Y was there a need for the unification of Germany?

Question

its an assignment that i shud do

Answer 1

With an open border and claiming the same people, the FRG and GDR couldn't have coexisted for a longer time. After the opening of the wall, people of the GDR travelled abroad enormously. Many of them simply stayed there, especially high qualifyed workers. But the rest as well needed foreign money, which was quite rare in this country, but was expected to be given by the government. At the same time, the industry already hardly could compete with the western one.

This state was economicly bleeding to death since Nov 9th '89.

Additionally many conservatives in the FRG, among them of course chancellor Kohl, saw their chance to be come. They never accepted the existance of a second state on german ground, and now they did what they could do to destabalize the situation and change the public oppinion in their neighbour state from the will to inner reforms to one for a united Germany. Appeareantly quite sucessful.

And then, of course, there was a will of many GDR citizens to be a part of a state with real (and not just propagated) economic power.

From today, it's hard to say, if there was an alternative, that would have worked. But for sure, keeping up the GDR, it would have taken decades to make it a sucessful state in a free world, even in the best case.

Some additional stuff: Some of the answerers try to give a fictional compare, how it would be, if that happened in the US. Okay, let's try that:

Divide the country into two parts (north-south; east-west; coastland-heartland... doesn't matter) and leave it like that for a while. After 12 years, you close the border between them, so hardly any more contact is possible. 28 further years later, open it again, and then ask those, who live in these countries, if they feel the need to be "reunited". The answers will be quite different. There will be some, who still feel as US-americans, but others, who see themselfes as citizens of the state, they lived in, maybe for all their live.

Same story in Germany. There were several, really hard discussions. All the autumn and winter '89, everything looked like the two german states would remain, either for a while or forever. Later, the unitiy perspective started to get stronger, but until the election of the Volkskammer (people's chamber; the GDR parliament), when there was a small majority for unification, that really wasn't clear. After that, also most of the other GDR-germans started to give in it (people in the FRG weren't asked).

Don't rely on the media of that time about that. They just showed those, who were cheering for Germany, but not those, who were sceptic or even against it. A united Germany was not common sense.

From a rational view back, unification had to happen former or later. But not because all the people's emotions.

Greets from (eastern) Germany

Answer 2

to consolidate their resources to make it strong economically, after all they are Germans, same race

Answer 3

Because the 2 Germanies were the "artificial" result of the separation after world war II after the victorious Western (the US, France, Great Britain) and Eastern powers (former Soviet Union) had devided the country. It had always been a major goal of all governments of the Western part of Germany to reunite both parts in the future. The economy of the GDR (Eastern part) was completey broke in 1989 and people in this part were fed up with the undemocratic prison-like state of "their" Germany.

U2_rich: There is no German "race" it's just the same "people"! Americans are no "race" either!

Answer 4

Maybe there was no need but the system in the GDR had to collapse at some point.

I was born in there in 1982 myself and was in the german Embassy in Prague the night the wall came down. Still most of my family lives in the East near Chemnitz.

From what my parents told me it couldn't have worked for much longer. Everybody officially had a job but some people were just paid for sitting around playing cards etc.

People who had relatives in the West (like my family) even had a harder time e.g. getting permission to travel. Obviously because the government was afriad they'd stay there.

Or to study things they wanted to.

Everything was controlled by the state and who didn't agree with these views (e.g. in polotical ed in school) got a bad note on the school report (have seen it). Or just think about people spyning on their family, friends and neighbours (watch the Lives of Others for that - it's a great film) on orders of the State.

So even if it hadn't happened in 1989/1990 it would have happened anyway some yaers later.

But without the help of other people (Pope J.PII, M.Gorbatschow, H.Kohl) and the prior developments in other communist countires like Poland it would have taken longer.

Most people are happy that Germany is united again but some are not. I think it's great becasue if it hadn't happened I wouldn't have had the chance of doing all the travelling I did and wouldn't be where I am now - in Dublin.

Answer 5

Why have two Germanys, when you can have one big happy Germany?

Answer 6

I dont know the reason why but here is what happened......During the defeat of Hitler in WW2 there was the Brits, America, and Russia.....everyone wanted to control a part of germany after the war because they felt they had ''conquered'' this land...so all the nuckel heads got together and said ok...well as you can imagine russia took was the ''east germany'' and Britian and America took ''west germany''  well while the brits and america and others helped rebuild russia did nothing more than put up a wall because all the easteners were running like crazy to the west....Well after Diplomatic blah blah blah....the wall was torn down and ''returned'' by russia.....I live here and beleive me...this is not what the people of west germany wanted....but they embraced the people and sent money and help and blah blah blah....and IDK if you ever been to east germany but they spent all the money on new cars and such and didnt rebuild..  Now today the people in the eastland want more money and are complaining that the west is not helping them out...and there really not no more because the peeps are lazy and get it together...So since there is not a ''wall''(that people want to put back up) There is a border among the people that starts where the wall once was.  This is alot of drama here in Germany and I dont understand much either and I live here because these people today are somewhat very Cockky and humble to other countries but not people that are a part of their own....There is alot of resentment and regret in Germany because of this and with ''this'' comes huge un-emplyoment (many east germans) and high taxes (%20) from your work check....so the question is on everyone's mind here..(oh and its not the GDR...The DDR-Deutsche Demokratische Republik,....... and the BDR Bundes Republic Deutschland)...(the history books in the US are wrong.)

.Y was there a need for the unification of Germany?

Answer 7

Germany was forcefully divided into two parts by powers beyond its control - the emerging Cold War between Russia and the USA. First the Potsdam Agreement created 4 different sectors, then the political agenda the Soviet Union and the USA had in store for Germany created 2 German states.

Nobody in Germany ever wanted 2 separate states - from the beginning onward German politicians strove to unite Germany. The West-German constitution stated this as well as the text of the East German national anthem. The goal was not achieved until 1990 due to political issues. The Soviets did not want East Germany to be annexed into Western Germany, they instead envisioned a Western Germany that left the NATO and became either part of the communist bloc or a neutral state (like Switzerland).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Occu...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Demo...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...

So yes, there was a need -  a need of the heart. The Wall had separated families: mothers from their children, siblings, husbands from their wives, friends etc. It was just inevitable that Germany would become one again.

I mean, imagine some weird dictator erecting a wall along the broadway in New York City, straight through Manhattan. Image people who live in New Jersey or Staten Island waking up one morning and not being able to get to Queens or Manhattan to work or to visit their family. That's how it was when the Berlin Wall was built.

Answer 8

If you want an answer from a cynical east german... So it would be easier for west germans to make empty promises, drain east germany of all it's resources and then leave the area and the people there with nothing...in my opinion it was for economic reasons, but not necessarily to do east germany a favour as it's often portrayed. You wouldn't call buying factories from someone for 1DM a favour now would you, which is something that happened a lot and helped west german companies immensly to get rid of a lot of potential competition.

Answer 9

I would think just the pictures of the people who were shot to death trying to escape east germany  and left hanging on the barb wire would be answer enough.

Answer 10

because it was forcefully devided in 1949

Sandy, you're talking ****, you said nothing has been rebuilt in East Germany, that is so not true, everything has been rebuilt, I'm East German, I see a lot of new buildings and people are not lazy either, I'm sure you must be West German, what a c**p. You probably never been to East Germany before, that's why you don't know anything. Or maybe you just went to small villages that are like behind the moon. Even in my small town a lot of things got done.

JK: you're right

Answer 11

As a West German, I'll give you a simple answer, and as a child of that time (it was the 1980ies when I grew up), I'll give you another one:

First, as to my West German mind: It simply doesn't feel good to be the potential target in a possible nuclear war between the Soviet and U.S. government. It really feels like [some word I'm not allowed to post here].

Second, I was in Berlin when the wall came down, and don't be mistaken: Germans in the East and in the West, they didn't speak the same language anymore. It was German, after all, but there were things I didn't understand, and there were thing's they didn't comprehend. They watched our Western TV (secretly), but they didn't understand our way of life.

We're growing together, slowly but surely, and it's a good thing for the people.

There might be some economic and political reasoning, as to: The European Union would never have come into true existence without the German reunification. B'sh'! If it hadn't been for Gorbatchev to let the GDR loose, we'd have made it alone, and that's a fact. But we (or at least, the thinking majority) appreciates them being with us now.

You cannot reason on a political or economical scale about that. Can you imagine a wall being built through the United States? You had the segregationists, the civil war, and all that. Yes, sure. But did anybody ever build a wall right through a city in the United States? They separated friends from friends, relatives from relatives, and many a person went to jail for not complying with the regime. (In the East and in the West, too; that's a fact that keeps being denied.) And many a person was shot for just trying (or while trying) to cross a border that wasn't ever recognized by any government in the world, but did physically exist.

Now, in the name of freedom and democracy: How can anyone say there was no need for the unification of Germany?

---

@JK, what do YOU know, kid? We were at the edge of the final war, with both sides having their nuclear armament ready to fire. It was a mutual agreement between the West and the East, and don't think the German people ever had a say in that matter. They didn't.