I’m so happy that a channel like this exists. There is so much material out there on the DDR but it’s all in German. Thanks for putting in the effort!

@NandiCollector

11 ай бұрын

*So true. Being from an ex-communist country like Albania, it always fascinated me to learn more about the East Bloc countries, especially the DDR.*

@danielryan9126

6 күн бұрын

Agree. I like cold war history of Germany and am in USA.

This story is ABSOLUTELY INSANE!!! CoCo sounds more like a state-sanctioned mafia than a “commercial coordination committee” 😂🤯

German here. Learned about all these things on KZread some 3-4 years ago. It's great that there is now an English-language channel, and my feeling is that you cover things with just the right depth.

In the East it was called CoCo, in the West they called it Mafia. Loan sharking, money laundering etc.

Absolutely fascinating. I met a former DDR Political prisoner on a tour of Hochenhausen Prison in Berlin. She had been sold to West Germany in the early 80s.

I’ve discovered this channel in the last few days! Having a lot of curiosity about GDR, your videos are very helpful. Thank you

@Love.life.ashigzoya

11 ай бұрын

Thank you very educative and refreshing . Times have changed since then but Germany is still not a free country This holds Germans hostage to economic forces in service of Washington .The energy crisis is hostage to this. Time Germans take to deciding about their destiny on own not by Atlanticists. Maj gen IA veteran

Speeaking of the GDR arms deals, there was a political scandal in Peru for the purchasing of assault rifles in the late 1980s. I remember it every time I see them still being used by police.

West Berliners had an easy access to an Intershop to buy their alcohol and tobacco: S-Bahn Station Alexanderplatz. It was in Eastern Berlin but trains to and from West Berlin called there, too - so an Intershop was on a platform in the tightly controlled "West Berlin" section.

I was most surprised by the fact that they were lending money to the state for high interest rates. That just sounds like an unnecessary level of corruption that I can't really fathom why the state would accept that

@donquixote3927

10 ай бұрын

I imagine the Directors became so wealthy from these activities they began to dictate or bribe policy to their liking.

Prisoners donated blood in the 80s...ugh this reminds me of the tainted blood scandal in the 1980s (which in Ireland was the SECOND tainted blood scandal; the first one was about hepatitis from the 1950s).

@cv990a4

Ай бұрын

Literally squeezing blood from its population to sell. The system was rotten to the core.

@relo999

Ай бұрын

"Fun" fact, the DDR's blood had a similar scandal. The DDR claimed nobody in the DDR had HIV and claimed they tested the blood, guess how much those claims were worth when loads of people got HIV in west Germany after surgery or otherwise needing blood. They didn't test any blood for HIV even when people in the DDR tried to get tested themselves.

Thanks! You are right, there are no in-depth channels exploring the DDR in English. I 've been fascinated with this country since when it still was a country. The more I know about the DDR the stranger it seems. Mach weiter so!

@eastgermanyinvestigated

Жыл бұрын

Thank you!

Thanks again for the continued interesting history of the DDR. I appreciate your direct and thoughtful facts and best of all in English! Danke

Not so long ago I saw a Dutch documentary about the history of Alpenkreuzer, a Dutch brand of popup campers produced in the DDR. Unfortunately I cannot find it again :(

Remarkable channel. I've been binge watching these videos today!

Thanks for your channel and good work. Incredibly interesting to me. Spent 6 weeks traveling throughout East Germany in early 2001. I had a personal tour guide. My x wife who was from the Saxony area. If I only had a fraction of the information I’ve learned from your channel back then. I was the first American/foreigner in the village she grew up in she said. Thank you again.

There is a German mini series made on the subject called “Preis der Freiheid”. It’s worth a peep.

Once more…most detailed and probably the only English language channel specialising in all matters DDR related. Fascinating insights abound not least of all, the hypocrisy inherent within the deeply flawed system with blatant corruption, nepotism, and downright lies.

@memesthatmakeyouwannadie3133

5 ай бұрын

The GDR did not do a single bad thing besides things every other state does. “Ohhh they spied on people. They tortured people.” NSA wiretapping and Guantanamo Bay also exist.

Fabulous. There is a German limited series called “BERLIN WALL” in the US with English subtitles that deals with KoKo on human level. It, too, is excellent; I found it on one of the major streaming services. And if that isn’t enough for your DDR habit, there’s “LINES OF SEPARATION” also available for streaming with subtitles. Both are very well-written and have absolutely fantastic acting. Enjoy.

There is an excellent German TV show dram called "Berlin Wall" that is about a senior member of KOKO during the last days of the GDR. Its an excellent show and o hoghly recommend it to anyone interested in East German history. I saw it on PBS on Amazon Prime (Canada).

As an American I am very excited about this channel. There are not very many English sources about the GDR

Am glad to learn something new, history is a favorite subject of mine, grand channel! - one of the other incomes, not just for DDR, but for the eastern blok in general was postage stamps, known in the west as "Wallpaper", pretty images printed by the millions and send to western collectors, funny when you think of the dislike that the socialists had of stampcollectors early on due to being an "upper class" hobby.

Als landgenoot was ik blij je kanaal ondekt te hebben. Ik heb heel wat tijd in de DDR doorgebracht in mijn tijd (met name "Die Hauptstadt der DDR") en je videos zijn een feest van herkenning! Ik kan alleen maar stellen, dat waar andere kanalen regelmatig de fout ingaan, ik je nog niet heb kunnen betrappen op een foutje ;-) Klasse!

@eastgermanyinvestigated

Жыл бұрын

Dankjewel voor je reactie, Hans. En mocht je me op een fout betrappen, dan hoor ik het uiteraard graag.

What a great idea to create content in english about DDR👏👏. Love your videos

Very interesting, thank you😮

You mention the appropriation of valuables from private ownership, and museums, subsequently sold in the west, but make no mention of the forgery that was undertaken by the state, this primarily affects philatelic material.

Your channel is truly fascinating, thank you so much for taking the time and efforts for your channel

Great video. Super production, information and engaging.

I suppose you have seen the fantastic TV Series Deutschland 83/86/89 ? In the 86 Series the scandalous affairs of KoKo were also mentioned.

Great videos, really happy I found your channel!

I need to centrally planned economy for myself

I do know that one of East Germany's last commercial enterprises was a division of their firearms manufacturing and were planning on selling guns to American Civilians. They were AK clones given the trade name "Weiger". Would you do a feature on the Kampfgruppen der arbeitsklasse? I can't find any reliable info on them in English. Thank you!

Talking about socialism and hostage taking, the chavista regime in Venezuela also uses political prisioners as trading chips for negotiations with the USA.

Very informative, love your videos, thank you!

Very well researched video and very interesting

Another great video. Extremely interesting!

The toxic waste/trash dumping business sounds like a classic organized crime networking affair. How many bodies ended up under tons of industrial waste?

Great video! Love the economic stuff

excellent work! keep the videos coming...

Very interesting! i did not know about this! Thanks!

You forgot to mention GENEX. Very good content, thank you!

Goede docu’s, interessant, bedankt. Groet, Matty

In the Deutschland TV series they had touched on this subject.

Always follow the money in an organisation .....

Very interesting KZread channel - I lived through years of the cold war but only had a sketchy knowledge of what was going on in East Germany.

I believe I got to visit an Intershop in 1987 when my high school exchange group took a bus from Hamburg to Berlin. I bought a big Toblerone

learnt a lot. thank u very much!!

There’s so few sources about Koko in English - both academic and commercial history - it is really bizarre.

Excellent channel.

Excellent! Great job!

American here. I lived in the DDR from late summer 1989-July 1990, after the “Wende”. I received an official response from the German Government a couple of years ago that my Stasi file had been destroyed a long time ago, and cannot be sent to me. Were many people successfully able to get theirs, or did most get destroyed? Thanks in advance for any knowledge on the matter.

Superb

When you talk about CoCo loans you say they set up a lending business in the west, but typically that would mean a business lending money *to* the west, not a business borrowing money *from* the west.

Nice. I have never heard of CoCo, and i have seen ALL the available DDR docus from ZDF, RBB etc. etc.

@DeltaStar777

Ай бұрын

I can highly recommend the book The ideal world of dictatorship by Stefan Wolle

As a kid i used to have a 10-12m high by 3-4m wide DDR flag, we used to make a tent using it and it eventually got all ripped apart. I have no idea where it came from but I'm so sad it got wasted...

I’ve had some products made in East Germany. I always thought it was strange for a socialist country to sell products to capitalist countries.

Net het boek 'het dossier'(roman) gelezen, gaat ook o.a. over activiteiten van de KoKo, een aanrader.

Great content! Im Norwegian, and I have found a set of dinner plates produced in East Germany.

Similar things happened in Bulgaria

Interesting. I was involved in a project via RFT in 1989, which I suspect was intended to generate foreign currency...

Does anyone know if East Germans could purchase items at the Intershops if they had foreign currency? If so, would they have to explain how they received it?

Many thanks. What was DDR government's attitude towards religious institutions, including the neighbourhood parish church?

The GDR's dire economic situation at the time was also due to (a) World War II, (b) the Soviet Union extracting unfathomably massive reparations from the GDR (which included disassembling almost every vaguely usable factory in the country and shipping it to Russia), and (c) the Soviet Union forcing the GDR to spend about 10% of its GDP on defense. I also believe the GDR had to finance its own occupation by the Soviet Union.

@eastgermanyinvestigated

Жыл бұрын

There definitely is a lot more to tell about the economy of the GDR. The topic is on my list of future videos.

@BB-kt5eb

Жыл бұрын

Those are all contributing factors, but problems were bound to arise either way. It probably could’ve lasted another decade or so without those problems, but even then, I’m not sure they could’ve held on in the face of all the other Soviet bloc nations turning away from communism.

@caezar55

Жыл бұрын

The main economic problem was a little thing called communism.

@jean6872

Жыл бұрын

@@BB-kt5eb Once Gorbachev took over the Soviet Union and introduced glasnost and perestroika and jettisoning the Warsaw Pact, the DDR was doomed.

@liliya_aseeva

11 ай бұрын

The reparations claim and deindustrialization program was dropped almost immediately after DDR's formal inception, since the DDR was formally a friendly socialist state. But the claim about defence budget quotas is probably valid. I think that Soviet union did not claim any money for the defence of East Germany (unlike the US does), but of course Soviet forces were stationed there for free.

totally insane!🤯🤯

maybe a secret for you. but not for - us - . Politics was one thing. Business was another. - Messe Leipzig - was the best example for it...

Can you cover the bloc parteis, and what motivation citizens would have to join parties other than the SED? Did they really believe they could make the country more nationalist by joining the NDPD, or more liberal by joining the JDPD, or more Christian by joining the East German CDU?

Could you have or do you have in German

Maximal hypocrisy department. 😂

Reminds me of North Korea and there office 7 or whatever is called. probably more beneficial for the NK regime than the GDR koko.

It takes a Dutch to finally hear german words pronounced correctly. Figures.

it’s almost like communism can’t survive without capitalism.

Ok, they were the DDR Treuhand haha

I like videos about DDR. I would support your channel if you were favourable towards "east Germany". But your not, so I won't help. Most your videos are a balance between useful information and the rage your comments cause, so not positive

All socialist countries had more or less similar undercover buisneses.

@andred7684

11 ай бұрын

Yup. Even the USSR had kinda sorta undercover businesses prompted by the very own populace

My favorite channel. I'm fascinated with the DDR. I don't really know why lol.