The Governmental System and Political History of the GDR

Abstract

Abstract In 1949, five years after the end of the Second World War, the joint military regime over defeated Germany came to an end and two German states were founded, the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Both were part and parcel of the larger strategies of the two main powers, US and USSR. The foundation of two separate, semi-sovereign states in Germany was the result of the final collapse of the anti-war coalition. The political system established in East Germany reflected the interests of the Soviet Union to build a cordon sanitaire of socialist states in Eastern Europe, including the eastern part of Germany. From the early days until its end in 1990, the GDR remained a political system not of its own right but as a vassal of the Soviet Union. This chapter describes the development of the political system in the Soviet Zone of Occupation, the later GDR, which began immediately after the end of the war and laid the very foundations of a Stalinist regime, which, despite various changes, political turmoil, and ambivalent attempts of reforming the political, economic, and social system, was never overcome in the forty years the GDR existed. The ruling communist party, theSocialist Unity Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED), was concerned with directing and controlling state and society. Its self-proclaimed omnipotence was not restricted simply to the state organization and the governmental system but included the economy, education, culture, and the way ordinary people could conduct their everyday life.