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It is often stated that most West Germans were hardly interested in East Germany during the Cold War. If so, what were they concerned with instead?...

While West Germans may have retained a certain cultural kinship with Germans who became part of East Germany, there was, however, for many the pressure to take sides in the binary hostility between the "free" nations of the West and the communist nations of Eastern Europe. With the US and the Soviet Union the chief powers in this "cold war," West and East Germans may well have been keenly interested in what was happening across the border between them, as the two nations were proximate "laboratories" in the competition between the two systems. In addition, many families had been split by the formation of the two nations, and Germans in both countries were desperate to hear news of their isolated family members.


Since one of the paramount concerns of the Cold War was the race to prove that each side provided a better way of life for its citizens, West Germany was eager to show that it provided more material prosperity than communist East Germany. West Germany indeed accomplished this feat via its Wirtschaftwunder or "economic miracle," which saw West Germany (and Austria) emerge from the devastation of the war and embark on an era of stunning economic growth.


Boosted by generous aid from America's Marshall Plan, West Germany easily outpaced East Germany in economic output, a contrast understood more easily when one considers that the Soviet Union was also devastated by the war and lacked the resources America could provide to help East Germany keep pace economically with West Germany.

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