After the end of World War II Germany was separated into nation-states. Each nation-state was governed by a different country because officials could not agree on peace terms. The

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

had claimed the eastern portion of the country. In 1947, the "German People's Congress for Unity and Just Peace" met in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. The Congress was to take the demands of all the occupied zones, and create a peace treaty which would enact a centralized German government. In order to have their nation-state properly represented, the Soviets created the

German Democratic Republic German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

in 1949 when they officially approved their constitution in May.

Purpose

The purpose of

propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...

in the German Democratic Republic was to maintain the

Soviet ideology The ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was Bolshevist Marxism–Leninism, an ideology of a centralised command economy with a vanguardist one-party state to realise the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviet Union' ...

of socialism. Through various forms of propaganda, such as posters, pamphlets and speeches, the Soviet Union censored the ideas of the allied forces and the outside world from the citizens of Eastern Germany. News published in the GDR was intended to inform the East German public of how current events fitted into "the overall pattern of historical necessity", with news editors specifically instructed by the government to extract "from every item of news its possible relevance to the global struggle between capitalism and communism". The GDR's propaganda also sought to portray the United States of America and other countries of the West, and especially its neighbour and main rival

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

, in a negative light. For example, in 1950, the GDR published claims that the United States was sabotaging potato crops in East Germany by

airdrop An airdrop is a type of airlift in which items including weapons, equipment, humanitarian aid or leaflets are delivered by military or civilian aircraft without their landing. Developed during World War II to resupply otherwise inaccessible tro ...

ping

Colorado potato beetle The Colorado potato beetle (''Leptinotarsa decemlineata''), also known as the Colorado beetle, the ten-striped spearman, the ten-lined potato beetle, or the potato bug, is a major pest of potato crops. It is about long, with a bright yellow/o ...

s onto crops. However, it has been claimed that the GDR's state newspaper, ''

Neues Deutschland ''Neues Deutschland'' (''nd''; en, New Germany, sometimes stylized in lowercase letters) is a left-wing German daily newspaper, headquartered in Berlin. For 43 years it was the official party newspaper of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany ...

'', failed to reach much of the East German population.

Media

Media for East German propaganda during the Cold War played a very significant role in the persuasion and ideologies of the East German people at this time. The types of media that were most prevalent in their propaganda efforts were posters, pamphlets, tabloids, and speeches.

Posters

Posters during the Cold War focused primarily on depictions of Stalin and his positive effects on East Germany. The information on the posters was used to convince the German people that the institutions of the Soviet Union would perpetuate a peaceful socialist society. Many other posters were used to depict the allied forces in a negative light, this form of propaganda was generated to make the Germans dislike the ally outsiders.

Pamphlets

The German Democratic Republic created pamphlets to promote a socialist and peaceful way of life to those living in Eastern Germany. These pamphlets were dropped in the Federal Territory of East German zones in large "propaganda rockets" and small "metal coconuts", along with "occurrence reports" that documents the times they were sent and 'outside occurrences' to spread their news in an innovative, creative and far reaching way. The "propaganda rockets" allowed for more people to be exposed the information over a large geographic scale.

Tabloids

The German tabloids during the cold war were used as media source to entertain and inform the working class with pictures, articles and news that highlighted the successes of the East German society.

Speeches

There were many influential leaders and intellectuals during the Cold War in East Germany. Speeches were made in order to persuade the people to fall in line with the socialist movement and the leaders of the Soviet Union. These speeches, along with the propaganda aforementioned helped to convince the German people that socialism and the German Democratic Republic would remain intact. Of central importance in the context of East German propaganda were the speeches given at the national memorial sites (''Nationale Mahn- und Gedenkstätten'')

Buchenwald Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or su ...

, Ravensbrück and

Sachsenhausen Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoners ...

on the occasion of the major anniversaries of the liberation of the concentration camps. According to historian Anne-Kathleen Tillack-Graf, the speeches were more about the current issues of the GDR concerning the political and economic situation, and only to a lesser extent about the lives and commemoration of the victims of the concentration camps and the historical events. Accordingly, the main topics of the speakers concerned Cold War issues such as

peaceful coexistence Peaceful coexistence (russian: Мирное сосуществование, translit=Mirnoye sosushchestvovaniye) was a theory, developed and applied by the Soviet Union at various points during the Cold War in the context of primarily Marxist– ...

, the

arms race An arms race occurs when two or more groups compete in military superiority. It consists of a competition between two or more states to have superior armed forces; a competition concerning production of weapons, the growth of a military, and t ...

between the Soviet Union and the USA or Ronald Reagan's Star Wars. In addition, there was a somewhat distorted portrayal of historical events in favour of a positive presentation of socialism.

References

External links

History Channel Online, Cold War

Map of Cold War Berlin, Encyclopædia Britannica Online

Contra Magazine Tabloids

The Birth of the German Democratic Republic

{{Propaganda in Europe Cold War propaganda Propaganda in Germany