I don’t understand people who can’t see the difference.
I was in East Berlin for a few hours or so in 1980. They were still doing reconstruction of bombed sites then, 35 years after the end of WWII. BTW, today is the 67th Anniversary of V-E Day.
Yes, indeed, freedom makes an amazing difference.
/johnny
The “before” pictures look like Detroit. I don’t think there will be any “after” pictures for Detroit.
Beautiful. Thanks for posting that.
I had heard this in the 1980s - the East German government didn’t bother cleaning up the war mess. This is great to see - shove it in the FACE of leftists. They had 45 years to clean it up and didn’t bother.
As an Army brat, I had an occasion to take a tour into East Berlin (they were allowed then, for some reason ... no pictures allowed) in either 1960 or 1961 (I was 15 at the time) and found the place very depressing and desolate.
It’s great, but it’s not completely clear. Text says 1 decade apart, title says plural decades apart
My friend's brother still lived over in the East. When he visited he found the family had a ration ticket of 1 gallon of paint per year. They were saving them up hoping that paint would be once again on the market. I believe they lived in the town where modern paint was invented.
The only excuse for the GDR is that the Russians assigned tasks to them to do (industrially) and they did them, and the people who lived there simply didn't count.
You probably don't know it but even the most modern office buildings for party officials in Russia itself had wooden door lintels and doors. They look pretty enough, some were carved ~ but finding a metal lintel or door was difficult because ALL metal production went first to the Military.
And that meant ALL. One of the reasons older pictures of metal incorporated in Russian, and East-Bloc architecture looks like it's been rehabilitated from somewhere else.
The Ernst Thaelman Factory in Suhl did some good work
communism produces sloth and corruption....as the society crumbles so does the infrastructure.
capitalism (even just a little bit of it) offers freedom and choice and inspires innovation and industriousness
It is interesting to note that the Germans have tried to preserve and restore their historic buildings.
From a socialist paradise to a decadent capitalist nightmare in just two decades. /S
“Freedom makes an amazing difference.”
Oh Yeah! Thanks for the post SWAMPSNIPER.
That pride of ownership makes a difference. Who is going to waste the effort to maintain community property when they have no stake in the investment?
Compare and contrast with Detroit over the same time period.
Thanks for posting.
If you have not seen this movie, you must rent it. It's in the list of my five favorite movies of all-time.
it’s the same with all of the former Eastern Bloc including Russia — a centralized economy cannot manage the complexity of an industrialized world. The communists had massive shortages of everything including paint.