ABSTRACT
Whereas there was a considerable element of ‘restoration’ in West German society, in the GDR ‘almost the whole of the old society’ [36 p. 77], with the exception of the Churches, the medical profession and a few small businesses, was deconstructed over the decade 1950–60. Although the speed and timing of the introduction of Socialism was a matter of debate, Ulbricht and the other leading Communist politicians within the SED never doubted the apparently scientifically proven truth of Marxism-Leninism and its applicability to the German situation. Convinced that capitalism was the seed-bed of Nazism, they were determined to eradicate both it and the attitudes associated with it from East German society. Having constructed through democratic centralism a party dictatorship, the SED sought to penetrate society at every level [80; 112; 116].
