Cold War propaganda in Germany

During the Cold War, the two German countries — the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic — viewed themselves among other things as representatives of their respective ideological systems and political camps. Their common language induced them to put much effort into 'proving' to each other their respective superiority.

Various means were employed for this argument, both verifiable facts and subjective propaganda, up to and including the spreading of lies. In the 1950s, both sides put roughly equal amounts of effort into this argument. Later, in particular during the chancellorship of Willy Brandt, the official stance of the Federal Republic changed because the focus moved from confrontation to coexistence. The attitude of the GDR changed as well, partly because the coexistence brought it benefits as well.

After this time, wrong and disparaging claims were restricted in Germany largely to the right of the political spectrum, in particular the Axel Springer Verlag publishing house — especially its Die Welt and Bild-Zeitung papers — parts of the CDU party, and the political journalist Gerhard Löwenthal, while the government tried to put forward a more discerning view, for example in the schools.

The change in the GDR, while it was there, was smaller; its official view of things continued to be propagated fairly absolutely, especially in the schools. The most prominent exponent of this confrontational approach in the media was probably Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler, who commented in his Der schwarze Kanal TV show on West German TV in a critical and polemic manner.

Parallel to the shift to less confrontational content, the methods employed changed as well from the crude means used at first. While in the Fifties techniques included dropping leaflets from planes and jamming radio transmissions, and the print media of the respective other sides were not allowed to be distributed, later there was more freedom, especially for electronic media. Starting in the 1970s, listening to Western radio or viewing TV was hardly still persecuted in the GDR; in the 1980s some West German stations were even retransmitted to areas where they could not otherwise be received because it was found that emigration was lower where Western TV was available. At the same time, however, Western print media were still tightly controlled and censored in the GDR. In the Federal Republic, GDR television was distributed through the cable network; Eastern print media could be imported and distributed without restriction from 1968.

Despite these improved information flows in both directions, some people on both sides continued to hold on to old prejudices, either for ideological reasons or because they did not want to bother with updating their view of the other side.

Citizens of the GDR sometimes thought that the political climate in the Federal Republic was more right-wing than it actually was. This was probably helped by the official presentation of Western politics by the GDR government, which frequently differentiated little between the numerous non-socialist and non-communist attitudes. Also, the social environment in the Federal Republic was viewed by some as more secure than they actually were, a misunderstanding helped by a lack of actual experience of life in the West.

In the West, the standard of living in the GDR was sometimes underestimated in the later years. On the other hand, others overestimated the power of the Eastern industry, which after the reunification turned out to be much less competitive than previously thought. Also, helped by wide-spread secrecy and lack of free speech in the GDR, most people in the West overestimated the GDR's stability, which caused great surprise about the speed of the collapse in 1989.

External links

• GDR-Wiki (in German) (http://www.meine-notizen.de/wiki/ddr.pl)
• East German Propaganda Archive (http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/gdrmain.htm)de:Deutsch-deutscher Systemwettstreit