ABSTRACT
East Germans cherished diligence, order, and respect for authority more than freedom, liberty, and justice. The Weimar Republic, Germany’s first experiment in democracy, collapsed too soon for the German people to develop any deep-seated attachment to democratic values. East Germans never had the opportunity to evolve psychologically, to progress from an authoritarian to a democratically oriented mentality. East Germany never experienced a “Prague spring” or a Polish Solidarity movement. It was a quiet land founded on a subliminal social contract: The East German state would provide jobs and otherwise uphold the hallowed German virtues of diligence, love of order, faith in authority, and loyalty to convention. A widespread resistance movement never had a chance in such arid soil; it never had a chance due to the heavy legacy of German history, the psychologically injurious nature of dictatorship, and the iron hold of the Soviet Union, which viewed the German Democratic Republic as the final bulwark against invasion from the west.
