WI: The Berlin Wall Was Never Built?

What if the Berlin Wall was never built, would DDR have been stronger or weaker? Would the DDR have spread further than north Germany into West Germany?
 
The Wall was built in 1961 to stem the tide of defections to the more prosperous West, which was draining East Germany of skilled labor. If the Wall was never built, the defections would have continued and East Germany's economy would have been weaker. The only way the DDR was going to spread into the West was a war; there was no chance of it spreading into the West. By 1961, the "economic miracle" had returned West Germany to a relatively prosperous state of affairs while East Germany's economy was still sputtering along like a Trabant with a bad valve.
 
Does this assume that Berlin goes entirely to East Germany and the Weat has to pick a new capital, or does this assume that people who wanted to leave East Germany could just step into West Berlin and hitchhike to the West if they felt like it?
 
No Berlin Wall built? In the early seventies, maybe even the late sixties, the GDR's population will drop below ten million.
 

James G

Gone Fishin'
No Berlin Wall built? In the early seventies, maybe even the late sixties, the GDR's population will drop below ten million.

Not just that but also those who would go would be 'the best' as was the case before the Wall went up. The young, the educated, the highly-trained. That's what was killing East Germany demographically before and it would only get worse.
 
Not just that but also those who would go would be 'the best' as was the case before the Wall went up. The young, the educated, the highly-trained. That's what was killing East Germany demographically before and it would only get worse.

What worries me is those remaining are also going to be those who are the lowest-educated, most tied to the Soviet economy and political system, and dedicated Communists, which means you run the very real risk of sinking future German unification or attempts at economic/political reform in the nation. I expect a much stronger Russian position/puppet mastery in the country and therefore, while impoverishing the nation itself, soldifying the Iron Curtain and stabilizing the Warsaw Pact by increasing power and economic projection into Eastern Europe. Not to mention, after the USSR falls (If it does as soon as in our timline), will West Germany want to take up the burden of rebuilding that scrapheap?
 
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