East Germany: Life Behind the Iron Curtain (TRIH ep 322)

1949 · Resource

Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook interview Katja Heuer about her new book Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949–1990. The conversation traces the GDR's origins in the Second World War aftermath, the contested decision to create a separate East German state, and the influence of German communists who lived through Stalinist exile and purges. Heuer outlines early postwar violence and looting, land reforms, refugee pressures, and the mass exodus to the West that culminated in the 1953 uprising an...

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