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by more_original 3445 days ago
I also was at the demonstrations and I also think that there was no realistic alternative to a reunification.

But at the time people were discussing different ways of performing the reunification. The SPD under Lafontaine proposed a slower approach rather than an immediate reunification. He made the point that because of the crumbling infrastructure and desolate state of the economy, a unification wouldn't be easy, resulting in unemployment etc.

These warnings turned out to be true, and people should have known. But people didn't listen and voted for CDU in great numbers, because they promised it all. And I think one reason for this is that the warnings also came from the old media, so many people thought "They've been lying for so long, this must be false."
1 comments
Noseshine 3445 days ago 

  proposed a slower approach rather than an
  immediate reunification
And that was out of the question. I too would have left the GDR immediately if that would have happened, and pretty much everybody I know too.

It's not true, that's all. We voted for reunification because we wanted it, that's all. A clean fast cut was the right way to go instead of continuing to muddle through. It was impossible to do a "smoother" transition - not unless the BRD would have disallowed people to move there and would have forced us to remain!

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more_original 3445 days ago
> And that was out of the question. I too would have left the GDR immediately if that would have happened, and pretty much everybody I know too.

So what? Depopulation happened anyway due to unemployment. I'm not convinced that substantially more people would have left if reunification had been planned for 1995, for example.

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Noseshine 3445 days ago
There would have been no difference in outcome if it had been "planned" for 1995 - so no reason not to do it right away. Do you really believe anything would have been better for the East German industry? It was nothing but junk, yes even what was supposed to be the best factories.

Except for a minority in East Germany there was no reason for a delay. The difficult and hard adaptation was inevitable! The GDR was a complete wreck.

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