From a reviewing stand on East Berlin's Marx-Engels Platz, Communist Boss Walter Ulbricht waved a bouquet of red roses as goose-stepping troops paraded past. Alongside "Spitzbart," as Ulbricht's unloving citizens call him because of his well-tended goatee, stood Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev and a high-powered array of other Communist visitors. The occasion was the 20th anniversary of the founding of East Germany's Communist state. What was perhaps most striking about the celebrations was not the relatively modest military show but the new skyline of East Berlin: ultramodern apartment buildings and...
East Germany: Making the Best Of a Bad Situation
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