The Triumph of Evil: The Reality of the USA's Cold War Triumph (Austin Murphy)

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The Triumph of Evil: The Reality of the USA's Cold War Triumph
Author	Austin Murphy
Publisher	European Press Academic Publishing
First published	2000 Fucecchio
Type	Book
PDF	PDF

Preface

The Triumph of Evil represents a wake-up call to the world. Barraged by the most effective propaganda machine in history, I myself long believed at least partially in the make-believe world reported by the mainstream press and the USA establishment. However, having experienced the opening of the Berlin Wall first hand, I began to learn (as explained in the prelude to this book) that the stories told in the Western media often greatly distort the true reality of events. Having subsequently further researched the facts, I now feel an obligation to cite them for those who also wish to wake up to The Reality of the USA s Cold War Victory.

To begin, using a very objective measure of analysis, the Introduction to this book documents the fact that the USA is the most evil nation in history. In particular, the USA has deliberately killed more unarmed innocent civilians than any other country in the world (including even more than Nazi Germany). This conclusion is consistent with the main body of the book, which clearly shows that the "bad guys" won the Cold War.

Chapter 1 conclusively demonstrates the fact that the USA propaganda about the evils of communism is largely either greatly exaggerated or pure myth. In fact, communism represents a very good alternative to the very horrible USA capitalist system, as communist countries are not only more benevolent but also economically more efficient.

Communist countries were poor relative to the leading capitalist countries only because they were relatively much poorer before they became communist, and, despite exhibiting faster economic growth than capitalist countries, they had not caught up by 1 990.

Chapter 2 uses the case of the divided Germany to more exactly detail the relative advantages and disadvantages of communism and capitalism in practice. East and West Germany are ideal for a comparison

THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL

PREFACE

because the people and culture were very similar before the division with forced economic integration, and even with the East Germans'

into separate communist and capitalist countries after World War II.

natural desire for Western income levels. While the plan (which I cre

The findings show that communism is a superior system in virtually all ated in 1989 and presented to various leaders shortly after the opening respects. However, West Germany began with far greater income and of the Berlin Wall) has never been used in practice, economic analysis wealth than East Germany, and faster economic growth in East Gerindicates that it provides a viable means for countries to prosperously many had reduced this income disparity by the time of its demise in survive in a capitalist world (and actually offers a very positive alterna1990 but had not eliminated it. The higher incomes of West Germany tive to traditional forms of both capitalism and communism).

represented an extremely important attrac.tion by itself in making people Chapter 6 explains how the USA's Cold War victory has resulted prefer to live in West Germany. In addition, the relative poverty of in the world turning more and more toward free-market systems (i.e., East Germany also forced additional disadvantages on East Germans global capitalism). The defeat of the communist Soviet Union has not in terms of the government repression needed to prevent the richer and only created a very powerful propaganda tool for the USA and its capimuch more powerful West Germany from using capitalist economic talist system, but it has also removed the one world power that used warfare, propaganda, outright sabotage, and other activities to underto be able to challenge USA domination and counter USA threats. The mine the East German communist system.

USA's successful push toward a world market economy (via persua

Chapter 3 describes more details of the East German system that help sion and extortion) is shown to have led to widespread poverty and ecoclarify exactly how and why the communist system (despite its superinomic catastrophes, especially related to currency crises, and especially ority) was overthrown in 1989-90. Contrary to popular belief, East Gerin the newly capitalist countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern mans were not seeking to rid themselves of an undesirable system but, Europe. In addition, the economic disaster of the German unification instead, were revolting against their relative poverty.

itself is explained to have contributed to a chain of events that has fur

Continuing with the German case, Chapter 4 provides a detailed comther contributed to the worldwide economic crises.

parison of the economic efficiency of the communist and capitalist Chapter 7 concludes the book with a political analysis of USA world financial systems. While there are similarities, the communist financial domination after the Cold War. As indicated there, the atrocities of the system is shown to be more effective overall. Despite its superior effi

USA and the cruelty of the USA's capitalist system continue unabated.

ciency, East Germany was poorer than West Germany because it had The Triumph of Evil: the Reality of the USA s Cold War Victory is a had to pay an enormous amount of reparations to the Soviet Union after factual book that leads to one implication for action: overthrow the evil World War II. These reparations payments, which represented partial capitalist system by voting it out of power. In the hands of the people, compensation for all the damages inflicted on the Soviet Union by Nazi the facts will ensure that the Cold War victory for the USA and capital

Germany as a whole, had a value equal to several times East Germany's ism was only a temporary one, and that justice will eventually prevail annual output. West Germany, on the other hand, was not only spared via the ballot box.

from having to make such payments, but it also received substantial.

financial aid from the richer USA (which had been untouched by World War II). While the greater financial and economic efficiency of the East German system allowed it to partially catch up for the huge difference in incomes that existed in the two countries at their founding in 1949, it was not able to fully overtake West Germany by 1989.

Chapter 5 details an economic plan for how East Germany could have survived and prospered, even with the opening of the Berlin Wall, even

Prelude: "Better Rich and Healthy..."

Previous to experiencing the revolutionary events surrounding the opening of the Berlin Wall in 1989-90, I must also admit to having largely believed in the great USA propaganda story about how wonderful capitalism is compared to communist societies. However, one ofthe first things I learned in my visits to East Germany was that it was different from the roboticized, repressed, cold, and stoical stereotyping of communist East Germany which I had been led to believe by Western media to be the truth.

An early clue to the actual facts of the East German people and culture occurred during my first visit there on May 1 , 1988. In particular, on that festive holiday in East Berlin, I found a kiosk which sold an assortment of interesting items, including stickers with the printed statement "Lieber reich und gesund als arm und krank," which translated to "Better rich and healthy than poor and sick." Astounded at such a sign that seemed to advocate striving for riches in the relatively poor (compared to the West) and reputedly repressive communist country, I asked the kiosk saleswoman if such statements were permitted in East Germany. After some discussion with her colleagues, she explained that the sticker had been designed as a counter to the Western slogan that one had to choose between being either rich and sick, or poor and healthy. After all, why not have the best of all possible worlds, which was what East Germany was trying to develop. Little did I realize at the time that East Germans would soon be achieving access to Western riches far faster than they had ever believed possible, albeit at the price of having to endure the sickness ofWestern capitalism.

14

THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL

PRELUDE

15

To further illustrate my naivety at the time, I relate another episode everybody knew the jokes. When I asked whether it was East or West from Berlin that occurred about one year later in July 1989, just before Gennan friends, he said that he had heard it from East Germans, but the revolution in East Germany broke out. The event is very trivial, but that some of the jokes had probably been invented by the West Germans it does provide an indication of the biases that USA propaganda had put and been exported to East Germany. When I continued to express shock into my mind, as well as something about the actual situation in East at people being allowed to tell such jokes in East Germany, he assured Germany during the Cold War.

me it was OK to say what one wanted in East Germany, as long as one As part of my attempt to experience various aspects of East German wasn't trying to overthrow the government.

culture (and meet new and exciting people) in the early summer of Being on a research assignment in Berlin for the entire period from 1989, I visited a local group of the Free German Youth in East Berlin the summer of 1989 to the summer of 1990, I experienced first-hand that had advertised its disco party in an East German tour guide book.

(and participated in) what I believe to be one of the most incredible About 75% of all East German youth were members of the Free German revolutions in history. During that time, I learned much about the Cold Youth, but only those with some interest in or support of communist War, the USA, East Germany, communism, and capitalism from direct politics tended to be active in the events or disco parties of this East observations, discussions, and actions (my actions also apparently led German government organization. After conversing with several East the East German secret police to create a file on me in their counterintel

German teenagers at the disco for some time (during which they repeatligence department, which investigated foreigners suspected of engagedly emphasized that they dido 't want war, although I had never brought ing in espionage and subversion in East Germany).

up the subject), one teenager asked if I wanted to hear some good Although my initial interest and knowledge in the subject matter of jokes. After I answered positively, I was asked if I knew the difference this book grew out of first-hand experience, I have verified all informabetween neutron bombs and East German coffee. When I said I dido 't tion herein with published sources (and so I cite the relevant authors and know, he answered that he dido 't know either, since both mercilessly publication year in parenthesis in the text or footnotes of this book). I kill people without damaging coffee cups or other objects. When I, have also investigated contrary published allegations, but I have refuted being unaware of the poor quality of East German powder coffee, didn't the distorted opinions with facts. My experiences in 1989-90, combined laugh, the East German asked me another question. He wanted to know with subsequent events and research, have slowly woken me up to face what the difference was between the East o"erman government leaders the fact that my country (the USA) is the most evil one on the face of and terrorists. When I said I didn't know, he answered that terrorists the earth and in the history of mankind.

have supporters. Shocked by the anti-government overtone (in what I had been led by USA propaganda to believe was a police state), I didn't Laugh because I again wasn't even sure ifl understood the joke.

When he explained that the East German leaders were not too popular, I asked whether it was permitted to make such jokes in East Germany. He laughingly said that everybody did it. Then he asked me of what crime an East German was convicted of for calling the East German leader an idiot. When I indicated that I dido 't know, he told me it was for the crime of revealing a state secret. After he told me several more antigovernment jokes but still failed to generate even a smile from me, he said I dido 't have any sense of humor. When I asked where he had learned the jokes, he told me that he had heard it from friends and that

An Objective Analysis of Relative Position in the History of Deliberate Exterminations of Human Beings

I spellf 33 years and 4 months in active military service as part of this country :SO most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscleman for Big Business, for Wall Street, for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer. a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil illlerests in /914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central America republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in /909-19/2. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in /9/6./n China I helped to see that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I fee/ I could have given AI Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. We Marines operated on three continents. " -Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, USMC (ret.), November 1935.

Most Americans learn in school, through the mainstream media, and from Hollywood that they are and have always been the "good guys" fighting evil villains (Schulz, 1982), as symbolized by John Wayne, or the recently deceased Roy Rogers in his old western movies (Rickey, 1998). Most Americans are made to believe that their system stands for democracy, freedom, human rights, and honest hard work in the pursuit of happiness within a capitalist framework, and they are led to see anyone who opposes their model system, especially communist as the "bad guys" (Zion, 1995). This attitude has resulted in the USA being internationally perceived by some to be the "capital of global arrogance" (Azad, 1998). Americans' attitudes (arrogant or otherwise) are heavily shaped by a press that has become increasingly concentrated under the control of just a few USA companies (Foerstel, 2000). Jensen (2000) has reported that six media firms now "control most of the world's information: Time Warner, Viacom/CBS, Disney, Bertelsmann, General Electric, and the News Corp." Even these few companies work together closely with each other in many joint ventures (McChesney, 2000). As stated by Phillips (2000), "Media is no longer a competitive industry but rather an oligopolic collective of like-minded rich, white, upper-class elites with shared agendas seeking to expand their power and influence globally. This concentrated media can easily manipulate (and censor) the information provided to the public to help it achieve its capitalist goals. For instance, in response to a question regarding the media's silence on a particular issue that would have portrayed corporate America in a negative light, one television station manager bluntly stated, "We paid $3 billion for these stations, and we have the right to make the news. The news is what we say it is" (Clark, 2000). ''The six largest U.S. firms accounted for more than 90 percent of U.S. theatre revenue," and "half a dozen major chains" rule "the roost" in the newspaper industry (McChesney, 2000). "More and more places are becoming 'one-paper' towns," and "radio is now dominated by a few mega-companies, each of which own hundreds of stations" (Jackson, 2000), while "U.S. book publishing is now dominated by seven firms, the music industry by five, cable TV by six," and "nearly all of these are now parts of vast media conglomerates" (McChesney, 2000). "The ownership and control of news media by an increasingly small and select group of business owners is bound to restrict the kinds of stories that get widely reported" (Lewis, 2000). One journalist put it more subtly, "If you know that they really don't want certain stories at the top, you're not going to do those kinds of stories" (Andersen, 2000). While there are small and alternative media organizations (Foerstel, 2000), their credibility is often marginalized, such as by comparing them with fantasy magazines like the National Enquirer if their views vary substantially from those of the mainstream giants, which thereby set the standards. Some of the big media/entertainment conglomerates have a significant amount of non-media commercial holdings (including in the armaments industry), and, in the interest of their own corporate profit maximization (as well as that of their rich corporate advertising clients), they have a natural pro-USA-capitalism (and even pro-war) bias (Foerstel, 2000). Also contributing to the media's pro-USA-capitalism prejudice is the fact that "the media corporations and the sponsoring corporations [i.e., the large corporate advertisers which effectively use their advertising expenditures to buy the media] are themselves tightly interlocked" (Jackson, 2000). The media's pro-USA bias is further reinforced by the heavy reliance of the press on USA government sources of information for their gathering and analysis of news, which can lead to extreme distortions in reporting to the public (Herman and Chomsky, 1988). In particular, with respect to international events, the mainstream media often just regurgitates stories created by tpe CIA for propaganda purposes (Goff, 2000). Saadawi (2000) concludes, "Never before in history has there been such domination of people's minds by the mass media .... How can we be free to choose if the media injects us day and night with false information?" While "tabloid" or ''yellow journalism" has long existed in the capitalist media to incite people to war and for other ends (such as to mobilize support for launching the War of 1898 against Spain), a form of capitalist journalism has developed in the USA and in Western countries that even more blatantly admits to being particularly biased and one-sided (Pirocanac, 2000). This new "journalism of attachment" is designed to provide a type of psychological "therapy" reporting which attempts to make the journalists and their readers feel good about themselves and their country regardless of the facts (Independent Commission of Inquiry, 1999). It represents the philosophy of "giving the people what they want" irrespective of factual information, or lack thereof (Schlechter, 2000). Since the advertisers who pay for television and other media are looking for audiences with money to spend, the "people" the press feel obligated to satisfy are those with more money, whose . very wealth naturally makes them right-wing anticommunists, and whom the media do not want to tum off with overly "liberal" reporting (Foerstel, 2000). There is thus no "market" for anti-USA and anti-capitalist facts and reports, and so capitalism naturally censors such information (Johnstone, 2000). Although the USA media often report some evil actions of the USA and its politicians, most of the attention is focused on relatively minor issues, such as sex scandals, which are said to represent exceptions that can be corrected with better human morals (Zion, 1995). The worst excesses are either ignored or distorted as a great triumph for the USA (Foerstel, 2000). However, as a result of the criticism on minor issues, the USA press is widely perceived as being objective and perhaps even overly critical (Herman and Chomsky, 1 988). In fact, the USA media covers politicians' personal lives and sexual behavior so extensively that attention is deflected from the terrible atrocities American political leaders have allowed the USA to commit (Foerstel, 2000). The possibility exists that even the USA leaders have been brainwashed by the media propaganda, which itself is so powerful that it often convinces even the propagandists themselves (Smith, 2000). The result is a classic case of denial, whereby people do not want to hear, investigate, or believe facts contrary to the "good" image created. For instance, within the context of comments about a "rediscovery of our values," the very popular President Ronald Reagan stated in January 1989 (a few years before he himself was afflicted with Alzheimer's related memory loss), "If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are" (Greene, 1999). This statement was either incredibly naive (demonstrating extraordinary ignorance of how terrible we Americans really have been as a people), extremely cynical (in terms of deliberately attempting to help dupe us Americans into a false sense of pride in the terrorism committed by the USA), or subconsciously factual (that we won't even realize that we represent a mass murdering nation of zombies, unless we wake up to the historical facts and cure our nation's sickness). Even those who recognize that the USA has committed many crimes against humanity typically try to justify the USA's atrocities by asserting that the USA has not been as terrible as other countries. For instance, the USA media is often so successful in vilifying the USA's enemies (like the Serbs) that even many left-wing critics of the USA and its policies are fooled into supporting some atrocities such as the USA's deliberate bombings of civilian targets in Yugoslavia in 1 999 (Foerstel, 2000). Despite the propaganda barrage against the enemies of the USA, an investigation of the facts indicates that it is the USA which has been acting imperialistically and immorally, engaging in actions that are little different from the very evil policies employed by Adolf Hitler who also vilified and slaughtered masses of innocent people (Johnstone, 2000). In fact, a careful analysis of history and current affairs indicates that the USA has committed the worst atrocities in world history. A mere listing of the crimes committed by the USA in its history provides educational perspective on this issue, but an objective measure of atrocities is required in order to establish unbiased evidence on the subject. For this purpose, the estimated body count of unarmed innocent civilians deliberately killed by a country can be used to keep score. According to that numeric measure, the USA is indeed number 1, although it may be only slightly ahead ofNazi Germany and Spain. Other countries in the top ten are listed to provide perspective, as are a few other countries with a reputation for infamous atrocities.

Evidence on USA Atrocities

The USA has killed over ll million unarmed civilians in a long continuous history of engaging in massive extermination campaigns, terrorism, imperialism, and other atrocities. This history ranges from the genocide of native American Indians (and stealing of their land) to the enslavement of African blacks; from the imperialist invasion of Mexico in the first half of the 1800s (enabling the USA to seize more land from the Indians) to the War of 1898 that was launched to permit the USA to seize Spain's colonies; from the Monroe Doctrine (which effectively solidified the USA policy of controlling or colonizing the Western Hemisphere) to the frequent invasions of Latin American countries that have continued throughout the 1900s to ensure governments there remain largely under the control of the USA; from the terrorist aerial bombings of civilian targets that have killed millions of unarmed innocent civilians over the last 50+ years in places like Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, etc. (and maimed millions more) to the murder of millions of unarmed civilians by CIA-imposed dictators such as in Indonesia, Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, etc. (Zion, 1995). A more exact breakdown of the body count follows:

[table]

Although each of the foregoing extermination campaigns is fairly well documented in the listed references, the breadth and depth of the USA atrocities merit providing more details and perspective.

The USA's Beginning Genocide

To begin the analysis with the USA's first, longest, and largest mass murder, it is first necessary to estimate how many Indians were in what is now the USA before the arrival of the white invaders. This task is especially important because USA propaganda would have people believe that the USA was largely a vast unsettled wilderness (occupied by only a few "non peoples called savages") before the invasion of the whites (Jennings, 1975). Henige ( 1998) has provided an abundance of facts indicating overestimation of the original Indian populations in Central and South America, but the Indian population existing within the USA before the arrival of the Europeans has been widely underestimated by a very large amount for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Churchill, 1994). While the USA was originally estimated by many early observers to be populated with millions oflndians (Thornton, 1987), even these guesses may have been far too low (at least partially because they were lacking in documented analysis). Nevertheless, many successive researchers have discounted (instead of more appropriately raised) such prior estimates, resulting in a compounded reduction in the already low numbers that lack scientific justification and that are unquestionably far below the actual original level of the native American population (Churchill, 1994). There is a very important political purpose and personal nationalistic bias in reporting very low numbers. In particular, underestimating the original Indian population makes the USA seem almost vacant originally before white occupation, thereby creating the impression that the conquest of the territory was a "settlement" as opposed to an invasion and mass killing (Johansson, 1982). There was also an important legal reason for the extremely low bias in early Indian population estimates, as British colonial law only allowed settlers to seize vacant territory and did not permit the taking of land by force or fraud (Jaimes, 1992). Jennings ( 1975) has indicated that many of the low estimates of the original Indian population are based on "official" USA government sources, such as a Smithsonian Institute book listing numbers estimated "without specific documentation" by Mooney ( 1928). 1 The meaninglessness of such government estimates is easily illustrated by Mooney's count of only 25,000 Indians in all of New England in the early 1600s, when one tribe living in a small 800 square mile area of New England alone numbered over 30,000 at that time, and when there is documentation of other densely settled territories of New England (numbering as many as 100 Indians per square mile) as well (Jennings, 1975). Similarly, whereas Mooney ( 1928) estimated scarcely a million Indians for the entire USA, archaeological evidence indicates millions of Indians lived in the eastern end of the Ohio Valley alone (Jennings, 1975). Nevertheless, modem authors, even those sympathetic to the Indians like Brown ( 1970), often recite ridiculously low numbers based on the "official" USA count. Mooney's "official" ( 1928) book actually implies less than one Indian per square mile on the 3+ million square miles of the USA. Such a low estimate is obviously ludicrous when one considers that there was a well-documented one Indian on average per square mile in "one of the world's areas least hospitable to human habitation" in a Western Hemisphere desert (Dobyns, 1966). Even numbers below ten million Indians in the USA appear somewhat absurd in light of researchers estimating 8 million or more Indians on a single island (Hispaniola) in the Caribbean. (Thomson, 1998). A much more plausible estimate of the original North American Indian population is provided by Domenech ( 1860), an unbiased European, who traveled extensively among the native Americans, studied many reports of other travelers and researchers, provided an analysis of many of the hundreds of Indian tribes in the USA, and stated the number of Indians north of Mexico to have been 16- 17 million in the mid-seventeenth century. A similar estimate based on other data is provided by Sale ( 199 1 ), who estimated 15 million Indians north of Mexico. Churchill ( 1994) has stated the number of Indians living north ofMexico was most likely between 12.5 million and 18.5 million before the invasion by the whites. Because Canada was very sparsely settled by Indians (Thompson, 1966), originally with " four or five or more times" as many Indians in the USA as in Canada due to the existence of"four or five times" as much land suitable for agriculture (Jaffe, 1992), most of the 12.5- 18.5 million Indians north of Mexico lived in what is now the USA at the time of the white invasion. However, thousands fled subsequently to Canada (Brown, 1970), which developed a relatively benevolent relationship with the Indians (Daunton and Halper, 1999), to escape the USA's attacks (Jennings, 1993). Churchill's ( 1994) range of estimates is partially derived from the typically observed 90-99% "disappearance" rates for native populations in various areas of the Western Hemisphere cited by Dobyns ( 1966), who suggested assuming no more than a 98% elimination rate. With the low point for the number of Indians north of Mexico being 370,000 (of which 250,000 were in the USA) at the end of the nineteenth century (Thornton, 1987), a division by one minus the maximum recommended disappearance rate of .98 (i.e., a division by .02) indicates 18.5 million Indians. Using the 250,000 figure for the continuous 48 USA states alone in the calculation implies 12.5 million Indians there. However, it is virtually certain that far more than 12.5 million of the 18.5 million Indians were originally in the USA territory, since a large number of the modem Indians in Canada were descendants of refugees from the USA's imperialist policies (Jennings, 1993), and since the USA's genocidal policies (Churchill, 1994) surely made the survival rate for Indians in the USA much lower than in Canada. In any event, such population estimates based on average disappearance rates in various places observed in the Americas are very likely on the low side. In particular, there is substantial evidence (some of which is reported subsequently in this Introduction) that the USA had a deliberate extermination strategy that was far more effective and continuous than the Indian policies used by the other white invaders (Churchill, 1994). As a result, it is probable that the USA had a much higher elimination rate than the rest of the occupiers of Indian land (thus indicating an extermination rate over 98%, and there fore implying an Indian population in excess of 18.5 million north ofMexico). Thompson ( 1966) has recommended an alternative method of estimating the original Indian population as the number that could exist on the land given the technology and resources (assuming the population would stabilize at that level). While Dobyns ( 1966) has indicated that only 2 million square miles in the USA were ''fit for Indian habitation, Kroeber ( 19 39) has estimated over 150 Indians per square mile on various large tracks of hospitable inland and coastal USA territory. Extrapolating those figures implies that the USA could have potentially supported over { 150x2 million}=300 million Indians if it were everywhere as densely settled as in the most populated areas. However, although about half of the 2 million square miles of hospitable USA territory were fertile river valleys (Dobyns, 1983), not all hospitable areas of the USA could have supported 150 Indians per square mile. For instance, Thomas ( 1976) provides widespread evidence of typical crop yields for Indians in the USA that were high enough to maintain populations as dense as 90 people per square mile on typically hospitable land, even after allowing for sizable fields left uncultivated for decades to permit soil rejuvenation (and some hunting). The latter, more realistic figure implies that the USA could have supported as many as 180 million Indians. A more conservative estimate is implied by Dobyns ( 1983), who has cited a study indicating that fifteenth century North American Indian farming methods could have supported between 10 and 25 Indians per square kilometer of average hospitable territory (or over 20-50 per square mile). One reason for using Dobyns's lower figures is that many Indians also engaged in a significant amount of hunting and fishing, in addition to farming, and those activities tended to use up more territory than pure farming (Thomas, 1976). Dobyns ( 1976) has cited one estimate of 5 purely hunter-gatherers per square mile of mountainous territory in the U SA and 10 per square mile for hunter-gatherer-fishers, but he also cites another estimate ( from a nineteenth century researcher) of 50 Indian hunter-gatherers-fishers per square mile over a large 25,000 square mile stretch of California territory. Using the more conservative former numbers , Thompson's ( 1966) methodology would imply only 10-20 million Indians on the 2 million square miles of hospitable territory in the U SA if no Indians were farmers. Because most Indians were engaged in agriculture as well as hunting and fishing (Dobyns, 1983), the number of Indians per square mile would actually be between 5 and 90. Thus, the estimate of 20-50 Indians per square mile is very feasible, implying 40-100 million Indians on the two million hospitable square miles of the U SA. While even these lower figures may seem high compared to the ridiculously low estimates put out by the USA government, an Indian population density of 20-50 per square mile is comparable to that of less populated areas of Europe in the same era. In particular, the number of people per square mile (of combined hospitable or inhospitable land) in Europe ranged between 1 0 and 100 in different countries in the late fourteenth century (well be fore Columbus "discovered" America), even though the bubonic plague had just wiped out 1/3 of the European population at that time (Hobhouse, 1989). Given that less efficient crops were planted in Europe than what the Indians historically planted in what is now the USA (Thomas, 1976), given that Europe had less fertile soil and a more inhospitable climate in many places than the hospitable areas of the USA ( Hobhouse, 1989), and given that people also engaged in an extensive amount of hunting in Europe (Sale, 199 1 ), there is no reason to believe that Indian population densities should be substantially lower than the range of European ones. In fact, detailed empirical research provides widespread evidence that Indians in the U SA could indeed subsist on similar acreage (and therefore with similar population density) as Europeans, and they could do so with less ground preparation and mechanization because of their heavy use of efficient crops like com (Thomas, 1976).2 In addition, since Indian lifespans in many parts of the USA have been found to be similar to those in Europe at the time (Thornton, 1987), it is very likely that they could h ave grown to a similar population density. Moreover, it should also be mentioned that a population density of 20-50 Indians per square mile is far less than the 125 Indians per square mile estimated to have originally existed in the 200,000 square miles of Central Mexico where farming technology was no more advanced than that used at the time by Indians in what is now the USA (Borah and Cook, 1969). An estimate of 20-50 Indians per square mile for the U SA is also substantially lower than estimated for many other parts of Central and South America (Denevan, 1976). It should be emph asized that the estimate of 40-100 million Indians on the hospitable territory of the U SA ignores the Indians on the 1,000,000 square miles of desert in the 48 mainland USA states (MacLeod, 1928), as well as those native Americans in Alaska and Hawaii. Given th at there were some Indians who lived in even the extremely arid USA deserts (Domenech, 1860), and given th at Hawaii was home to hundreds of thousands aborigines (Larsen, 1994 ), 90% of whom were also exterminated by the USA invaders (Jennings, 1975), the latter numbers may not be trivial. Another estimate of the original Indian population in the USA can be obtained from actual sightings of Indians by settlers. For instance, after the Europeans had unsuccessfully tried to colonize Virginia in the sixteenth century (Dobyns, 1 976b), a second white invasion of the territory led a Virginia colony secretary to make notes in 16 12 indicating 0.7 Indian warriors observed per square mile on hospitable land (MacLeod, 1928). However, Dobyns ( 1966) mentions th at many potential warriors (or young adult males) may never have been seen because they died from disease or retreated further inland before being sighted in battle formation. In addition, since many Indian warriors may have engaged in guerrilla warfare instead of deliberately forming into mass countable groups th at could be decimated by the white invaders' superior firepower ( Jennings , 1 975), many more warriors may not have been counted. The number of unobserved young adult Indian males could have been especially large in Virginia, since Indians in the southeastern states of the USA were less likely to be organized into tribes that would send warriors out to face settlers and soldiers (Hobbouse, 1989). Even the large organized tribes of Virginia "avoided out-in-the-open battles," and retreat was often their only option for escaping from the deadly settlers (Sale, 199 1 ). Moreover, even for Indian tribes that did fight, military se rvice itself was voluntary, and so not all young Indian males were warriors (Novack, 1972). Assuming th at 50-90% of the young Indian males may have died or retreated inland before being observed in massed battle formation, there would be between 1 .4 to 7 young adult males per square mile. Assuming 4 Indians per young adult male as in some overly conservative prior research (Denevan, 1 976), that implies 5.6 to 28 Indians per square. Given two million square miles of hospitable land in the USA (Dobyns, 1 966), there would be between 11.2 million and 56 million Indians in what is now the USA. Since there is evidence that there were actually five (Dobyns, 1 983) or six (Denevan, 1996) Indians per young adult male (as opposed to the four assumed in the calculations), and sometimes as many as twelve (Domenech, 1 860), these figures could rationally be increased by 25-50% or more (to at least 1 5-70 million Indians in the continental USA). Dobyns (1983) has provided more detailed data indicating there were actually 1 1 .2-1 2.5 Indians per warrior, as not all young males were available to fight on the front lines, and because there were numerous older and younger male Indians as well as females. Such a higher multiplier seems especially plausible if the multiplier itself is to incorporate the information provided in the previous paragraph about not all warriors being observed. Using the lower end of the 1 1 .2-12.5 range, the Virginia sightings of 0. 7 warriors per square mile therefore imply 7.8 Indians per square mile, or 1 5.6 million Indians extrapolated to all 2 million hospitable square miles of the continental USA. This figure should be increased somewhat to allow for the Indians on inhospitable lands in the continental USA, as well as on land in Hawaii and Alaska. Moreover, given that Virginia (the basis for the extrapolated estimates) was probably less densely settled than other areas like New England (Hob house, 1989), it is certainly possible that the number of Indians in what is now the USA originally far exceeded 16 million. Dobyns ( 1983) actually cites estimates of over 10 Indians per square mile in Virginia and over 30 Indians per square mile in New England. These figures imply 20-60 million Indians in the USA if the other of the 2 million square miles of hospitable land in the USA were equally densely settled. While MacLeod ( 1928) has estimated that only 1 .5 million square miles of the USA were originally inhabited by the Indians, largcly because of an assumption that the mountains and vast Midwestern prairie lands were not cultivated by them, this hypothesis appears to be in error. In particular, some of the mountains of the USA may have been occupied with as many as 5 Indians per square mile (Dobyns, l976a), and archaeological evidence indicates that there were originally a large number of actual Indian towns on the Midwestern prairies (Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 1925) and that the Indians on those prairies were originally farmers who existed on diets heavy in com (Larsen, 1994). Regardless, even making the false assumption that the prairies and mountains were totally vacant, the numbers still indicate at least 15-45 million Indians in the USA. Thus, it is pretty clear that there were originally far more than 10 million Indians in what is now the continental USA, as recent scholarly estimates indicate (White, 1995). By the mid-nineteenth century, Domenech ( 1 860), an unbiased French observer (whose own travels as well as his study of other Indian voyageurs led him to believe that the USA government estimates for the Indian population to be only � of the true total at the time), estimated the number of Indians in the USA to have fallen to between one and two million (as he reported that the "greater part" of the hundreds of Indian tribes had disappeared or were "almost extinct" by 1 860). By the time most Indians had been rounded up and sentenced to desert reservations in 1 890 (or forced to flee into Mexico or Canada), their number in the continental USA had dropped further to only 250,000 {Thornton, 1987). Even after having well over 95% of their population eliminated by the tum of the century, the Indians still had to endure several more decades in their desert concentration camps. In the meantime, most of the remaining Indian children were separated from their parents so that American Christianity could be taught to them without "pagan" parent influence, and only afterwards were they finally granted USA citizenship and allowed to leave their reservations (Churchill, 1 994). Even after citizenship had been granted, the Indians remained poor, since the few resources on their desert reservations were often given to the "nonIndians" (who alone had sufficient capital to exploit them), and since, outside the reservations, "those few [Indians] who do obtain employment paying a decent wage or salary are often expected to act like whites if they expect to be promoted or retained" (Meister, 1976). The disappearance of the native Americans in the USA cannot be attributable to assimilation into white society, as marriage and association with Indians was generally frowned upon religiously and socially until the twentieth century (Jennings, 1 993) and was even illegal ins ome areas of the USA (Waters, 1977). However, many of the remaining 250,000 Indians of the USA at the end of the nineteenth century were of mixed race (Dobyns, 1983), as temporary sexual relationships had frequently developed out of contacts with white traders (McCracken, 1959). While granting Indians citizenship in the twentieth century has increased their assimilation into the overall USA society to the point where the number of people with some partial Indian ancestry has risen to about 10 million (or less than 5% of the USA population), the number of people in the USA with some partial Indian ancestry outside the reservations was only a few hundred thousand in 1900 (Johansson, 1982). The latter figure represents about 1% of the overall combined 76 million Indians and non-Indians living in the USA in 1900 ( World Almanac, 1998), and represents substantially Jess than 10% of the original Indian population before the invasion of the whites. These numbers stand in sharp contrast with those of neighboring Mexico, which immediately granted citizenship to Indians upon its founding (Jennings, 1993), and which today has a population that is 90% at least part-Indian (compared to only 4% of the USA population having any Indian heritage) and that includes about 30 million pure Indians (U.S. News & World Report, 1993). While a significant portion of the Indians in the USA may have died out because of diseases spread by the invading whites, researchers such as Meister ( 1976) have documented the fact that it wasn't the contact with the whites but the brutal practices of the white invaders (such as removing Indians from their land, food, and water sources) that led to the high Indian death rate from disease (and that led to the virtual extermination of the Indians in the USA). Domenech ( 1860) has explained that Indians actually increased their population over time when allowed to live stationarily in peace in a fertile area, but that migrations forced upon them by the USA destroyed their morale, frequently drove them to alcohol, and weakened their ability to resist disease. Regardless, while a severe epidemic or widespread outbreak of disease might temporarily drop a population level by a third under normal conditions (Hobhouse, 1989), it took an invasion and outright genocidal policies to virtually exterminate the Indians (Thornton, 1997). In addition, although many Indians may have died in intertribal battles (Thornton, 1987}, such fighting had been fairly minimal until the whites employed military force to push Indians tribes ever farther westward into other Indian tribes' territories (Jennings, 1975, 1993). Assuming at a minimum the lower end of the range of Churchill's (1994) possibly very low estimates (i.e., 12.5 million) for the number of Indians originally being in what is now the USA, assuming one half of the Indians in the USA were killed by or intermarried with the Spanish and others who had occupied parts of what is now the USA for a time (such as in Florida and the Southwest), assuming an extremely high estimate of 500,000 Indian warriors were killed while engaged in battle with armed forces (Thornton, 1987), assuming a half million Indians in the USA fled to Canada or Mexico, and assuming normal population growth of 0% (due to the disease, hunger, and dislocation caused by the white invasion potentially reducing the Indian birth rate to the level of the normal death rate), one arrives at an extremely conservative estimate of 5 million Indian noncombatants killed by the USA. However, given that there were likely far more than 12.5 million Indians originally living in what is now the USA, given that the rate at which the Spanish and others killed or married Indians was only a small fraction of the USA extermination rate (Cook, 1943), and given that the Spanish and others occupied only a portion of the USA and only for a time, it is likely that the number of Indians killed by the USA far exceeds 5 million (and is probably greater than 10 million, although only the absolute minimum figures are included in the conservative Table 1 count). The European "settlers" in the USA had been involved in the slaughtering of Indians at least since their invasions at Roanoake in 1607 and Plymouth in 1620 (Churchill, 1994). Although Britain advised the settlers to pay for the land they seized, such a requirement was virtually impossible to enforce (Chalk and Jonassohn, 1990), especially since the colony states had been made fairly autonomous (Osgood, 1957). Even when local British military forces formally forbade settlers from invading Indian territories (in an attempt to keep the peace with the Indians), enforcement was very difficult without more troops and more formal British laws (Downes, 1940). As a result, until 1763, the settlers were abl� to freely steal from the Indians and kill any of them who got in the way, and, even in instances of actual settler purchases of land from the native Americans, fraud was normally involved (Chalk and Jonassohn, 1990).3 Within such an environment, fighting naturally broke out frequently (Utley and Washburn, 1985). In an attempt to help protect both themselves and their land from the invading American settlers, many Indians allied themselves with the French in various wars, as well as politically with Britain in some of the continuous disputes over settlers stealing Indian property (Chalk and Jonassohn, 1990). Finally, Britain, which sought to exploit the Indians via trade as opposed to land theft (Jaimes, 1992), established in 1763 a blanket proclamation that formally forbade American settlers from stealing more land from the Indians, setting a boundary at the Allegheny mountains (Smith, 2000). While frontiersmen like George Washington saw the proclamation as a "temporary expedient to quiet the minds of the Indians," and while there were numerous attempted breaches of this law (including an outright military invasion of Indian territory by Virginia militia in 1774), the Indians (with some British encouragement in the complex political environment) had some success in en forcing the proclamation (Downes, 1940). In fact, the 1763 legal infringement on settlers ' "right" to steal Indian lands was one of the primary motivating factors in the American settlers ' revolution from British rule 12 years later (Novack, 1972), although important tax and trade issues were also involved in the conflict (Smith, 2000). Most Indians quite naturally sided with the British against the USA in the American Revolutionary War (which lasted until at least 1782 west of the Allegheny mountains), as, despite some French political assistance later in the war, USA attempts to win Indian neutrality with treaties promising to steal no more Indian land and to engage in friendly trade (through which the Indians hoped to obtain the weapons needed to defend against settler encroachments. on their land) were foiled by continued USA settler invasions of Indian territory and by the USA's failure to pay for goods traded with the Indians (Downes, 1940). After the USA victory over Britain, the white American settlers were "freed" from British legislation prohibiting the theft of more land from the native Americans. As a result, it became possible for more USA territories and states to be created out of further areas stolen from the Indians. The USA initially claimed all Indian territory as its own, arrogantly announced that the Indians as a whole had no rights whatsoever to their own land, and offered the Indian nations the choice of various small reservations under USA dominion or the "destruction" of their ''women and children" (Downes, 1940). However, USA military invasions of Indian territory were initially defeated in the early 1790s, and so the USA resorted thereafter to using local military superiority to force individual Indian tribes/nations to enter into treaties to· give up a portion of their land in return for the USA agreeing to stop its attacks (Jennings, 1993). Such treaties were similar to those entered into by the USA in the 1775-1782 war (Downes, 1940), although this pacification strategy was not completely successful in holding all Indian military forces at bay in the American Revolutionary war or in subsequent conflicts such as in the War of 18 12 (Utley and Washburn, 1985). The USA pacification treaties with the Indians were substantially different from those typically entered into earlier by the European colonial powers. In particular, the European colonists had generally engaged in treaties with Indians merely in order to form alliances with them to promote trade, although it is true that allied Indians were often encouraged to fight other tribes who were cooperating with competing European powers (Jennings, 1975). In contrast, the USA's strategy was to use each successive treaty to "keep the natives quiet" on the frontier until the newest conquered possessions could be fully absorbed and "resources could be mustered and organized" to allow armed settlers and soldiers to invade other Indian territories that the USA had guaranteed by treaty not to seize (Jennings, 1993). Grinde ( 1975) provides an illustrative case study whereby settlers in the 1800s invaded Cherokee land guaranteed by federal treaty and engaged in widespread killing of lndians there, but Federal officials generally allowed such behavior, legally asserting in the Cherokee case that the Federal treaties were overridden by local government rights (such as that of the state of Georgia here) which invariably sided with the settlers and left the Indians with no rights. USA purchases of land from European powers, as well as the USA's seizure of territory from Mexico in an imperialist war that the USA launched in the middle of the nineteenth century (Zinn, 1995), enabled the USA to carry on its strategy of engaging in pacification/extermination of ever more Indians. Frequently, after settlers had invaded the Indian territories guaranteed by prior treaties (and had begun taking or destroying Indian food sources on the Indian lands), the Indians were paid a nominal amount for the lands they were forced to give up (under threat of more violent expulsion) in a new treaty that would also be broken by the USA at some point thereafter (Domenech, 1860). The USA eventually signed over 350 treaties with various Indian tribes or nations and it broke each and every one of them (UAINE, 1998). Only thereb; was the USA able to expand westward. While the American Revolutionary War had freed the USA from the all-important British infringement on the country 's "right" to steal more land, the original 13 USA states generally maintained most of the same laws that they had created when they were autonomous states under British colonial rule. These laws included providing rewards for the extermination of Indians. In particular, the state governments set up by the settlers had begun in 1641 to establish legislation that offered rewards for the killing of any and all Indians (including men, women, and children, although special rewards were offered for Indian boy scalps), with such legislation continuing in effect into the late nineteenth century (Waters, 1977). Note that these laws and killings could scarcely be blamed on European countries, since the colony states had had full autonomy in setting such Jaws. In particular, the American settlers had locally elected their own legislatures and many other government officials (generally exhibiting even more democracy than existed in England itself), and "the common people probably had a stronger voice in their government in the English colonies than they did in any other part of the world at that time" (Chitwood, 1948). Having seen the prior "success" of the extermination laws in the eastem states, many of the new territories seized by the USA also adopted legislation paying for the killing of any and all Indians. Over ten territories and states with such extermination laws, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, and Virginia, are listed just as examples by Waters ( 1977) and Churchill ( 1994). Although the individual states and territories were allowed to set up their own decentralized reward system for killing Indians, the genocide campaign was national in scope. The country's first president, George Washington, told his fellow Americans that Indians were to be "hunted like beasts," and the USA hero Thomas Jefferson said that the USA should "pursue [the Indians] into extermination" (Churchill, 1994). As a result, Indians were hunted like animals, and their springs were deliberately poisoned (Waters, 1977). Their villages were burned, their crops were destroyed, and successful efforts were undertaken to keep them from obtaining fish for food (Craven, 1968). In addition, diseases were deliberately spread among the Indians, and force was frequently used to drive the Indians from their hunting and crop lands (Thornton, 1987). Cook ( 1943) wrote that, to USA citizens, "all Indians were vermin, to be treated as such .... Since the quickest and easiest way to get rid of his troublesome presence was to kill him off, this procedure was adopted as standard for some years. Thus was carried on the policy which had wiped out en masse tribe after tribe across the continent." Stannard ( 1992) reported, "In 1784 a British visitor to America observed that 'white Americans have the most rancorous antipathy to the whole race oflndians; nothing is more common than to hear them talk of extirpating them totally from the face of the earth, men, women, and children." This attitude eventually resulted in the "American aphorism 'The only good Indian is a dead Indian"' (Brown, 1970). Besides being offered cash rewards for killing Indians, USA citizens were also given a strong incentive to kill (or disperse or otherwise dispose of) the native American Indians in order to be able to seize their land that the USA government claimed and "sold" very cheaply (Strobel and Peterson, 1999). Miller ( 1975) has documented one case where a few USA settlers shot thousands of unarmed Indians (possibly over 10,000, including many on a reservation designated by the whites) from one peaceful tribe alone (the Yuki) over a short period of a few years in the mid-nineteenth century, and, despite the successful slaughter of virtually the entire tribe with almost no settler casualties, the murderers actually protested formally to their state governor when soldiers refused to help with the massacre. While the speed of the genocidal actions of this case (with over 90% of the tribe being directly murdered in less than a decade) may have exceeded the norm, the latter settler protest provides evidence that such genocidal acts were not only normally sanctioned but also expected. However, not all 5+ million Indians were shot. In true capitalist fashion, the USA succeeded in its genocide at a minimum cost in terms of resources expended, as those Indians who fled the livable land seized by the USA with its guns often died of starvation and disease ( Jaimes, 1992). To further expedite the extermination process at minimal expense, dogs were often used to hunt down the Indians (to save on the labor costs of hunting them), and, once caught, Indian children were sometimes killed by bashing their heads against t rees to save gunpowder costs ( Waters, 1977). Few Indians put up a fight, since 70% of the Indian tribes were outright pacifists (Sale, 199 1 ), and since most of the rest also realized that they could not win against the superior firepower of t�e white k!llers (Merriam, 1905). In this extermination campaign, stattonary Indtan farmers had little chance of survival and so some . ' lndtans attempted to escape from the USA's New Order by becoming s�ri�tly mobile hunters of buffalo and other game (Hobhouse, 1989), gtvmg up their extensive agricultural pursuits even on the breadbasket �f the Midwest (Larsen, 1994). Although this non-stationary form of hfe was contrary to most Indians' nature (Domenech, 1860), a number of Indians were able to successfully adapt to this environment, with one tribe (the Navajo which had historically been composed of nomadic hunters) even being able to prosper under these conditions, more than doubling its population between 1600 and 1860 (Meister, 1976). Nonetheless, in the end, few were able to escape from the genocidal policies of the USA, which reacted to the Indian hunting strategy by deliberately killing tens of millions of their buffalo food (and other game) in a deliberate attempt to starve the remaining Indians into extinction (Thornton, 1987). Nevertheless, because even these efficient extermination procedures were not fast enough for some white invaders, the USA frequently resorted to deliberately spreading diseases, such as by having items (like blankets) known to be in fected with deadly germs put in or near Indian settlements (Stannard, 1992). Jennings ( 1988) documents allegations that offering Indians "gifts" infected with smallpox was a "widespread" practice on the western frontier in the 1800s as well as earlier ( Jennings, 1988). There were also very serious Indian accusations of the USA infecting Indian prisoners with smallpox prior to releasing them back into their tribes to cause epidemics (Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 1925). Evidence exists that the deliberate spreading of disease by USA settlers began in the 1600s (Jaimes, 1992) and continued into the late 1800s (Stearn and Steam, 1945). Although "such things ... were not likely to be advertised to the world by the perpetrators" (Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 1925), concrete evidence has been uncovered for at least some of the terrible deeds (Jennings, 1988). In just one such campaign alone in the mid-nineteenth century, the USA may have killed several hundred thousand Indians by giving them blankets known to be infected with smallpox (Jaimes, 1992). Perhaps, partly as a result, there were Indian religious movements that preached a refusal to accept any gifts, tradable goods, or other items that had been in contact with the white settlers (Downes, 1940). Although other European invaders, especially the Spanish, also deliberately slaughtered many Indians (Stannard, 1992), the USA was by far the most atrocious. Just for instance, according to Cook ( 1943), the Indian population in California fell by only 33% between 1770 and 1848 during S panish and Mexican. rule, but it fell by over 800/o from this lower level during the first 32 years of USA rule from 1848-1880.4 In addition, in contrast to the fact that a significant portion of the drop in Indian population under Spanish and Mexican rule was due to Christian conversions and interracial marriages assimilating a number of the Indians into the "civilized" society, virtually all of the decline in Indian population under USA rule was caused by extermination policies that did not allow interracial marriages and assimilation until much later. In the USA, not just the military but virtually all who came into contact with the Indians were involved in the genocide, as the various local governments themselves had not only legalized the slaughter, but they also paid rewards for the killings (Waters, 1977). While the exact number of Indians slaughtered by the USA is not known, the evidence is too overwhelming to seriously question the deliberate and extensive nature of the genocide. The evidence also provides substantial support for a hypothesis that the number of unarmed innocent Indians deliberately killed by the USA far exceeds the very conservative 5 million estimated here.

Subsequent USA Killings of Innocent Unarmed Civilians

Scarcely had the USA's virtual extermination of the Indians been accomplished, and the USA sought out more lands to steal and more people to slaughter. After attacking and defeating Spain in the War of 1898, the USA proceeded to seize some of Spain 's former colonies such as the Philippines (Copeland, 2000). Although the people in many of the new lands now claimed by the USA did not conduct any major rebellion against their new rulers, a large Filipino resistance army had seized almost the entire Philippines from the Spanish before U SA troops arrived, and the U SA invaders had to wage an outright war against the Filipino people until 1902 (and fight off sporadic Filipino resistance until 19 15) in order to subdue the native population (Agoncillo, 1969). In retaliation for the resistance to the U SA's colonial conquest, the USA directly massacred hundreds of thousands of Filipino civilians, while hundreds of thousands more died of starvation and disease trying to escape the massacre-- over 600,000 were killed on the Luzon island alone by early 190 1 according to the commanding USA general there (Franklin Bell), and that was before numerous subsequent massacres, in one of which over 100,000 more Filipinos on Luzon were killed according to statistics compiled by USA government officials ( Schirmer and Shalom, 1987). A USA Congressman who observed the "pacification" of the Philippines stated that the USA army "simply swept the country and wherever and whenever they could get hold of a Filipino they killed him" (Kamow, 1989). The U SA first began its newest form of terrorism through aerial bombardments of civilian targets in a war against enemies almost as atrocious : Nazi Germany and fascist Japan. Although the Germans and Japanese also committed terrible extermination campaigns in World War II, there is little moral difference between the German and Japanese killings of unarmed civilians perceived to be enemies and the USA's slaughter of unarmed innocent German and Japanese civilians in its deliberate terrorist bombardments of civilian targets, especially given the many USA aerial attacks that were deliberately aimed at civilian living quarters (Markusen and Kopf, 1 995). It should also be mentioned that Churchill ( 1994) has uncovered documents indicating the Nazis were merely following the USA's role model with respect to exterminating unwanted people. While figures provided by Markusen and Kopf ( 1995) indicate only 500,000 civilians killed by USA bombings in World War II, Webster s ( 1992) reports well over I ,000,000 German and Japanese civilian deaths in World War II. Since the USA dominated the aerial terror bombing campaign (with the only other major player, Britain, engaging in much smaller operations), most of those civilians must have been killed by the U SA (Markusen and Kopf, 1995). As for more modem atrocities through U SA aerial terrorist bombings, the slaughter of over 250,000 unarmed Laotian civilians during the period 1965-73 and of over 500,000 innocent unarmed Cambodian civilians during the 1969-73 interval (as estimated by the Finnish Inquiry Commission) is indicative ( Herman and Chomsky, 1988). These exterminations occurred at a time when there were no Cambodians or Laotians fighting Americans in any form. Given the fanatical anticommunism of many brainwashed Americans who do not perceive communists as people worthy of life, it should also be mentioned that few if any of the Cambodians and Laotians were even communists initially. Although in Vietnam there were indeed armed communist guerrillas fighting Americans, they were actually only struggling for the right to the free elections that the French bad promised upon their departure from the colony (Blum, 1995). Slaughtering possibly as many as ten innocent civilians with terrorist aerial bombings for every one "enemy" soldier killed (successfully exterminating an estimated 1,000,000 civilians by 1970) seems to represent deliberate murder, especially if these actions are considered in the light of the various extermination statements made by American leaders at the time (Herman, 1970). To try and justify such actions as being part of normal warfare is tantamount to trying to justify Hitler 's mass murder of the Jews because a small fraction might have taken up arms against him (Markusen and Kopf, 1995). Thayer ( 1985) cites estimates of only 200,000-400,000 civilians having died in Vietnam, but his figures are based on the number Qf civilians being admitted to South Vietnamese hospitals, and these numbers ignore the massive number of civilians killed in remote or communistcontrolled areas where USA air attacks were concentrated. While an exact figure for the number of Vietnamese civilians murdered by the USA is not known, McNamara ( 1999) bas cited Vietnamese government evidence of over one million Vietnamese civilian and military casualties per year, implying that millions of civilians were killed during the period of the heaviest USA involvement between 1965 and 1973, since estimates of military deaths (which may be more accurately measured) are only a million or so for the whole war (Bums and Lei ten berg, 1984). Vietnam officially reports 2 million civilian dead (CNN, 2000b), which would imply far more than 1 million maliciously murdered by the USA, given that Thayer's ( 1985) data imply collateral civilian casualties from actual military battles between opposing ground forces numbered far less than 400,000, and given that the communists themselves deliberately killed only about 40,000 civilians (Lewy, 1 978). Herman and Chomsky ( 1 988) report the total number of Vietnamese killed in the USA's war against Vietnam to be about 3 million, but all these figures may underestimate the true total, especially if one considers not only the direct murdering of civilians via USA aerial bombings a,, ·. ia traditional executions (by USA and puppet South Vietnamese ground forces) but also those killed indirectly as a result of the USA's deliberate attempts to murder millions by starvation through the destruction of food supplies (Zinn, 1995). Even in Iraq, where the USA might have seemed justified in fighting the Iraqis who had seized Kuwait in an almost bloodless invasion, it should be mentioned that Kuwait was an artificially created monarchy (Salinger and Laurent, 1991 ), which continues to maintain a repressive rule of that area of the world even after its "liberation" from Iraqi rule (Associated Press, 2000b). In particular, Kuwait was carved out of a larger Iraq shortly after World War I by the British (and made formally "independent" in 1 961 }, so that the vast oil resources there could continue to be controlled by capitalist companies subsequent to Britain giving up its Middle Eastern colonies (Blum, 1995). There is also some evidence that the USA plotted to encourage/provoke Iraq into its invasion in 1 990 to retake the territory (Salinger and Laurent, 1991 ). Regardless, for purpose of the body count, the USA's terrorist aerial bombardments on Iraq attacked mostly civilian targets (including civilian air raid shelters deliberately), directly resulting in the death of approximately 50,000 Iraqi civilians (Clark, 1992) and almost completely destroying the civilian economy (Laffin, 1 994). Moreover, the USA bombings deliberately and systematically destroyed vital civilian targets (such as irrigation systems, power plants, and sewage disposal systems), and this destruction combined with the continuing embargo against Iraq have resulted in extremely poor sanitary conditions, inadequate medical services, hunger, and related disease that has killed over one million Iraqi civilians, a very large number of whom are children according to a United Nations (UN) study (Flounders, l 998b). In addition, the USA's use of depleted uranium weapons in the 1991 war continue to cause tens of thousands of cases of terminal illnesses (such as leukemia and ancer) for those who live near to where such weapons were used (lAC, 1998b). Although the USA was able to use the UN as a cover for its military attacks on Iraq in 1991, the USA alone was responsible for its massive bombing of civilian targets, and although the embargo of lraq was originally agreed to by the UN in 1990 after Iraq occupied Kuwait, it has been the USA vetoes (with British support) of UN proposals to lift the trade sanctions that have perpetuated the embargo long after the Iraqi withdrawal (Flounders, 1998b ). W hile the USA has agreed to loosen the trade sanctions in recent years to allow the import of some nutritional items (including alcohol) and luxury goods (like cars), many necessities (like parts to rebuild Iraq's power and transportation infrastructure, agricultural and medical equipment or components, and even medicines) are still held up by the USA, as the USA continues to try to terrorize the Iraqi people into overthrowing their leader, whom the USA government leaders just happen not to like (King, 2000). Even a USA congressional representative has recently called the USA-led (and USA-enforced) embargo against Iraq "a horrendous policy-it's infanticide" (CNN, 2000a). USA Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's statement that the mass killing of civilians in Iraq is "worth it" as a means to achieve the desired political goal of removing Saddam Hussein from power verifies the deliberate nature of the USA's extermination of innocent Iraqi civilians (lAC, 1998b ). As for the crimes of the CIA and its controlled leaders, Indonesia is a good example. There in 1 965, the CIA had one of its allied Indonesian military leaders (Suharto) overthrow the elected government in a coup and then proceed to murder close to one million unarmed communists and other civilians, who had been part of, or identified with, a previously elected coalition government (Griswold, 1 979). While the CIA gave the Indonesian government a great deal of latitude in slaughtering virtually any people with left-wing opinions, the CIA also provided lists of thousands of specific Indonesians to be exterminated (Blum, 1995). The communists here, like the Jews under Hitler, offered virtually no resistance as they were killed by combinations of army troops, police, and gangs or paramilitary forces that were specifically armed by the CIA for the task (Levene and Roberts, 1999). In addition, the same CIA ally (Suharto) slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent people in one of his annexed provinces (East Timor) in the 1970s and 1 980s (Blum, 1995). While some of the estimates of the number killed exceed a million in the 1 965-66 blood bath alone (Levene and Roberts, 1999), Amnesty International estimates between 500 000 and 1 000 000 , , , were murdered in the 1965-66 extermination campaign, while a further 200,000 have been killed in East Timor (Blum, 1 995). A lthough some might not blame the USA in cases like this indirect mass murder, to exonerate the USA here would be equivalent to excusing Hitler for most of his murders, because he had foreign followers and "protectorate" governments in Croatia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Austria, and other countries carry out much of his slaughter, and because most of his victims (including most Jews) were foreigners in terms of never having resided in Germany (Markusen and Kopf, 1995). The largest extermination campaign not yet mentioned occurred in Korea. In particular, the South Korean military dictatorship that was put into power by the USA after World War II was busy killing unarmed civilians with left-wing opinions in South Korea even before the Korean War broke out in 1 950. Ho, Hui, and Ho ( 1 993) estimate that about 100,000 unarmed South Korean civilians were executed by the South Korean government before 1950, while Scheffer ( 1999) cites a South Korean army veteran's estimate of several hundred thousand. The Korean war itself (provoked by frequent South Korean military invasions ofNorth Korea) gave the South Korean government the ability to greatly increase the number of executions without attracting too much internat.ional notice (Blum, 1 995). In addition, early in the war, the U.S. military officially ordered all civilian refugees to be shot (Workers World. 2000b). Ho, Hui, and Ho ( 1 993) estimate that one million South Korean civilians were murdered by USA and South Korean forces during the 1 950-53 war, while several hundred thousand North Korean civilians were slaughtered during the short time of occupation by USA and South Korean forces (often via gruesome procedures such as by burying masses of people alive, burning large groups of civilians alive in locked buildings, and even pouring gasoline down the throats of babies screaming for milk). Until recently, any South Korean who talked about these crimes (including victims or relatives of victims) faced a prison sentence in their country (Griswold, 2000). Halliday ( 1981) indicates the extent of such USA atrocities in Korea to be "probably true," and he reports specific evidence such as a USA diplomat admitting to the killing of over 100,000 South Korean civilians after the USA reoccupation of South Korea, and the sending of thugs and dispossessed landlords to North Korea during the temporary USA occupation of that country in 1 950. Besides these mass murders, the USA slaughtered many more North Korean civilians in its terror bombings ofNorth Korea that destroyed virtually all civilian buildings there during the Korean War (Smith et al., 1 996). As a result, demographics indicate that the North Korean male (female) population fell from 4,782,000 in 1 949 to 3,982,000 in 1953, while the female population fell from 4,840,000 to 4,509,000 over the same time interval (Halliday, 1981 ). These numbers, which are consistent with those estimated by McCormack and Selden ( 1978), indicate over a million North Koreans lost even assuming the birth rate actually fell to the normal peacetime death rate during this stressful period (the 33 1 ,000 drop in the North Korean female population imply that a large portion of those killed were indeed innocent civilians). A plausible estimate is that 12-15% of the North Korean people (or 1 .2 to 1.4 million people) alone were killed during the Korean War (Smith et al., 1 996), not to mention the million or so South Korean civilians killed by the USA and its puppets, for a total of about 2 million civilians (Ayling, 2000). A general source of details on the crimes ofthe USA since World War II is Blum ( 1995). The list of mass murders committed by USA bombings or CIA puppets includes dozens of additional countries, among the most infamous of which were the slaughtering of over 1 50,000 Guatemalans in what Amnesty International has called a "program of political murder" (Harbury, 1 994), at least 75,000 El Salvadorian civilians (Blum, 1995), at least 40,000 Colombians (Mcinerney, 1998), and at least 10,000 Chileans (Sandford, 1976),5 not to mention the thousands of civilians who have been killed by USA actions in many other countries such as Iran, Nicaragua, and Angola (Blum, 1995).6 The body count in Table 1 does not incorporate any USA crimes which may have been committed but for which there is currently little or no evidence. For instance, Keeler ( 1989) reports that the CIA had an Operation Pique that was designed to affect the mental attitudes and behavior of employees at nuclear power plants in communist Eastern Europe, implying some intent to cause a nuclear meltdown/holocaust. Given the very bizarre and otherwise virtually inexplicable behavior of the employees who caused the nuclear disaster at Chemobyl in the Soviet Union in 1 986 (Medvedev, 1 99 1 ), it is possible that the USA's Operation Pique may have had something to do with it (and therefore may be responsible for the thousands of deaths which resulted but which are not counted here). In addition, because the focus is on the deliberate murder of unarmed civilians, Table 1 does not count the many unarmed Japanese POWs who were slaughtered by the USA (Dower, 1 986). Nor are all the people killed by USA embargoes counted in Table 1, as only the million Iraqi civilians clearly and deliberately killed by the USA through a combination of blockade and terror bombing of civilian targets are included in the 11 + million figure.7 Nor does this analysis count the effect of the USA's use of modem US biological weapons, some of which may have been deliberately launched against countries like Cuba (Franklin, 1992) and North Korea (Ho, Hui, and Ho, 1993), and others may have just "escaped" the laboratory (Horowitz, 1997). This analysis also does not incorporate some of the other atrocities deliberately committed by the USA, in which there may have been a substantial amount of harm and torture inflicted but few dead bodies. For instance, there is some evidence that the CIAINSA does engage in mind control torture (often through cults and other front organizations), and even estimates as high as 10 million victims (many of whom may, as a result, have their lives wasted in mental asylums or be lost through suicide and other unnatural deaths) have been cited in a 1995 Texas conference on the subject (sponsored by the Freedom ofThought Foundation) in the video "The Rosetta Stone to the Unconscious." Note here that the NSA stands for the National Security Agency, about which most Americans knew nothing for decades, although it was the largest "intelligence" organization in the USA (Bamford, 1983), thereby providing an indication of the enormous potential for secret undisclosed crimes of the USA secret police (since most Americans had never even heard of the NSA much less knew of its covert actions). Some interesting sources on the CIA/NSA crimes committed in the USA are Bowart ( 1 978), Stich ( 1 994), and Constantine (1995), who also document some of the cooperation between the USA "intelligence" agencies and organized crime, including joint efforts to sell narcotics. The latter activi ties may not really be so surprising given that the drug trade was actually instrumental in the spreading of British capitalism and colonial rule (Tho'Mas, 1997). While some of the reports on the activities described in this paragraph (but not countable in the aggregate documented body count reported in Table l) may be exaggerated (or distorted in some way, as would be expected in mind torture activities), they merit mention because of the paucity of mainstream media coverage of the evidence on these issues and because of the lack of evidence refuting the claims. The foregoing measurement of the USA's mass murders also does not include its part in one of the worst atrocities in history: the enslavement of millions of Africans. Tens of millions of Africans died (mostly on land) while being forcefully transported to their new "homes" in America (Stannard, 1 992). Capitalist countries spread a belief that Africans were "half-animal" in order to "justify" their cruel enslavement (Chin, 2000), at the same time that they spread the gospel that free trade (including in people) would benefit all. However, the facts indicate that_ "there can be no doubt that the level of culture among the masses of Negroes in West Africa in the fifteenth century was higher than that of northern Europe, by any standard of measurement-homes, clothes, artistic creation and appreciation, political organization and religious consistency" (DuBois, 1 965). Africans were also way ahead of the whites in many areas of technology, astronomy, and navigation at the time, possibly even having "discovered" America a century before Columbus bungled into it (Chin, 2000). However, despite the cultural superiority of African culture, the European colonialists had superior weaponry through which they were able to win control of Africa by application of direct military force and by paying and arming African "allies" (Davidson, 1 961 ). The African puppets of the whites were manipulated (through intrigues, bribes, and threats) into serving the will of their European masters to have the human "goods" delivered (in return for more weapons and luxury items) into the middle of the nineteenth century (lsaacman and lsaacman, 1983 ). The slave trade itself robbed Africa of its prime workers and created a chaotic society that focused on obtaining slaves for export instead of on domestic production of real goods (DuBois, 1965). In particular, the African economic and social system was destroyed by Europeans' profitable use of exploitative trade strategies, which involved selling mas� produced luxury goods to the African rich (especially to the slave tradmg puppets themselves) in return for slaves and other commodities thereby reducing the demand for traditional African production for th� ?lack masses and �hu . s bankrupting local African producers. This system IS actually very snrular to the methods utilized by the USA today to destroy foreign economies and to economically enslave much of the world, as will be explained later in Chapters 6 and 7. Alt�?ugh t�e USA was not the only country involved in committing atroc1t1es agamst slaves, the USA treatment of Africans was in many respects worse than the other major players such as the Spanish. In � articular: there were less slaves brought to the USA than to the SpanISh colomes (at least partially because the USA had less people and money than the Spanish colonies initially), and so the USA was not able to murder, rape, and torture as many as the Spanish. However, the USA slavery laws were much more atrocious insofar as they made the blacks and their descendants slaves forever, whereas the Spanish did not enslave the offspring and even allowed most of their existing slaves to earn or buy their freedom eventually (Teepen, 1 998). For instance, in contrast to the early nineteenth century USA where blacks were almost always slaves, the proportion of the African population that was free had risen in 1 808 (after only I 00 years of slavery) to over 75% in one Spanish colony of the Western Hemisphere (Sharp, 1 976). In addition, many think slavery ended in the USA in the 1 860s, after the northern USA states executed a plan to free the slaves in the southem states (formally announced in 1 863) as part of a successful military/ �litical effort to win (by 1 865) a very bloody civil war, which began (m 1 861) when the northern states tried to impose a protectionist tariff system on the country as a whole, and the southern states (which wanted "free trade" in both goods and people) seceded from the union in protest (Copeland, 2000). However, after the southern whites lost the civil war, they created a form of neo-slavery by forcing blacks to sign work contracts that essentially sold their freedom and lives to white owners in return for being allowed to live (Lewis, 1 998). Because the blacks had no money, no food, and no land, they bad no other choice (Zinn, 1 995). This "efficient" system (which provided capitalists not only with the advantage of cheap black labor and lowered the cost of agricultural raw materials for industry but also drove down the cost of competing white labor and thereby made USA industry even more competitive) lasted into the 1 900s (Finkin, 1 997). As documented by Patterson ( 1970), such explicit forms of slavery have been replaced with more subtle forms of racism and wage slavery in the twentieth century that are similar to those used by Nazi Germany against the Jews before their extermination in World War II, and data indicate that this system has resulted in the early death of over 30,000 blacks per year in the USA (cumulating to millions of deaths over time). The significantly higher death rates for USA blacks have continued into the twenty-first century, with USA blacks still having a life expectancy over five years less than for USA whites (mostly because of poverty), and with blacks therefore continuing to have to pay higher life insurance premiums (Paltrow, 2000) that (among many other biases) further impoverish them (and therefore actually contribute to the higher death rates themselves in a typically circular capitalist process of making the poor ever poorer). Perhaps fittingly, the USA continues to honor explicit slaveowners on almost all of its paper money (including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, and Benjamin Franklin), with even the exception of Abraham Lincoln (on the $5 bill) having once said, "I do not stand pledged for the prohibition ofthe slave trade between the states. I, as much as any man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race" (Cosby, 1 998). With many of these slaveowners (such as Andrew Jackson and George Washington) also having been mass murderers of Indians (Churchill, 1 994), it seems appropriate to honor them on the very money and wealth which was derived in large part from the policies of black slavery and Indian genocide. The Table 1 count also does not include the many millions of other people who died in the USA in the past as a result of the capitalist economic system. Besides slavery, this system caused harsh working conditions (as exemplified by many male and female children as young as 6 years old having to work 1 00 hours per week just to survive), unemployment, poor living conditions, and general poverty (Zinn, 1 995). The resulting deaths do not appear to be deliberate, even though the only crime for which these millions were killed was that they were born poor in a capitalist society. Nor does this analysis of USA mass murders incorporate any of the repressive aspects of the formal police state that exists in the USA itself. In particular, the USA is a leader in the number of police per capita and in the percent of the population locked up in prison, with 5 times as many prisoners per capita as the rest of the world (Butterfield, 2000). The per capita prison population in the USA in the 1 980s (and today) was actually more than twice as high as that in what the USA used to refer to as the Eastern European communist "police states" (UN, 1994). In addition, the total number of uniformed, undercover, private, secret police, and related administrative personnel in the USA is about 1% of the population (Reynolds, 1 994) and even exceeds the per capita numbers of 1 988 East Germany, which was reputed to be among the most notorious of the "police states" ofEastern Europe (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1 998).

Other Countries Ranked in the Top Ten in Exterminations of People

While other countries have also committed mass murder on a grand scale, their atrocities rank lower than the USA in all cases. Only two other countries even come close to the USA in terms of the magnitude of their extermination campaigns. Germany ranks number 2 in mass murders largely because Nazi Germany under Hitler's capitalist rule in the 1933-45 interval deliberately killed over 10 million civilians (most during the war years of 1941-45), including over 5 million non-Jewish Soviet civilians, 5 million Jews, and hundreds of thousands of others (Markusen and Kopf, 1995). Many were executed directly, but millions of others were deliberately slaughtered more indirectly through hunger and disease in concentration camps or in scorched-earth occupied territories (Elliot, 1 972). The Nazis actually used the USA as a role model in some of their racial policies and extermination campaigns (Churchill, 1 994) that so greatly enhanced the profits (and stock prices) of the German corporations, which had been instrumental in financing Hitler's democratic election to power (Feinberg, 1 999). For instance, a December 2, 1 941 German Economic Armament Staff report stated the objective of the scorchedearth policies in the occupied territories as "the elimination of the surplus eaters (Jews and the population of the Ukrainian �ities such as Kiev, which receive no food rations at all)," indicating deliberate mass murder (Wytwycky, 1982). Slightly less than half the Soviets and only about half the Jews were killed with poison gas or executions (Elliot, 1972). The number of civilians (especially the number of Soviet and Polish civilians) killed by Nazi Germany would be even larger if all those who died of exploitation (i.e., overwork and undernourishment) were included, as Elliot ( 1972) and Wytwycky ( 1982) have indicated. The Nazi holocaust was not the first mass murder committed by Germany. In particular, German troops had previously used a practice of violently forcing "undesirable" natives in their South West African colony in the late nineteenth century into an unlivable desert (and firing at any Africans trying to return to their own land), thereby exterminating tens of thousands of the Herero people there (Levene and Roberts, 1999). Eventually, some of the remaining natives were allowed into concentration camps, where harsh conditions killed thousands more. There are certainly similarities here to the USA's genocide of the native Americans, although it is clearly on a far smaller scale and did not employ all the gruesome tactics used by the USA (e.g., the Germans did not offer rewards for the killing of any and all natives, did not deliberately spread disease, and did not deliberately destroy native food and water resources-moreover, the Germans always allowed the live capture of female natives and spoke of the "annihilation" of the Herero nation as opposed to the extermination of the people themselves, providing for some possibility of an "enslavement" alternative). Regardless, Germany's killings of the Soviets, Jews, Herero, and others are not sufficiently large to put the country into first place, especially since the eleven million estimated killed by the USA represents an extremely low estimate (as previously explained) and may greatly understate the true number of victims (which may very well exceed 20 million). Spain ranks number 3 in terms of mass murders because it committed genocide of Indians in its conquest of Central and South America in the middle of this millenium, with many Indian noncombatants being slaughtered with a combination of weapons and dogs, and many more dying indirectly through starvation and disease as they fled the massacres (Stannard, 1992). While some have estimated a "disappearance" of tens of millions of Indians from Spanish colonies in the Western Hemisphere (Stannard, 1 992), estimates of initial Indian populations in Central and South America may have been way too high, as explained in Denevan ( 1976) and Henige ( 1998). In addition, ofthe millions oflndians who did once live in Spanish America, many were killed in battle and from related causes (such as from starvation and disease on the front lines of military sieges of fortified cities defended by armed combatants), and many more died as a result of the harsh living and working conditions they had to endure as Spanish slaves (Chalk and Jonassohn, 1990) or as overtaxed serfs (Borah and Cook, 1969). A large portion of the Indians in Spanish America died of disease, which spread rapidly in the environment of Spanish conquest (Stannard, 1992), but Spain's official policy was one of forcing the conversion of the Indians to Christianity and subservience as opposed to outright genocide (Jaimes, 1992). As a result, except for the deaths resulting from some of the initial genocidal policies followed by the Spanish Conquistadors, who may have engaged in willful extermination policies that contributed to the spreading of disease (Larsen, 1994), most of the Indian deaths are not counted as deliberate murders. In particular, the Spanish generally sought via slavery (and extracting raw materials like gold from their land) to economically exploit the Indians (and not kill them), and, in contrast to the USA policy of offering rewards for the killing of natives, Spain even punished "heroes" like Columbus just for excessively exploiting the Indians (Chalk and Jonassohn, 1990). In addition, a significant portion of the decline in the Indian population of Central and South America can be attributable to the Spanish policy of separating the Indian male slaves from the females for substantial periods of time and by working them so hard even when they were allowed to meet that they had "little inclination for marital communication; in this fashion they ceased procreation" (Cook, 1998). Moreover, a large part of the reduction in the pure Indian population in the Spanish colonies was due to interracial mating, as many Indians were assimilated into society via Christian conversions, and most Spanish freely married with the Indians (Driver, 196 1). Although Spain has also committed atrocities against non-Indian peoples, such as during the Inquisition (which mostly involved the Christian murder of non-Christians), it has not been involved in any material atrocities in the last few decades. An exact number of noncombatants deliberately killed by the Spanish is not known, but it may exceed 5 million (Stannard, 1992). The remaining countries in the top ten killed far less people. For instance, number 4 Pakistan murdered as many as three million Bengalis in 1971 (Chalk and Jonassohn, 1990), number 5 Japan slaughtered over a million Chinese civilians in its invasion of China in the 1930s and 1940s as well as conducted several lesser atrocities (Markusen and Kopf, 1995), number 6 Turkey exterminated over a million unarmed Armenian civilians between 1915 and 1922, as well as thousands of people in the Balkans in prior years (Levene and Roberts, 1999) and thousands of Kurds in subsequent years (Andreopoulos, 1994), number 7 czarist Russia slaughtered over a million people in a purge ofCircassians from its Caucasus provinces (Levene and Roberts, 1999), number 8 Nigeria killed over a million of its ethnic Ibo civilians (via flagrant mass murder, blatant aerial bombings of civilians, and deliberate efforts to prevent Red Cross and other relief supplies from reaching a starving civilian population) in a war against its secessionist Biafra province (Forsyth, 1969), number 9 France massacred over 500,000 in its colonies (Smith, 2000), and number 10 Britain legalized the killing of hundreds of thousands of people, including over 200,000 aborigines in Australia after ruling the country to be ''uninhabited" in 1788 (Reynolds, 1995), and over 300,000 Irish in the seventeenth century (Levene and Roberts, 1999) in a parliament-approved campaign that "treated all sections of Irish as if they were, not humans but beasts," and that imposed the death penalty for Irish found repeatedly communicating with Catholic priests or failing to leave land seized by British soldiers (MacManus, 1973). 1 It is interesting to observe that, with the exception of Japan, all of the countries in the top ten are religiously Christian or Moslem. . In addition, all of the countries in the top ten just happen to be capitalISt ones, even though no "credit" is being given here for the millions who have died of starvation and disease as a result of colonialism and other methods of capitalist economic exploitation, as those people like the millions who perished in the slave trade) died as a result of the crue�ty of the capitalist economic system as opposed to being deliberately ktlle s d (Marx and Engels, 1988b ). The criteria used in this study to mea­ � the magnitude of human exterminations ignores all such deaths which are not clearly deliberate. For instance, the deaths of millions of slaves who died in transit from Africa were not caused by deliberat extermination policies, but instead by poor living conditions that can be attributed to the capitalist system which put a positive value on the slaves' lives but not high enough to provide them with adequate food, water, quarters, medicine, and sanitary conditions (Miller, 1988). To provide perspective here, it should be mentioned that there is some evidence that the death rate of the "free" white crew members who transported the slaves was about as high as that of the slaves (Curtin, 1969), providing an indication of the relative value (and the kill rate) of workers in general under capitalism (but not implying a general intent to kill them).9 From a legal perspective, the primary reason for not including deaths related to pure economic exploitation in the atrocity count is the fact that deliberately killing workers (even one's own slaves), was generally against the law, even though such murder was only a misdemeanor in the USA when the victim was a slave (Nicholson, 1 994). Thus, under this legal framework, the massive deaths resulting from capitalist economic exploitation are not considered intentional killings. However, the executions of runaway slaves are (although the numbers are too small relative to the other USA mass murders to be listed separately in Table I and are instead essentially incorporated into the "Other" account), just as the mass slaughter of civilians of specific countries with bombings and embargoes is counted as deliberate murder because it was not only allowed but even ordered by the USA (and killing Indians in any fashion was obviously even more deliberate insofar as it was not only legal but also encouraged by the USA with rewards of money and land).

Caveats on the Refutation of Communist Atrocities

Given the distorted reputation of communist countries in the capitalist press (Herman and Chomsky, 1988), some may find it surprising that no communist countries made the top ten, especially since even many skeptics of the mainstream media (and left-wing critics of the USA) often recite the anticommunist propaganda they hear in the mainstream press, such as by referring to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) as "one of the twentieth century's most bloody dictatorships" (Str� bel and Peterson, 2000). However, the widespread belief that com- . mumst governments have killed millions is largely a myth that is spread by th� capi�list press, which is heavily influenced by the CIA and its fanatical anticommunist allies (Blum, 1 995). '0 For example, many blame Pol Pot for the deaths of millions of his own people during his rule of Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, with some being executed for collaborating in the USA's murder of a half million Cambodian civilians through aerial bombardments, and with many more being killed for attempting a coup against him in reaction to his military attacks on Vietnam revolving around a border dispute (Kiernan, 1996). However, the neutral Finnish Inquiry Commission investigated and found that the number executed by Pol Pot was only between 75,000 and 1 50,000 (Herman and Chomsky, 1 988). While it is true that hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died of starvation and disease under Pol Pot's regime, these deaths do not appear to be any more deliberate than the poor who die of similar causes under capitalism. In fact, many of these deaths were the result of the USA bombings themselves, which had destroyed Cambodian agriculture (via the destruction of 75% of its draft animals and substantial amounts of rural housing, as well as the depopulation of the countryside that resulted from millions fleeing to the cities to escape the USA bombings). Despite a forecast by sources close to the USA government that a million people would die in 1975 if Cambodia were deprived of USA aid (which had been partially feeding the starving, refugeeswollen cities before Pol Pot seized power), the USA not only stopped aid after Pol Pot became ruler but also imposed an embargo against the country it had so terribly bombed (Herman and Chomsky, 1988). Some imports of food from communist China and Pol Pot's forcing of the city dwellers to the farms shortly after his takeover in 1975 prevented the disaster from being any worse (Kiernan, 1 996). It should also be mentioned that, subsequent to Pol Pot's removal from power (which occurred after the Vietnamese army counterattacked and occupied Cambodia in 1 979), the USA supported Pol Pot in his guerrilla war against the occupying Vietnamese troops (Blum, 1995). In addition, given the USA history of using diplomacy, bribes, and extortion to stir up tensions between communist countries (Griswold, 1972), it is possible that the USA itself had played a part in promoting the deadly rivalry between Cambodia and Vietnam that motivated many of Pol Pot's killings (Klinghoffer, 1 998). Regardless, Pol Pot's execution of 75,000-150,000 people is a horrible crime, although it is not enough to make the top ten. 11

In a similar grotesque exaggeration of the truth, Rummel ( 1991) and others claim that communist China murdered tens of millions of people, especially during the period 1 950-52 (shortly after the communist seizure of power) and during the Cultural Revolution in the 1 960s. However, such estimates are largely based on various sources that are either unpublished or published for propaganda purposes by the Anti-Communist League of Nationalist China on the island of Taiwan, which appears to have completely fabricated the numbers (Teiwes, 1 997), in an apparent attempt to ')ustify" its military attacks on communist China that continued long after the communists' seizure of power (Associated Press, 1950). Schuman ( 19 56) even saw and talked with some specific people in communist China after they were alleged to have been executed. More accurate figures are provided by Chinese government sources. In particular, Grunfeld ( 1996) has found a substantial amount of evidence indicating that Chinese government reports in such matters (despite being cloaked in ideological verbiage) are fairly reliable, especially in comparison to Western estimates that are often based on limited and biased refugee claims, "wild exaggerations," or even outright fabrications. 12 For instance, in the 1950-52 interval (at a time when China was fighting the USA in Korea in a war that threatened to escalate into China itself), the Chinese government publicly reported (and displayed) its executions, many of which were also publicized in the USA press at the time (Associated Press, 1 951 ). The local Chinese government announced a total of 28,332 executions for one province (Kwantung) during the 1950-1951 interval, and if that figure were extrapolated proportionally to the rest of the country, it would imply about 400,000 official deaths (Stavis, 1 978). However, that province was a coastal one near Hong Kong and may have had an abnormally high number of executions. Other information provided by Chinese government leaders indicates 1 35,000 executions nationwide based on 800,000 official trials and a reported 1 6.8% execution rate of "counterrevolutionaries" at the height of the death sentence campaign in 1 951 (Meisner, 1999). In addition to the official government death sentences, there were also many executions carried out independently by the local peasants, who may very well have killed tens of thousands of landlords (in retaliation for the prior decades of mass starvation inflicted upon them) and other perceived enemies such as agents or supporters of the former Nationalist Chinese government on the mainland (Teiweis, 1997). There is one Chinese source estimate of 7 10,000 victims between 1950 and 1952 (Gong, 1 994), but that figure may reflect a speech made by Mao in the 1 950s that referred to so many "liquidations" (Stavis, 1978), which the anticommunist propagandist Rummel ( 1 991) himself admits "could simply mean to remove, deactivate, or make ineffective, rather than kill." In addition, since there was still some fighting going on with as many as 400,000 Nationalist Chinese guerrillas or bandits at the time (Gong, 1 994), and since the western and southwestern parts of mainland China remained under Nationalist Chinese rule until 1951 (Kwong, 1 997), it is possible that some of the 7 10,000 "liquidations" were related to the killing (or disbursing) of soldiers and armed guerrillas, and some of the actual executions may have been of noncivilian POWs. Moreover, fear of arrest during the 1 950-52 strife may have motivated as many as 500,000 people to commit suicide (Teiweis, 1997), and these deaths may have been included in the 7 10,000 "liquidations." While the suicides were certainly caused by the communist Chinese seizure of power and subsequent campaign of public trials, they could not be considered willful murders (especially given the fairly low rate of death sentences in the trials). As a result, the true number of deliberate killings of unarmed civilians is likely to have been far below 710,000 during the 1 950-52 interval. Gong ( 1994) cites an official Chinese report of 230,000 people put under public surveillance and 1 ,270,000 imprisoned by the communist Party in the 1950-52 interval. lf the officially cited ratio of about 1 execution for every 6 convictions were applied to that data (with the other 5 of 6 convicted people being put under surveillance or imprisoned), it would indicate about 300,000 executions during that period. However, even that number may be an overestimate, as the official rate of sentencing "counterrevolutionaries" to be put under public surveillance (32%) documented by Meisner (1999) was much higher than Gong's (1994) figures indicate. The differences in the imprisonment rates may be due to the fact that the latter figures include many people imprisoned for P�/political corruption (Schuman, 1956) as opposed to "counterrevolutionary" activities. Applying to Gong's (1994) data Meisner's (1999) cited ratio of about l execution for every 2 people put under observation would imply less than 200,000 executions over the 1 950-52 period. Mao did clearly admit that several of his leaders killed 35,000 people through cruel treatment in prisons during the Cultural Revolution during the 1 960s, but it should also be mentioned that he had those leaders responsible tried and executed (MacFarquhar, 1 993). While there was some violent fighting during the Cultural Revolution (Dietrich, 1994), and while MacFarquhar (1993) cites some estimates of the number of killed in the hundreds of thousands, he admits such high numbers are based on flimsy evidence that extrapolates potentially exaggerated guesses of killings from refugees fleeing areas with a greater amount of disorder. As Deleyne (1974) indicated, the rhetoric during the Cultural Revolution was very violent, there were a significant number of arrests, and two hundred thousand people were thrown out of the Communist Party, but there was very little actual violence, and the number of people actually killed in the 1 960s probably approximates the Chinese government estimate of 35,000. The total number of people killed by communist China is therefore probably low enough to keep the country out of the top ten in mass murders, although more evidence on the issue is certainly needed to be sure of the exact number. 13 Rummel ( 1 99 1 ) and MacFarquhar (1993) have also blamed Mao for tens of millions of Chinese deaths during a famine in 1 958-6 1, but the magnitude of such deaths may be overstated, and they certainly do not represent deliberate killings. In particular, managerial errors (especially with respect to a rapid attempt to attain huge economies of scale without adequately addressing small group incentive and initiative issues), a relatively greater investment focus on industry (for national security reasons related to ongoing USA Cold War threats), and very poor weather caused the catastrophe (Meurs, 1 999). In addition, it should also be mentioned that, even if there had been as many as 10 million additional deaths annually (compared to 6 million officially recorded by the Chinese government) during that 3-year disaster (Aston et al., 1 984), it would not have even brought the death rate up to the level of the pre-communist era. For instance, Deleyne ( 1 974) states that the annual death rate in China had been 3.4% in normal peaceful (and "prosperous") times in the 1 930s under capitalism, whereas the death rate had fallen to 1.1% by the mid-1 950s under communism. 14 Applying the difference of 2.3% to a population of 600 million Chinese, yields a figure of over 10 million lives saved per year by Mao's communist policies that both increased incomes in the aggregate and equalized them across the population. Even if a catastrophic extra 10 million deaths did occur annually in the famine of 1 958-61, the annual death rate was still below that of pre-communist China during normal times, and so Mao's policies saved few lives even in the years of his worst mistakes and misfortune. The Soviet Union is also reputed to have murdered tens of millions of people, mostly during the period of Stalin's rule between 1930 and 1953 (Rummel, 1 990). In the first chapter of this book, this allegation along with many other myths about Eastern Europe, communism, and its collapse, will be shown to be untrue. 15

Conclusion

This objective investigation indicates that the USA, which has had the most continuous, widespread history of committing atrocities of any country in the world, is truly number 1 in exterminating innocent unarmed civilians. Although this finding is in contrast to the opinion held by so many Americans that the USA is the "good guy," it is consistent with the perception of parts of the rest of the world that often view the USA and its world policeman policies as hypocritical (Thadani, 1998). The measured discoveries of this research are also consistent with the opinion of some that the USA is "the biggest terrorist in the world" (Moorehead, 1 998).

The Documented Facts about Eastern Europe and Communism: A Refutation of Popular Myths about the True Good Guys

While most have a false impression of USA benevolence or "kindness," many believe that the former governments of Eastern Europe (and other communist states) were (and are) horribly totalitarian, economically inefficient societies that collapsed because they did not serve the people of those countries (Pipes, 1 993). This chapter explains the true causes of the disintegration of communism in Eastern Europe, provides facts refuting the popular myths surrounding Eastern Europe and communism, and clarifies why the USA won the Cold War despite having an inferior system.

Economic Phenomena Contributing to the Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe

The virtually bloodless collapse of communism in Eastern Europe has caused many to conclude that the communist system was removed there largely as a result of its own economic failure to improve the standard of living of the people (Campbell, 1992). While it is true that economics did play a roll in the fall of communism, the communist system itself was actually reasonably effective economically, as is indicated by the higher average real economic growth rates experienced by Eastem Europe under communism (compared to capitalist countries) from 1 946-89, as well as before that time interval in the Soviet Union where communism took hold earlier in 1917 (Murphy, 1 998). In fact, Eastern Europe enjoyed higher growth rates than Western Europe even in its final critical years (IMF, 1 993), and the fall of communism in Eastern Europe can be more attributed to the economic failure of the system in existence there prior to communism than to the mistakes and problems of communism itself. In particular, prior to communism, Eastern Europe had had substantially lower economic output per capita than Western Europe and the USA (Mead, 1 994). For instance, the gross national product (GNP) per capita of Russia was about 1 0% of that of the USA during peacetime before communism in 1913 (Gregory, 1982), and GNP per capita was even lower by the time of the communist revolution there in 1917 (Hutchings, 1 982). Thereafter, real GNP per capita in the Soviet Union under communism caught up significantly, rising to 31% of USA GNP per capita by 1991 (UN, 1994 ).' That performance occurred despite the very destructive Foreign Interventionist Civil War of 191 8-22 (Krivosheev, 1 997), which reduced Soviet output by about half (Hutchings, 1 982), and despite the almost as destructive Nazi invasion of 1941-44, which reduced Soviet GNP by over 20% (Maddison, 1969).2 After growing faster than the USA in all peaceful decades up to the political collapse of Eastern Europe in 1 990,3 Russia's economy deteriorated enormously following the capitalist takeover by Yeltsin, with real GNP falling by about 50% between 1991 and 1 996 (IMF, 1 997a). A comparison of real economic growth rates in the Soviet Union and the USA shortly before and after the collapse of Eastern European communism in 1990 is provided in Table 2:

[table]

Similarly, real economic growth in all of Eastern Europe under communism was estimated to be higher than in Western Europe under capP. talism (as well as higher than in the USA) even in communism's final decade (the 1 980s), and real economic o�tput fell by over 30% in Eastem Europe .as a whole in the 1 990s after the reimposition of capitalism (IMF, 1998: 1 7 1). So why was communism overthrown in Eastern Europe, if real economic growth was higher than under capitalism? One answer can be found in the area's historic poverty. Although communism had partially bridged the huge gulf in standard of living differences between Eastern Europe and developed capitalist countries, it had not completely done so, and many people began to incorrectly associate communism with poverty. Increasing contact and communication with richer capitalist countries contributed to this feeling.4 As a result, many Eastern Europeans (including many of their leaders) began to falsely perceive capitalism to be a get-rich-quick scheme to bring their standard of living up to the level of the developed capitalist countries (Marcy, 1990).

Other Factors Contributing to the Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe

There were, of course, other factors that reduced people's support for the communist system in Eastern Europe and therefore contributed to its demise. Many of these other factors related back to the economic problems in Eastern Europe. However, the Soviet participation in a civil war in Afghanistan may have played a role independent of economics in reducing support for, and confidence in, the communist system.

General Problems Related to the Economy

The efficiency of communism may have enabled Eastern Europe to overtake the richest capitalist countries by 1 989 (and may have thereby avoided communism's undeserved reputation for economic inefficiency) if it had not suffered so much destruction from war and had not therefore also felt the need to expend enormous resources on defense. In Particular, the Soviet Union had been invaded militarily by over a dozen countries in the first 25 years of its existence (including by the very powerful capitalist countries of the USA, Britain, Germany, and Japan). Subsequently, it had been subjected to various threatening Cold War acts by the USA, including a massive number of military flights over Soviet territory, as well as frequent attempted assassinations and sabotage by USA spies and infiltrators (Smith, 2000). Many of those infiltrators and others seeking to instigate armed revolution in the Soviet Union had earlier collaborated with the Nazi invaders during their temporary occupation of a portion of the USSR in World War II, and some of those terrorists preaching "freedom, democracy, and other humanitarian concerns" had even been members of Nazi extermination squads (Blum, 1995). Although the absolute amount of military spending was lower in the Soviet Union than in the USA, the Soviet leaders felt it necessary to spend a larger portion of their smaller GNP in order to maintain relative military parity as a deterrent to more attacks (Campbell, 1 974). Without this higher percentage of GNP allocated to defense spending, a larger amount of resources would have been available for consumption and productive investment, and the Soviet Union no doubt would have come closer to catching up with the USA in terms of satisfying consumer desires by 1989. In addition, the technological embargo imposed by the richer Westem countries against Eastern Europe contributed to the inability of that area to fully meet its consumers' demand for high-tech goods. Just for instance, the cost of producing modem semiconductors was over 20 times higher in Eastern Europe in 1989 than it would have cost to purchase them on the "free" world market (Krakat, 1 996). Despite the embargo, Eastern Europe was able to attain a level of technology that was at least on par with that of many capitalist countries with similar GNP per capita, and less than a decade behind that of the USA (Smith, 2000), but the embargo certainly increased the cost of technology and inhibited the ability of Eastern Europe Union to satisfy their consumers' wishes (Parrott, 1 985). The inability to satisfy consumer high-tech demand as well as rich Western countries also contributed to a perception that communist systems were backward and uninnovative because they are governmentrun (as opposed to systems that theoretically concentrate innovation in the private or corporate sector). Despite this false perception, there is actually some evidence that governments encourage more long-term innovation than rich capitalists or corporate bureaucrats who are more risk-averse and focus more on short-term profits (Der Spiegel, 1 998), and it was not the innovation of the capitalist countries but their riches that allowed them to be able to afford the investments needed to develop the leading technologies. The greater wealth of capitalist countries not only enabled them to spend a far larger absolute amount of money on research and development, but also generally a larger percent of their much higher income (DeBlasi, 2000). The capitalist riches themselves arose through centuries of colonialism, imperialism, slavery, and other forms of foreign exploitation (which were enforced via strong military forces that were able to increase their relative strength as the relative income disparities between the countries grew), as explained by Bittorf (1992) and Darity (1992). Exploitation in the form of horrible work and living conditions for the domestic masses (that included forcing 6-yearold children to work 1 00+ hour weeks just to survive) also contributed to the capitalists' accumulation of wealth and technology (Marx and Engels, 1988b ). Despite the riches of private capitalist individuals and businesses, it has actually been governments that have originally been responsible for many of the major innovations in the world, such as related to computers, electronics, the internet, space exploration, and atomic energy (Marcy, 1 990). Even communist China, despite its very low level of income per capita (that still has far to go to catch up with · the West), has managed to become among the world leaders in innovation in many areas, such as in gene research (Leggett and Johnson, 2000) and in the development of important practical agricultural processes or new plant strains (Meurs, 1999). Although economic misconceptions directly contributed to the collapse of communism, there were certainly other factors involved as well. For instance, a desire for the political freedoms of the developed capitalist countries, not just their riches, played a part in Eastern Europe turning away from communism. However, to some extent, it was the greater wealth of the developed capitalist countries that enabled them to en . gage in the many threatening actions and wars that motivated communtst repression to restrict some political freedoms (Blum, 1995). Similarly, the Eastern European people's desire for greater travel freedom, especially in East Germany, also motivated them to overthrow COmmunism. However, it was the relative economic poverty of Eastern Europe that heavily contributed to the restrictive travel policies which were implemented to combat the drain of important skilled workers (like doctors and nurses) to the higher incomes of Western Europe (Apel, 1 966). East Germany had the most restrictive travel policies because West Germany tried to entice its skilled workers to emigrate not only through much better-paying jobs (easily obtainable because of similar culture and language and, more importantly, because ofWest Germany's offer of immediate and automatic citizenship to East German immigrants) but also with sizable cash payments and many other benefits (Der Tagesspiege/, 1990f).5 West Germany could afford to be so "generous" to East German immigrants because it had impoverished East Germany after World War II by forcing it alone to pay the entire amount of the enormous reparations to the Soviet Union that was contracted for Germany as a whole by the USA at Potsdam in 1 945 (Apel, 1966). Other forms of economic warfare and extortion (where the far greater wealth of the capitalist countries gave them powerful advantages) also played a part in communist Eastern Europe moving toward capitalist systems. In particular, lucrative trade, loans, and aid were often offered to communist countries if they conducted capitalistic economic "reforms", while "non-reforming" communist countries were typically confronted with trade barriers. Moreover, the threat of an escalation of the arms race, which was especially counterproductive to the poorer communist countries that had to expend a larger percent of national income to defense as a result, also produced motivation to appease Western demands for capitalist reforms (Marcy, 1 990). In addition, ethnic, cultural, and religious differences were a factor in the break-up of the Eastern European communist bloc. In particular, many people in Eastern European countries and in the former Soviet Union had resented being dominated by Russians since the pre-communist days of czarist Russia (Matlock, 1 995), especially after Russia killed or exiled millions from the Caucasus in the 1 800s (Levene and Roberts, 1 999). However, economic subsidies and investments in the non-Russian republics of the Soviet Union (as well as the grant of some political autonomy) had greatly reduced such tensions under communism (Marcy, 1990) and eliminated the need for ethnic-related repression (Getty, Rittersporn and Zemskov, 1 993). The ethnic problems reemerged only under Gorbachev's capitalist reforms in the mid-I 980s under Perestroika, as those free market policies resanctified the quest for personal or regional gain (at the expense of others), which encouraged ethnic or nationalist movements (Marcy, 1 990). For instance, an earlier Soviet policy of investing substantial sums into less developed areas of the Soviet Union (in order to bring their income closer to that of the historically richer Russians) was drastically cut back under Perestroika for reasons of economic efficiency, and those who opposed such reforms under Gorbachev were purged from power, thereby magnifying the resentment of Russian domination and causing a reawakening of the nationalist or independence movements (Marcy, 1 990). The Soviet Union's decision to charge its Eastern European allies capitalist market prices for oil in the late 1980s also contributed to the 1 989 revolutions among its Eastern European allies, as the resulting slowing of economic growth there increased the people's dissatisfaction with the communist system (and their Russian defenders), especially in East Germany (Ritschl, 1 996) where the original revolution broke out. The Joint Economic Committee ( 1988) of the USA Congress itself was well aware of the fact that the capitalist reforms whicn the USA was pressuring Eastern Europe to undertake quite naturally increased income inequality, which caused "tensions among the nationality groups."

The War in Afghanistan

Also potentially contributing to unrest among ethnic groups in the Soviet bloc (especially in the Moslem republics of the USSR), and to dissatisfaction amongst the Soviet people in general, was the 1979-89 military participation of the USSR in a civil war in Moslem Afghanistan, which provided some evidence of actual Soviet atrocities that led many people in the Soviet Union to question the legitimacy and morality of their government and leaders (Kuperman, 1999). The conflict started when CIA-financed rebels began terrorist attacks against a communist government (Blum, 1 995), which bad (completely independent ofthe Soviet Union or its agents) overthrown a feudal dictatorship earlier in 1978 (Rodman, 1 994). This government then invited Soviet military forces into the country to aid in stopping the CIA-sponsored terrorism (Blum, 1 995). The rebel terrorists were being led by ''Ultra-conservative" Moslem religious leaders and landowners, who initially were largely supported by bandits and smugglers (especially on the border with Pakistan), and later by many Afghan males (especially in rural areas) who opposed the communist government acts which decommodified women (i.e., forbid their sale) and which offered education (including literacy) and other rights to Afghan females (Urban, 1990).

However, the Soviet Union refrained from sending more than military advisors to help out until late December. l 979 (Zeloga, 1995). The communist Afghan leader who had requested Soviet support was overthrown and murdered by a USA-educated extremist, whom the Soviets believed was a CIA agent attempting to discredit communism (Rodman, 1 994). Before significant Soviet military forces arrived, the Afghan extremist (whom the Soviets themselves executed in their "invasion") had ordered the killing of thousands of civilians, and many Afghan soldiers (and entire government military units) had defected to the rebels, exasperating the level of violent conflict (Girardet, 1 985). lt should be mentioned that violence in Afghanistan did not really start with the communist seizure of power in 1978, as there had been widespread tribal feuding in Afghan rural areas before 1 978 that was not related to the communists or Soviets and that had created over a hundred thousand refugees at one point in the mid- l 970s (Urban, 1990). Even after the removal of the extremist Afghan ruler, Amnesty International reported that hundreds more civilians were subsequently executed or tortured to death in prison under the more moderate communist government installed by the Soviets (U.S. Dept. of State, 1988). Nonetheless, it should be emphasized that the communist repression in Afghanistan was motivated by possibly even more horrifying actions conducted by the foreign-supplied rebels, who themselves had long engaged in widespread murderous acts of terrorism against civilians in Afghanistan (Blum, 1995), and who later (beginning in the 1 980s) launched numerous terrorist attacks against civilian targets within the Soviet Union itself (Amstutz, 1986). In reaction, the communists made many successful attempts to infiltrate and disrupt rebel forces or peacefully bribe them into defection or cease-fires (Girardet, 1 985), but they also conducted military raids and aerial attacks on rebel positions that killed tens of thousands of people, including many civilians (Amstutz, 1986). In addition, although Soviet soldiers were forbidden from even arresting civilians unless there was evidence of them having weapons or breaking laws (and although they even allowed many anticommunist civilians to keep weapons if they were thought to be needed to defend against rebel terrorist attacks), Soviet troops did fire back directly when fired upon, no doubt killing many civilians in the process (Tamarov, 1992).

There is also some evidence that communist troops did deliberately shoot innocent Afghan civilians on numerous different occasions, murdering hundreds of them (U.S. Dept. of State, 1 985). While not justifying such murders, it must be mentioned that motivation for some of the Soviet atrocities was related to the killing of Soviet soldiers by civilians (even communist civilians), to whom the CIA-financed rebels paid cash rewards for each Soviet soldier murdered (Tamarov, 1992). Also contributing to some Soviet atrocities was soldiers' frustration with civilians' refusal to provide information on the perpetrators of rebel crimes (Reese, 2000). Regardless, it must be emphasized that Soviet soldiers involved in committing atrocities were "harshly disciplined" (Urban, 1 990), and there was never any systematic or premeditated effort to kill civilians. Moreover although there is evidence that some Soviet soldiers engaged in robbing Afghan civilians, Soviet soldiers were also very frequently involved in stealing from their own military (largely to finance the purchase of narcotics that substituted for the normal vodka to which Soviet soldiers had better access in the USSR}, and, in any event, any illegal "freelance" actions against civilians was "punished severely," as admitted even by Soviet soldiers who had defected to the USA (Alexiev, 1988). The Soviet army behavior in Afghanistan actually compares favorably to that of the USA army in its most recent major action, the 1 99 1 Persian Gulf War, which is glorified in the USA despite war crimes such as ground troops committing mass murder of defenseless Iraqi POWs and civilians (even though USA troops were hardly ever threatened in the entire war and mostly only by friendly fire and never by civilians or POWs}, and which created a promoted hero out of a gen­ �ral who deliberately slaughtered Iraqi troops while they were retreat­ �ng exactly as they had agreed to do after an armistice had been entered mto (Hersh, 2000). . Specific evidence on the extent of civilian killings in Afghanistan 18 � rovided by the U.S. Department of State ( 1987), which reported untdentified sources indicating as many as 1 5,000 civilians killed during �e first 8 months of 1 987, during which time it was stated that "civiltan casualties were enormous" as a result of Soviet counterinsurgency operations that were launched as reprisals for rebel raids into the Soviet Union . itself. If 1987, which was a year of average Soviet military casualties but less accurate aerial bombings due to rebel acquisition of Stinger missiles (Zaloga, 1 995), had been an average year for civilian deaths in the 1 979-89 war, the total would be 225,000 civilians killed in the war. Since the USA-reported reported civilian kill rate in 1987 was probably very biased upward (given that it no doubt includes civilian death tolls grossly exaggerated by the rebels for propaganda purposes), and since civilian casualties may have been abnormally high in 1 987 due to decreased accuracy of Soviet aerial bombings that year, the number of civilian deaths was unquestionable far less than 225,000, but that figure can be used as an upward bound. Since the rebels did engage in widespread bombings of civilian targets that had destroyed over a thousand schools and hospitals in rural areas covering 90% of the country in the first few years of the war (Bradsher, 1983), since the rebels frequently conducted rocket attacks and bombings on residential areas of heavily populated cities (Blum, 1 995), since the rebels assassinated virtually every government official and communist party member they could (as well as most communist supporters and sympathizers, and frequently any unknown or uncooperative people), with one unit · of 1 200 rebels in one Afghan city assassinating 600 people in a 2-year period alone (Girardet, 1 995), since the rebels even murdered Western journalists in order to be able to steal their cameras (Urban, 1 990), since the rebels had such heavy weaponry that they could not even be labeled a traditional guerrilla force (Jalali and Grau, 1 995), since the rebels had about as many soldiers (approximately 200,000) as the Soviet/Afghan communists (Girardet, 1985), and since the rebels often engaged in inter-group feuding that may have directly led to the deaths tens of thousands of people (Urban, 1990), it is likely that the rebels may have killed at least half of the civilians, leaving the communists with responsibility for less than 1 1 5,000 civilian deaths. Given survey evidence (of Afghan refugees in Pakistan) indicating that aerial bombings of civilian targets caused the deaths of under 50% of the civilians killed by communist fire (U.S. State Dept., 1 987), and given that most of the remaining deaths were likely to have been unintentional battlefield casualties (i.e., the result of ground forces actually fighting armed rebels), it is probable that the communists deliberately killed less than half the civilians for whose deaths they were responsible. Because many of the reports of heavy communist bombings of civilian areas in Afghanistan had no truth to them, being clearly fabricated by the rebels for propaganda purposes (Urban, 1 990), and because many of the other stories of alleged communist atrocities were also invented by the rebels and their CIA supporters (Blum, 1 995), it is likely that the number of civilians deliberately killed by the communists in Afghanistan was only a very small fraction of 1 1 5,000 (and definitely far less than 60,000). Further evidence on this issue is provided by the fact that it wasn't until l 984 that the communist air force utilized any high-level strategic bombers such as TU- 16 aircraft (Girardet, 1 985), which, like the USA B-52 bombers in Vietnam, result in more indiscriminate killings via saturation bombings. Communist air power in Afghanistan, which consisted largely of about 1 000 helicopters, MIG fighters, and SU-25 tactical bombers (McMichael, 1 999), was generally used to support ground troops (Girardet, 1 985). Even the Soviet strategic bombers were effectively used to assist combined ground/air offensives as opposed to engaging in mass killings/terrorizing of civilians (Urban, 1 990). Some Western analysts were astounded that the communists rarely even made pure aerial attacks on supply lines, which were vital to the rebels (Girardet, 1985), or on other targets far in the rear of enemy troops (Kuperman, 1999). The fai lure of the communists to use air power alone to attack such important targets, which were so important to the Afghan rebels, and which the Soviets did instead block or ambush with air-lifted ground forces at various times (Girardet, 1 985), provides evidence of the inhibitions the communists had about potentially attacking innocent civilians. Even in cases where pure aerial attacks were launched against rebel-controlled villages in reprisal for rebel atrocities, there is evidence (from anticommunist sources) that the Soviets had a standard policy of warning the civilians (by loudspeaker) to leave the villages before-hand (Alexiev, 1 988). . Similarly, despite allegations of some limited communist use of chemIcal weapons in the war and despite a Western perception that chemical weapons would have been very effective militarily in the Afghan terrain if widely employed against populated rebel positions, the Sovie!s . a�parently believed they created too much risk of "many collateral ctvthan and friendly casualties" (McMichael, 1 991 ). A leading British expert journalist has called the allegations of any Soviet use of chemical weapons "a complete lie ... a CIA fabrication" (Urban, 1 990). All the evidence therefore seems to imply that communist air power was mostly directed against military targets (i.e., areas with armed rebels generally engaged in combat), and that most of the civilians killed by communist aircraft (as well as ground forces) represented true unintentional battlefield casualties. The nwnber of civilians deliberately killed by the communist forces may have therefore amounted to only a few thousand, especially since the total number of civilian killings is probably greatly overestimated (as mentioned previously}.6 Communist troops in Afghanistan did conduct raids to methodically destroy villages and farms in order to inhibit their use as rebel supply centers (in a scorched-earth policy designed for rebel-controlled rural areas), but there was no actual attempt to kill civilians or commit genocide. In fact, affected residents were welcomed into government-controlled cities (Bradsher, 1 983}, and displaced people were even offered rewards for settling in government-protected rural areas (Urban, 1 990). Hundreds of thousands of people did move to government-controlled cities, although more (millions) preferred to flee into refugee camps in neighboring countries like Pakistan, which were safe from the continuous rebel terrorist attacks on government-protected areas in Afghani· stan (Girardet, 1985) and which were also almost never attacked by the communists (Urban, 1990). At least partially contributing to the fact that so many refugees chos.e resettlement in neighboring countries was the heavy outside humanitarian aid provided to ensure tolerable living conditions in the foreign refugee camps (Amstutz, 1 986). Regardless, within this civil war environment, many civilians may have died f�r health reasons, although there was no mass starvation like there was tn peaceful times during the prior rule of the Afghan feudal dictatorship �f the early 1970s (when as many as 100,000 Afghans died of hunger tn the peaceful 1971-72 period alone before the communists took power), and the biggest health hazard of the 1 980s in Afghanistan was induced by an extreme shortage of medical personnel in rebel-controlled are� that was largely caused by Afghan doctors leaving for higher pay tn foreign capitalist countries (Girardet, 1 985). Although the actual extent of communist atrocities in Afghanistan was no doubt far less than widely claimed, publicity about them cer· tainly caused some Soviet citizens to question the validity of their country's official policy of benevolence (Kuperman, 1 999). This reduced confidence in their government and leaders may have led many to yearn for a change.

Minority of Leaders Dismantle Communism Against Will of Majority of People

While there were numerous factors that contributed to a desire among some to tum away from communism, it is especially important to point out that the majority of the Eastern European people did not want to eliminate their system (although they may have wanted to reform aspects of it). Communism was actually dismantled by various Eastern European leaders who acted against the will of the people. For instance, the Soviet people (including a majority in the subsequently independent Caucasus and South Asia) had v�ted overwhe�­ ingly (over 70%) in favor of preserving the system m early 1 . 991 '_I1 a free plebiscite on the issue (Becker, 1 999a). However, desptte t�1s vote, the "free-market" advocate Yeltsin led the dissolution of the Sovtet Union later in 1 991 in a major power grab (Wayland, 2000a). Somewhat later in 1 996 the dissolution of the Soviet Union was voted to have bee� unconstitutional by a Russian parliament elected under Yeltsin 's new constitution (Wall Street Journal, 1 996), but it was too late because the continuing, hostile capitalist President Yeltsin had already creat� d dictatorial powers for himself (Wayland, 2000a). Nev�rth . eless, ��s�tte heavy marketing and positive media coverage of capttalist polihctans in Russia in the 1 990s (and virtually no effective marketi�g by communists there), one survey indicated that 58% of th� Russtan population believed in 1 999 that "it would have been better tf the country had stayed as it was before 1 985," and only 27% of the Russians disagreed with that opinion (Economist, 1 999c ). Similarly, the majority of the people in East Germany (the country that had led the 1 989-90 revolution in Eastern Europe) wanted to preserve a reformed version of their communist country. In particular, an unbiased survey conducted by East and West Ge�a� s in December 1989 (shortly after the opening of the Berlin Wall} 1� d1ca�� that over 7 1% of East Germans were in favor of keeping therr soctahst system and 73% were in favor of maintaining a separate country (Bahrrna� and Links, 1 994). However, as will be explained in Chapters 2-4, va� ­ ous East German leaders gave in to Western pressure to open . up thetr economy and political system, thereby enabling an overwhelmmg combination of West German bribes, extortion, and marketing to destroy the East German economy and the people's will to preserve their system and independence. · It should also be noted that the people in some Eastern European countries, such as Serbia (Economist, 1 993) and Bulgaria (Economist, 1 990), actually voted to maintain rule by reformed versions of their communist parties even after opening up their political system to Western-style elections that permitted manipulation by Western media and economic extortion (lAC, 1 998a). Despite the fact that anticommunist capitalists exercise a virtual monopoly over the media in some countries like Russia (Associated Press, 1 996a) and threaten to "resist" (implying economic boycotts and even civil war or other "upheavals") if the people vote communism back into power (Associated Press, 1 996b), many Eastern Europeans continue to vote for left-wing political parties that are reformed versions of the communist parties which previously ruled Eastern Europe (Murphy, 1 995). Such parties have been elected into power in Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, and Lithuania in the mid1 990s (Economist, 1 995), as well as in Yugoslavia (Economist, 1997) and Mongolia (Associated Press, 2000).

Dispelling Other Common Myths about Communism

Many people have many other misconceptions about communism and the causes of its collapse. These misconceptions are spread by the myths and strong anticommunist bias that exists in the mainstream press which is controlled by concentrated capitalist money and is heavily influenced by the CIA (Herman and Chomsky, 1 988). As stated by Ralph "McGehee, a highly decorated CIA veteran, ' Disinformation is a large part of [the CIA's] covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target audience of its lies"' (Goff, 2000).

Quality of Life, Freedom and Individuality

Due to the widespread existence of a dominating one-party rule and more leveled income under communism, there is often the perception that normal life was harshly regimented under communism (Pipes, 1 993). In fact, communism freed people from unemployment, poverty, crime, major money anxieties, excessive social frictions, and economic inequalities and thereby actually created the opportunity for a higher quality of life (Falck, 1 998), as Marx and Engels ( 1 988a) predicted.

Some evidence on the relative value of rights and freedoms under communism is provided by a recent 1 999 Russian survey (Whitehouse, 1999). This survey found that 68% of the Russian people felt "the right to free education, medical help, and financial support in old age" to be among the most important human rights, and 53% indicated as important "the right to a well-paid job in one's area of expertise," whereas only 14% and 8% mentioned "freedom of speech" and "the right to elect one's leaders", respectively, as important. In addition, even though only 23% listed "the right to private property" to be important, a separate question found 40% wanting a Western-style capitalist/democratic system, perhaps because they still associated a higher standard of living with such systems (and incorrectly assumed, as so many do, that the capitalist system was the cause of Western wealth). Despite the latter perception among a significant number of Russians that is perpetuated with Russian capitalist political slogans like "Don't you want to live as in Europe?", an even more recent survey indicated that 48% of the Russian people prefer "state planning and distribution" compared to only 35% of Russians favoring "private property and the market" (Economist, 1999). Further evidence on the value of the various benefits of communism is available from a very limited survey that I conducted of Germans who had emigrated from communist East Germany to capitalist West Germany before unification in 1 990. The survey found that the emigrants would have been willing to give up 2 1.04% of their West German income to have the communist advantages of virtual elimina­ � ion of unemployment, drugs, crime, uncertain prices, and life-sustainIng money anxieties. The survey also indicated that these same Germans would have been willing to give up 6.69% of their income to avoid having the East German political system and secret police. A separate and more thorough survey of East Germans in the 1 990s indicated that they had felt overall freer from government interference in th� 1980s in communist East Germany than they did in the united capi­ �hst Germany in the 1 990s (Northoff, 1 995). This latter finding is espectally important for putting the relative value of communist freedoms and repression in an interesting perspective.

Exaggerations of Political Repression

Much of the USA government and mainstream press propaganda about political repression and secret police in Eastern Europe was exaggerated (Marcy, 1 990). Just for instance, in December 1 989, it was reported worldwide in the mainstream press that Romania had killed over 60,000 peaceful demonstrators, when in fact a thorough investigation by the government that overthrew the communists indicated only 142 demonstrators were killed and only after they had violently attacked police forces and indicated their intention to overthrow the government (Ratesh, 1 991 ). Exaggerated claims of communist atrocities (which in the case of Romania led to a brief civil war that did kill hundreds of armed soldiers and police) often result from CIA disinformation, which is spread through press sources in countries allied with the USA against communism, or through private organizations and individuals funded (overtly or covertly) by the CIA (Blum, 1995). The claim that Stalin and other Soviet leaders killed millions (Conquest, 1990) also appears to be wildly exaggerated. More recent evidence from the Soviet archives opened up by the anticommunist Yeltsin government indicate that the total number of death sentences (including of both existing prisoners and those outside captivity) over the 1921-1953 interval (covering the period of Stalin's partial and complete rule) was between 775,866 and 786,098 (Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, 1993). Given that the archive data originates from anti-Stalin (and even anticommunist) sources, it is extremely unlikely that they underestimate the true number (Thurston, 1996). In addition, the Soviet Union has long admitted to executing at least 1 2,733 people between 1917 and 1921, mostly during the Foreign Interventionist Civil War of 191 8-22, although it is possible that as many as 40,000 more may have been executed unofficially (Andics, 1 969). These data would seem to imply about 800,000 executions. The figure of 800,000 may greatly overestimate the number of actual executions, as it includes many who were sentenced to death but who were not actually caught or who had their sentences reduced (Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, 1993). In fact, Vinton ( 1993) has provided evidence indicating that the number of executions was significantly below the number of civilian prisoners sentenced to death in the Soviet Union, with only 7305 executions in a sample of 1 1 ,000 prisoners authorized to be executed in 1940 (or scarcely 600/o ). In addition, most (68 1 ,692) of the 780,000 or so death sentences passed under Stalin were issued during the 1 937-38 period (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1 993), when Soviet paranoia about foreign subversion reached its zenith due to a 1 936 alliance between Nazi Germany and fascist Japan that was specifically directed against the Soviet Union (Manning, 1 993) and due to a public 1936 resolution by a group of influential anti-Stalin foreigners (the Fourth International which was allied with the popular but exiled Russian dissident Leo Trotsky) advocating the overthrow of the Soviet government by illegal means (Glotzer, 1 968). Stalin initially set a cap of 1 86,500 imprisonments and 72,950 death penalties for a 1 937 special operation to combat this threat that was to be carried out by local 3-man tribunals called ''troikas" (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1993). As the tribunals passed death sentences before the accused had even been arrested, local authorities requested increases in their own quotas (Knight, 1993), and there was an official request in 1 938 for a doubling of the amount of prisoner transport that had been initially requisitioned to carry out the original campaign "quotas" of the tribunals (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1993). However, even if there had been twice as many actual • executions as originally planned, the number would still be less than 1 50,000. Many of those sentenced by the tribunals may have escaped capture, and many more may have had their death sentence refused or revoked by higher authorities before arrest/execution could take place, especially since Stalin later realized that excesses had been committed in the 1937-38 period, had a number of convictions overturned, and had many of the responsible local leaders punished (Thurston, 1996). Soviet records indicate only about 300,000 actual arrests for antiSoviet activities or political crimes during this 193 7-3 8 interval (Davies, 1997). With a ratio of 1 execution for every 3 arrests as originally specified by Stalin, that figure would imply about 1 00,000 executions. Since some of the people sentenced to death may have already been in confinement, and since there is some evidence of a 50,000 increase in the total number of deaths in labor camps over the 1 937-38 interval that was probably caused by such executions (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1993), the total number executed by the troika campaign would probably be around 1 50,000. There were also 30,5 14 death sentences pas�ed by military courts and 4387 by regular courts during the 1937-38 J)enod, but, even if all these death sentences were carried out, the total number remains under 200,000. Such a "low" number seems especially likely given the fact that aggregate death rates (from all causes) throughout the Soviet Union were actually lower in 1 937-38 than in prior years (Wheatcroft, 1 993). Assuming the remaining I 00,000 or so death sentences passed in the other years of Stalin's reign (i.e., 1 921-36 and 1 939-53) resulted in a 60% execution rate, as per the Vinton (1993) sample, the total number executed by Stalin's Soviet Union would be about 250,000. Even with the thousands executed between 1917 and 1 921, it is plausible that the number of unarmed civilians killed between 1917-1953 amounted to considerably less than a quarter mil lion given that thousands of these victims may have been Soviet soldiers (Freeze, 1 997), given that some may have been armed bandits and guerrillas (Getty, 1 985), and given that at least 1 4,000 of the actual executions were of foreign POWs (Vinton, 1 993). A USA former attache to the Soviet Union, George Kennan, has stated that the number executed was real ly only in the tens of thousands (Smith, 2000), and so it is very likely that the true number of unarmed civilians killed by the Soviet Union over its entire history (including the thousands killed in Afghanistan more recently) is too small for the country to make the top ten in mass murders. There were no doubt many innocent victims during the 1 937-38 Stalin purge, but it should also be mentioned that there is substantial evi· dence from the Soviet archives of Soviet citizens advocating treason· able offenses such as the violent overthrow of the Soviet government or foreign invasion of the Soviet Union (Davies, 1 997). In addition, the Soviet Union felt itself so threatened by subversion and imminent military invasions by Japan and Germany (which occurred in full force in 1 938 and 1 941, respectively) that it perceived a need to undertake a nationwide campaign to eliminate potential internal enemies (Manning, 1 993). Moreover, these external threats were further fueled by the fact that the Russian nobility and czarists (over a million of whom had emi· grated after the communist revolution in 1917) had given financial aid to the German Nazis in the 1 930s for the purpose of using them (once they had successfully taken power in Germany) to help them overthrow the Soviet government (Feinberg, 1 999). 8 Forged documents and misinfor· mation spread by Nazi Germany to incriminate innocent and patriotic Soviets also contributed to Soviet paranoia (Andrew and Gordievsky, 1990). It must also be remembered that Soviet fear of foreign-sponsored subversion in the 1 930s existed within the context of guerrilla warfare fought against the Soviet Union by some of the same groups of people who had fought with the foreign i nvaders against the Soviet Union in the 1918-22 Foreign Interventionist Civil War (Conquest, 1 986). While the 1 937-38 purges were very repressive and tragic by almost any measure, they may have helped prevent the fascists from inciting a successful rebel lion or coup in the Soviet Union (Thurston, 1 996). Such a threat was a very real one given that the German Nazis did succeed in using political intrigues, threats, economic pressure, and offers of territorial gains to bring other Eastern European countries into their orbit, including Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, as well as Yugoslavia for a short period of time (Miller, 1 975), given that the Soviet Union had been subjected to a brutal 191 8-22 civil war which was launched by rebels who were supported by over a million foreign invading troops from over a dozen capitalist countries (Schulz, 1 982), given that there was a large amount of sabotage committed by Soviet citizens in the 1930s (Conquest, 1 986), and given that there were a significant number of Soviet dissidents who were in favor of overthrowing the Soviet government even if it required an invasion by Germany or some other foreign power (Davies, 1 997). It is also possible that the Germans and Japanese had spread sufficient misinformation to lead many people to believe in the existence of an alliance between the exiled Trotsky and the fascist countries that offered Germany and Japan some Soviet territories in return for helping the Russian dissident take power in the remaining part ofRussia (Glotzer, 1 968). In addition, many people may have worked independently to sabotage the Soviet Union in the hope that they would thereby contribute to a foreign overthrow of the Soviet Union (Ritterspom, 1 992), especially since Nazi Germany did make extensive efforts to incite uprisings, cause subversive actions, and create ethnic conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (Schulz, 1 982). Although the Soviet Union may have falsely blamed Trotsky for advocating cooperation with the fascists, even Trotsky admitted that some of the victims of Stalin's repression may have indeed been German or Japanese agents (Glotzer, 1 968). Despite the Soviet Union's success in defeating the subsequent invasions by fascist Japan (in 1 938) and Germany (1941 -44), the danger posed by the Nazi spies and saboteurs in Eastern Europe is illustrated by the fact that the CIA considered them so effective that it adopted virtually the entire Nazi network into its own system of terrorism in Eastern Europe after World War II (von Schnitzler, 1 992). The CIA also extensively used Trotskyites and other antiStalin leftists in its very powerful anticommunist propaganda machine (Saunders, 1 999). Evidence from the Soviet archives indicates that the officials responsible for the political repression of the 1 930s sincerely felt the victims were guilty of some crime such as sabotage, spying, or treason (Thurston, 1 996), and many of the executions of the Great Purge were reported in the local Soviet press at the time (Conquest, 1 990). Even when there was proven to be no direct connection between the accused and the fascist foreign powers, there was often a strong belief that the suspects were foreign sympathizers who were working on their own (without formal direction) to contribute to the overthrow of the Soviet Union (Ritterspom, 1 992). It should also be noted that much of the 1 93 7-38 repression, often called the Great Purge, was actually directed against the widespread banditry and criminal activity (such as theft, smuggling, misuse of public office for personal gain, and swindles) that was occurring in the Soviet Union at the time (Getty, 1 985). In addition to the executions, there were also many imprisoned, and hundreds of thousands of people were expelled from the Communist Party during the Great Purge for being incompetent, corrupt, and/or excessively bureaucratic, with such targeting of inept or dishonest Soviet bureaucrats being fairly popular among the average Soviet citizens (Davies, 1 997). Like the myths of millions of executions, the fairy tales that Stalin had tens of millions of people arrested and permanently thrown into prison or labor camps to die in the 1 930-53 interval (Conquest, 1990) appear to be untrue. In particular, the Soviet archives indicate that the number of people in Soviet prisons, gulags, and labor camps in the 1 930s, 1 940s, and 1 950s averaged about 2 million, of whom 20-40% were released each year, (Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, 1 993). This average, which includes desperate World War II years, is similar to the number imprisoned in the USA in the 1 990s (Catalinotto, 1 998a) and is only slightly higher as a percentage of the population. It should also be noted that the annual death rate for the Soviet interned population was about 4%, which incorporates the effect of prisoner executions (Getty, Rittersporn, and Zemskov, 1 993). Excluding the desperate World War II years, the death rate in the Soviet prisons, gulags, and labor camps was only 2.5% (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1.993), which is even below that of the average "free" citizen in capitalist Russia under the czar in peacetime in 1913 (Wheatcroft, 1993). This finding is not very surprising, given that about 1/3 of the confined people were not even required to work (Bacon, 1 994), and given that the maximum work week was 84 hours in even the harshest Soviet labor camps during the most desperate wartime years (Rummel, 1990). The latter maximum (and unusual) work week actually_ compares favorably to the 1 00-hour work weeks that existed even for "free" 6-year old children during peacetime in the capitalist industrial revolution (Marx and Engels, 1 988b ), although it may seem high compared to the 7 -hour day worked by the typical Soviet citizen under Stalin (Davies, 1 997). In addition, it should also be mentioned that most of the arrests under Stalin were motivated by an attempt to stamp out civil crimes such as banditry, theft, misuse of public office for personal gain, smuggling, and swindles, with less than 1 0% of the arrests during Stalin's rule being for political reasons or secret police matters (Getty, Ritterspom, and Zemskov, 1 993). The Soviet archives reveal a great deal more political dissent permitted in Stalin's Soviet Union (including a widespread amount of criticism of individual government policies and local leaders) than is normally perceived in the West (Davies, 1 997). Given that the regular police, the political or secret police, prison guards, some national guard troops, and fire fighters (who were in the same ministry as the police) comprised scarcely 0.2% of the Soviet population under Stalin (Thurston, 1996), severe repression would have been impossible even if the Soviet Union had wanted to exercise it. In comparison, the USA today has many times more police as a percentage of the population (about 1%�, not to mention prison guards, national guard troops, and fire fighters mcluded in the numbers used to compute the far smaller 0.2% ratio for the Soviet Union. In any event, it is possible that the communist countries of Eastern Eu�pe would have become politically less repressive and more democratic (especially over time), if there hadn't been overt and covert efforts by capitalist powers to overthrow their governments (Blum, 1995), including subversion conducted in the USSR as late as the 1980s that the USA government admitted to in the 1 990s (Chossudovsky, 1 997). These efforts at violent subversion were initially carried out mostly by the British (before World War II) and then later more so by the USA through the CIA, which did succeed in one case in violently overthrowing a very democratic communist government in Chile in 1973 (Blum, 1 995). If the communists had truly been as evil and dictatorial as they are portrayed to be in the capitalist press, the peaceful revolution of 1 989 in Eastern Europe (with virtually no related deaths except in Romania) could never have occurred. Moreover, it is far from clear whether the communist countries acted more repressively against people with capitalist views than capitalist countries have acted against communists (Schulz, 1 982). Most who are not communists are probably not aware of the harassment, economic penalties (such as loss of a job for political reasons), torture, imprisonment, and murder that even goes on in developed capitalist countries, not to mention the atrocities that occur in less developed capitalist countries like Greece, Zaire, post-1 973 Chile, etc. (Blum, 1 995). Just as "ordinary Germans" in Hitler's Nazi Germany (i.e., those who weren't communists or other people that Hitler hated) "had little to fear from the Nazis" (Associated Press, 2000h), those who don't have communist views are often not affected by capitalist government repression, and so most don't feel threatened by it in any way. Nonetheless, despite the fact that political repression by modern capitalist states does not directly affect the majority of the population (just as Hitler's capitalist German government directly repressed only a minority of the German population), political repression by capitalist governments has claimed millions of victims, such as close to a million unarmed civilians with left-wing political views killed by a dictator put into power in Indonesia by the CIA in 1 965-66 (Griswold, 1 979), as previously mentioned in the Introduction. In stark contrast to capitalism, there is long-term evidence from earlier cultures such as the North American Indians that communist societies can be very natural, free, and democratic (Novack, 1 972). Some evidence on the relative attractiveness of these societies can be found from the fact that a large portion of white people taken prisoner by the Indians in the USA willingly stayed with them and refused offers to return to the white capitalist society (Downes, 1 940). Some of the initial Spanish explorers/conquerors of the Western Hemisphere reported that many of the Indians lived in a virtual communist paradise without shortages, money, government, or violence (Sale, 1 991). Although some of the communist Indian tribes did engage in some limited fighting, especially when invaded, attacked, or threatened (Churchill, 1 994), there were also many earlier communist peoples, such as the aborigines of Australia (Reynolds, 1 995) and 70% of Indian tribes (Sale, 1 99 1 ), who were almost completely pacifists. Even the Indian tribes that occasionally fought other tribes did so much less ferociously than capitalist societies and were "internally more peaceful" with far less crime (Jennings, 1993). Ancient communal societies show that violence, crime, and wars are not innate to human nature but are instead the product of egotistical ideologies and systems such as capitalism (Marcy, 1 990). For instance, capitalism in the USA promotes an unnatural self-centeredness that has resulted in a long history of engaging in extermination campaigns and other atrocities, as documented in the Introduction. In contrast, evidence of a modem communist country that remains somewhat democratic (despite the USA's enormous efforts to use virtually all possible means to overthrow it) is provided by the Cuban political system. Cuba not only allows free voting, but also has a procedure to allow for the recall of elected officials (that is often used effectively in practice against unpopular politicians), has the Cuban people themselves make P?l �tical nominations (instead of political parties or the CIA), and prohi�Jts candidates (or the CIA) from spending money on electoral campaigns (Scheffer, 1 998). Some evidence that capitalist countries are also far more imperialistic, militaristic, intolerant, and evil than modem communist countries has been discussed in the Introduction. A general analysis of these issues, especially with respect to the political repression of the capitalist superpower, the USA, is also provided by Schulz ( 1 982}, who documents some of the terrorism carried out by the nearly one million CIA agents worldwide that engage in scores of covert action each year to ensure the widespread existence of capitalist governments friendly to the USA. Further evidence is provided by Blum ( 1 995}, who describes the events around dozens of the over 400 military invasions and bombings conducted by the USA just since World War II (Wilson, 1 999a) that have often led to severe political repression. That these imperialist actions are nothing new is documented by the World Almanac ( 1 998) itself, which lists 23 separate USA military actions or "interventions" (mostly periodic Latin American invasions) that occurred in the 1 900s before World War II (and that excludes the World War I related actions). Even before 1 900, the USA had engaged in over I 00 invasions to ensure USA control of (or influence over) many countries (Zion, 1 995). In contrast to the widespread imperialism of the capitalist USA alone, there have been a mere I 0 communist invasions of other countries. In addition, the USA's imperialist actions themselves at least partially justify four of the invasions by communist countries, with the only exceptions being Cambodia's invasion of Vietnam in the late 1 970s (which was described earlier in the Introduction)/ and the Soviet Union's invasion of 5 Baltic countries in the 1 939-40 period as part of a deal with capitalist Germany for the USSR to reclaim land (and a defensive perimeter) lost in the 1918-22 Foreign Interventionist Civil War (Bullock, 1 992). For instance, the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1 956 and Czechoslovakia in 1 968 were motivated by paranoia surrounding the CIA's attempts to instigate revolts in those countries (Blum, 1 995), while North Korea's invasion of South Korea in 1 950 represented merely an escalation of the open border warfare that had been initiated by the South Korean dictatorship created by the USA (Ho Hui, and Ho, 1 993). In addition, as previously mentioned, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1 979 was conducted only after a terrorist war was launched against the established communist government by CIA-financed rebels, who were bought by the USA with billions of dollars in cash, additional drug trading profits, and a promise of a return to a fanatically religious feudal tyranny in order to deliberately provoke Soviet intervention (Feinberg, 1 998). Longer-term evidence that capitalism in general has been causing an ever-increasing number of people to die in wars, even as a percent of the population, is provided by Urlanis ( 1 971 ).

Myths About Communist Economic Inefficiency and Resource Misallocation

Besides falsely believing that communist countries violently kill far more people than capitalist countries, a large number of people (including many academics) also believe that communism has caused poverty and resource misallocation which are responsible for massive numbers of deaths relating to starvation and disease (MacFarquhar, 1 993). In fact, the reverse is far closer to the truth. In particular, communism has saved hundreds of millions of lives through not only faster real income growth but also greater income equality. For example, not only did communist Eastern Europe grow more rapidly than capitalist countries (at the same time it had less income inequalities than capitalist countries),9 but communist China has grown faster economically than any country in the world for some time. In particular, the average annual rate of growth in China was 12. 1% for the period 1 992- 1996 and 7.3% for 1975-91, compared with an average of about 3% for capitalist countries (JMF, 1 997b ).10 In addition, despite real income per capita still being only 1 17 that of the USA in 1 991, less than 10% of the Chinese population lives in poverty (UN, 1 994) compared to about 20% of the population in the much richer USA according to the UN (Associated Press, 1997). As a result of such successes, the annual death rate in China actually fell to about 1% of the population shortly after the communist revolution in China in 1 949, which was far less than the 3% annual death rate that had previously existed in peaceful and famine-free times under capitalism (Deleyne, 1 974). As documented in the Introduction, �m�unism therefore actually resulted in the saving of over ten milbon hves per year in China, and the only exception was the interval 1958-61 when, due to horrible weather that caused a terrible famine, the death rate temporarily rose back close to the same level as it had previously been in normal times before communism. It should be mentioned that Chinese death rates during the 1 95 8-61 catastrophe remained far below those reported by Ho ( 1 959) for China during capitalist famines. Although inadequate storage and some mistakes made during the Great L�p Forward contributed to the human disaster in 1958-6 1, it is interestm� that so many authors such as MacFarquhar (1993) blame commumsm for these deaths but ignore the fact that the death rate in these worst years under communism was comparable to the level in normal Years under capitalism in China. Such biased authors also tend to ignore the . rac_t that 35 million people die of hunger each year in the current capitahst world order (Flounders, 1 998b ). Similar to the case of communist China, many falsely blame Stalin's Soviet Union for over ten million famine-related deaths in the Soviet Union in the 1 930s (Conquest, 1 986); although the facts indicate Stalin and the Soviet Union actually saved the lives of millions of people. The 1 930s in the Soviet Union represented a time of severe civil strife, widespread banditry, and even guerrilla warfare (Getty, 1 985), which started when rich Russian farmers and rural merchants (called kulaks), who controlled most of the agricultural machinery and capital in the 1 920s, and who often charged peasants interest rates of 1 00% or more for use of the needed equipment, sought to increase their profits by refusing to supply food to the cities at prices set by the government (Meurs, 1 999). Stalin countered this attempt to extort higher prices with a collectivization of the farms that many farmers resisted. 11 The rich farmers and rural merchants themselves were initially allowed to join the collectives, but their resistance to the process later caused the government to assign most of these millions of people to jobs elsewhere (Conquest, 1 986). Many were sent to other provinces, or to work camps, such as in Siberia, especially if there was evidence they been involved in the widespread activity of destroying food or committing sabotage in protest against collectivization (Campbell, 1 974). Farmers indeed committed about 1 0,000 separate acts of terrorism (about half being violence against people and the other half being destruction of property) in each of the years 1 929 and 1930 alone (Meurs, 1999). Meanwhile, because of the frequent practice of farmers refusing to work and even destroying food, and because of bad weather, many farmers did not have enough food to make the mandatory sales of grain to the state at a fixed price (Conquest, 1 986), with such sales representing a sort of land tax except that consumer goods were provided in return for the tax payment. Although the government procured less food than it had in the late 1920s to keep the city dwellers fed (Meurs, 1 999), there was insufficient grain left for some farmers, and hunger and related disease existed in this environment, especially in the Ukraine in the early 1 930s (Koenker and Bachman, 1 997). Nevertheless, Tottle ( 1 987) has documented an enormous body of evidence indicating that much of the information on the famine-related deaths are completely fraudulent or wildly exaggerated, with the sources of the false propaganda being Nazi Germany in the 1 930s, rich anticommunist Americans, and various Ukrainians who fled to the West after collaborating with the Nazis during Hitler's occupation in the early 1 940s. For instance, many pictures alleged to have been taken of victims of the 1 932-33 . �amine were actually from the famine that resulted from the 191 8-22 clVll war, and many of the stories were made up by people who had never even visited areall they claimed to have witnessed. Despite these facts, Conquest ( 1986) claims that Stalin is responsible for about 15 million deaths in the 1 930s. He bases his numbers on his citation that the Soviet population grew from 1 58 million to about 1 69 million between early 1 930 and early 1 939, whereas a population of 184 million would have been expected with a more "normal" population growth based on the growth rates of the late 1 920s. 12 However, this computation ignores the fact that birth rates tend to be lower during periods of rapid. industrialization (Schmid, 1 998), such as during the 1930s in the Soviet Union. The erroneous population growth extrapolation also does not fully take into account the lower birth rate that can be expected to occur during periods of civil strife, famine, hunger, disease, and massive displacement of people, it fails to take into consideration the deaths stemming from armed conflict which included widespread guerrilla warfare and even an invasion by Japan in 1 938 that had to be defeated by the Soviet Union (Conquest, 1 986), and it ignores the fact that many left the Soviet Union as refugees from this situation (Nove, 1993). Wheatcroft (1993) provides concrete information on newborns in the Soviet Union, indicating that birth rates were about 1 .5% lower in the 1932-36 interval than in the 1 920s and were about 0.5% lower during the other years of the 1 930s. These lower birth rates alone explain all of the lower growth in the population during the 1930S. 13 With the exception of 1 933, documented death rates in the Soviet Union averaged less than 2% per year in the 1 930s and were even lower than the approximate 2% average death rate reported for the late 1 920s (which was a time of relative tranquility), and the death rate of 3.7% reported for the catastrophic year of 1 933 was very close to the annual death rate (also over 3%) in Russia under capitalism in 1913 (Wheatcroft, 1 993), which had been a year of peace and an abnormally abundant harvest there. 14 Thus, it appears that, despite the tragic executions and famine, Stalin and communism actually saved millions of lives.

Myths about Specific Aspects of Communism Efficiency

Besides the widespread false impressions that exist about the general efficiency of communist countries like China and the Soviet Union, there seems to be a popular misconception about specific aspects of the economic efficiency of communism. 15 In particular, many people mistakenly believe that the communist economies must be inefficient based on an assumption that they do not allow for decentralized decision making and result in long waiting lines and shortages. Waiting lines, shortages, and waste did often exist in communist countries because the government purposely set the prices of many goods too low to clear (and also because richer capitalist countries placed embargoes on the export of the high technology goods to communist countries). However, the low fixed prices (and the right to a job with income) did ensure that everyone in communist countries had the right to essentials like food, housing, medicine, and clothes (aus erster Hand, 1 987), unlike in capitalist countries where a large portion of the population do not have access to such essentials (Chossudovsky, 1 997) even in far richer capitalist countries such as the USA (Strobel and Peterson, 1 999). Also, the centralized fixing of prices greatly reduced the amount of time spent on wasteful tasks performed in capitalist countries of price shopping, price negotiation, and attempts to avoid marketing manipulation and fraud (Furlough and Strikwerda, 1999). The relative efficiency of centralized government administration can be seen by comparing government and private systems in the USA itself. For instance, in the insurance industry, expenses (administrative, marketing and other costs) as a percent of collected insurance premiums are only I% for centralized government social security, whereas they amount to 50% for private insurance companies (Smith, 1 994). The fact that private capitalist systems are actually outright counterproductive is easily illustrated with examples like chemical/pharmaceutical firms making money on treatments for cancers they themselves cause by failing to remove carcinogens from their chemical products (Phillips, 2000). Note that these inefficiencies and counterproductive activities enhance the reported income levels of the capitalist countries (since the extra insurance costs, sale of carcinogens, and cancer treatments all go into GOP income statistics), just as do the costs of the higher crime rates in capitalist countries that amount to about 1 0% of GDP in the USA (US News & World Report, 1 994).

The overall relative inefficiency of capitalism was especially well demonstrated by Gorbachev's own capitalist reforms of the Soviet Union in the late 1 980s under his Perestroika policies, which resulted in an increase in the number of administrators, greater white collar crime (as well as greater crime in general), 16 and lower economic growth (Marcy, 1990). The planning and administrative advantages of communism, combined with full employment and some economies of scale and scope, represent some of the reasons why communist countries did grow faster in real terms than capitalist countries, despite all the wars and other obstacles put in their way by the external environment. More specific analysis of these issues are provided later in Chapter 4 in a direct comparison of communist and capitalist financial systems in Germany.

Implications of the Empirical Experiences of Eastern Europe and Communism

Overall, the facts indicate that communist systems serve their people far better than most give them credit. Despite their accomplishments, the communists lost the Cold War essentially because they started out so much poorer than their rich capitalist adversaries, and a few people took power who effectively surrendered. Although there are only a few communist countries left in the world, the empirical experiences of Eastern Europe and other communist coun­ �es can be useful for providing some perspective on what might happen tf a communist government were elected in a rich country such as the �SA. In particular, given the prior accomplishments under commumsm, one might expect higher real income growth and less poverty. In addition, over 95% of the people would be better off if the transitory fonn of communism that existed in communist Eastern Europe were applied. For instance, in the USA, dividing 1 999 Gross Domestic Product (GOP) by the number of people employed, the average income would be about $70,000 per worker. In addition, under communism, taxes would probably be much lower, because there would be no need for the huge military spending now used to maintain USA world domination (Blum, 1 995), 17 and because communist governments tend to be more efficient than their bureaucratic capitalist counterparts.•& As in communist Eastern Europe, higher pay would be available to the most productive and skilled (implying over $ 1 50,000 in annual income being available to the most skilled in the USA), and so only the millionaires and billionaires would be economically worse off. The advantages of communism to an extremely large portion of the population becomes even more apparent when one considers the fact that it is substantially more likely for a middle class American to fall into poverty than to rise into the upper class (Strobel and Peterson, 1 999), thus implying that communism may be desirable not only because it increases incomes for almost all Americans but also because it greatly reduces the undesirable downward component of income variation. 19 Communism was theoretically and ideally designed to eventually eliminate the need for government, as capitalistic egoism was supposed to be slowly deleamed after potentially hundreds of years of transitory communism or socialism, at which time all could share equally in consumption/income according to their need (Hahn, Kosing, and Rupprecht, 1 983). If such a purer form of communism were applied that distributed GNP equally among all USA residents (not just the employed), each person would be entitled to about $35,000 per year, or about $ 140,000 annually for a family of four. Note that this latter calculation incorporates social security and simi lar transfer payments to retirees and others not working, and so an even smaller percentage of this latter income would be taken away in taxes. In addition, the latter figure might easily be l 0-20% higher because cheap child care facilities and the availability of jobs for all under communism would increase employment and GOP. Some might assert that output might actually decline under pure communism without material incentives for harder work and productivity, largely because capitalist economists tend to view work as "irksome, involving 'disutility' that must be overcome by wages to secure the labor needed for production," but, in contrast, anthropologists (recognizing past cultures such as the aborigines and Indians to have thrived without such incentives) perceive work as "the fundamental condition of human existence ... through which the individual is able to define himself as a full and valued member of society" (Strobel and Peterson, 1 999). One can observe from youth engaged in sport activities how natural it is to exhibit extreme exertion and enthusiasm without monetary rewards, so that it is certainly possible that severa! hundred years of communist society in transition would allow us adults to learn what is natural to youth (and past societies). Regardless, through a great reduction in unemployment, poverty, crime, money anxieties, and social frictions, communism can permit a higher quality of life, more freedom, and greater individuality, just as it did in earlier communist societies (Zion, 1 995). A detailed, documented analysis of the advantages of communism (in transition) in the modem world (and a comparison with capitalism) is provided in the next chapter using the German case as an empirical example.

A Post-Mortem Comparison of Communist and Capitalist Societies Using the German Case as an Illustration

Many believe the collapse of East Germany represented evidence that the country's communist society was inferior to the West German capitalist one, insofar as the East German people did vote to replace their own system with the West German one in 1 990. However, the voting was heavily biased by the greater riches offered by West Germany, and, contrary to popular myth (Christ, 1991) and related propaganda (Summer, 1994), these superior riches were not derived from the capitalist system itself but from the postwar treatment of Germany. This chapter uses the most recent data and information to show that, despite its very serious disadvantage of starting with much less wealth, the communist East German society was superior in many respects.

Dominating Influence of Mandatory East German Reparations Payments

Real income per capita started at a far lower level in East Germany because of reparations payments it had to make shortly after World War II, and, despite faster real economic growth in East Germany, it had not yet caught up with West German levels by 1989. In particular, in the 15 years after World War II the Soviet Union extracted over 50 bil . lion Marks in reparations fro� East Germany than West Germany Patd (Apel, 1 966). More recent West German government estimates of total East German reparations and other payments to the Soviet Union indicate a figure over 100 billion Marks (Merkel and Wahl, 1991 ), which represented several times tiny East Germany's National Income or annual output at the time of the payments (most of which occurred between 1 945 and 1 953). While West Germany also made some postwar payments related to Nazi Germany's atrocities and war defeat (including compensation to war victims), they were largely offset by Marsha11 Plan aid given to West Germany by the USA shortly after World War 11 {Apel, 1 966). If East Germany had instead been able to invest the 100 billion Marks in reparations (starting in 1 953 and reinvesting all capital and earnings each year) at its average 1 8% rate of return on investments (Naumann and Truempler, 1 990), it would have compounded to give East Germans income per capita equal to about 15 times the level in West Germany in 1 989. 1 Instead, however, the enormous reparations caused East German income per capita to be only about 2/5 that of West Germany in the 1 950s (Merkel and Wahl, 1 99 1 ), although it had risen to 2/3 of the West German level by 1989 (Gregory and Stuart, 1 995). It was the discrep· ancy in personal income arising from differences in reparations that had caused East Germany to build the Berlin Wall in 1 961 in order to prevent its skilled workers (such as essential doctors and nurses) from being "bought" by the richer West Germany (Ape1, 1 966). In fact, before the Berlin Wall was erected, several million East Germans ( espe· cially skilled workers like doctors and engineers) moved to West Ger· many for the higher incomes available there, and this migration resulted in a large loss to the East German economy (Apel, 1 966). Besides the large net migrations of people, black market activities and outright sab· otage by both the CIA and West Germany also helped motivate the building of the Wall (Blum, 1 995). Given that East German income would have been higher than in West Germany without the reparations payments, it can be deduced that it would not have been necessary for East Germany to have the Berlin Wall if West Germany had made its share of the reparations payments for Nazi Germany's war crimes. In particular, the burden to East Ger· many would have thereby been enormously reduced and would have allowed its income to be substantially higher. At the same time, West Germany's income would have been reduced by it making its share of the payments. In this situation, it probably would not have been necessary for East Germany to have slightly longer work weeks (since it would not have been necessary to catch up with the West), nor to have such severe shortages (that could have been alleviated with greater wealth), nor to spend so little on pollution control (that reflected East Germany's relative poverty), nor to restrict political freedoms (that East Germany did not want the richer West Germany to take advantage of), nor to have such an obnoxious secret police (whose primary purpose was to keep East Germans from leaving the country for the greater riches of West Germany). All the relative disadvantages of communism in East Germany may therefore derive, at least partially, from its postwar reparations (and not from communism). Thus, it is possible to conclude that communism in ·East Germany was superior to capitalism in West Germany in all respects (except of course for the super rich, who would become less wealthy and powerful under communism). A list of the relative advantages of each system is provided in Table 3, followed by a more general discussion.

[table]

Advantages of East German Communism

1. No unemployment. The right to work at a job of one's own choice was guaranteed by the East German constitution (Aus erster Hand, 1 987). While there were some (mostly alcoholics) who continuously refused to show up for jobs offered by the state, their numbers represented only about 0.2% of the entire East German work force, and only 0. 1% of the scheduled work hours of the rest of the labor force was lost due to unexcused absences (Krakat, 1 996). These findings are �specially noteworthy, given that people were generally protected from being fired (or otherwise penalized) for failing to show up for work or for not working productively (Thuet, 1 985). The importance of the communist characteristic of full employment to workers is reflected in a 1 999 survey of eastern Germans that indicated about 70% of them felt they had meaningfully less job security in the unified capitalist country in the 1 990s than they did in communist East Germany (Kramm, 1999) 2. No inflation. While there was a slight average annual inflation rate of 0.5% in the aggregate economy between 1 960 and 1 989, consumer prices were held constant over the 1 960- 1989 interval (Statistisches Amt, 1 990). Even the inflation rate in the aggregate economy was 0% in East Germany's final decade, as admitted by the final East German government (Statistisches Amt, 1 990),2 which was both strongly anticommunist and formally allied/unified with the West German government (having been "elected" under heavy economic and political pressure from the West German government). While West German propagandists like Schwarzer ( 1 999) admit that East German aggregate accounts were as accurate as West German ones, they often try to fabricate inflation in East Germany by citing the depreciation of the East German currency in the 1 980s on the black markets (or in the context of a very narrowly traded basked of goods). Basing an aggregate inflation rate on such prices of a limited amount of goods in a very narrow market is not only absurd, it is also totally inconsistent with data on East German aggregate purchasing power, as reported by the West German government and various West German banks (Welfens, 1 992), which indicate East German inflation figures to be accurate (as will be explained in more detail in Chapter 4).3 3. No life-sustaining anxieties. Food, apartments, children's clothing, day care, and mass transportation were heavily subsidized and therefore very cheap regardless of income (Collier, 1 985). Work with income was guaranteed by the state as were living quarters (Aus erster Hand, 1987), and a person could not be thrown out of an apartment even if the person didn't pay the very trivial rent (Filmer and Schwan, 1985). All also had the right to free medical care, disability income, and retirement income (Aus erster Hand, 1 987), and so it was not necessary for those needing round-the-clock care to burden relatives as 80% in West Gennany do (Meyer and Schulze, 1 998). A survey of eastern Germans indicated that 58% of the people felt social security is significantly worse in the united capitalist Germany than it had been in communist East Germany (Kramm, 1999). 4. More rights for women and children. Women had initial access to jobs at least as good as those of men in East Germany, although family considerations and other factors may have resulted in them not advancing as far as males later on in life (Voelker and Flap, 1 999). Regardless, female employees were about 3 times more likely to hold skilled or white-collar jobs than working women in West Germany (Meyer and Schulze, 1998). There existed extremely cheap day care in East Germany (open up to 12 hours a day), with 80% of East German children under 3 years ?fage, 95% of all 3-6 year-old� and 80% of 6-10 year-olds (when not m regular school) being in nursery schools, kindergartens, or child care groups (Meyer and Schulze, 1 998). Although it was not necessary for women to work (and a significant minority did not), the availability of reasonable child care made it much more feasible with most mothe� doing so in order to generate extra spending inc�me for the family (f•lmer and Schwan, 1 985). Also contributing to more East Gennan women working was the fact that mothers were given one work day a month off to do housework, and women were allowed unlimited work leave to take care of sick children (Meyer and Schulze, 1 998). Moreover, a paid maternity leave of 6 months was available after the birth of the first child and up to one year for the second child (Falck, 1998). The mat · 1 · h' em• ty eave mcreased to 18 months for the third and all subsequent c h l�dren (Schwarzer, 1 999). In addition, the work week was shortened w de vacaf · · · (F 1 •on hme was lengthened for mothers w1th more chtldren .�ck, 1998). Also, the state bank offered cheaper credit to families Wt three or more children, with an interest rate of between 0% and 3% dependi� g on the number of children (instead of 4% to 6% otherwise), along With a standard 0.2% fee to cover defaults (i.e., a form of credit insurance), although 2% was added to the interest rate for late payments (Autorenkollektiv, 1 988). For older children, there were many sports, cultural, and study activities organized by East German government-sponsored groups like the young pioneers and the Free German Youth. In addition, special holiday facilities existed for children. After unification, these organizations, activities, and facilities were closed down (as such unprofitable things do not exist in the united capitalist Germany), and "children are often left on their own in the aftemoons and during the holiday periods" (Meyer and Schulze, 1 998). 5. Equal educational opportunities for all. There was no tuition for college, and a living allowance was provided by the state to students without any future debt obligations (Aus erster Hand, 1 987). While a small minority of East Germans feel that the educational system is better in the unified Germany, far more eastern Germans (more than double) believe the educational system under communist rule was supe· rior (Kramm, 1999). 6. Socially more just. The difference between high and low wealth levels was much lower than in capitalist countries (thus resulting in no major differences in social class based on wealth), at least partially because of state regulation of wages, which along with all the foregoing social security benefits ensured no true poverty in East Germany (Dietz, 1 983). In addition, it was generally almost impossible to become extremely wealthy in East Germany because of 90% tax rates on high levels of profits and because of restrictions on the size of private firms (Buero des Ministerrates, 1 970). Such restrictions might represent a disadvantage for a small minority of super rich, but it would not be rei· evant to the vast majority ofpeople.4 7. More natural. The communist system resulted in more natural human relationships. This greater naturalness was reflected in the results of a survey of eastern Germans, who indicated that most felt more com· fortable under the old communist system there than under capitalist uni�cation (Kramm, 1 999). In particular, the communist East German society was not so plagued by the capitalistic characteristic of personal greed above everything (Aus erster Hand, 1 987). However, relationships were sometimes artificially used for material gain to obtain goods and services in short supply in East Germany, as noted by Voelker and Flap ( 1997), who conducted a survey that touched on this issue. Their survey indicated that both relatives and "coworkers" actually provided more such material access than "friends." If friendship had truly been based on such material advantages, then the result would have been the opposite (as more friends would have been deliberately chosen that provided such material advantages). This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that any material advantages of true friendship in East Germany may have been the byproduct of the friendship as opposed to the cause. The survey also indicated that people considered to be mere superficial "acquaintances" or "neighbors" played a much smaller role in assisting with access to goods and services in short supply, as would be consistent with a hypothesis that East Germans did not cultivate superficial relationships to gain material advantages. It should be mentioned that the primary purpose of Voelker and Flap (1997)'s survey was apparently to support a biased opinion/hypothesis that East Germans were unfriendly to their neighbors. However, the two Western researchers were only able to provide supporting evidence for their ridiculous hypothesis by effectively having any neighbors considered to be friends removed from the sample of neighbors (as they themselves admitted in a footnote). "Friendliness" was generally not a commodity that was "sold" in East Germany, and so East German cashiers, waiters, waitresses, and sales­ �ple in general were actually considered to be rude by foreigners (Filmer and Schwan, 1 985), at least partially because of their honest naturalness and lack of superficiality. Perhaps in reflection of this fact, a survey asking East Germans which of 16 different characteristics that �ey find most important in a partner (such as "loving father/mother," �oyalty," and "has intellectual interests," all three of which ranked htghly) indicated the attribute of "has a highly paid job" ranked the absolute lowest in importance, while "has an attractive appearance" ranked fourth from the bottom (Edwards, 1 985). Moreover, Falck (1998) reports in a well-documented book that the gt'eater equality of treatment of men and women in East Germany, and a more natural set of official morals with respect to sex resulted in less conflict between men and women, virtually no prostitution, far less incidence of sexual perversion, and women who were considered by many foreigners to be both more pleasant and more intelligent than in capitalist countries. Also contributing here was the lack of stress with respect to job security, fewer financial worries, and no life-sustaining money anxieties, which also resulted in the well-documented fact that East Germans engaged in sex much more frequently (and with more sexual partners on average) than West Germans (dpa, 1 990b). Another study indicated that East German women typically enjoyed sex much more (with a 70% orgasm rate), at least partially because communism allowed East German women to feel equal, far more independent, and far less oppressed (Kleinschmid, 1 985). 8. Much less crime. Narcotics were almost nonexistent in East Germany, although there were some illegal homemade drug concoctions, such as combining legal alcoholic beverages with legal tranquilizers and even mixing a detergent with cola (Leopold, 1 985). Regardless, murder and violence were rare, and theft was much less prevalent than in the capitalist countries (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1 998). For instance, in 1988, there were 7 criminal acts per thousand residents in East Germany compared to 71 per thousand residents in West Germany (Northoff, 1995). As a result, a 1999 survey of eastern Germans indicated that 81% felt less secure from crime in the unified capitalist Germany than in communist East Germany (Kramm, 1 999). An Ameri· can woman visiting East Germany in the 1 980s was astounded that she could actually walk the streets alone at night without any fear (Filmer, 1985a). 9. Less overall pollee control. For instance, the amount spent per capita on police, secret police, and public security was less in East Ger· many than in West Germany. In particular, such spending by East Germany was $225 per East German citizen in 1989 (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1 998), using the official exchange rates which approximated purchasing power exchange rates (Collier, 1985), while spending by West Germany on internal security was about $264 per citizen in the same year (Statistisches Bundesamt, 1 996). s It should be mentioned that about t/5 of the total police, secret police, and public security personnel in East Germany were actually heavilyarmed military troops (primarily trained to fight armed enemy infiltrators, paratroopers, and saboteurs), whereas all West German military formations are paid for out of defense spending as opposed to public security spending (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1998). In addition, the East German figures include foreign espionage spending, which is included in. West Germany as a separate (and secret) budgeted amount estimated to be about $8 per capita (Schmidt-Eenboom, 1 995). Thus, per capita spending figures for East Germany that would be more comparable might be $225x{ 1 -.20}=$ 1 80, or about 2/3 that of West Germany's $264+$8=$272. Given that East German income per capita was about 2/3 that of West Germany's in 1 989 (Gregory and Stuart, 1 995), it can be concluded that East Germany spent about the same percentage of National Income as West Germany. It should be mentioned that over half of East German spending on internal security was for secret police (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1998), which was perceived to be needed to defend against the stated intent of the much larger and richer West Germany to take over East Germany (von Schnitzler, 1 992). As a result, there were more secret police than other police in East Germany (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1998). In particular, in 1 987, there were 9 1 ,0 1 5 secret police compared to 15,646 regular police, 6226 police liaisons with neighborhood watch groups, 8294 criminal police, and 62 12 traffic cops (with all these figures including supporting administrative personnel). Also included in the East German internal security figures were 31,555 full-time national guard troops (consisting of 11 ,000 members of a Stasi "Wachregiment" � !ready included in the 91,015 secret police population, 14,115 "Bereltschaftpolizei," and 6400 "Transportpolizei"). There was a total of 8526 prison guards and 3377 immigration officers (as well as almost 10,000 more of the 91 ,015 secret police who were directly involved in emigration/immigration tasks) also in East German internal security. There were 15,129 security guards (and supporting administrative personnel) in East Germany whose costs are not included in the internal security spending Gust as amounts for security guards in West Germany are separately budgeted, there as private business expenditures). Overall, ac�al secret and other police, prison guards, security guards, and supportmg administrative personnel represented about 0.8% of the East Gennan population (with national guard troops and immigration officers representing a further 0.3% of the population).

10. Not harassed by the Western secret police. The all-powerful West German secret police (which inherited Hitler's organization, people, and laws) harassed many people (especially West Germans) with left-wing political opinions, using tactics like entrapment, spreading false rumors, and causing people to lose their jobs (Schulz, 1982), but the East German secret police severely restricted these illegal, harassing activities against East Germans in East Germany. However, the West German and allied secret police were able to tap some phones and open some mail in East Germany (Staadt, 1 998), and the East German secret police itself did harass many of its own citizens, especially if they applied to emigrate to West Germany (Henke and Engelmann, 1 995). 6 In addition, for a large number of the annual 15 million visits of East Germans to West Germany in the late 1 980s (Murphy, 1992b), a secret police security check was required (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1 998). Nonetheless, it must be emphasized that the tactics of the East German secret police generally consisted of openly attempting to persuade people not to take actions that damaged the State (Riecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, 1 990), and that tactic was in stark contrast to the West German secret police strategy of doing everything possible to penalize people for any anti-government opinions (Schultz, 1 982). 11. Not as manipulated by the Western press. The Western press is heavily influenced throughout the world by the CIA and rich capital· ists (Blum, 1 995), but there is an especially strong manipulation by the CIA in West Germany (Agee and Wolf, 1 975). In addition, the German media is strongly tied to the big-business-oriented Christian Democratic Party (Der Spiegel, 1 994). While the East German press was strongly ideological and controlled by the government (and thus had its own manipulative bias), that press provided an alternative to the propaganda of West German television, which could be watched by most East Ger· mans, except soldiers and about 1 5% of East Germans who were out of the West German television range (Filmer and Schwan, 1 985). 12. Not manipulated by Western marketing. Prices were determined in East Germany by administrators largely based on cost, although unmanipulated demand and need factors were also considered for many products (Steudtner, Hempel, and Ulrich, 1 988). As a result, there were more rational and objective prices, since the people were not manipu· lated by the advertisements and marketing gimmicks of capitalism. In comparison capitalist value and price, are determined by how much someone can be convinced to pay for something. For instance, if someone persuades another person to pay $1000 for something totally worthless like a handful of pebbles, the value of this worthless item in capitalism is $1000 regardless of whether the buyer later figures out the stones are worthless. Although capitalist swindles are common, a much more subtle form of distorting value occurs even more frequently (and almost continuously) in capitalism (Furlough and Strikwerda, 1999). In particular, through advertising, sales people, and marketing, it is possible to get consumers to pay much more for the same product, or even buy an inferior (or worthless) product for a higher price. One classic illustration of this phenomenon that is glorified as a genius of capitalist marketing (and even taught in marketing classes at USA universities) is the case of Gary Dahl selling 1 .3 million worthless pebbles for $4 a piece as "pet rocks" (Scripps Howard News Service, 1 999). Another example is with breakfast cereal. The major brandname cereals usually cost far more than for a generic breakfast cereal of approximately the same type, and these high-priced brandname cereals have about 90% of the market share (Gibson and Ono, 1 996). So the market "value" of a good in capitalism can be greatly increased by advertising and other psychological manipulation (Green, 1999), with such marketing strategies being so effective that over 90% of the people are willing to pay the higher "value". As a result of such potential to exploit consumers and confiscate their money through excess charges (Furlough and Strikwerda, 1 999), an enormous amount of resources is spent in capitalism for marketing that manipulates people and distorts reality, with marketing (including retailing) expenses making up half of the cost of the average consumer �ood (Pride and Ferell, 1 997). While marketing can provide valuable � nformation, entertainment, and even positive psychological feelings, it 18 often difficult, time-consuming, annoying, and mentally disturbing to try to differentiate the manipulative and reality-distorting aspects of marketing from its positive characteristics. Thus, it is unclear whether capitalist marketing creates any net positive value much less covers its enormous cost. Nonetheless, this cost is incorporated into the price of ��s and is therefore effectively paid for by consumers whether they hke It or not (unless they are willing to expend the enormous amount of time and energy required to sift through the distortions, find and investigate alternatives, and take risks with unfamiliar products/companies). Some evidence of the net negative effect created by capitalist marketing is provided by the great effort and cost so many people incur to avoid advertising, telephone sales pitches, and general marketing manipulation (Kaufman, 2000). A more subtle (and potentially more damaging) negative effect of capitalist marketing is the "pushing" of products with actual negative long-term value, as exemplified by the unhealthy obesity which is rapidly growing in the current capitalist marketing environment that "encourages us to eat food high in calories and fat" (Winslow, 1 999). The fact that capitalist marketing also has the negative effect of keeping good products out of the market is illustrated by the statement made by manager Mark Greenberg, "You can have a good product, but if you don't have good marketing and a good brand name, your're toast" (Kiplinger's, 2000). 13. No need to shop around for the best price. The prices of goods or services of the same type and quality were the same everywhere in East Germany. Although it was often necessary in East Germany to shop around for available goods (Filmer and Schwan, 1 985), although used goods were sometimes the only ones that could be found, and although lines to buy goods at East German stores were typically longer than the check-out lines at West German stores, many of the new goods in short supply were readily available without waiting at the very expensive East German exquisite shops (Falck, 1998). Whenever East Germans had the choice of paying higher prices or waiting in line, the latter choice was usually considered superior, especially since it was possible to read or socialize while waiting in line (whereas it is more difficult to engage in other activities simultaneously when engaging in the price/quality shopping necessary in capitalism that requires greater concentration and effort). 14. Simpler tax system for individuals. The state withheld about 1 5% from wages (up to a maximum of 25% for higher wage-earners) without the need for filing a tax form (Buero des Ministerrates, 1966). On the other hand, for private companies, which could exist with 10 or fewer employees, taxes on profits were levied at a steeply progressive rate that reached 90% for income over 250,000 Marks (Buero des Min· isterrates, 1 970), which was about $ 1 50,000 at official exchange rates.

15. Faster real economic growth rate. East Germany's national income grew in real terms about 2% faster annually than the West German economy between 1961 and 1 989, as documented in Chapter 4 of this book.7 However, because the very large reparation payments made by East Germany to the Soviet Union after World War II had caused it to start at a much lower level, it had not yet caught up by the 1980s, being only about 2/3 that of West Germany's at that time (Gregory and Stuart, 1 995).

Advantages of West German Capitalism

1. Shorter work hours. The West German work week was 2 hours shorter, and the West Germans had slightly more paid vacation days and holidays per year (Osmond, 1 992). However, it should be mentioned that the East German workers actually had more free time than the average worker in the far richer USA (largely because Americans generally have fewer paid vacation days). In addition, even the apparent relative advantage for capitalist West Germany here may in fact be only on paper, as a 1 999 survey indicated that, despite the high level of unemployment in the unified country, more eastern Germans felt they had a greater amount of free time under the old communist system than they do in the unified capitalist Germany (Kramm, 1 999). This conflicting survey result may stem from "voluntary" overtime, work brought or conducted at home, and other activities (including work planning and worrying, as well as very stressful job searching) that is not counted in the official work week. l. Fewer shortages. Waiting lines at West German stores tend to be shorter than those that existed in East Germany. However, one needs to have more money to buy the goods in West Germany, and often it is necessary to do a lot of time-consuming price shopping in order to keep the price from being even higher (Statistisches Bundesamt, 1996). �irnilarly, in East Germany, there were exquisite shops where goods 10 short supply elsewhere were easily obtainable at very high prices (Falck, 1998). Some evidence on the relative time costs of shopping for the best Price and availability does exist. For instance, the unified German government has estimated that, under the capitalist system, shopping alone takes up about 15 minutes per day of the average German's time (Statistisches Bundesamt, 1 997), which comes to almost 1 00 hours per year. This figure approximately equals the average number of hours that was spent per capita waiting in line in the communist Soviet Union (Freeze, 1 997). It should also be mentioned that the highly centralized and regulated German capitalist system has less competitive pricing practices than more decentralized capitalist systems like in the USA (and so shopping probably takes less time in capitalist Germany than in other capitalist countries), while the Soviet Union probably had longer waiting lines than more efficient and more prosperous communist systems like in East Germany (and so shopping in the communist Soviet Union probably took more time than in other communist countries like East Germany). Thus, it is far from clear that shopping takes more time under the average capitalist system than under the average communist system (without even considering the advantages of communist market· ing systems in avoiding the manipulation and fraud that exists in capi· talist systems). Some evidence on this issue directly comparing communist East Germany with capitalist West Germany is provided by Meyer and Schulze ( 1 998). These researchers found that East German families spent less time on housework (including normal shopping but excluding child care upon which East Germans spent substantially less time) than West Ger· mans, despite the fact that East Germans tended to have less access to some household automation (like microwave ovens) and personal trans· portation (although they did have greater access to inexpensive meals at work which reduced household tasks related to preparing meals). One of the primary time-consuming activities avoided in East Germany was the need to "bunt for bargains and compare prices, quality, and quan· tity." A much more important difference existed with respect to the short· age of specific goods and services in East Germany. In particular, there was at least a l 0-year waiting time between ordering and receiving a new car (Filmer and Schwan, 1 985), and there was a similar wait with respect to a telephone connection in East Germany (Schwarzer, 1 999). The system was not actually as incredibly inconvenient as it seems, as it was always possible to buy a used car in East Germany, and there were also ways to obtain a new car in a timely fashion by ordering it 10 years before one had the money available (or having relatives or friend do so 10 years before a child was of driving age). Given that a 25% subsidy from the state significantly reduced the cost of new cars (ADN, 1990), and given that East Germans had about half as many cars as West Germans (Mueller, 1996), the shortage of cars was not nearly as terrible as it may have seemed, especially since East Germany had an extremely cheap but effective mass transportation system (Welfens, 1992). Although the telephone shortage created a more difficult problem, East Germans were able to use inexpensive public pay telephones somewhat effectively, and the cost of telephone service (when finally obtained) was reasonably cheap in comparison to the capital costs of supplying it (Schwarzer, 1999). It should also be mentioned that many services like repairs had to be reques�ed weeks in advance in East Germany (Filmer and Schwan, 1985). The latter situation motivated many to learn to perform their own services and repairs Gust as the high cost of services and repairs in West Germany motivated many to do their own work in those areas). 3. Lower levels of pollution. Because of its relative poverty, East Germany spent less on pollution control than in the richer West Germany (Gregory and Leptin, 1 977), as is typical of poorer countries (such as Mexico and Hong Kong) whose people normally value higher consumption of goods over a cleaner environment (Robitaille, 2000). Just for example, one study indicated that the workers of the most polluted city of eastern Germany (Bitterfeld) were ready "to accept environmental pollution" as a price for maintaining their jobs, and the unified capitalist German government itself placed very low priority on pollution problems in eastern Germany, as illustrated by it budgeting only 67 1 million Marks on pollution control in eastern Germany in the �t year after unification, compared to East Germany spending over 2 billion Marks on pollution control in its final year (Welfens, 1992).1 In fact, despite the closing of so much of East German industry shortly after unification in 1 990, the pollutant most dangerous to local human health (sulfur oxide) actually rose in eastern Germany in 1991 from the ! evel in 1989 even though some higher spending by East Germany in Its final year had significantly reduced the emissions in 1990 from the 19�9 1evel (Buck, 1 996). 9 It should also be mentioned that there is little evtdence that the pollution in East Germany had a deadly impact, given that the death rates in the most polluted areas of the country than in the less polluted areas (Der Tagesspiege/, 1 990m). 4. Political freedom fa�ade. The West German system created the fafYade of democracy by publicly allowing the formation of different political parties, and that appeared to compare favorably with East Ger· many, where one needed to obtain permission from the government to start a new political party. However, the West German government can and has outlawed some peaceful political parties and organizations that are not perceived to be consistent with the capitalist order, such as numerous pacifist groups and a fairly popular West German com· munist party in the 1 950s (Angenfort, 1 996). Thus, despite the fa�ade of greater political freedom in West Germany, there is a trivial differ· ence in practice between East Germany's requirement to obtain permis· sion to form a political party and West Germany's right to disallow any political parties or organizations it chooses (except that the West German system creates more risks to founder activists with respect to expending the time/money in starting up an organization that is only later ruled to be "verboten"). For instance, in anticipation of unification, the former communist party of East Germany (relabeled the Party of Democratic Socialism from the Socialist Unity Party) revised its platform to meet the con· stitutional requirements of the united Germany that were the same as in West Germany, which merely annexed East Germany in 1 990 (von Schnitzler, 1 992). Despite the changes made by the party to be in favor of a market-oriented economic system, to respect private property, and to endorse capitalist-style elections, many German anticommunists believe the party should be outlawed (Economist, 1 996). The primary reason appears to be because a fraction of the members of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) are openly communists (Autorenkol· lektiv, 1 995), and because financial and other harassment has failed to eliminate the party's popularity (Economist, 1 995). Similarly, West Germany also appears freer with respect to making or writing statements about the government, but there are actually laws in West Germany that prohibit slandering government rulers, just as such laws existed in East Gennany but were rarely enforced. In addi· tion, although demonstrations are widely thought of as being tolerated in West Germany, there is substantial evidence of police and social repression of demonstrations in West Germany (Hamburger Abendblatt, 1992). On the other hand, the massive peaceful demonstrations in East Germany in the fall of 1 989 (as will be described in Chapter 3) indicate substantially less repression there than is normally assumed, and dissent on particular issues was freely allowed in East Germany insofar as petitions could be (and often were) collected and sent to the East German government for action (Philipsen, 1993}.10 It should also be emphasized that, in capitalist West Germany, only the rich have sufficient money to make their statements or writings sufficiently publicized to have a widespread effect on others' opinions, and it has been well-established that West German elections are controlled by marketing, money, and personalities (Schumacher, 1998). Moreover, communists are not legally allowed to have jobs in the West German government bureaucracy (von Schnitzler, 1 992), and West German businesses {being invariably owned by rich anticommunists) often follow the government's example, thereby virtually prohibiting working people from publicly stating communist opinions in capitalist West Germany (unless there were a few tolerant rich business owners with job openings).11 A more general form of extortion also exists insofar as rich capitalists often threaten to eliminate jobs (by taking capital out of the country) if a socialist government is elected, and this threat of unemployment is made very clear to the working masses in capitalist societies (Copeland, 2000). Despite these facts, and despite the fact that the established, ruling West German political parties are widely perceived to be "clubs for a political class that makes its own rules" (Rohwedder, 2000}, West German elections are generally held to be more democratic than East German ones. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that East Germany � lso had multiple political parties, although they voluntarily formed Into . � united National Front shortly after World War II to create a coahtton bloc designed to prevent a reelection of the capitalist Nazis (Weber, 1 988). East Germany also permitted voters to cast secret bal1?ts and always had more then one candidate for each government position (Honecker, 1994). Although election results typically resulted in over 9�% of all votes being for candidates or parties that did not favor :vo�ut10nary changes in the East German system (just as West G . erman lechon results generally resulted in over 99% of the people votmg for nonrevolutionary West German capitalist parties},12 it was always possible to change the East German system from within the established political parties (including the communist party), as those parties were open to all and encouraged participation in the political process (Filmer and Schwan, 1985). The ability to change the East German system from with�n is best illu���ted by the East German leader who opened up the Berhn Wall and mataated many political reforms in his less than two months in power (Krenz, 1990). The East German political system was actually more democratic than the West German one in at least two respects. In particular, only East Germ�y allowed voters to cast votes against the system, and thousands dtd so at each election (Weber, 1988). Moreover, only East Germany had a free referendum approving its constitution (von Schnitzler, 1 992). I� addition, the East German political system may have actually resulted to less corruption, since, despite a great deal of West German propaganda to the contrary, the opened East German records indicate fW: les� evidence of bribery and use of a position for personal gain than extsts m West Germany (Honecker, 1994).u Nevertheless, after being bombarded with capitalist propaganda (and welfare) for almost a decade, only 200/o ofEast Germans believe the old communist political system was superior, although over 30% believe they are about the same, and less than a majority believe the "democ· racy" of unified Germany is better than the communist system (Kramm, 1999). Overall, there is actually some question as to whether there is �ore honest freedom from repression in capitalist Germany, especially gtven a 1993 survey which indicated that more East Germans felt safer from state infringements in their lives in 1 988 under the communist East German government than they did in the 1 990s under the united capitalist rule (Northoff, 1995). 5. More travel freedom. West Germans had greater freedom to travel to more countries, at least for those West Germans with sufficient money to be able to afford to travel. However, East Germans had a substantial amount of travel freedom within the vast expanse of Eastern Europe, wher� travel costs were subsidized by the East German government, espectally for youth (A us erster Hand, 1 987), and where vacation travel within East Germany was very heavily subsidized for workers (Filmer and Schwan, 1985). It should also be mentioned that most East Germans were allowed to travel to the West after a long application process and security check (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1 998). In addition, the delay and security check for such travel did not exist for retirees (over 65), who were allowed 30 days of unrestricted stay in the West annually (Filmer and Schwan, 1 985). Nevertheless, over 90% of East Germans feel they have greater freedom of travel in the unified Germany than under communist rule (Kramm, 1 999), with this clear increase in freedom stemming not only from the opening ofthe Wall but also from the higher level of income (derived via the huge transfer payments from western Germany) that makes travel more feasible financially. 6. Less transparent police. Although the West German secret police is scarcely noticeable to those with conservative or no political opinions, the West German secret police can be at least as harassing as the East German one for people with the "wrong" left-wing opinions, often inflicting serious damage such as causing a person the loss of a precious job (Schulz, 1982). It should also be mentioned that the regular West German police had such a close relationship with the main branch of the West German secret police (the Verfassungsschutz or "Constitutional Protection") that one West German police insider stated, "One never sees the borders between the Constitutional Protection and the regular police" (Der Spiegel, 1 992b ). It should also be mentioned that stories related by victims indicate that the repression of the East German secret police was not nearly as terrible as its reputation and generally only occurred in cases of clear law violations or repeated attempts to undermine the East German gov­ �mment (Furian, 1 99 1 ). Most of the East German secret police's activities were related to security checks involving applications to visit West Germany (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1998). In fact, of the arrests made by the East German secret police between 1985 and 1 988, about SO% were for illegally attempting to emigrate to West Germany, about 20% were for threatening East Germany and its employees (mostly for delaying or refusing an application to emigrate), and about 20% were for working with West German organizations (often to publicly embarrass or otherwise pressure East Germany into allowing them to emi­ �t�), while only about 5% were for treasonous offenses (such as comnuttmg sabotage or spying for West Germany), and only 11 (about 0. 1% of arrests) were for making public slanderous statements against East Germany or its leaders (Henke and Engelmann, 1995). Some East Germans actually felt they had more freedom of speech under communism because, unlike in capitalist West Germany, they felt they could say whatever they wanted without fear of losing their job (Eckart, 1984). However, a majority of East Germans believe they have greater freedom of speech in the unified Germany than they did in com· munist East Germany (Kramm, 1999). The latter survey results were probably at least partially related to the deliberate transparency of the East German secret police methods which made more people aware of the restrictions on freedom of speech (and possibly also related to the fact that many people in eastern Germany don't have a job and don't realize the job-related penalties which can occur when one says the "wrong" thing). 7. Higher Income and wealth (i.e., escaped reparations). As pre· viously mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, West Gem_tan� was richer than East Germany. This advantage (like the others mdJ· rectly) derived directly from the relative post-war treatment of the two Germanies and not from the type of economic system. In particular, West Germany escaped from having to pay reparations for the crim . es committed by capitalist Nazi Germany as a whole against the Sov1et Union. The dominating importance of this factor can be seen from the fact that the flow of people from eastern to western Germany continued unabated even after West Germany annexed East Germany in 1 � (Statistisches Bundesamt, 19%), even after the two areas became vu· tually identical except in terms of relative income, and even after the massive welfare payments made to the eastern Germans narrowed the income differential. Because capitalist unification in 1990 had destroyed the East German economy, reducing gross national product (GNP) by over 40% (Osmond, 1992), and putting over half the population there out of work, western Germany had to make enormous transfer payments to the eastern part to keep incomes above the levels under co�­ munism (Rohwedder, 1996). As mentioned in the introduction to thiS chapter, the communist system could have grown to being vastly richer than the West German capitalist one if it had not had to make the enormous reparations payments to the Soviet Union, and it certainly could have created far more wealth and income with the large transfer payments of the 1990s than has been the case under capitalist transformation of East Germany (as will be documented in Chapters 4 and 5).

Conclusion

Given that virtually all the advantages of West Germany stem from the external postwar treatment of Germany (and given that some of the West German advantages are mere fa�ades ), communism dominates capitalism in virtually all respects. This hypothesis . is c�n�iste . nt with a survey finding 10 years after the Berlin Wall opemng mdtcatmg that only 45% of eastern Germans in 1999 feel that capitalist "democracy" is better than the old communist system (Associated Press, 1999c), despite the massive transfer payments (or bribes) to eastern Germans and despite the fact that the capitalist German propaganda machine has continuously blamed communism for East Germany's relative poverty while largely ignoring the true cause (i.e., the massive post-war reparations forced on East Germany alone). 14 Nevertheless, it is possible that the average East German is at least intuitively aware of the long-term superiority of their system. For instance, a 1999 survey indicated that 67% of East Germans feel the future perspective for the corning generations was better under communism than it was under the unified capitalist Germany (Kramm, 1999), even though 70% of East Germans believe the advantages of unification currently outweigh the disadvantages, mostly because of the improved living standards brought on by the merger with (and welfare payments from) the richer western Germany (Associated Press, 1999c). Further evidence on this issue is provided by the unbiased survey conducted in mid-December 1989 after the East Germans had been well exposed to the riches of the West without having the reparations reason �or their relative poverty explained to them. At that time, the �ast . �ajorlty (over 70%) of the East Germans were in favor of mamtammg a socialist system and of maintaining a separate East German country (Bahrmann and Links, 1994). Only after the East German economy and morale were destroyed by a 3: 1 exchange rate (that was artificially created on January I, 1990 and that was ridiculous in comparison to the &rester purchasing power of the East German currency) and only after the West German currency and riches were promised immed�at�ly to the East Germans in return for a unification vote, did the maJonty of East Germans favor unification and capitalism. A detailed analysis of the events of 1989-90 that led to German unification is provided in the next chapter.

A Detailed Autopsy of the Collapse of the Superior System in the Divided Germany

Before describing the incredible events of 1989-90 that resulted in the collapse of East Germany and the defeat of communism in the Cold War, it is first necessary to provide some historical background on the situation. Germany had been split into two parts since World War II, and this division was to continue until the revolution of 1989.

Historical Background of the Most Incredible Revolution of Our Time

In World War II, Nazi Germany fought a two-front war against the communist Soviet Union on the eastern front and against the capitalist USA and its allies on the western front. Fighting between the capitalist USA and the capitalist Nazis was fairly limited until very late in the war, and Nazi Germany committed 80% of its military strength on the �tern Front (Becker, 1997a) where over 3 million of its own soldiers dted (well over 80% of its total losses in the war) along with approximately 1 million soldiers of its satellite allies (Krivosheev, 1997). While the war never even touched any formal state of the USA, and while the number of Americans who died in that war was counted in the hundreds of thousands, approximately 20 million Soviets lost their lives in the figh� �gainst Germany, and their country was badly destroyed by the Nazt Invasion. By the time the war had ended in 1945, Soviet troops had occupied the eastern part of Germany, while the Americans and their capitalist allies (primarily the British and the French) had occupied the western por· tion of Germany. Because of differences in the ideologies of the USA and the Soviet Union, the two major occupying powers were unable to agree on a peace treaty that would unite Germany back into one country (Autorenkollektiv, 1966). Instead, the eastern portion of Ger· many developed into a country with its own communist government, while the western portion of Germany developed into a country with its own capitalist government. The eastern German country was called the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany for short. The western German country was called the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), or West Germany for short. West Germany was several times the size of East Germany in terms of land and population. In its constitution (which was created under USA supervision and never approved by German voters), West Ger· many claimed that it was the sole legitimate government ofthe German people, which included people in both East and West Germany (von Schnitzler, 1 992). According to the West German constitution, East Germany did not exist as a real country, but instead was merely an area of their country that was temporarily under Soviet occupation (Apel, 1966). Although East Germany was labeled communist, the country would probably be more accurately called a socialist nation in transition to�ard communism. According to the philosophy of Karl Marx, commumsm represents a system where wealth is distributed according to nee?, �d such a system can be achieved only after a long period of soc1a�1sm where the central government controls all wealth but distributes 1t to people based on work performance (Hahn, Kosing, and Rupprecht, 1983). There were numerous political parties represented in the . �st German parliament, but the leadership role of the East German Soc1ahst Unity Party was grounded in the East German constitution which had been approved by East German voters (Dietz, 1983). Despite East German offers to create a united neutral confederati�n between the two German states in the 1950s (such as on the same b�IS as had been successfully implemented for the united neutral Austna), West Germany refused to compromise on its goal for outright annexation of East Germany (Hoffman, 1990). As a result, the two Germanies remained separate for over 40 years. Their separation was a product of the Cold War between the capitalist Western countries (led by the United States) and the communist Eastern countries (led by the Soviet Union). In fact, Germany served as a main battlefront for the Cold War, which was waged with economic and political weapons as ·opposed to military means.2 Both sides in the Cold War used every available political and economic tool to improve their own situation and reputation, but the capitalist Western countries had (and employed) far greater resources to damage the economy and political position of the other side.3

Secret Police and Political Repression

The Cold War resulted in the use of various nonlethal weapons such as spreading propaganda, inciting people to riot, sabotage, and spying, with the USA being overwhelmingly the most aggressive (Blum, 1995).4 As a result of these activities, both sides in the Cold War developed strong secret police forces, whose job it was to prevent the other side from overthrowing their government although the USA also utilized its secret agents to engage in much more offensive and violent operations (Schulz, 1982). In East Germany, the secret police force was known as the State Security, or Stasi, which cooperated with Soviet intelligence liaisons or advisors but which was pretty much left on its own to maintain internal security (Henke and Engelmann, 1995). In East Germany's final year, this organization had 91 015 official members and support staff (about ' . 0.5% of the 16.5 million population of East Germany), who were gtven �e task of protecting government leaders and buildings, administering �portant sports programs, providing national guard services, uncover­ �ng plots to overthrow the government, collecting information, conduct1�8 statistical analysis, performing passport and emigration control serVIces, and spying in the West (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1998). One of the largest functions of the Stasi was to conduct security checks 00 those who applied for permission to visit or emigrate to West Germany (Henke and Engelmann, 1995), as West Germany's constitu�ionally stated intention to annex East Germany automatically made tt an enemy of the East German state (von Schnitzler, 1992). Given that there were over 200 million letters, over 20 million phone calls, and close to 10 million visitors from West Germany each year in the 1980s (Edwards, 1985), the Stasi actually had the resources to monitor only a very small portion of these contacts with the "enemy." The 91,015 Stasi roster included many purely administrative personnel, including cooks, medical personnel, and others who provided support services to the Stasi that were not directly related in any fashion to the aforementioned tasks. In addition, over 10,000 of the 91,015 represented heavily armed military formations largely trained to fight enemy infiltrators and paratroopers, and almost 10,000 others were uniformed officials directly controlling border crossings (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1998). Of the total 91,015, only 1418 were undercover agents domestically active in early 1989 (and many of these were used to observe foreign diplomats and tourists), although a further 2232 held full-time civilian positions, such as high-level offices in industry, government, or defense (Wiedmann, 1996). There were 1380 full-time agents (including some undercover agents) and office personnel involved in observing and controlling religious, cultural, and unusual political activities in East Germany, with some of these Stasi members involved in censorship (Wiedmann, 1996). Besides the several hundred organizations recognized by the East German state (Rein, 1989), there were also over 100 unofficial East German "cultural" groups or organizations with their own ''underground" printed periodicals or press, and there also existed a total of 160 underground political groups, with about 2500 active participants, of which only about 60 people were considered by the Stasi to be pure enemies of socialism (Henke and Engelmann, 1995). Stasi members were, on average, paid about I 0% more than the aver· age East German at about 22,000 Marks annually, although generals made two to three times that amount (Gauck, 1991 ). However, Stasi agents were also required to work long hours and were prohibited from having capitalist friends, except for the purpose of gathering infonna· tion (Riecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, 1990). The entire budget for the Stasi (including wage and other costs) was slightly over 1% ofNational Income in 1989 at 3.5 billion Marks, which included only 34 million in West German Marks (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1998). For many of their information-gathering activities, the Stasi used informants. The number of people who had knowingly provided information to the Stasi at some time during the history of East Gennany was about 600,000 (which is equivalent to about 4% of the East Gennan population), although only 174,000 were listed as infonnants in 1989 (Mueller-Enbergs, 1996). The 174,000 figure includes a significant number of the over 2 million communist party members, who bad merely agreed to cooperate with the Stasi if needed (and often only in special circumstances that might be restricted to providing some overall opinions on worker morale, etc.), but who were rarely if ever contacted (Henke and Engelmann, 1995). Some of the informants hadn't even formally agreed to work for the Stasi but were contacted for information at some point, and many of the informants who were contacted only provided very general information on events, the economic situation, and the overall political climate or mood of the people (MuellerEnbergs, 1996). Much of the information on individuals was collected with respect to a security clearance check, such as for someone who wished to visit the ideological enemy West Germany. Investigations of �ose with official business dealings with West Germany were espeCially strict and thorough to reduce the possibility of taking bribes or other corruption. A�ut 800/o of the informants were listed as gathering general infor­ �ation of the type often provided publicly in West Germany by journalIsts.'?� their contact sources (such as surveys and reports on businesses/ �hv1ttes not covered in the government-controlled press), 18% of the mfo�ants merely offered facilities (such as their apartments) for the meetmgs between informants and the 13 000 full-time Stasi members who c . oordinated their activities, and onl� 2% (or under 4000 people) were mvolved in observing people suspected of engaging in spying, :bversion, illegal political activities, sabotage, attempts to overthrow 1 �government, or other treasonous activities (Henke and Englelmann, (M S). Over 90% of the informants were male, and 99% were adults ueller-Enbergs, 1996). d Detailed research on the motivation of Stasi informants has been con­ . ucted by Mueller-Enbergs (1996). Most informants were not paid but Instead acted o t f · · · 'th th u o patnottsm, a sense of duty and cooperation w1 m e a � thorities, the expectations of their position at work (or in the comti�st Party), and social pressure. Some, however, provided informan tn return for a specific reward, such as very small amounts of additiona! income, the hope of better career opportunities, and, in much less frequent cases, a reduced jail sentence after having committed a crime like theft. The Stasi considered informants acting out of self-interest as opposed to political conviction to be unreliable and preferred not to have to rely on such people. About a third of those asked to serve as informants refused, and there was generally not any attempt to penalize those who did not cooperate with the Stasi, other than the withdrawal of any rewards offered or hoped for. The Stasi used telephone taps and room bugs when sufficient infor· mation existed for a formal report of suspected criminal activity to be approved (Riecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, 1990). While random bugging was not allowed, technological capacity existed to listen in on up to 20,000 phones in East Berlin alone (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1998). Only 430 personnel were involved in telephone or room huggings, however, and many of these were spying on foreign embassies and missions. A total of 530 agents had tasks related to opening mail (Wiedmann, 1996). Although subjective opening of correspondence based on the personal interest of a Stasi agent was prohibited, random opening of mail from West Germany was allowed (Riecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, 1990). Many of those involved in postal interception were merely controlling international mail for smuggling activities related to attempts to avoid import duties and attempts to bring in illegal goods like weapons, narcotics, and right-wing propaganda, and only about 1% of the 30 million packages that were mailed into East Germany each year were intercepted in part or in whole by the Stasi (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1998). The Stasi conducted over l 00,000 security checks of East Germans each year (many related to applications to visit West Germany), and almost 30,000 people were put under close observation by the Stasi annually, about l/3 of whom for their activities relating to a delay or refusal of an application to visit or emigrate to West Germany (Henke and Engelmann, 1995). About 2500 people per year were arrested by the Stasi, about 95% of these were convicted of some crime, and most of those convicted were sentenced by East German courts to multiple years in prison (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1998). Although these conviction and imprisonment rates may seem high, they are actually similar to the rates for Federal crimes in the USA, where "Federal defendants were convicted 87% of the time in fiscal 1998 and nearly three out of four of those found guilty ended up in prison, a Justice Department report says" ( Wall Street Journal, 2000£). About half of those convicted ofStasi-related crimes in East Germany had actually been completely investigated by the regular East German police without any Stasi participation whatsoever, although they were formally listed as Stasi arrests/convictions because the nature of their crime (such as threatening an East German government official) was listed as being under Stasi jurisdiction (Henke and Engelmann, 1995). With the exception of about one hundred people arrested annually for treasonous crimes (such as committing sabotage or spying for West Germany), most of the Stasi convictions were related to attempts to emigrate to West Germany (including over half for actual illegal attempts to emigrate to West Germany, and including many others for threatening East German officials or working with West German organizations to pressure East Germany into allowing them to emigrate, as documented in Chapter 2). Although about one hundred people were arrested annually for publicly slandering East Germany in the 1970s, there was a total of only ll people arrested for that crime between 1985 and 1988. An interview conducted by Opp and Gem (1993) after unification provides an interesting perspective on the extent of the East German �ople's perception of secret police activity under communism. In particular, the two investigators asked residents of Leipzig (the capital of East German political demonstrations at least since 1982) whether they had had contact with the police or security forces for political rea­ �ns in terms of {i} being watched, {ii} being questioned, {iii} being mstructed, or {iv} being taken to the police station, with each "yes" answer having a survey value of 1 .0 (cumulating to a score ranging between 0.0 and 4.0 per interviewee). The survey yielded an average �ore of 0.20, implying that many had never experienced any such repression" (e.g., if people who had had contact with the secret police �ad experienced all 4 forms of such "repression," the survey would unply that only 0.20/4==5% of the population had experienced any contact whatsoever with the security forces). While complete information on West German secret police methods are not available, their numbers have been estimated to also be about 100,000, the majority of whom are undercover agents (Schulz, 1982). Undercover agents are paid up to 1 00,000 West German Marks (about $60,000) annually tax-free (Der Spiegel, 1 993b) as well as sometimes offered a good job subsequently in the West German government bureaucracy and/or the dropping of criminal charges or deportation proceedings for criminals and foreigners, respectively (Schulz, 1982). These numbers do not even include the massive army of regular police in West Germany, whose numbers per capita far exceed those of East Germany, and which worked very closely with the West German secret police (Der Spiegel, 1 992b ). According to one estimate, there were an additional one hundred thousand secret police in West Germany controlled by the occupying USA, British, and French allied troops (Schulz, 1 982). In addition, the USA had many agents in East Germany who managed to open mail and listen in on private telephone and other conversations of both average East German citizens as well as the top East German leaders (Staadt, 1998). Although these figures appear to be lower per capita for West Germany given its larger population, it must be remembered that the Stasi rosters included many people in tasks assumed by others in West Germany, such as support, passport and immigration control, providing internal security against armed infiltrators and paratroopers, etc. It is also important to recall that West Germany spent more per citizen than East Germany on overall internal security, as documented in Chapter 2. Moreover, whereas the occupying forces in West Germany (especially the USA) have tens of thousands of people engaged in secret police activities, only several hundred Soviets were involved in such operations in East Germany which was largely trusted to do that work itself (Andrew, 1999). The number of West German informants is unknown, but given the fact that companies, unions, and police frequently report on (or are reported to) about political activists, the number may be very large (Schulz, 1982). While existing evidence indicates some West German secret police tactics that are similar to those conducted by the East German secret police with respect to the use of informants, huggings, and mail openings, the extent of such activities may be much greater in West Germany, where superior resources and technology exist (Riecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, 1 990), and where there is evidence of millions of pieces of mail being seized in one year alone (Schulz, 1982). Perhaps the biggest difference between the two countries' secret police forces may lie in philosophy. The East German secret police had a philosophy that attempted to restrict anyone who didn't love the East German people from becoming a Stasi agent. As a result of this philosophy, the Stasi often tried to talk people out of taking future actions against the state, instead of trying to prove them guilty and send them to prison (Riecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, 1990). This philosophy of emphasizing prevention instead of punishment permeated the entire East German police system and was even grounded in the East German constitution (Weber, 1 988). The philosophy was also entrenched in the East German method of raising children, insofar as in communist countries (like East Germany and the Soviet Union) both parents and child care centers were encouraged to lead by example, persuasiorr, love, praise, non-monetary rewards, habit, and social pressure as opposed to verbal or physical punishment (Autorenkollektiv, 1 973). One partial byproduct of this system was the existence of crime rates in East Germany that were l/ 10 those in West Germany-- also contributing to the far lower crime rates was a general environment of greater social security and equality in East Germany (Northoff, 1 995). On the other hand, West German secret police is more geared toward the goal of punishing, imprisoning, or terminating enemies of the state, as Schulz ( 1982) documents. For instance, the West German secret police often try to infiltrate radical left organizations and then entice them with drugs in order to disorient and discredit them and to justify arr�ts. The West German secret police infiltrators have even provided radical left groups with bombs and weapons in an extreme attempt to both win their trust and entrap them, and some of these weapons have been then used to actually kill innocent people (Schmidt-Eenboom, 1 .995). Attempts are also usually made to disrupt groups through divis .. ve discussions of unimportant topics and personality conflicts, while hes and rumors are often spread to create personal problems that distrac� (and demoralize) members (Schulz, 1982). The most powerful tactic typically used by the West German secret police, however, is to pre� ent those with radical left views from obtaining or keeping a job, which they do by indicating to employers that the individuals are dangerous. Just labeling them communists is usually enough, since most employers are fairly affluent, very anticommunist, and averse to having communist workers, especially given the fact that the West German government even made it illegal for those with communist views to work for the government in any way (von Schnitzler, 1 992). The number of victims ofWest German secret police surveillance and harassment is estimated to be in the millions (Schulz, 1 982). The differences in philosophy may have made the East German secret police more transparent, while many people (except those with radical left views) are not even aware of the existence of the West German secret police. In addition, like their USA counterparts (Stich, 1994), the West German secret police actively engages in weapons and narcotics smuggling as well as other illegal activities (Schrnidt-Eenboom, 1 995), and the supplemental income from these activities combined with higher government spending per capita on security certainly could help the West German secret police to afford the technology needed to engage in their tasks more secretly. Moreover, I have also been in contact with several West Germans who allege that the West German secret police, like the USA secret police, engages in brainwashing and torture through the use of drugs, hypnosis, and electronic equipment, which are ideal methods for secret repression because they are extremely difficult to prove or find evidence of, and the very damage to the victim's mental health inflicted by this form of repression represents a perfect means of discrediting the victims and their stories as well as distorting their own memories (Bowart, 1 978). To assist the secret police forces, various laws were passed in both East and West Germany to permit the imprisonment of anyone perceived to be an enemy of the state (Furian, 1991 ). These laws as well as other political legislation, were · used in varying degrees to maintain establishment control of the system. For instance, the West German government outlawed numerous organizations that promoted opinions which it did not want the people to have, including various antiwar groups and a popular communist party that had fought against (and had also been prohibited by) Hitler (Angerifort, 1 996). West Germany also made membership in (or assistance to) any political organization connected with East Germany to be illegal. The latter prohibition was extended not only to the East German communist party but also to the Free German Youth, which was a cultural organization charged with the goal of ensuring the East German youth's right to "happiness" (among other socially constructive goals), and to which about 75% of all East German youth belonged (Edwards, 1985). Moreover, the candidate lists from which West German voters are actually allowed to choose are undemocratically selected by bureaucrats in the established, rich, and powerful West German political parties (Rohwedder, 2000), and write-in votes, or otherwise voting against the system, have never been permitted in West Germany.5 In addition, the West German people were never even allowed to vote on their own constitution which was effectively imposed on them by their USA occupiers after World War II (and they still haven't been able to).6 As if all these things were not enough, West German laws exist t�at essentially allow the West German secret police to engage in absolutely any activity (no matter how illegal or immoral) without fear of any chance of prosecution, and this power has effectively given the West German secret police the right to control even the "elected" government officials as opposed to vice versus in East Germany (Schulz, 1 982). As documented in Chapter 2, despite being perceived as much more totalitarian than West Germany, East Germany had many democratic characteristics, including some attributes of democracy that West Germany didn't have, such as the legal right to cast a secret ballot against all the . different candidates of the established political parties. The rules for domg so were publicly written at all East German polling locations, and thousands did register a recorded vote against the party slate in each East German election (as will be explained in this chapter, this right to :te against the system was not meaningless). In addition, there were . 0 aspec� of East German democracy that were to be particularly important in the peaceful revolution of 1989: the right to engage in limand � � t (as long as one was not trying to overthrow the government) politi e ngbt � make changes to the country from within the established cat parties and government.

Cold War Economics

The most im . its all' portant tool used by the USA m the Cold War was to help ricbe /::-ow and prosper economically. By making West Germany capital' East Germany, the USA was able to support its position that •sm was better. Financial aid and capital from the USA was especially important in the economic reconstruction of West Germany in the years following World War II (Apel, 1 966). On the other hand, the much poorer Soviet Union did not have suf· fi�ient �ealth to offer such noble assistance to East Germany. Instead, With the1r own country wrecked by World War II, the Soviets required t�e East Germans to make enormous reparation payments as compensa· t1�n for all the damage and killing that the unified Germany had com· m1tted. In and apart from the differences in damage inflicted by World War II on the Soviet Union and the USA, the Soviets had inherited a des�rately poor country in 1917 when they first took power from the previous feudal leaders of Russia (with national income per capita equal to I I 12 that of the USA at that time, as documented in Chapter I ),1 and they never could have offered the assistance that the USA provided to the West Germans. �s a result of the difference in the post-War foreign economic ass1sta?ce/reparations, West Germany very quickly became the much w�alth1er country (Apel, J 966).8 This situation provided West Germany With an excellent economic weapon with which to strike at East Ger· many. In particular, the West German government provided working-age East Germans who moved to West Germany with significant amounts of money and other benefits in order to emigrate to West Germany (retir· ees were not given such incentives). For instance, free loans and other state assistance of up to 1 60,000 West German Marks (about $100,000) were offered to each East German emigrant worker, along with a scarce apartment and reimbursement for any property that remained behind in East Germany (Der Tagesspiege/, J 990t). In addition, East German emi· grants to West Germany were also provided with instant West German citizenship, �hich allowed them to obtain West German jobs. Being much . wealthier and much larger (and being supported by their USA occupiers), West Germany could provide such incentives almost with· out limit. In . o�er a decade's time, the result was a large net exodus of several m1lhon people out of East Germany, which, net of the several hundred thousand West Germans who emigrated to East Germany, represented a �oss of over 1 0% of the East German population (Apel, I 966). Ac�ordmg to West German propaganda, this population move· me? t provided �est Germany with evidence of the "superiority" of their country, their government, and their economic system. In addition, many of the people who left East Germany were highly skilled individuals (like doctors, nurses, and engineers), who were very difficult and costly for East Germany to replace (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1998). The East German morale and economy suffered as a result (Apel, 1 966). Besides engaging in a deliberate policy to buy up East Germany's skilled work force, the economic war was also fought with other tools. For instance, West Germany was also able to utilize its superior wealth to promote extensive illegal black market currency trading and smuggling operations that also contributed to damaging the East German economy (Murphy, 1 992b ). Many such operations were conducted by the West German secret police itself (Schmidt-Eenboom, J 993).

The Berlin Wall

This situation continued until 1 961, at which time the East German government came to the conclusion that the process of damaging their economy and emptying their country of skilled workers could no longer continue.9 In 1961, East Germany set up rules that forbade their citizens from traveling to West Germany without special permission. In addition, travel restrictions were placed on West Germans going into East Germany in order to prevent a continuation of the black market currency trading and smuggling that were damaging the East German economy, to inhibit spying by Western secret police, and to stop outright sabotage activities committed by Western secret police (Blum, 1995). Because of the economic crisis caused by the emigrations and black market trading, many East Germans supported the government's restrictive policies at the time (Lahann, 1 998). The travel restriction rules were enforced by barbed wire, minefields, walls, and soldiers along the entire border with West Germany. Although many of these barriers had existed since the early 1 950s (and about 1 50 �ple had been killed in the border area prior to 1 961 ), the final barncr between the two countries was erected in 1 961 in Berlin (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1 998). Berlin was a large city of several million people that was partially in West Germany and partially in East Ger­ �any. The part in West Germany was called West Berlin, while the part 111 East Germany was called East Berlin. After 1 961, the city was not only divided politically by different ruling governments, it also was split physically in two by a large wall that separated East Berlin from West Berlin. This wall built on August 1 3, 1 961 was called the Berlin Wall. It was forbidden for East Germans to try to cross the Berlin Wall, just as it was forbidden for East Germans to enter West Germany through any other border point (which was mined in many places). East Gennan soldiers patrolled the border points constantly, and they were given orders to shoot anyone who tried to cross the border until early in 1989. Over the 28 years from 1 961 to 1 989, 756 East Germans lost their lives trying to "escape" to the higher income in West Germany, including 239 around the Berlin Wall. Many of the 756 martyrs were shot, while others died from mines and drowning (and some committed suicide when caught). Many more were wounded. It should be mentioned that the average number of about 30 killed per year is fairly small in comparison to, for example, the hundreds of Mexicans who die on average each year trying to "escape" into the United States (Reifenberg, 1 996), which does absorb 300,000 Mexican immigrants annually (Millman, 2000). However, the 756 German deaths do represent a human tragedy nonetheless (it should also be mentioned for comparison purposes that fewer Mexicans have been shot by USA border guards, as most Mexican "refugees" trying to "escape" to the higher pay in the USA have died from drowning, cold, starvation, and other "natural" causes while trying to pass through less well-guarded but inhospitable border areas). Between 1961 and 1 989, about 50,000 East Germans (averaging over one thousand annually) were apprehended alive for attempting to escape and put into East German jails for one or more years. Over 90% of all attempts at illegal border crossings failed (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1 998), with most being discovered by East German security forces while still in the planning stage (Hertle, 1 996). In the first few years of the Wall, only a few thousand East Germans were allowed to legally cross over into West Germany, and most of these people were loyal communist party members on political and business endeavors. After a few more years, the East German govem· ment relaxed its restrictions and allowed more frequent entries by West Germans and permitted its own senior citizens to freely cross over if they were over 65 years old (Merritt and Merritt, 1 985). Travel free· dom was markedly increased after 1 972 when West Germany formally recognized the existence of a separate government in the East Gennan zone, although it continued to refuse to recognize the legitimacy of a separate East German state or acknowledge its existence with an embassy (von Schnitzler, 1 992). By the 1 980s, trips to West Gennany were possible for East German citizens who were over 50 years old, or who had relatives in West Germany, and some others were also allowed to visit West Gennany after a long bureaucratic wait of several years and a security clearance from the Stasi. In 1 987, although 300,000 applications for visits to the West were refused by the East Gennan government, 1 ,297,399 East Germans under the retirement age were granted the legal right to visit West Germany (Hertle, 1 996). In 1 988, the number of visits by East Gennans into West Germany was over 15 million, over 99.9% of whom returned to East Gennany (Murphy, 1992b). Nevertheless, the Wall remained successful in inhibiting most activities that were damaging to the East Gennan economy. For instance, far less than 1% of those East Germans who visited West Gennany chose to stay there (Hertle, 1 996), and illegal smuggling operations remained curtailed (Murphy, 1 992b). However, to be able to minimize such activities in the face of relaxed travel restrictions (as well as to inhibit the spying and subversion that more contacts between East and West Germans allowed), increased security checks were required, especially on those seeking to visit West Germany, and so the Stasi had doubled its numbers from 1 972 to its peak level of 1 989 (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1998). Although East Germany had managed to survive most of the 1950s before the Wall with less than 20,000 Stasi members, it perceived greater Stasi control as a means of allowing more travel freedom while simultaneously preventing the resulting economic damage that OCcurred in the 1 950s.

Status Symbols in East Germany

D . . espne mcreased travel freedom in the 1 980s for some, many young �t . Germans without West German relatives were still forbidden from VJSJhng West Gennany, and this situation caused jealousies and discontent These · 1 · · th th · f 'WI · Jea ous1es were heightened by the fact at e existence o e�t . German relatives (and/or friends) often meant presents and opportunJhes to receive West German goods (Whetten, 1 980).

A few dozen of the top leaders in the East German government and numerous East German business travelers were among those who received Western gifts via their business dealings and/or who could access such goods in Western shops or in a "ghetto" for the East German elite in Wandlitz (Schabowski, 1 991 ). However, most communist party members and Stasi agents were greatly disadvantaged in this respect as they were strongly discouraged from having any West German friends (Keithly, 1992). In fact, many East Germans saw no advantages to being in the communist party and instead only disadvantages, which included having a significant amount of time used up in Party meetings and a percentage of income deducted for Party dues (Eckart, 1984). Although moral pressure was put on East Germans in more responsible positions to join the communist party, a belief in its purpose must also have played a part in over 2 million East Germans (over l 0% of the total population) joining the Party (Dietz, 1983), since they thereby gave up time, money, and potentially even access to West German goods. West German goods were a big status symbol in East Germany, because the East German government severely restricted imports from Western capitalist countries (Murphy, 1 992b). Restricting imports from West Germany had helped protect the East German economy from unemployment (as explained in more detail in subsequent chapters) and had allowed the East German economy to grow faster than We� t Germany in the years since 1 961 (as documented in Chapter 4 of this book). However, because the East German economy had not grown f� t enough to make up for the pre-1961 difference in economic prospenty and was still only 2/3 the size of West Germany's per capita by 1 989 (Gregory and Stuart, 1995), many of the goods in East Germany were of lower quality, being on the same level as inexpensive West German goods. For example, the most prevalent East German car (the Trabant) was similar to the VW Beetle with respect to reliability, durability, easy repairs, inexpensive cost, good gas mileage, small size, low maximum speed, some safety problems (in a crash), and old design (Woodruff, 1 997). Besides generally having less luxurious and less modem g�s , there was an especially serious scarcity of high technology goods hke computers in East Germany because of the Western technology embargo against communist countries (Hertle, 1 996). The higher standard .of living in West Germany combined with a reputation for high quahty and high technology made possession of West German products a very prestigious belonging. As a result, some categorized East Germans into two classes. The upper class had West German relatives with consequent opportunities to travel to the West and obtain Western goods (Keithly, 1 992}, whereas the lower class, which comprised about 500/o of the East German population (Filmer, 1985a), had no West German relatives. The jealousy, frustration, and discontent caused by this "two class" system were magnified by other problems in East Germany. In particular, there was a shortage of some consumer goods like cars (Filmer and Schwan, 1 985) and telephones (Schwarzer, 1 999) that resulted in a wait of over 10 years after ordering. In addition, some goods (such as fresh tropical fruit like bananas and pineapples) were rarely available (like only around Christmas) and/or obtainable only after physically waiting in line for hours, and many services (like repairs) had to be requested weeks in advance and/or required payment of a negotiable tip (Filmer and Schwan, 1985). Some of the negative effects of the shortages could be reduced or eliminated in various ways, as previously mentioned in Chapter 2. For instance, it was always possible to buy second-hand goods. The latter opportunity was especially useful for obtaining a car without an extensive wait, although many East Germans also greatly reduced the inconvenience of the normal 1 0-year wait for a new car by having relatives order a new car 10 years before a child was of driving age at the same time that they begin saving for the purchase to ensure timely payment for delivery. Nevertheless, although there were 225 cars per 1000 residents of East Germany in 1 988 (Mueller, 1 996), that still compared somewhat unfavorably with about 1 car per 2 citizens in West Germany (Kusch et al., 1991 ), and the overall consumption situation made East rior Germans feel their own economy and system to be that much more infeto the West German system (Filmer and Scbwann, 1985).

Escaping from East Germany

As a result, many East Germans bad a desire not ooly to · · Gennany but also to live there. West Germany offered hi.gba" and other monetary benefits u well as the opportunity to par1cba:1e swner goods that were not available in East Gelmany. A 1 of East Germans who wanted to leave their country indicated that 42% desired to emigrate because of the shortage of consumption goods in their country, while 27% stated that they wanted to leave primarily to attain greater freedom to travel (Falck, 1 998). Details and statistics on emigration attempts are provided by Eisen· feld ( 1 996). Thousands of East Germans applied to their government for permission to emigrate each year, with the numbers rising to tens of thousands by the late 1 980s. Only a fraction of the applications were granted, and there was generally a fairly long waiting period (of several months to years) even for the emigration visas eventually obtained. For instance, there were 284,700 new applications for emigration between 1 980 and June 1 989, but only 1 58,800 were allowed to leave, while 87, I 00 withdrew their applications ''voluntarily" during this time. On June 30, 1 989, there were a total of 1 25,400 unfilled applications (up from 1 1 3,500 on December 31, 1 988). Applicants for emigration visas were generally subjected to consider· able pressure to cancel their requests to leave the country. While gentler means of persuasion were often used, the applicants were also subjected to a thorough Stasi investigation that sometimes proved to be harassing. Several hundred of the applicants each year were arrested and found guilty of various crimes as a result of such investigations, and thousands more were subjected to warnings. In addition, the applicants were gen· erally informed of the risk of possibly never being allowed to reenter East Germany and the resulting difficulties of seeing their friends and family again. Many responded negatively to this pressure (with tens of thousands complaining each year to the head of the East German gov· emment about their treatment), thousands quit their jobs, and some even began voicing vocal opposition to East Germany in an attempt to pres· sure the government into seeing their continued stay as not only useless but even counterproductive for the country. Those actually allowed to leave were subsequently denounced publicly as agents offoreign powers and even traitors, and although East Germany made some modest (and somewhat inconsistent) efforts to encourage the emigrants to return, only a few hundred decided to do so each year. To avoid this uncertain and often undesirable application procedure for emigration (or to circumvent it when months or years passed with· out the application being granted), some chose to try to emigrate ille·gally. However, because of the Wall and other barriers between the two Gennanies, only a few people succeeded each year. There were hundreds of illegal plans or attempts at "escape" each year, but most were foiled by the Stasi even before the border area had been reached. Besides trying to break through the armed border, there were other ways to emigrate illegally. For instance, a handful of those who visited West Germany each year (less than six thousand in 1 988) decided to stay there and not return to East Germany. More might have done so, except such emigration without permission was a violation of East Gennan law and meant not being able to visit East Germany again. In addition, the East German authorities made it clear prior to each visit that it would be unlikely that the friends or families of an illegal emigrant would ever be allowed to visit West Germany. As a result, an emigration made it difficult to be able to see one's East German relatives and friends again (Hertle, 1 996). Although meetings between emigrants to West Germany and their East German families and friends often occurred while on vacation in other communist Eastern European countries such as Hungary, the Stasi sometimes used their own network of informants to disrupt such contacts (Eisenfeld, 1 996). These tactics helped successfully inhibit well over 99% of East German visitors from staying in West Germany, although the percentage remaining in West Gennany had been trending upward at 0.22% in 1987, 0.35% in 1988, and 0.6 1% in the first half of 1 989 (and reaching the 1% mark in August 1989), with most of those staying being vital skilled workers like doctors (Krenz, 1 990). Another way of illegally emigrating was to seek refuge in the West Gennan consulate office in East Berlin. West Germany did not have an actual embassy because it did not officially recognize the legal existence of a separate East Germany), or to seek political asylum in the USA embassy there (Keithly, 1 992). Once inside, diplomatic immunity laws prevented the East German police from entry, and papers were generally negotiated for the refugees to emigrate legally (to avoid adverse pu�licity and other hassles). The problem here was that East German �hce stood outside the West German consulate office (as well as outSI�e the various foreign embassies) and normally did not allow anyone Without permission to enter. Only an unexpected rush by a large group of East Germans had ever succeeded in emigrating this way. Another way to illegally emigrate to West Germany also existed. In particular, although East Germans could not visit West Germany without permission, they could travel almost without restriction (and fairly cheaply) throughout the expanse of Eastern Europe, including into Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Russia, and other communist countries (aus erster Hand, 1 987). While these allied countries also had strict border controls with Western countries (and would not allow East Germans into Western countries without visas from the East German government), it was possible to seek refuge in the West German embassies in those countries. Although East Germany had made some arrangements with its allies to try to control entry to the West German embassies in those countries more strictly in an attempt to stop the several dozen East Germans who successfully emigrated in this manner each year (Eisenfeld, 1 995), police control of these embassies was not as strong as in East Germany.

Prelude to the Revolution

In the mid-1 980s, Michael Gorbachev became the new leader of Soviet Union, and he initiated many capitalist reforms under his Perestroika policies and also announced an official program of greater freedom of speech in a policy called Glasnost (Marcy, 1 990). Although some of the other Eastern European countries (like Poland and Hungary) followed the Soviet lead, East Germany and others (like Romania) continued their hard line against capitalist propaganda and reforms (Mittag, 1 991). This situation led to internal inconsistencies within Eastern Europe. For instance, in 1 988, one Soviet publication, Sputnik, began making such open statements about reforms in communist countries that it was no longer imported into East Germany (Arnold, 1 990). Subsequently in early 1989, an ex-spy chief from East Germany published a book that raised some questions about the history of the Soviet Union in the 1 930s when it was under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. Printing of this book was discontinued in East Germany after only a few copies had been sold (Wolf, 1 99 1 ). As an expression of discontent against the continued hard-line policies in East Germany, a significant number of East Germans voted against the communist party slate in an election there in May of 1989. Although the East German government reported the party slate to have won over 95% of the votes (just as it had in all previous elections over the prior 40 years), a number of East Germans claimed election fraud (Krenz, 1 990). In particular, some East Germans counted the number of their friends who claimed to have voted against the party slate, and that number exceeded the official number of"no" votes reported in some of the local districts, such as in the East German city of Dresden. In actual fact, many of the votes against the party slate were not counted because the list of party candidates had been crossed out with an "X", and East German election rules required each candidate's name to be crossed out with a line for a "no" vote to be registered.10 The new freedoms opening up in the communist world had also hit Red China. There, thousands of students demonstrated openly against the government for several months in 1 989, with the protests being concentrated on demands for higher pay for intellectuals, lower inflation, and less corruption, although there were also more minor demands for greater political freedom that were advanced for propaganda purposes (Keidel, 1991 ). However, after the demonstrators called for the overthrow of the government and attacked government security forces, the Chinese army was sent in to restore order, and several hundred demonstrators were killed in June 1 989 in what was called the Tiananmen Square massacre (MacFarquhar, 1 993). Despite worldwide outrage at the incident, the East German government stated its support for the Chinese government's actions, and many began to fear a similar incident in East Germany (Krenz, 1 990). Meanwhile, on May 2, 1 989, a potentially even more revolutionary event had occurred in Hungary, one of East Germany's communist allies in Eastern Europe. On that day, Hungary had eliminated some barbed wire on its western border with neutral Austria to symbolize the toning down of the Cold War (Krenz, 1 990). Hungarians (who were not otfe�d the immediate Western citizenship, money, and jobs that emigrating East Germans were) had long been able to travel into Western countries, and so it was largely a symbolic event for them. It also did not change the fact that East Germans still could not cross the Austrian �rder (397 of 607 East Germans trying to do so in 1 988 were caught by . e Hungarian border troops and returned to East Germany for prosecution), but the symbolic border opening was widely publicized on West German TV stations that East Germans were able to watch (Hertle, 1 996). Hungary had always been a favorite summer vacation spot for many East Germans (Krenz, 1990), with 800,000 East Germans visiting the country each year, and with several hundred thousand more travelling through the country on the way to other Eastern European destinations (Hertle, 1 996). An especially large number typically did so after school ended in East Germany in early July (Krenz, 1 990), and there were about 200,000 East Germans in Hungary in the summer of 1989 (Keithly, 1992).

Hungary in the Summer of 1989

The explosive effects of the events in Hungary in the summer of 1 989 are documented by Hertle (1996). A small number of East German tour· ists in Hungary had already taken advantage of the more open border there to have themselves smuggled out in the trunks of the cars of A us· trian or West German tourists in May and June of 1 989, but nothing earthshattering happened in those two months. However, in mid-July 1 989, a few dozen East German tourists in Hungary attempted to drive their own cars openly through the border gate into Austria, having sud· denly heard rumors that the border was now "open." Although they were turned away by Hungarian border guards without prosecution, some feared penalties when they returned to East Germany because their passports were stamped as having permission to visit Austria denied. As a result, over 50 East Germans sought refuge in the West German embassy in Hungary. The existence of refugees at the West German embassy brought inter· national press coverage. Increased press coverage resulted in many per· sonal offers to individual East German tourists by West German and Austrian tourists who promised to smuggle them out. In addition, West German and Austrian tourists freely provided advice on how to seek refuge at the West German embassy in Hungary, which was finally closed on August 14 with 171 East German refugees. Many more East Germans seeking to emigrate camped out in the yard and on the side of the street nearby. To relieve the problem, the Hungarian government built some refugee camps where the East Germans could stay until the problem was resolved. Although Hungary had a treaty with East Ger· many to repatriate anyone trying to illegally cross over into the West, the Hungarians wanted to maintain good economic relations with the West Germans in order to continue to be able to access West German credit, capital, and high technology goods. As the number of refugees grew, so did the press coverage. More press coverage brought more smuggling offers and more advice from tourists to go to the refugee camps, and the whole process started to feed on itself. Some Austrian and West German tourists even began spreading written leaflets to East German tourists in Hungary informing them how to emigrate. On August 1 9, 1989, one rich Austrian aristocrat (a descendant of the old Austrian Emperor's family) even held a large party on the Hungarian border and conspired with a non-communist member of the Hungarian government to allow 600 invited East Germans in Hungary to use the opportunity to flee through the Austrian border in mass. Three days later, spurred on by this event, and realizing that the few border guards could not have stopped a large number of people except by shooting them, 240 more East Germans crossed the border into Austria. The fleeing East Germans gambled correctly that the Hungarians did not want to risk such an international incident for an East German problem. However, subsequent attempts in August were stopped by strengthened border troops, who wounded several East Germans attempting to emigrate illegally. Finally, after thousands of East German refugees had filled the area around the West German embassy and other living quarters provided to them by the Hungarian government, after numerous incidents, and after many East Germans had already been smuggled through the borders, the Hungarian government negotiated a deal with West Germany to let the refugees enter West Germany via the Austrian border in return for a ��� of 500 million Deutsche Marks (about $300 million) and some poht �li support. On September 1 1 , Hungary announced that it was reaking its treaty with East Germany on repatriating refugees, and over 2·00? East Germans were allowed to emigrate immediately from Hun­ � tnto West Germany, while more East Germans still on vacation ere chose to emigrate through the open border later in the month. tra As a result, the East German government terminated unrestricted �el to Hungary. Thereafter, travel to Hungary by East Germans would 00 Y be allowed with special permission.

The international publicity had made it known to all East Germans that there were reasonably safe ways to emigrate to West Germany. East Germans could watch both East and West German television channels, and so news of the emigrations through Hungary could be seen from both points of view. Those who had been most interested in emigrating now saw a favorable chance, and, although most had initially sought refuge in Hungary, dozens of other refugees had meanwhile also broken their way into the West German embassy of Czechoslovakia and into the West German consular office in East Berlin itself.

The Train through Dresden

After trips to Hungary were no longer freely allowed in September 1 989, East Germans seeking to emigrate began concentrating on the other West German embassy targets. For instance, by the end of September, hundreds of East Germans had taken refuge in the West German embassy in Poland, and many more were breaking into the West German embassy in Czechoslovakia again. Czechoslovakia was the most popular travel destination for East Germans (9 million East Germans visited Czechoslovakia in 1 988) because it was nearby and no special visa was required (Bahrmann and Links, 1994). For those seeking emigration from East Germany, Czechoslovakia was also now an attractive destination because they could not only enter the West German embassy there, but they could also conceivably travel through the lightly guarded Czech border with Hungary, from which they could freely emigrate via the open Hungarian border with Austria. By the end of September, the number of East Germans who had emigrated via Hungary over the prior few months exceeded 20,000, and the West German embassy in Czechoslovakia was soon fi lied up with thousands of East Germans (Goertemaker, 1994). The East German government then negotiated a similar solution as was imposed on it in the Hungarian case. It "temporarily" terminated unrestricted travel to Czechoslovakia but decided to formally allow the legal emigration of all East German refugees in the West German embassy in Czechoslovakia (Bahr, J 990). As part of the emigration agreement in the Czechoslovakian case, over ten thousand refugees around the West German embassy in Czechoslovakia were to travel by train through the southern part of East Germany before reaching West Germany (Keithly, I 992).

One set of trains filled with refugees was scheduled to ride through the East German city of Dresden early in the morning of October 5, 1989 at about 1 :30 A.M., and details of the events that fol lowed are reported by Bahr ( 1 990). To prevent any East Germans in Dresden from climbing aboard the trains in transit to West Germany, the East German police closed off the train station in Dresden late in the night of October 4, 1 989. Notified by West German television of the trains that were to pass through, over five thousand East Germans came to look on and complain, frequently claiming to suddenly want to take a train ride somewhere. As the complaints became heated, violence erupted as normal Dresden people (mostly teenagers and very young adults) tried to break into the train station, and others threw rocks at the train station windows. The police counterattacked. Hundreds of people were clubbed and/or arrested by the police.

The Last Birthday of East Germany

Meanwhile, in East Berlin, preparations for the 40th anniversary of the founding of the East German government were being made. The borders to tourist traffic were temporarily closed to reduce the possibility of foreign-instigated disorder (preventing myself from meeting a cute East German woman with whom I had an evening rendezvous!), and known East German dissidents were put under especially close observation, as was usual during such times (Riecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, 1 990). Communist leaders and sympathizers all over the world were going to attend the October 7 ceremonies, including the leader of the Soviet Union (Michael Gorbachev), and the East German government did not want any embarrassing riots. On October 6, on the eve of the celebration, over one hundred thousand members of the East German youth organization (the Free German Youth) marched through the center of East Berlin holding torches in demonstration of their support for their country, just as they had on this day for the last few decades. There was one major difference in their peaceful demonstration this time, however. On October 6, 1 989, instead of shouting in support of their own country's leader, the Free German Youth chanted "Gorbi, Gorbi, Gorbi" (Krenz, 1990). be As reported by Bahrmann and Links ( 1 994), the ceremonies on Octor 7 • 1989 went smoothly for most of the day. However, early in the evening, a number of people on a central plaza (Alexanderplatz) in East Berlin indicated their intent to express their support for their communist ally, Gorbachev, and the group started walking toward a building (Palast der Republic) where he was meeting with East German leaders. As the group continued across the rest of the plaza and crossed a central park where people often strolled, the crowd grew. Once in front of the building, the crowd shouted chants in support of Gorbachev and sang com· munist songs. Police were stationed in front of the building, but they and the building were separated from the crowd by a narrow river (with bridges over it blocked by police). Nothing earthshattering happened until plainclothes police began arresting a few people for making remarks that they perceived to be anti-government. The arrests in plain view of the crowd were not popular, and the secret police was jeered. The crowd had grown to over ten thousand people by this time, and they began to lose their fear of the secret police and to feel power in their numbers and in their complementary opinions. Somewhat later, the crowd began moving back toward the residential section of East Berlin, and the chanting became more militant, with jeers of "Secret police, get out!" The crowd gathered more strength in the residential section, as the demonstrators called on those watching from balconies to join them by chanting "Onto the street." The demonstrators also soon ran into crowds of people returning home from an official fireworks ceremony (celebrating the 40th anniversary of East Germany), but many of these celebrants merely wanted to go home. Meanwhile, the secret police chief (Erich Mielke) had ordered the police and security forces to hinder the spread of the demonstration (Schabowlski, 1 990). Police barriers were set up, but, with many people (including many fireworks celebrants) needing to get to their homes, the various crowds of people began to force their way through the barriers (Riecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, 1990). The crowds were then surrounded by troops and pushed back in a direction away from their homes (Schnauze, 1 990). With thousands of people being pushed against one another in an unknown direction, and with many people angry at not being allowed to return to their homes, violence broke out (Riecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, 1990), chaos ensued, and the police clubbed and arrested hundreds of demonstrators as well as innocent bystanders (Schnauze, 1990).

There were also numerous other much smaller demonstrations on October 7, including in other cities of East Germany, such as in Leipzig and Potsdam (Bahrmann and Links, 1 994). However, there had been prior publicity (including circulating flyers) about these events from well-known and well-observed East German dissident groups such as "Neues Forum." Neues Forum was one of the newest, most popular, and most famous dissident groups in East Germany that had been created as a new forum for promoting political discussion, but it had not been formally authorized by the state because the group openly sought to "break the state's power monopoly" to reform the system instead of going through the 200 different organizations already authorized (and encouraged) by the East German government to express their opinions and initiate reforms (Rein, 1 989). As a result of the prior information on these demonstrations sponsored by renowned dissidents, the Stasi bad been well-prepared for them and had easily broken them up with a few arrests that included several West German, Polish, and other foreigner demonstrators in Potsdam (Maximytschew and Hertle, 1994).

East German Police Control

The police patrols, arrests, and clubbings continued through the night of October 7 and the next day in Berlin as the security forces sought to restore order in a situation they did not understand and for which they were ill-prepared (Riecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, 1 990). The East German police and troops had been trained to fight criminals and foreign infiltrators but not innocent demonstrators and their own people (Diedrich, Ehlert, and Wenzke, 1998). The East German secret police had put all the well-known East German dissidents under close observation . and had quietly dispersed or kept under control the small demonstrations that they had called (as they had always done in the past). The demonstration in the center of Berlin, however, appeared to be spontaneous and without leaders. . In East Germany, demonstrations were illegal unless they were authonzed by the government. However, as previously mentioned, East Germany had laws guaranteeing freedom of expression (Philipsen, 1 993), an: there was nothing illegal in a group of people wandering some­ � ere to express support for their government or their communist allies th ecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, 1 990). Only when some people in e group made anti-government statements or slandered government eaders was police action allowed (Rein, 1 989). By the time this happened in Berlin, there were already over ten thousand people in the crowd (and they were mixing with another group that was returning from a government fireworks festival). People arrested for making public statements against the government or for leading unauthorized demonstrations were usually released with a warning for first offenses (Riecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, 1990). However, serious and subsequent offenses could be penalized with several years in prison (Furian, 1 991). A statement against the government or its laws was considered serious only if the police perceived the action to be threatening to the government and/or to have been initiated by foreigners or others seeking to overthrow the government (Rein, 1989). For instance, jokes about the government were allowed to be told in bars and private gatherings as long as there was no perceived intent to overthrow the system (Schlechte and Schlechte, 1 993). Normally, the police (usually the secret police) attempted to persuade any offending individuals from further public anti-government action (Riecker, Schwarz, and Schneider, 1990). In the October 7-8 events in Berlin, however, there were simply too many to persuade, including many who were arrested or injured without having made any anti-government statements and without having been involved in the unauthorized "gathering" at all (Schnauze, 1 990). Although no one died in the actions in Berlin on October 7 and 8, there were quite a few hospitalized (including some police troops). The international press came out strongly for the demonstrators and expressed shock at the police brutality (Schumann, 1 990). To provide some perspective here, however, it should be pointed out that the East German laws against publicly slandering the country were similar to some American laws (existing in 48 of the 50 USA states) prohibiting flag-burning (Greene, 2000). In addition with respect to laws on demonstrations, it should be mentioned that even in the "free" USA, demonstrations are only allowed if permits (which are not always granted) have been obtained from the government, and masses of intimidating police are often present even when a demonstration is permitted (lAC, 1998a). Moreover, it should also be noted that demonstrators in the USA are often chased down and clubbed, arrested (for "unlawful assembly and crossing police barricades''), and sprayed with harmful chemicals just for engaging in peaceful protests against the world poverty caused by capitalist globalization (Associated Press, 2000g). Government ordinances are also sometimes imposed in the USA to prohibit demonstrators from wearing helmets, gas masks, or other protection from police assaults (Szczesny, 2000b ), thereby ensuring police brutality has the maximum effect. At any rate, since most East Germans watched West German TV, their opinions of the events were strongly influenced by the Western anticommunist interpretation of the actions of October 7-8 (that naturally emphasized police repression and put East Germany in a negative light). As a result, many East German supporters of the demonstrators attended candle-laying ceremonies to show their solidarity against violent attacks on innocent people, and the movement began to gain momentum (Bahrmann and Links, 1 994).

The Leipzig Affair

Shortly thereafter, on Monday, October 9, 1 989, one of the stranger events of this weird episode occurred. On that day in a town with over four hundred thousand residents in the southwestern portion of East Germany, there was a threat of another large demonstration, and the �ackground to and actions of that day remain a mystery to most investigators (Joppke, 1 995). Since 1982, small demonstrations had periodically occurred around a church (Nikolaikirche) in the center of Leipzig at approximately 6 P.M. 0� Monday (Scheider, 1 990). For many years, young East German disstdents had figured out that the East German government's guarantee of religious freedom allowed them some rights to freedom of assembly and expression there, after a "peace prayer" was issued at 5 P.M. I myself interviewed some of the participants who indicated that most of the demonstrators had no religious beliefs but merely used the church � a protective cover for expressing their discontent. Such demonstra­ �ons usually consisted of several dozen dissidents at the most, and the S emonstrators were always dispersed shortly after leaving the church. uspected ringleaders of the demonstrations were usually arrested and �meti�es given jail sentences of up to several years for slander or plottng agatnst the state. On September 4, 1 989, in keeping with this tradition, several youths began to demonstrate with placards "For an open country with free people," as reported by Tetzner (1990). Their signs were tom down immediately by secret police but not before Western reporters had taken pictures. On September 1 8, 1 989, this action was followed up with a demonstration of several hundred people, with some demanding the right to leave the country. This demonstration was also quickly dis· persed by police, and approximately one hundred people were arrested. These incidents were followed by a similar demonstration of over a thousand people on September 25. As usual, this latter demonstration was also broken up by police, and numerous suspected ringleaders were arrested for taking actions against the state (Schumann, 1990). On Monday October 2, 1 989, another demonstration ensued in the center ofLeipzig, as also reported by Tetzner ( 1990). This time the dem· onstrators did not yell anti-government slogans. Instead, they chanted Gorbachev's name to demonstrate their support for their communist ally. They also shouted "We're staying here" to show that they were not people who wanted to illegally emigrate. Such slogans did not give the police adequate cause to make arrests and disperse the demonstra· tors. The failure of the police to act and the supportive nature of the slogans also gave the demonstrators a sense of legitimacy. As a resu�t, as the demonstrators walked peacefully around the plazas and parks m the center of Leipzig, many other people who were strolling in the area joined the group. The crowd soon grew to approximately three thou· sand people. Although police cordoned off some areas and roads to pre· vent the demonstration from blocking all traffic, no violence or arrests occurred. The slogans remained supportive of Communism (as opposed to demanding reforms), with the most militant cries to the police on that day being "Shame on you for not letting us through." Only after mos� of the demonstrators had gone home did verbal and physical provocatiOn of the police occur, which resulted in a few arrests. On October 7, 1989, normal official festivities were held in Leipzig to celebrate the 40th anniversary of East Germany. Several well-known dissidents used the opportunity to speak to masses of people gathered for the festivities. The East German police were already prepared and quickly dispersed the crowds with water cannons and numerous arrests (Schnauze, 1 990).

The Decisive Day

Renewed arrests and violent dispersal of demonstrators in Leipzig on October 7, combined with the news of violence in Dresden on October 4 and in East Berlin on October 7, led many to fear the worst for the Monday October 9 demonstration in Leipzig (Bahrm� and L�ks, 1994). As a precaution, a large number ofEast German pohce, soldters, and tanks had been called into the city, and orders had been issued by the East German leader (Erich Honecker) and by the secret police chief (Erich Mielke) not to allow the demonstration to occur (Kuhn, 1992). There were rumors in Leipzig that a slaughtering of demonstrators might occur, as it had in communist China in June of 1 989 (Bahrman and Links, 1 994). People were warned not to go toward the center of the city after 5 P.M., and some schools and businesses in the center of the city were closed early to allow the people to go home before then (Kuhn, 1992). In this situation, there may have been only a very small number of people brave enough to join in the demonstration on that day, and the police might have been able to disperse the few courageous demonstrators as usual. However, a series of events then occurred that dramatically changed the course of history but has rarely been reported by anyone except Kuhn (1992), who interviewed many of the key participants. To begin, early on the morning of October 9, Walter Friedrich, a professor for youth culture at the University of Leipzig, drove to East Berlin to confer with his old friend Egon Krenz, who held an important position in t�e East German government's policy-making committee called the pohtburo. In addition to his position in the politburo, Egon Krenz was also in charge of security and was the head of the East German youth organization called the Free German Youth. Friedrich convinced Krenz to check to make sure that the police and other troops had been given orders not to shoot. In addition, he pleaded with Krenz to try and have the security f�rces show restraint, unless the demonstration turned destructiye or Vtolent. He also suggested that Krenz replace the old sick leader of East Gennany (Erich Honecker) and take charge of the country himself. After Friedrich left, Krenz attempted to contact the East German leader, but the old man was in meetings all day. Because Krenz was unable to reach Honecker, he called the various ministers of the central government in charge of the various police forces (such as the secret police chief Mielke) and convinced them not to employ violence. After talking with Krenz, Friedrich returned to Leipzig and spoke with his friend Roland Woetzel, who was a communist party member with an influential political position in Leipzig. In conjunction with five other local dignitaries, Woetzel then recorded an announcement requesting the demonstrators in Leipzig to remain nonviolent and promising to have the government listen to the opinions of the demonstrators. The cassette with the recording was given to various administrators in the center of the city, as well as to the Leipzig radio station, with instructions to play the cassette on the radio in the afternoon and on the city's loudspeakers at the time of the church "peace prayer" between 5 P.M. and 6 P.M. There were several thousand people gathered around the central church for the "peace prayer" between 5 P.M. and 6 P.M. Included among them were over a thousand communist party members who had been ordered by the local communist party to inhibit a demonstration from occurring afterwards. Because of the large number of people attending the church ceremony, many had to stand outside the church, even though three nearby churches had been opened up to handle the overflow. After the church ceremony ended peacefully (around 6 P.M.), the church leaders recommended that the people go home in a direction away from the city center in order to avoid a confrontation. However, this recommendation was ignored in the face of the public announcement condoning a demonstration that was being broadcast on local loudspeakers and on the radio. The thousand communist party members in attendance at the "peace prayer" also perceived the public announcement played on the loudspeakers to be a rescinding order of the command to break up any post-ceremony gathering. As a result, after the prayer services were over, many people moved uninhibited through the central plaza toward the main train station in the city center. They were observed there by an estimated thirty thousand people, many of whom were merely on their way home from work, school, or shopping. About this time, Woetzel was busy explaining the unauthorized public announcement to his superior Helmut Hackenberg. Hackenberg was the overall political leader in charge of Leipzig and, as such, was responsible for coordinating the various police and other forces that were available to break up the anticipated demonstration. Faced with a local public announcement condoning the demonstration that conflicted with the order from the central East German government not to allow the demonstration, Hackenberg called the head of the central East German government, Erich Honecker, for instructions. Because Honecker was in a previously scheduled meeting, Hackenberg was only able to talk with Krenz. Krenz said to wait until he had checked with Honecker, after which he would call back. An hour passed without official orders. In the meantime, the police forces were frozen, the public announcement condoning the demonstration had greatly reduced tensions in Leipzig, many observers and bystanders joined in the demonstration, and about seventy thousand people peacefully demonstrated in Leipzig that day. ''

Subsequent Demonstrations

On the following Monday (October 16), there were over one hundred thousand demonstrators in Leipzig (Bahrmann and Links, 1994). Although demonstrations in the rest ofthe country had been inhibi�ed by the arrests and violence in the early part of October, they bad not been completely stifled, and the prior week's peaceful, semi-authorized demonstration had given the people in Leipzig renewed courage. On October 18, 1989, the previous leader of East Germany (Erich Honecker) was replaced by Egon Krenz, the man who had effectively allowed the crucial October 9 demonstration in Leipzig to occur without arrests (Krenz, 1 990). With Leipzig as an example, and with a new leader who had shown a willingness to allow demonstrations to occur, a larger wave of demonstrations broke out across East Germany in both large and small towns, �ith over a half million people participating in 1 45 different demonstration across East Germany in the week of October 23-30 (Hertle, 1 996). These as well as the regular Monday demonstrations in Leipzig continUed in ever growing numbers (Bahrmann and Links, 1 994). On Novem­ ber 4, 1989, a demonstration was even formally authorized in East Berlin, and a crowd of over a half million people attended (Hertle, 1 996) that was broadcast on East German government television (Frankfurter Rundschau, 1999). On November 6, 1 989, a peaceful demonstration OCcurred in Leipzig with over four hundred thousand people present (Tetzner, 1990), which was approximately the number of residents in that city, although many of the demonstrators came from other East Gerrna · n · Clhes to participate.

[pages 146–7 missing]

Opening the Berlin Wall

before work the next day, the guards at one of the Berlin Wall crossings indicated that they could no longer peacefully contain the crowd and obtained telephone permission to open up the border gate completely without any controls. Other uncontrolled border crossings into West Berlin were also subsequently made available prior to midnight, while additional gates into other parts of West Germany opened up somewhat later. By 4 A.M. on November 10, about 70,000 East Germans had crossed over into West Berlin (and 5000 into other West German cities), but more than half of these had already returned to East Germany by that time. Although there were celebrations on the night of November 9-10, the bigger party occurred on the night of November 1 0-11 when millions of now informed East Germans entered West Berlin and other cities in West Germany on the originally scheduled date (Hertle, 1 996). The West German leader (Helmut Kohl) came to make a nationalist propaganda speech to the celebrants, but he was drowned out by hecklers and jeering from the crowd of people who preferred to celebrate (Bahrmann and Links, 1 994 ). The celebrations continued throughout the month of November and into the early part of December. After an initial massive wave of emigrations in November, the average number of East Germans immigrating daily into West Germany fell in December to about one thousand, which was substantially lower than the rate just before the building of the Wall in August 1961 and was not that much higher than the levels of the 1950s that East Germany had previously survived (Murphy, 1 990b ). The average annual number of emigrations in the 1 950s was 220,311 , but there was a high point in 1 953 of 33 1 ,390 emigrations, which was approximately the same as the 343,854 East Germans who emigrat� legally or illegally in 1 989 (Hertle, 1996), with many of the 1 989 emigrants being people who would have emigrated in prior years but were prevented from doing so by the Wall. While the parties continued, the politicians in East and West GermanY continued to rant and rave throughout this period about issues of little immediate concern to the celebrating Germans. Many scarcely even noticed in late November when the West German chancellor Kohl indicated that any increase in aid and economic cooperation was dependent on East Germany initiating capitalist economic reforms and Western style elections ( dpa, 1 989). Most were also not concerned when, in early December the East German parliament (without consulting the East Gennan �ople) succumbed to the pressure by removing the arti� le of the East German constitution that guaranteed concentrated power m the hands of the communist party and by replacing Krenz with a more pliable economic reformist, Hans Modrow (Bahrmann and Links, 1 994). Although West Germany initially responded somewhat positively by offering some limited financial aid (Der Tagesspiege/, 1 989c ), a decision was made before Christmas that would end the celebration and turn the widely-welcomed opening of the Wall into a catastrophe.

The Collapse of the Berlin Wall

Even after the November 9 event, the East Germans had always maintained strict control of West German tourist traffic into their country in order to protect their products from being smuggled out at cheap black market prices (Murphy, 1992b ). However, after opening up the Wall for East Germans, the West German government was putting extreme political pressure on the East German government leaders to reduce controls on West German travel to East Germany. The East German government was also being pressured into allowing West Germans to freely convert their currency into East German money at an incredible exchange rate of 3 East German Marks per West German Mark. This exchange rate was absurd because the purchasing power of the East German Mark was approximately equal to that of the West German Mark. In fact, for many items (like food, books, clothing, rooms, and other consumer staples), the East German Mark could actually buy 5 to 10 times more consumer goods in East Germany than the West Mark could buy in West Germany (Collier, 1 985). The 3:1 exchange rate thereby made it 15 to 30 times cheaper for West Germans to shop in East Germany than in West Germany, and such inexpensive purchases represented a form of legalized shoplifting that effectively reduced the East German standard of living by over 2/3. Although the removal of controls on smuggling and the legalization � fa ridiculous exchange rate would effectively make it possible for the ncher West Germans to steal from the poorer East Germans (Arnold, 1990), the new, economically naive East German leader, Hans Modrow, succumbed to West German pressure in late December 1989 and agreed to the new policies along with other capitalist demands in return for West German financial aid (Der Tagesspiege/, 1 989c). January 1, 1990 was set as the date on which the new 3: 1 exchange rate (Der Tagesspiegel, 1 989t) and open borders with no visa fee, no minimum official money exchange, and no security check for visitors to East Gennany (Hertle, 1 996) were to go into effect. Prior to that, an unbiased midDecember survey of East Germans had indicated that over 70% were in favor of both socialism and the maintenance of a separate East Gennan state (Bahrmann and Links, 1 994). There was one final enormous party on New Year's at the Brandenburg Gate with about a half million people enjoying the festivities and fireworks there (Bauer, 1 990). After that celebration, the new economic reforms proceeded to destroy the East German morale, economy, and society. Already in early January 1 990, the number of East Gennans emigrating to West Germany had doubled from a somewhat manageable one thousand per day (Murphy, 1 990b) to over 2000 per day ( dpa, l 990a). By February 1 990, most East Germans were in favor of unification as a means to avoid a further deterioration of their economy, although the majority still preferred a more left-wing government (Der Tagesspiegel, 1 990g). However, by promising a 1: 1 exchange rate if their East German representatives won an election scheduled for March 1 8, 1 990, the conservative West German coalition parties were able to win the votes of a narrow majority of East German voters and impose their system on the East Germans (Der Tagesspiegel, l 990o ). It should be emphasized that the political collapse of East Germany was not inevitable. A more repressive government would have never allowed the demonstrations nor undertaken reforms of the system. In addition, a benevolent but more prudent government would have never have succumbed to Western pressure to open up their economy to a ridiculous and destructive exchange rate. Moreover, before adopting any Western-style elections (that enable the rich to buy the polling result), a wise East German leadership would have waited until reparationsinduced wealth disparities had been eliminated (as could have been achieved within 2 years using the economic plan described in Chapter 5).

The Effect of the East German Revolution

The demonstrations and reforms in East Germany that occurred in the fall of 1 989 spread quickly to the other communist countries of Eastern Europe. As the people in these countries saw that demonstrations could be successfully undertaken even against the most hard-line communist government (i.e., the one in East Germany), they followed suit (Weiss, 1990). Except in Romania, the governments of the remaining Eastern European countries gave in to the demands of the demonstrators without firing a shot (Ratesh, 1 991). By the end of 1 989, future Westernstyle elections had been declared in all of the previous communist countries of Eastern Europe in alliance with the Soviet Union, including East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania (Weiss, 1 990). Shortly thereafter in early 1 990, constitutional reforms were also initiated in the Soviet Union (without the consent of the people) that permitted Western-style elections (Service, 1 998). Such reforms opened up their countries to Western media manipulation (lAC, 1998a) and led to the break-up of the Soviet system the following year (Service, 1998), despite the fact that the Soviet people had voted earlier in 1991 to preserve the Soviet Union (Becker, 1 999a). East Gennany had been the hardest and most crucial piece of armor in the Soviet Union's bloc of nations (Goertemaker, 1 994). East Germany had the second largest army, the highest standard of living, and the strongest economy in the Soviet bloc (Krenz, 1 990). And East Germany was at the forefront in high technology goods like electronics and computer chips (Mittag, 1 991 ). The Soviet bloc desperately needed such products in order to survive in the Cold War against the capitalist nations which had restricted the export of high technology goods to the Soviet bloc (Parrott, 1 985). Without East Germany, Eastern European l�ers surrendered to Western pressure and allowed the Soviet bloc to stmply collapse (Frankfurter Rundschau, 1 999). The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in many former republics being transfonned into outright capitalist dictatorships (Whalen, 2000). Even Eastern European countries such as Russia that have attempted to c�� te a fa�ade of political freedom have turned the words "democracy mt . o a farce by banning opposition parliament, political parties, an� medta (Ignatius and Rosett, 1 993), by allowing organized crime to setze ec · b · · onomtc and political power (Raith 1 994), and y engagmg m outright h . ' . 1 pure ases of people's votes m elections (Hearst Newspapers, 996) . 1 2

In addition, the transformation of Eastern Europe into capitalist countries did not bring the desi red economic prosperity. Instead, the pressure that the capitalist West put on the Eastern European countries to destroy all vestiges of Communism merely brought unemployment, inflation, poverty, financial uncertainty, crime, and chaos (Cox News, 1995). And Egon Krenz, the East German leader who had acted so quickly upon the demands oft he peaceful demonstrators to open up the Wall and initiate political reforms in East Germany, was convicted and imprisoned in the united Germany for deaths at the Wall (Associated Press, 1 999d). That conviction occurred despite the fact that Krenz (as an East German government minister merely carrying out the orders of the East German leader Erich Honecker at the time) was far less responsible than the West German government itself for the Wall and the tragedies there (Murphy, 1 990b ). The economic destruction resulting from unification was to create social and economic divisions between East and West Germany that would take decades to mend (Dumas and Dumas, 1 996). Although the differences between the two Germanies were not that great at the end of December 1989, the policy of unifying the countries by destroying East Germany greatly magnified those differences (Frankfurter Rundschau, 1 999) and also contributed significantly to various economic crises of the 1 990s, as will be explained later in Chapter 6. Before engaging in a thorough analysis of the aggregate new world order in the post-cold-war era in Chapters 6 and 7, however, the German case is studied in greater detail in the next two chapters to provide more concrete perspective on communism. In particular, a comparative analysis of the East and West German financial systems prior to the 1989 revolution is conducted in the next chapter. This analysis demonstrates not only the similarities of the two systems and their potential compat· ibility (implying that the destruction of the. East German system was unnecessary) but also shows that the East German financial syst�m �as actually superior and more efficient in many respects. One implication of these findings is that it was the capitalist West German system that should have been changed, not communist East German society. At the very least, the advantages of the East German system should have been preserved, as Chapter 5 shows was indeed possible.

A Comparative Analysis of East and West German Financial Systems in Light of the New Evidence

The political reforms in the communist world led to a popular demand for the importation ofthe economic and financial system ofthe capitalist West. This political demand for capitalism was stimulated by academic propaganda on the theoretical efficiency of capitalism (e.g., Taga, 1984; and Goldfeld and Quandt, 1 988). Unfortunately, such simplistic theories ignore many practical financial issues, and the result of the economic reforms in Eastern Europe since 1989 has been depression instead of the promised prosperity. For example, the IMF ( 1 996) reports that Gross Domestic Product fell by over 40% in Eastern Europe over the interval l990-95. A realistic appraisal of differences between capitalist and communist business financial systems is useful in order to mitigate future economic catastrophes.

Historical Evolution of the Divided German Financial Systems

As a divided country, East and West Germany prior to unification proVIde an interesting example for a comparison of East and West business finan · 1 • li Cia decision-making systems. Although Germany was a cap1ta st country prior to its capitulation in World War II, the eastern portion of the country was put under Soviet occupation after the war, and this sector developed into communist East Germany.

Despite specifying four separate zones of occupation for USA, French, British, and Soviet occupation forces after the war (and four separate zones of Berlin which was isolated within the eastern zone), the original plan of the victorious allied countries (stipulated at Yalta in early 1945) was for a united Germany to be created out of the defeated Nazi country and for that united nation to pay reparations to the USSR for war damages (Harmssen, 1 951 ). The exact amount of the reparations was set according to an agreement between the Soviet Union and the Western occupying countries at Potsdam in July 1 945 (with $ 1 0 billion contracted to be paid to the USSR as partial compensation for the enormous destruction that Nazi Germany had inflicted on it during World War II), but the USA violated this agreement in May 1946 when it began to prohibit the Soviet Union from taking any reparations from the western sectors of the occupied country (Apel, 1966). As a result, the Soviet Union had to extract the entire amount from its tiny eastern sector of Germany, and the resulting reparations payments from that area averaged about 25% of its national income each year between 1 946 and 1953 (Stolper, 1 960). Other expropriations of wealth by the Soviet Union (to cover other war-related costs) made the total amount taken from East Germany sum to over 1 00 billion Marks (Merkel and Wahl, 1991 ), which represented many times tiny East Germany's annual output at the time. For instance, most of the capital stock in eastern Germany had been seized by the Soviet Union by the end of I 946 (Harmssen, 1951 ), including about 40% being carted off to the USSR (Apel, 1966) and a further 20% being kept in eastern Germany but under Soviet ownership (Ritschl, 1 996). By 1 948, reparations-induced money printing and inflation in the Soviet sector caused the USA and its allies (Britain and France) to form a separate West German currency for its western zone of Germany and Berlin (Schwarzer, 1 999). The Soviet Union reacted with a blockade of western Berlin which was isolated from the rest of western Gennany (Apel, 1 966). After the USA airlift had succeeded in "saving" western Berlin from having to pay its share of the reparations, the USA bad a German government formed for the western sector of the country (also including the isolated West Berlin) in 1 949. This West German go . v· ernment's constitution mandated the annexation of the eastern Sovtet sector whenever possible (Ritschl, 1 996). In reaction, the Soviet Union allowed a separate communist country to form in East Germany later in 1949 ( Autorenkollektiv, 1 966). Meanwhile, the wealth of German war criminals and former Nazis had been expropriated by the government in East Germany over the period 1945-46 (Adler, 1 980). As a result, much of the private capital there not seized by the Soviet Union had been put under local East German government ownership, including a large amount of industry as a result of a June 1 946 referendum in which 72% of the people in the industrial Saxony portion of East Germany voted for nationalization (Ritschl, 1996). Later in 1 946, local elections in all of East Germany resulted in slightly over 50% of the people there voting for the Socialist Unity Party, which represented a merger of the Social Democratic and the Communist Parties (Andrew and Gordievsky, 1 990). Also in the meantime, large private landholdings had been nationalized (and redistributed to smaller farmers) during this immediate post-war period (Burant, 1987), although agriculture was not collectivized until the 1958-60 interval (Ritschl, 1 996). Most of the remaining major businesses in East Germany were nationalized by the state in subsequent years, with a large section of privately owned capital bought out by the government in 1 972 (the year after Erich Honecker assumed power), at which time state ownership of industry rose from 82% to 99% (Weber, 1 988). By the 1 980s virtually all land and businesses with more than 10 employees were owned by the state (with most conglomerated into huge state businesses called Kombinate in the 1 970s), which thereby directly controlled decisionmaking, and the state also regulated wages, prices, and many other business decisions in the rest of the economy (Behr, 1 985). The official policy with respect to the remaining private enterprises was that th�y were allowed only if they served the better community in�erest (Ftlmer, 1985b ). Other than having one state owner, which theoretically a�empted to act in the best interests of all the people in the country (tnstead of for the good of a rich minority of shareholders), the East German financial system was similar to that of West Germany in many respects (with the stock market in East Germany existing solely in the fo� of the government having the right to buy up any private c�mant s that grew to over 10 employees, with the "buyout" price bemg pecified to be a legal formula based on profits).

A Comparative Analysis of Financial Decision-Making

To facilitate the comparison of the financial systems, business finan· cial decision-making activities can be divided into several semi-separate functions, including making, funding, and managing investments. A comparison of how each of these functions was practically carried out in East and West Germany prior to unification is conducted separately in different subsections. This analysis is followed by an empirical eval· uation of the relative efficiency of the two systems. Financial decision-making in East and West German firms prior to unification was fairly similar in many respects. Differences in invest· ment, funding, and control functions existed largely because of the dif· ferences in the financial environment

Making Investments

In both East and West Germany, investment decisions were typically centralized for large organizations but decentralized for smaller invest· ments. In East Germany, the final decisions for large investment projects were made by a centralized State Plan Commission (Staatliche Plank· ommision). However, the management of the East German economy was divided among a number of different firms that included People's businesses called volkseigene Betriebe (VEB) and VEB conglomerates (Kombinate), and each ofthese firms had some degree of independence in investment decision-making. For example, decisions on smaller proj· ects, such as those under S million Marks in value and some financed within the individual firm from internally generated profits and cash flow, were made by the firm's management (DIW, 1989). Such a com· bination of centralized and decentralized investment decision-making was similar to that employed in firms in West Germany. In West Ger· many, lower-level management makes decisions on projects up to a specific maximum value, and top management makes the final decision on larger investments (Perridon and Steiner (1988: 27). In addition, the criteria used to make investment decisions were similar, with the payback period of the investment and/or the internal rate of return (IRR) being widely employed in both countries (Knauff, 1 983). The payback period (called the Rueckflussdauer der einmaligen Auf wendungen in East Germany) is computed as the time required for the expected cash inflows from the investments to pay for the initial outflow. For investments with perpetually constant cash flows, investments with payback periods less than the inverse of the required return on the funds tied up in the investment are considered worthwhile. The IRR (called the .Grundfondsrentabilitaet iri East Germany) is computed as the discount rate that sets the sum of the present value of the cash flows from the investment equal to the initial investment. Projects with IRRs greater than the required return are optimally accepted. However, other factors are also considered, such as type and quantity of inputs, type and quantity of outputs, and environmental factors (Knauff, 1983). For both the payback period and the IRR, the cash flows from the investments have to be forecasted. In East Germany, prices for goods and services were centrally controlled and determined, and so cash flows were more easily forecast. Thus, there was less chance of error of making an investment that should not have been made, as well as a lower probability of not making an investment that should have been made. In West Germany, where prices are determined by the market and fluctuate greatly, the probability of making an investment that does not subsequently earn the required return (or of not making an investment that would have earned a return over that required) is greater. In addition, the price uncertainty in West Germany requires more forecasting and analysis, and thus more time spent on making investment decisions. Investments in East Germany were also made with full knowledge � f other investment and future resource allocation plans, and so excess mvestment that might have resulted in redundant capacity or dual research and development programs were minimized. Gorbachev's experiments with a market economy in the Soviet Union in the late l980s also illustrated the fact that investment decisions tend to be suboptimal when made by the individual businesses without central government planning (Marcy, 1 990). Moreover, central financial planners were able to avoid the costs and �gency problems associated with bankruptcy risk that can cause capitalIst borrowers to make excessively risky, imprudent investments and to neglect more profitable, prudent investments (Myers, 1 977). An example of capitalist incentives to make imprudent investments is the case of a firm gambling its last funds on a project with extremely high risk and very low (or even negative) expected returns but the remote possibility of a very large return that would save the company from failure (Murphy, 1992c ). An example of a capitalist company being unable to make a prudent investment with a high expected return is the case of a company that has no funds left to initiate the investment and has such shaky credit that it can't even win the trust of potential customers much less suppliers or creditors (Frankfurter Allgemeine, 1998b). While the advantages of central planning supervision of funding and investment for financially troubled firms would be lost if failed firms were allowed to make investments that were economically unviable (Goldfeld and Quandt, 1988), heavy interest penalties and stringent administrative interference by the state in cases of insolvency did create incentives and opportunities to minimize wasteful activity, as Granick ( 1974), Melzer and Stahnke ( 1986), and Autorenkollektiv ( 1 988) document. Apart from being more efficient in mitigating agency costs, the communist system also avoids both the legal costs of bankruptcy and the negative domino effects of bankruptcy that lead to layoffs, further bankruptcies, and lower economic growth (Hudson, 1992). One problem often mentioned with investment in centrally planned economies is that decisions were based on centrally planned prices instead of"market-clearing" prices determined by consumer purchases. As a result, prices and cash flows did not "efficiently" reflect true "rational" values (Erdmann, 1983). However, it is not clear that prices are more efficiently and rationally determined by a large mass of uninformed West German consumers who must spend a considerable amount of time price-shopping and who can be manipulated at great cost by expensive advertisements and highly paid sales people motivated to sell any goods at a price as high as possible (as explained in Chapter 2). In East Germany, a small group of well-informed East German central planners, who had access to information on the East German supply and demand situation as well as on West German prices, established different prices for different levels of quality and service. Flexibility in pricing some goods was provided to many East German firms through the issuance of price range guidelines (instead of fixed prices). Adjustments in both fixed prices and price ranges were also permitted at the firm level in order to better balance supply and demand (Steudtner et al., 1 988). Although East German central planners maintained fairly static prices (or price ranges) for consumer goods that did not fully reflect the supply-demand situation, a complex system of subsidies and transfer pricing adjustments were made in East German businesses in order to adjust prices toward value for purposes of measuring costs, profits, and finn cash flows (Erdmann, 1 983). While the East German transfer pricing system required a significant amount of administrative time, greater effort for accounting, valuation, and transfer pricing is required in West Germany. In West Germany, there are many more firms and product brands, and there are at least three separate bookkeeping systems in each firm: one for financial reporting, one for internal purposes, and one for taxes (Matz, 1 975). Within the paperwork maze of the cumbersome West German bureau­ cracy, West Germans expend an extraordinary amount of time to merely try and figure out (as well as avoid) tax liabilities (Der Spiegel, 1992a), which were computed more automatically in East Germany.

Funding Investments

Funding for investments came from sources internal and external to the firm in both East and West Germany. In both countries, internally generated funds came from business profits after taxes and after dividends to the owner(s) of the business, where the business owner in East Gennany was the government (Steudtner et al., 1988). East German firms were automatically forced to pay 50% of net profits as dividends to their central government owner, and the government could also control the investment of the remaining profits as well (Melzer and Stahnke, 1986). The actual amount of funds retained in East German ��inesses was set as a function of both the profitability of the firm and •ts mvestment needs (Steudtner et al., 1988). On the other hand, in West � ennany, amounts retained in businesses could be arbitrarily set by nc� owners based on their idiosyncratic consumption and investment des�res, with this decision being made for consumers by professional managers in large West German corporations (Perridon and Steiner, 1988: 302-319). �or decisions on internal financing, one advantage of the East Ge�an :v� was �hat the central planners did not have the same � apa� 1ty to b . excess1ve amounts of internally generated funds retamed m the IISiness to finance suboptimal investments, which Jensen ( 1986) has cited to be a major problem for managers of Western corporations. This problem is present in all capitalist economies because managers are motivated to inefficiently hoard assets to protect their salaries and jobs. The problem is compounded in West Germany because West Gennan banks, as the major stock brokers who vote most shares owned by retail customers, and as equity investors (Whitney, 1 994), tend to control the voting shares of many large industrial firms to which they also make large loans. To protect their loans from default, German bankers have an incentive to force the corporations they control to hold on to far more assets than are optimal for maximum productivity. If more financing was needed, external funding was available in both East and West Germany. In East Germany, the external funding market consisted of a state bank (Staatsbank) that issued credit (Autorenkollektiv, 1 988) and a state planning commission (Staat/iche Plankommission) that provided equity capital (Melzer, 1 983). The interest rate charged on credit from the Staatsbank was 5% (for both private and public firms), although a subsidized rate of 1 .8% was offered for investments in technology (or other areas deemed to be vital to the economy), and the rate increased 2% (or more, up to a maximum of 1 2%) in any case of late payments (Autorenkollektiv, 1 988). The return on the equity capital investments of the Staatliche Plankommission was set as a minimum of 6% (which automatically had to be paid annually to the state owner as a sort of preferred stock dividend that was deducted before computing the state's effective common equity claim or net profit) and was allowed (via the setting of prices controlled by the state) to be as high as 1 8% for the most efficient firm in an industry (Melzer, 1 983). On the other hand, in West Germany, external funding comes from rich individual and institutional investors, to whom firms sold securities (debt and equity) that had to offer the expected returns arbitrarily demanded by those investors (Perridon and Steiner, 1 988). In both countries, the pricing of the securities was important for allocating funds at the appropriate cost to the businesses, so that they could make their investment decisions rationally using this cost of funds. Because external funding in East German firms came from a central planning body that had access to full inside information, the cost of funds could be more precisely priced, and funds could be allocated to the most efficient users of the funds. On the other hand, in the capitalist West Gennan securities market, prices differ from value by a random error tenn that may be known only to insiders (Myers and Majluf, 1984). The size of this error term and the corresponding difference in rational funds allocation to the most efficient users can easily be quite large (Summers, 1 986). Causes of discrepancies include excessive securities price speculation through technical analysis (Beja and Goldman, 1980), price manipulation that "Wall Street insiders readily concede ... is rampant" (Stem and Fritz, 1987), mafia fraud and extortion in the securities industry (Smith and Schroeder, 2000), large security order imbalances (Blume, Mackinlay, and Terker, 1 989), inadequate fundamental valuation analysis due to investor incompetence, neglect, and/or emotional swings (Oppenheimer, 1 984), investor overconfidence and regret (Barber and Odean, 1999), biased reporting on companies because outside (and allegedly "independent") security analysts are under constant threat of companies withholding useful information (and even launching libel lawsuits) if negative statements about companies are made (MacDonald, 1 999b ), a short-sighted perspective on the part of investors (Zarowin, 1 989), and general institutional psychological factors that cause market prices to deviate from intrinsic value (Haugen, I �9). According to Summers ( 1 986), corrective arbitrage of such situations might prove unsuccessful even in a well-developed securities �et. As a result of such mispricings, funds are allocated irrationally 10 capitalist economies, instead of to the most efficient users. To the situation of reduced rationality of funds allocation in the West G�an securities market is added the problem of increased resources bemg applied to security analysis (and funds allocation) than were necessary in the centrally planned communist capital market. A centrally planned economy permitted decisions on fund allocation in East Germany t� be made by a small, well-informed group of analysts, who were theorettcally well-trained in socially useful financial analysis (Auto­ �nkollektiv, 1 988). That compares favorably to the situation in West ennany, where funds are channeled to businesses by a large, less � el . l-�nformed group theoretically composed of price speculators and �diVIduals who happen to have large amounts of wealth (through inher­ ��ce, crime, sales ability acting ability etc ) Even when ''profesSional" • ' · · . . . th . managers are chosen to invest money in capttahst countries, e evidence does not indicate more intelligent investment decisions, as money managers are generally selected based on sales ability and personal contacts (O'Barr and Conley, 1 992). Such a situation implies even less rational and less efficient investment in West Germany. In addition, in Western capital markets, the costs of trading and analyzing the value of a security often result in investors requiring a premium return over that normally required (Halle and Stoll, 1 989). This liquidity premium is larger for smaller firms because of the inability to spread fixed costs of trading and analysis over a large trading volume (Dubosfsky and Groth, 1 986). The existence of liquidity premiums in Western capital markets implies a higher cost of capital, especially for smaller firms (Stoll and Whaley, 1983 ).1 In an effort to reduce these liquidity premiums, an extensive financial infrastructure can be built up, but the fees and commissions from the banking, brokerage, and insurance components of that infrastructure alone exceed 5% of GOP in some countries (Stopa, 1 999), and these deadweight costs don't even include other major costs of liquidity trading (like differences between buying and selling prices), nor do they include all the costs of shopping around for the best deal and analyzing investments (Murphy, 2000). Moreover, because of the existence of central planning in East Germany, greater stability in consumption there might have been expected than in West Germany. As a result, a lower return premium could be required for systematic risk as measured by a consumption beta (Ahn, I 989), thereby magnifying the discrepancies between the costs of capital in the two countries. It should also be mentioned that required risk premiums on securities fluctuate wildly in Western capital markets (Chan, Chen, and Hsieh, 1 985). The result is uncertainty as to the cost and availability of funds, socially unproductive speculation on the future course of the risk premium, and more mispricing and wasted analytical resources (Murphy, 2000). In addition, a further risk premium may be. required in Westem capital markets for the variation in the risk premium (Chan, Chen, and Hsieh, 1985). The resulting higher cost of capital results in less investment projects being acceptable and therefore lower economic growth in capitalist countries (although the higher returns required mean faster income growth for the rich). There is also some evidence that rich capitalists and corporate bureau· crats are more difficult to persuade to fund innovative and productive long-term investments than governments (Der Spiegel, 1 998), as previously discussed in Chapter I. In particular, the desire to protect jobs, salary, and the status quo contributes to the fact that capitalist corporations "don't tend to be great foundations of independent thinking" in the USA (O'Barr and Conley, 1 992) or in Germany (Rhoads, 1999). Moreover, "innovative" capitalist heroes (such as Bill Gates) glorified by the Western press often create nothing on their own but instead copy the innovations of others and then monopolize the market through special deals arranged through rich relatives (and social contacts), buyouts, and predatory pricing made possible only because of their riches (Wilson, 1998a). Even true innovators and entrepreneurs are not really made �appy by enormous amounts of accumulated personal wealth but are m�t�d motivated more by the lure of "creating something," "having a MISSion," and "connecting with other people .. .in a team" (Wall Street Journal, 2000a). Further evidence on this issue is provided by the fact tha� despite technology embargoes and despite having less capital, the communist countries were fairly successful in staying fairly close � the technological level of the richest capitalist countries (Smith, 000), often strictly through local development because ofthe technol0&>: embargoes (Parrott, 1 985). An example of East German technologtcal . advances can even be found in their much maligned auto industry, Whtch developed a world class car (the Trabant) in the late 1 950s (Schroeder, 1995), and which also designed a new car model that was Years ahead of West German development in the 1 970s although East ?ennany did not have the resources to justify further development for �ts small market (Bauer, 1 999). Adler ( 1 980) has cited evidence indicat- ( IDg that communist countries were able to motivate more innovation and parr · · . ICtpahon) among workers, and he logically drew the concluston that "th m . e type of production technology associated with the comtec �st l m�e of production is being engendered in the scientific and 0 ogtcal revolution."

Managing Investments

Once an investment decision is made and financed, the project must le :anag<:d· G� financial management requires monitoring of probron� rnakmg adJustments to the plan because of changes in the envitives �n� and undertaking proper measurement of, and setting incenor, gOOd performance.

It is often assumed that efficiency in monitoring and changing plans was lower in East Germany. In particular, because pricing was more static and centralized in East Germany, shortages were more frequent than in West Germany, where firms often have more flexibility to correct problems of being out of stock with marketing manipulation (McCarthy, 1975) and changes to the usual cost-based prices (Erdmann, 1983). Burant (1987) has also mentioned the problems in the East German system of fixed prices that did not readily adjust for technological and factor cost changes. Product black markets, hoarding, speculation, wastage, and production stoppages (caused by machinery breakdowns and a lack of spare parts) thrived in this environment. Subsidies and transfer pricing corrections were often too complicated and inflexible to completely remedy these problems (Melzer, 1 983). However, there is little evidence that the supply-demand imbalances in East Germany caused more inefficiency than the potentially more onerous problems in West Germany. As explained in Chapter 2, the more flexible West German pricing system created problems such as product price uncertainty, extra time spent planning for an unknown future, decisions made incorrectly due to lack of knowledge regarding future prices and the aggregate economic situation, time lost shopping around for the best price, inconvenience associated with the financial incentives to wait for the next "special" or coupon, and misleading marketing tactics that create annoying disinformation and discrepancies between price and rational value (Furlough and Strikwerda, 1 999). A particularly large amount of time is lost in capitalism while negotiating or bartering over the price that can range widely depending solely on relative negotiating skills. Although some laws restricting the size of discounts in West Germany reduce some of this inefficient use of time for consumers, such time expenditures are still required for the very frequent inter-business purchases in order to maximize the chance of negotiating the best possible price. In addition, the lack of perfectly competitive markets in capitalist countries results in prices being chronically too high to clear. As a result, waste and inefficiency such as unused industrial capacity, unemployment, apartment vacancies, and unpurchased and spoiled goods are historical norms (Marx and Engels, 1 988b ). The current existence in the USA of an extraordinary number of homeless not geographically dispersed from a large oversupply of housing is a typically perverse case of capitalism in practice (Johnson, 1 990). A similar example of the perversion caused by capitalism is the perceived need to reduce agricultural output (or even destroy food "surpluses"), so that agricultural prices (and profits) can be increased (with the help of a capitalist government), even when there are domestic citizens suffering from hunger and malnutrition (Hobhouse, 1 989). Berliner (1957) bas mentioned problems in socialist enterprises arising from managers having incentives and capacity to conduct unreported transactions and falsify records (MacDonald, 1 999a). However, similar problems exist in capitalist corporations and are likewise minimized in socialist enterprises with proper auditing and control through interfirm comparisons (e.g., Steudtner et al., 1 988). In addition, the organizational and human problems of bureaucracy, waste, and judgmental errors existing in socialist societies (Shmelov and Popov, 1989) are equally prevalent in capitalist firms (Schwartz, 1 990). Moreover, while corruption and bribery may occur in government operations of all �pes, most such bribery is initiated by rich capitalist businesses bribmg poor country officials (Tanzi, 1 998). In addition, such activity may actually be much more prevalent in capitalist systems, given that brib­ � between business representatives is rarely prosecuted, is not always Illegal, and is "just accepted" as a normal business activity even in welldeveloped (and allegedly less corrupt) economies like the USA (Gerlin, !995), and given that "flagrant" cases of extortion (including death threats for failure to do deals) also exist even among the largest and most P�tigious companies (Simpson, 2000). Corruption may be far more Widespread in West Germany where bribery (literally translated from the German word "Schmiergeld" as "lubrication money") is not only legal but also tax-deductible (Celarier, 1 995). The capitalist reforms of Gorbachev's Perestroika in the Soviet Union in the late 1 980s indicated �t the capitalist system of controls tends to be inferior� as indicated oi � e larger number of administrators required, the h1gher amount crune that results, and the compounding of problems compared to :;. the earlier, more centrally-controlled g�vernment system (Marcy, In add. · ( h . Ilion, in East and West Germany except for small companies (which had a potentially more serious pr�blem of overall management skills), there existed the agency problem of motivating non-owner managers and workers to achieve organizational goals such as improving efficiency (Jensen, 1986). In both East (Steudtner et al., 1988) and West (Perridon and Steiner, 1 988: 344-367) Germany, simi lar variables were used to measure, motivate, and reward good performance. For instance, actual revenue and profitability levels achieved were examined in both countries, and special emphasis was placed in East as well as West Germany on cost reductions (Kostensenkungen) and return on investment (Rentabilitaet). In addition, in both countries, the performance measures were compared to past performance, to competitors' performance, and to targeted results. Actual performance above expectation was often rewarded with bonuses and recognition, while sub-par performance could result in demotion. In East Germany, the ability to compensate managers for good performance was limited by ideological directives that restricted differences in pay (Hof, 1 983). In addition, job security rules inhibited laying off managers and workers for poor performance (Thuet, 1 985). However, similar limitations also existed in most companies in West Germany, where the labor force is heavily unionized (including a large portion of white-collar workers). Where incentive systems do exist in capitalist firms, they are usually of a monetary form that can be manipulated for personal gain to the detriment of business or society as a whole (Schwartz, 1 99 1 ). For instance, employees often have a greater incentive to play office politics than perform productive work in capitalist systems (Sherman, 1 993). In addition, commission salespeople often "push" overpriced, unnecessary, and poor quality products that frequently have no positive value to the consumer (e.g., Shapiro, 1994). One German high-tech industrialist bluntly summarized the capitalist world with the statement, "Life is selling" (Orth, 1 998). The often somewhat arbitrary nature of capitalist pay-incentive awards can cause wasteful frictions, rivalries, jealousies, frustration, and short-sighted behavior that is counter to both company and societal interests in the long term (Murphy, 1 989). Although the existence of stock incentive plans in West Germany can theoretically help to enhance the motivation to work toward a common goal of maximizing the company's stock price (Diamond and Verrechia, 1 982), it is not clear that maximization of stock price maximizes company value and efficiency. For instance, DeFusco, Johnson, and Zorn ( 1 990) have found evidence that stock option plans only provide an incentive to transfer wealth from bondholders to stockholders and do not result in any increases in firm efficiency. In addition, Larcker ( 1 983) has found empirical evidence that stock incentive plans are no more effective than other long-term incentive plans in increasing stock prices. Moreover, because stock prices are not determined by insiders with full information, stock prices often behave extremely irrationally (Krueger and Kennedy, 1 990), may fluctuate around short-term events and ignore long-term prospects (e.g., DeBondt and Thaler, 1985, and Jacobs and Levy, 1988), can deviate greatly from true value for significant periods of time without detection (Summers, 1 986), and can therefore provide distorted signals for performance purposes (Froot, Scharfstein, and Stein, 1992). Because such distortions in stock prices exist in Germany as well as in other countries like the USA (Schiereck, De Bondt, and Weber, 1999), compensation based on such prices can lead to distorted performance by employees. Even ifthe common goal of company valuation maximization could be attained, individual company maximization is often inconsistent with value maximization of a larger whole (Eiteman, Stonehill, and Moffett, 1 998) and is frequently at odds with the welfare of society (Marx and Engels, 1 988a ). For instance, even the capitalist philosopher Adam Smith stated that profit-maximizing business owners are often naturally engaged in a "conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices" (Strobel and Peterson, 1999). Regardless of whether employees are paid in stock or cash, it should �Is� be mentioned that promotions and the highest compensation in capItahst countries are often allocated to those who are best at playing office politics as opposed to those who are the most productive (Schwartz, �990). What club(s) a person belongs to can also factor in as being very :��nt in determining pay and employment status (Knight, 1983). � Pll ahsm, jobs themselves can take a great deal of time just to find (lf they can be found at all) and are typically allocated based on physical �uty, sales skill, self-promotion, and personal contacts instead of on �kill and productivity (Los Angeles Times, 1 996). 1t isn't what you know ut who you know that often counts most in capitalism (Sesit, 1 995). Although West German capitalism was somewhat more regulated than in other countries (like the USA), about 40% of all West Germans got their jobs through social connections such as via relatives (Wegener, 1 991 ), with the percentage being significantly higher for private company positions than for government jobs (Noll, 1 985), and with better positions being obtained by those who used their social connections to obtain their jobs (Noll, 1 984). Although about 40% of all East Germans also used social contacts to choose where they were going to work, there was no significantly higher prestige and pay for employment obtained through connections in East Germany (Voelker and Flap, 1 999). Since jobs (and regulated wages) commensurate with a person's skill and education were effectively guaranteed by the East German state (so that there were no additional job search costs associated with not having social contacts in the right places), the capitalist concept of "social capital" and artificial "contact networking" had far less material employment value in East Germany (as contacts in East Germany were used merely to allow people to work with others they already knew and liked, and not to ration off scarce jobs). Perhaps as a result of knowing that they were working for the good of society as a whole (as opposed to slaving to maximize the profits of the rich), social pressure and awards to work together for a common goal were stronger in East Germany (Hof, 1 983). As a result, an atmosphere existed that permitted greater cooperation among workers than in West Germany, with most East German workers welcoming innovation and new technology, and with 5 times as many East German workers finding their work increasingly interesting as those finding it less so over time (Adler, 1 980).

Empirical Comparison of Efficiency

The analysis of practical financial decision-making indicates that the East German system may have been superior for purposes of investment decision-making, funds allocation, and financial management efficiency. Some evidence on the overall comparative efficiency of the two systems can be obtained from national economic growth statistics reported in Das Statistische Jahrbuch der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik and in the IMF's International Financial Statistics. As explained by Stolper ( 1 960), "the differences in the concept of national income between East and West Germany are surprisingly small."

Comparative Aggregate Economic Performance

In 1989, Net National Income per capita in West Germany was 3 1 ,774 West German Marks, while Net National Income per capita. in East Germany was 1 6,7 12 East German Marks. Although the East German Mark was inconvertible, research indicates that it had a purchasing power equal to between 75% (for the reasonably affluent) and 1 50% (for the less affluent) of the West German Mark for average consumers in the early 1980s (DIW, 1 984). The average higher purchasing power of the East German Mark was confirmed when average prices rose by about 13.8%-8.6%=5.2% more in eastern Germany between 1 989 and 1 991 when the East German Mark was replaced with the West German Mark (and prices in eastern Germany moved close to the market levels in western Germany), as documented by various West German professional research estimates (Osmond, 1 992). Given the subsequent phasing out of rent controls, and given other factors that caused consumer prices in eastern Germany to rise another 1 6% more than in West Germany between 1 991 and 1 996 (Statisticshes Bundesamt, 1 997), it can be assumed that the average purchasing power of the East German Mark was equal to at least 1.15 West German Marks in 1 989.2 Deflating the 1 989 West German incomes by the average 1 5% higher prices that existed in West German Marks, East German income per capita appeared to be about 40% lower than in West Germany in 1989.1 However, since the East German National Income figures do not include some ''unproductive" services that are incorporated into the West German figures, as noted by Stolper ( 1 960), a more comparable National Income for East Germany might be over 1 0% higher than reponed (Collier, 1 985), making East German income per capita about 213 that of West Germany. On the other hand, given that a larger number of East Germans were in the work force because a larger percentage of the females (over 60% of the female population) was employed (Schwarzer, 1 999) and given that unemployment did not exist in East Germany, the disparity in income per employed worker was p� obably gJ'eater at about 50%. A similar conclusion was reached by a maJor economic research institute in West Germany (Handelsblatt, 1 990). G Neve�e1ess, the cause of the disparity between East and West erman mcomes was a function of the post-war treatment of the two Germ · antes and · · th can not be traced to different levels of effictency m e two systems. As previously mentioned, East Germany had to pay over 100 billion Marks to the Soviet Union after the war (Merkel and Wahl, 1 991 ), while West Germany was receiving substantial foreign aid (Mar· shall Plan) from the USA that largely offset its minor payments for Nazi Germany's war crimes (Apel, 1 966). Studies have indicated that repa· rations (such as those paid by France after that country's defeat in an 1 871 war that helped finance Germany's industrialization) do lead to a permanent decline in the relative level of economic prosperity of the paying country, as well as typically inhibiting economic growth rates because of lower levels of investment and depressed morale (Gavin, 1 992). With income levels in West Germany already substantially higher than in East Germany, approximately 1 5% of the population of East Germany, or about 3 million people, chose to move from East to West Germany in the 1 950s, while only about a half million Germans moved from West Germany to East Germany (Apel, 1 966). The emigrants provided further wealth gains in the West and losses in the East (Behr, 1 985), with the cost to East German society as a whole of the net emi· grations (in terms of lost taxes and investment, i.e., the output that the emigrants otherwise would have created for East German society as a whole net of the emigrants' own expected consumption) being esti· mated at another 36 billion Marks (Apel, 1 966). This figure combined with the reparations losses of I 00 billion Marks represented an enor· mous value in the 1 950s and would have grown to an even larger sum today if invested at normal rates of return. In particular, given an average real growth in Net National Product of 4.5% on an average aggregate investment equal to 27% of Net National Product between 1 96 1 and 1 988,4 East Germany was able to earn a rate of return on its investments equal to 1 7%, which is similar to the East German return on investment estimated over different time periods by Mueller, Murphy, and Sabov (1993), Naumann and Truempler (1990), and Mueller ( 1 978). Assuming that East Germany had been able to invest the 1 36 billion Marks at that normal 1 7% rate of return starting as late as 1 961, it would have grown to a value of 1 36( 1.17)28= 1 1 ,034 billion Marks by 1 989, or over 11 trillion Marks (over $6 trillion). Assuming just the 1 7% interest rate on this money was finally paid to its people in 1 989, Net National Income per capita in East Gennany would have been higher by 1 1 .034x. l 7/.0000 1 6=11 7,236 Marks annually thereafter. As a result, East German incomes would have then been over four times the level of West German incomes per capita in 1 989, if there had been nominal compensation in 1 961 for all the different costs associated with post-war reparation payments (i.e., if West Germany had paid East Germany for the share of the reparations payments that it was really morally obligated to pay). If compensation had only been made for the nominal reparations payments (and not for the emigrationrelated losses), East German income per capita would have still grown to over 3 times that of West Germany by 1 989. Another way to evaluate the effect of reparations is to assume that the average annual 1 00 billion/9= 1 1 billion Marks ofEast German National Income paid in reparations between 1 945 and 1 953 (see Chapter 2) was invested each year at a rea/ 1 7% interest rate (which is well below what it probably could have earned given the severe shortage of capital in East Germany at that time caused by the reparations), and then assume a 1 7% rate of return on this extra wealth accumulated by 1 953 was earned and paid out to East German citizens as higher wages that � ould be consumed and saved in normal proportions thereafter (so that It would also grow after 1 953 at the same rate as the rest of East German National Income). The result would have been East German National Income per capita in 1 953 that would have been about 2.5 times as high as . otherwise and would have thereby resulted in East German wages bemg similar to (and perhaps slightly in excess of) those in West Germany at the time. That fact would have likely resulted in far less East Ge�s emigrating to West Germany, thus enabling East Germany to avo•� � substantial portion (if not all) of the emigration-related loss of �6 h•lhon Marks. Because real economic growth was historically faster � East Germany than in West Germany in the 1 950s even with those �se�, East German income per capita would have no doubt been higher . n 10 West Germany in 1961, especially since West Germany's own 10� . me per capita would have been lower as a result of it not having the nu lions of valuable East German emigrants they were able to exploit. �ven faster economic growth in communist East Germany thereafter em ��se of !he greater efficiency of the system, as will be documented to Pl r l cally m this section for the post- 1 961 situation that was not disrted by reparations and emigration losses), East German income per capita would have far exceeded that in West Germany by 1 989 (almost double). In that situation of fairness in reparations payments, West Ger· many might have been motivated to build a wall to keep its own work· ers from emigrating to the higher incomes of East Germany (especially given the higher quality of life in East Germany with respect to nonfi· nancial factors, as documented in Chapter 2). However, East Germany was never compensated for its huge repara· tions-related losses, and so it constructed the Berlin Wall in 1961 to stem its already considerable economic losses. As a result, the resettle· ments stopped after 1 961, and the different economic systems in the two Germanies were allowed to function semi-isolated from each other. In this separated environment between 1 961 and 1 989, real East German Net National Product per capita increased by an average 4.5% whereas real West German Net National Product per capita increased by only 2.7% per year. For this comparison, the National Income accounts reported in constant prices were used,5 so that the nominal growth fig· ures were effectively deflated by inflation (averaging 0.5% and 4.0% for East and West Germany, respectively).6 Backcasting the 1 989 esti· mated value of the East German Mark (at 1.1 5 West German Marks in 1 989) by the relative aggregate economic inflation rates reported for the two countries (the 0.5% and 4.0%, respectively) indicates that the East German Mark had aggregate purchasing power equal to 0.44 West German Marks in 1 961.7 These results imply per capita East German income was about 2/5 that of West Germany in 1 961 compared to almost 2/3 in 1 989. The latter two ratios are identical to those reported by the Western researchers Merkel and Wahl ( 1 991) and Gregory and Stuart ( 1 995), respectively, for the two different time periods. 8 Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) tests revealed that the higher eco· nomic growth rates for East Germany between 1961 and 1 989 were sta· tistically significant from those of West Germany at the .00 I level (with a t-statistic of 4.4). In addition, as previously hypothesized, income and consumption per capita in the planned East German economy had lower annual standard deviations (of 1.1% versus 2. 1% for income, and 2.1% versus 2.6% for consumption), with Chi-squared statistics of 53.5 and 43.9, respectively, indicating the difference to be statistically significant at the .005 and .05 levels. Moreover, even in the I 0 years before its collapse, East German economic growth was faster than in West Germany, at 4.0% versus 2.0%, respectively. A listing of economic growth rates in East Germany in its final decade is provided in the following Table 4 along with the comparative numbers for West Germany:

[table]

These aggregated results occurred despite higher social spending and lower investment spending in East Germany than existed in Western capitalist countries (Schwarzer, 1 999), despite the advantages that West Gennany had in superior access to the capital, trade, and technology of the richer Western countries, and despite the substantially higher military expenditures that East Germany felt obliged to make (6-8% ofNational Income versus only 3% in West Germany) to defend itself (Merkel and Wahl, 1 99 1 ).9 Thus, aggregated statistical evidence indicates that the East German system was more efficient in spurring economic growtb. 1o

Causes of Collapse in the East

Like the Berlin Wall, the cause of the collapse of East Germany can be traced to the income disparities in the two countries (Dieckmann, 1 991 ) . As explained in the previous subsection, the income disparities resulted :om . the contrasting postwar treatment by the occupying victors (i.e., esp•te �aster economic growth, East Germany never caught up). Even &realer mcome disparities existed for skilled positions, and heavy ceono · · · . ffilc mcenhves were provided by the much larger and wealthter West � ermany to East Germans for migrating to the West (like above-average IDcome, . preferential housing, and enormous guaranteed loans). This th econom•c situation not only induced massive migrations to the West and ereby sabota b) b · 1 ged the East German economy (Murphy, 1 990 , ut tt a � en � bled West Germany to market capitalism as the religion of pros­ �ty, Just as it continues to do (Christ, 1 991). With the use of heavy est German propaganda that portrayed the communist system as inferior, enough East Germans were convinced to vote in March 1 990 for an end to their system. The ruling conservative parties in West Germany also used a combination of promises and threats to ensure electoral success. For instance, 10% annual real economic growth in the first two years after unification was forecast if the conservatives won (Berliner Allgemeine, 1 990b ). In addition, because the permission of the conservative ruling parties in the West German parliament was needed for any unification agre·ement or aid (Wall Street Journal, 1 990), they had a great deal of leverage to offer rewards (like a I: 1 exchange rate) for a vote favorable to capitalism and "free trade" (Nelson and Du Bois, 1 990). 11 A final factor influencing the March 1 990 election results was a very destructive West German currency strategy. In return for limited economic aid, the West German government persuaded the East German government to change the official exchange rate from 1: 1 to 3 East German Marks for 1 West German Mark in January 1 990 and to eliminate strict import and export controls. This action effectively reduced East German wealth and income by 2/3 (Murphy, 1 992a) and totally demoralized the East German population, as Cote ( 1 990) illustrates. Then, in the week before the March election, the ruling West German party promised a return to the 1: 1 exchange rate, if it was elected (Fisher, 1 992). 12 Many left-wing East Germans indicated that they voted for the right-wing political parties merely so that the money would come (Der Taggesspiegel, 1990d). The importance of expensive marketing in defeating communism should not be underestimated. Through effective advertising, distribution, sales manipulation, and economic clout (Von Dohnanyi, 1 991 ), and through gross exaggeration of any quality problems for communist products (Zeitmagazin, 1 992), a superior "Western" image was created (Fox, 1 991). As a result, despite the fact that East German products were frequently demonstrated to be superior in unbiased scientific analysis (like taste tests without brand names), more expensive West German products were preferred (Labs, 1 991 ). Also contributing to the rapid increase in West Germany's market share of the East German market shortly after it was opened up in 1 990 was the normal practice of capitalist penetration pricing (McCarthy, 1 975), whereby West German exports to East Germany were priced low enough to bankrupt their East German competition (Der Spiegel, 1 993a). Once the East German finns (which, in addition to suffering image problems, also had inadequate liquidity, experience, and preparation for the capitalist competition) were bankrupted, prices were raised to West German levels (in order to maximize West German corporate revenues and profits). Some evidence of this phenomenon can be found in the fact that prices rose less rapidly in eastern Germany than in western Germany in 1 990, whereas inflation in eastern Germany was over 1 3% in 1991 compared to just 4% in western Germany after the widespread bankruptcy of East German firms, which was reflected in the 40% decline in economic output in eastern Germany in 1 990 and 1 991 (Statistisches Bundesamt, 1992).

Evidence on the Economic Inefficiency of Capitalism In the East

Despite their current popularity, past capitalist reforms in poorer countries have never produced any evidence of a material increase in efficiency (Seib and Murray, 1 991 ), neither for Eastern Europe (Gey and Quaisser, 1 989) nor for other areas of the world like Latin America {Prebisch, 1 982). The indications from the most recent capitalist reforms in Eastern Europe have demonstrated even more negative indications. In particular, as previously documented, GOP fell by over 40% over the interval 1 990-95 in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and the USSR. In �tern Germany, the capitalist reforms also led to a catastrophe desptte hundreds of billion of Marks in aid from western Germany. F . . or mstance, output was estimated to have fal len by about 1 0% m �tern Germany in 1 990 (Kempe, 1 99la) and substantially more in � 1 (Aeppel and Roth, 1 991 ), although transfer payments (like unemp oyment checks) from the western German government amounting to !001o of the output of eastern Germany (Kempe, 1 991 b) increased their mcome substantially above the level under communism (and thereby kept �em content enough not to rebel). Production fell by more than 60% 10 the 1 990-91 interval (Kempe 1 99 1 b) GNP fell by over 40% ov th ' ' :a . r at short time period (Osmond, 1 992), and unemployment m tern Germany reached 40% if the mass of part-time workers were :ted as unemployed. In addition, despite sizable unemployment c ks and higher wages for those able to find work, early surveys indicated only a third of the population in eastern Germany felt better off economically than before (Junge Welt, 1 99 1 ). 13 Even after western Germany had poured over $100 billion annually into eastern Germany from 1 990-96 (equal to about half East Germany's pre- 1 989 Gross National Product), the economy of eastern Germany remains a disaster zone that requires similar continued high welfare payments from the west just to maintain a minimum standard of living (Rohwedder, 1 996). Despite the ending of the large special subsidies paid to eastern Germans for fleeing to western Germany and despite the heavy economic aid now being given to eastern Germany, the number of Germans fleeing from the eastern part to the western part continued to run over 10,000 per month into the early 1 990s (which matches pre-1960 levels), and this figure did not include the nearly one million eastern Gennans who commuted to jobs in western Germany daily in the early 1990s (Wochenpost, 1 992b). However, noneconomic factors as well as the dismal economic conditions contributed to the dissatisfaction and desire to leave the eastern part of Germany. For instance, Garrettson (1991) compared the situation in eastern Germany in the early 1990s to the southern United States after the American Civil War: the area was flooded with opportunistic West German "carpetbaggers" (like consultant and financial swindlers) seeking "shameless exploitation" of the eastern Germans, who had limited knowledge of the New Order and who were persecuted for any part they may have played in the old system.14

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