Fate of an East Germany that survives

samcster94

Banned
With a POD between November 9th 1989 and October 3rd 1990, East Germany has to survive and as a democracy on peace with West Germany. No North Korea expies are allowed, but something like a DDR version of Orban is allowed. What can be done to make this happen??? They had a new non-Communist Constitution written that never got used, I'd love to see it used in TTL. I know the economics would not be pretty as it'd be a poorer country and its borders would be a mess.
 
Only hope of DDR is to keep Soviet Union around and Communists on power in DDR. Without both DDR will be worse as just failed state. November '89 is absolutely too late for survival of DDR. Immediately when it opens its borders all well-educated and young people will move to West. There would be soon only few old commie in DDR.
 
Basically the DDR was doomed once that the 1989 Revolutions started: the Inner German Border would eventually fall, even if this could take a bit longer than OTL and the country would be soon emptied.
The division of Germany after WWII was a purely political and artificial one and, except for some die-hard communists or regional rivalries, the general idea of a one Germany was never totally removed. This was more tempting from the eastern side when your potential partner was just one of the richest countries in the world.
A hurried Reunfication, which wasn’t the first West German idea in late 1989 soon became the only solution to avoid a DDR complete collapse and a disorganized migratory tsunami to the West.
Even if this is postponed (e.g: a customs and monetary union between BDR and DDR with existence of a formally independent DDR), full reunification wouldn’t take long...simply there was no reason to keep two independent German states side-by-side
 

Perkeo

Banned
I'm afraid that the two alternatives are unification or communism, literally everything else is ASB. Just look at the election results from March 18 1990:
53.3% for parties that wanted immediate unification
21.9% SPD - who wanted the slow path to unification
16.4% Communists
In other words, the East Germans fell only just short of unanimously rejecting the concept of neither communism nor unification.
 
Yes...and from a West Germany perspective, which Chancellor wouldn’t like to make history as the “unite the Heimat Chancellor”?

If Kohl decided to act in an über rational manner (e.g: no union to avoid burden to the BDR taxpayers), SPD would soon be available to unify things : )
 
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