ABSTRACT
The leaders of one polity, the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), were firmly aligned with the Western world, liberaldemocratic in their political orientations, and deeply convinced of the merits of the free market economic system. There was nothing left to do but establish separate governments for West and East Germany and let them take their separate political and economic paths under the influence of their former occupying powers. By the time, the powers had reached an agreement to end the Berlin blockade, this council had hammered together the Basic Law for the FRG. The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was widely regarded as the most successful of socialist economies, with a standard of living closer to West than East European averages, and thus privatizing and modernizing it did not initially seem so overwhelming a challenge. At least, the GDR's first Constitution looked quite like those of the liberal democracies in the West.
