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The PEOPLE’S WAR by James G on Alternate Timelines

PEOPLE’S WAR – EAST GERMANY, 1995


One – Temporary closure


At the end of June 1989, the East German government decided to close the country’s external borders. The frontier controls weren’t completely sealed with some traffic open to Westerners and also a few East Germans allowed out, yet the usual summer vacations to be taken by tens of thousands of the nation’s citizens to various countries within the ‘friendly’ Eastern Bloc were no longer possible. Exit visas were cancelled for trips to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. A trickle of people would still be allowed to make crossings because the closure wasn’t meant to be air-tight, but it would be good enough. It was announced as a temporary measure though without a firm end date given. The reason presented to the people of East Germany was due to the ‘troubling international situation’. Neighbouring governments, allies they were, weren’t that impressed: the East German visitors brought with them money to spend and, in addition, that excuse brought questions aplenty about views from East Berlin on their regimes. Internal trouble was anticipated in response by the Politburo led by the ageing and ailing Erich Honecker. The people wouldn’t like it and there would be some unrest. Nonetheless, the leadership stuck with their decision.

What was done was to head-off further expected trouble, worse than people upset at their holidays abroad cancelled. The political situation underway in both Poland and Hungary, especially the latter where many East Germans often went to spend their summer vacations, was troubling just as the country’s leadership had explained as their reasoning. A briefing was delivered by the Stasi to the Politburo ahead of the decision on the borders concerning something else going on with Hungary, beyond the transfer of power from fellow socialists to quasi-democrats. That concerned a plan concocted by outside troublemakers behind the ‘Pan-European Picnic’ to try and do something amazing: bring down the entire power superstructure of Eastern Bloc countries resistant to change, reform & liberalisation through seeing people cross into the West via borders to be opened through the Iron Curtain. Other options as to dealing with that were discussed, including ‘active measures’, but Honecker and his cohorts opted for that temporary closing of the borders. That was deemed less dramatic and more proportional.

What wasn’t expected then was that those borders would stay sealed for good. Moreover, the Politburo didn’t foresee the Eastern Bloc falling apart around them just as those schemers against them aimed to see done. There was also no foresight that acting as was done in June ‘89, even though it brought about some internal trouble, would keep the regime that led East Germany in power with all that they had into the 1990s and long past the additional implosion of the Soviet Union as well.

The German Democratic Republic would outlast those who created it.