only as Soviet as its Communist ruling elite thinks it must be in order to maintain themselves in power. During World War II, the German Communist leaders in exile in Moscow planned, presumably under Soviet direction, minimally to sovietize rapidly the Soviet zone of Germany and maximally to sovietize all of it. East Germany included the core of Prussia's combination of work ethic, respect for authority, ambivalence in attitudes toward the West, and little experience of democracy. There followed a wave of protests in both German states by intellectuals, especially by writers, and also Evangelical prayer services in all the major East German cities and many smaller ones.
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