The Germans went about World War 2 like it did not happen and they did not talk about anything that had to do with the war. They decided that they were going to start off with a clean slate and start anew. World War 2 was a horrible tragedy especially on Germany’s part. They were targeting civilians, as well as Jews. Germany also got hit the hardest during the way, and they are still to this day renovating buildings from the war.
East and the West Germany shaped historical memory in multiple ways. For example the Soviets built a monument in 1945, right after the war, to celebrate the victory of the war. . The Soviets also produced a crazy amount of tanks, which was one of the reasons that the allies won the war. Ronald Reagan also gave an important speech around that time and he said; “Mr Gorbachev open the gate! Tear down the wall.” This was really important because they did not have any idea that the wall was going to come down after this speech. The Berlin wall coming down was a complete accident.
On the Eastern side there was a monument for the books that they burned during the war. In 1943 over 20,000 books were burned. I thought it was interesting how they said, “whenever books were burned, men would be burned as well,” because that was a completely true statement. So many innocent people died during this war, and the fact that they only targeted people that were not Hitler’s “superior race.”
After the Berlin wall was put up in 1961, the people in East and West Berlin were in agreement that they wanted the wall down. By putting up the wall they were separating people from their families, if they lived in different parts. People also had to get new jobs if they lived in East Berlin, but worked in West Berlin. There were also many differences between the two. The key difference between East and West Germany is that East Germany had a communist system, while West Germany was democratic. The East German economy is a little behind West Germany. A reason for this is because most of the big corporations and headquarters are in Western Germany. Eastern Germany is also still going through a lot of construction from the war still.
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