• TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    27 days ago

    It’s been a long time (I think it was an old Proles of the Round Table episode?) but I remember hearing that when Germany reunified the West German state that essentially became the entire German state kicked people out of their houses to return the properties to Nazis and their descendants who’d had it seized in the aftermath of WW2 and German partition, so loath was the West German government to allow anyone to face the slightest consequence for being a Nazi.

    EDIT: if anyone is interested in looking into this, the organization responsible was called the Treuhand I think? I believe it means Trust Agency or something like that.

    • tripartitegraph [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      27 days ago

      In Blackshirts and Reds, Parenti also talks about how East German officials who prosecuted collaborators were, after reuinfication, held liable to West German laws that made their earlier rulings illegal.
      From the footnote on page 83:

      Helene Heymann, who had been imprisoned during the Hitler regime for her anti-Nazi activities, later was a judge in the GDR, where she presided over anti-sabotage trials. She was put on trial in 1996. When her conviction was read out, it was pointed out by the judge that an additional factor against her was that she was trained by a Jewish lawyer who had been a defense attorney for the Communists and Social Democrats.

      • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        27 days ago

        Yeah I remember them mentioning that a bunch of productive state owned enterprises got privatized and sold off to capitalists who then shut them down for being insufficiently profitable, resulting in mass unemployment, which also is incredibly awful.

        The reunification seems like one of the the biggest non-war related disasters of the 20th century.

          • TheLepidopterists [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            27 days ago

            Yeah, I can’t think of anything in modern history that feels like it set humanity as far back as the Soviet Union and allied socialist states collapsing.

            EDIT: also, sorry if it sounded like I was trivializing the other collapses, I’m just not as familiar with them.