FRG denying reunification of Germany

Hello there,

since I have been on a trip to the former GDR territories the last few days, I began to think about what would have happened if the FRG had said:

"Reunification?!? Never..."

What would the GDR have been like in the year 2013?
Would the east-west conflict and the cold war between the U.S. and USSR still be ongoing?
 
IIRC didn't West Germany offer automatic citizenship to all ethnic Germans? If they don't unify with East Germany then they could end up getting buried under the mass of people moving there for a better life, whilst subsidising the former eastern states was, and still is, a financial black hole it at least avoids mass population shifts.
 
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For this to happen you either need the FRG to be much weaker economically or for the GDR to have been a North Korea style hellhole that needs colossal levels of investment to bring it up to the FRG's level. Whichever way Re-unification is going to happen at some point.
 
Alternatively, you could somehow strengthen the national identities of Easy and West Germany as separate states, although I am not sure how to go about doing this.
 

Pomphis

Banned
IIRC didn't West Germany offer automatic citizenship to all ethnic Germans?

From the west german POV all east germans and west germans were simply german citizens. An east german could walk into any west german embassy anywhere (provided he got out of east germany first) and ask for a (west) german passport. They were not offered citizenship, they already had it.

In addition, under the west german constitution any east german land could simply by saying so join the FRG.
 
From the west german POV all east germans and west germans were simply german citizens. An east german could walk into any west german embassy anywhere (provided he got out of east germany first) and ask for a (west) german passport. They were not offered citizenship, they already had it.
In addition, under the west german constitution any east german land could simply by saying so join the FRG.

Indeed, and they'd probably never get the needed majority to change the constitution.
Plus in this scenario the CDU/CSU would have to be willing to lose a significant part of their voter base; and in the case of a blunt and simple 'NO' to reunification several members of the parliaments (federal and state level) would defect to more rightwing parties in an instant (the 'Republikaner' spawned off the CSU anyways)
 

Deimos

Banned
Hello there,

since I have been on a trip to the former GDR territories the last few days, I began to think about what would have happened if the FRG had said:

"Reunification?!? Never..."

What would the GDR have been like in the year 2013?
Would the east-west conflict and the cold war between the U.S. and USSR still be ongoing?

Do you want the government of the FRG to vote against reunification or do you want the whole population to be against it?
The first can probably be achieved if a left-wing Social Democrat is in power. The SPD was in large parts sceptical towards reunification and maybe Oskar Lafontaine as chancellor with a cabinet of his followers would do it (although it would surely be political suicide).

For the other option you need a cultural shift. Many left-wing intellectuals believed the forced dismemberment a justly deserved result for the crimes of WW 2 and were very opposd to a reunification since it would seem as if Germany was absolved from her crimes. There were also concerns that GDR citizens were only interested in obtaining West German currency. So xou could maybe create a backlash with that or make the left-wing view I described above more widespread.


For the whole, the GDR was in no shape to withstand the fall of the Eastern Bloc IOTL and it was too small to temporarily halt the process even if it would have remained commuist. For the OP to suceed the majority of the Warsaw Pact has to stay communist and that requires a POD several decades before the reunification IOTL and not just the FRG to refrain from attempting reunification.
 
Hello there,

since I have been on a trip to the former GDR territories the last few days, I began to think about what would have happened if the FRG had said:

"Reunification?!? Never..."

What would the GDR have been like in the year 2013?
Would the east-west conflict and the cold war between the U.S. and USSR still be ongoing?

I think Re-unification was granted. IMO, it was question of sooner or later. USSR would have collapsed whatever happened to Re-unification.
Lets say re-unification was long term process and GDR still function as separate state, very close to fully integration.
It sure would have been Democratic State.
In economic term it woulld be par with OTL Czech or maybe bit better.
Only thing is whether outright unification was better solution
or long-term process...
 
I think Re-unification was granted. IMO, it was question of sooner or later. USSR would have collapsed whatever happened to Re-unification.

Reunification happened as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union (which happened over several years); if the USSR had'nt dissolved then it's more likely than not that their would be no reunification, but rather a situation sort of like with North Korea where the FRG wants it, but the Soviets prop-up the DDR government (opposing it unless it's under their conditions) while at the same time vaguely supporting reunification at some illdefined future date when certain conditions (some of which are non-starters) are met.
 
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Reunification happened as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union(which happened over several years); if the USSR had'nt dissolved then it's more likely than not that their would be no reunification, but rather a situation sort of like with North Korea where the FRG wants it, but the Soviets prop-up the DDR government (opposing it unless it's under their conditions) while at the same time vaguely supporting reunification at some illdefined future date when certain conditions (some fo which are non-starters) are met.

Doubt it. In OTL the Reunification came before the Soviet Union broke up, with the okay from moscow.
 
You could stop Reunification in another way: "Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany"

Had France, Britain, the US or Russia not given green light on Reunification, there wouldn't have been much both Germanies (is that the correct Plural?) could have done.
Maybe lobbied their cause a bit, but it wouldn't have happened.

The FRG denying Reunification by itself was very very unlikely. Nobody thought about the Economic problems at the time (at least not loud enough) and the political climate was very supportive of the idea.
And the there is the Basic Law, which practically demands a Reunification of German under it.

Simply said, the FRG would not deny Reunification by itself, but if the Allies decide to block this approach, then I can see the FRG denying it.
 
Reunification happened as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union(which happened over several years); if the USSR had'nt dissolved then it's more likely than not that their would be no reunification, but rather a situation sort of like with North Korea where the FRG wants it, but the Soviets prop-up the DDR government (opposing it unless it's under their conditions) while at the same time vaguely supporting reunification at some illdefined future date when certain conditions (some fo which are non-starters) are met.

I know, but technically USSR still not disintegrated during reunification process. It just USSR was powerless and had barely hold the its Republics.
 
If for whatever reason the GDR survives, then it would be more or less like the Czech republic right now: it's industrial base was decent for a Eastern Bloc country, it's only that in comparison to the West its products failed internally and due to the way the Deutschmark was introduced that it lost its foreign markets. With the GDR staying separate and having its own currency, that wouldn't happen, that's why I would think Czech-republic-like. Probabably a bit better due to Western German investment, which ITTL would come significantly due to the better exchange rate and the much lower wages in GDR which never materialized IOTL. Effectively, GDR would be the cheap neighbour of the FRG for years, similar to what Poland and the Czech republic are to some extent today.

Naturally, the GDR would have a significantly lower population. There actually was a mass movement IOTL, and it's still ongoing to some degree, but that is nothing in comparison to what would actually have happened.

Also: Berlin would be a financial and economic mess, even worse than IOTL.
 
Also: Berlin would be a financial and economic mess, even worse than IOTL.

Berlin would be a shitty city to live in. The FRG government remains in Bonn and both city parts have now to cooperate much much more than before. The Wall is gone and you are basically talking about a "united" city split into two parts.

I don't want to see the nightmare that planning projects like the new airport will become. Now not only incompetent planners will cause failures, you also have to coordinate the whole project between two states. Nightmare fuel...

I like the analogy with the Czech Republic. The GDR will probably end up like that. Member of the EU, but dwarfed by the FRG.

The whole thing with citizenship will cause a lot of problems. It will improve via the EU, but if the GDR doesn't get the support it needs, many people will leave for the FRG. Maybe even more than in OTL, depending on how reliable the government is seen.
 
I read some passages here about the German basic law and it's "Demand for Unity" which toggled me to think, what would much younger politicians have decided if they had been in power at that time instead of Helmut Kohl, who made decisions at that time driven by his own personal experiences.

Could this demand have been scrapped away by those younger politicians?
I mean, it is possible, as far as I regard correctly, the Bundestag can scrap anything away with a 2/3 majority.

And if the GDR existed until today, would it be more like North Korea with some group of hardliners in charge or something like Venezuela?
 
And if the GDR existed until today, would it be more like North Korea with some group of hardliners in charge or something like Venezuela?

The old government of the GDR could not hold itself. It had never the same propaganda hold on its population, sooner or later the people would have fought against it.
And with Russia no longer putting down any uprisings, there was no way the GDR would end up like North Korea.

Maybe a modernized communist or authoritarian state, but not on the level of North Korea.
 
I think it would take an ASB with a FutureScope (TM), showing the good burghers of the FRG exactly what an economic burden they were about to take on, to swing that one.
 
The Reunification of Germany was in 1990; the Soviet Union began falling apart in 1988.

True but the expectation was a long, slow decline like the Ottoman Empire, not a sudden implosion during a time of peace.

Unless the FRG ended its instant citizenship policy for East Germans, the DDR was unsustainable. In 1989, schools were closing due to the sheer flight of students and teachers. Hospitals and government offices were running short on staff. As long as a free way out was available, any such state was bound to collapse.
 
True but the expectation was a long, slow decline like the Ottoman Empire, not a sudden implosion during a time of peace.

Unless the FRG ended its instant citizenship policy for East Germans, the DDR was unsustainable. In 1989, schools were closing due to the sheer flight of students and teachers. Hospitals and government offices were running short on staff. As long as a free way out was available, any such state was bound to collapse.

Well yes, but the point I was making was that a Soviet Union that did'nt start collapsing like that would very likely not have been any more keen on German Reunification than China is on Korean Reunification, indeed probably less so as the Chinese are atleast willing to accept American troops in a Unified Korea so long as they stay south of the then former DMZ.
 
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