Demographics of East Germany

[Marko]

After reading an article on the Berlin Wall I had an idea so I am looking for some answers.

By the time of the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 a fifth of its population had emirgrated. How likely is that the Soviets allow the emigration to continue and merely replace population loss my bringing in people from elsewhere beyond the Iron Curtain, especially Poland. Would it be possible to have East Germany in 1990 with Polish plurality and not wishing to join with West Germany but rather end in negotiations with Poland around 2000 for uniting with them?

Cheers

 

[Sunny]

After reading an article on the Berlin Wall I had an idea so I am looking for some answers.

By the time of the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 a fifth of its population had emirgrated. How likely is that the Soviets allow the emigration to continue and merely replace population loss my bringing in people from elsewhere beyond the Iron Curtain, especially Poland. Would it be possible to have East Germany in 1990 with Polish plurality and not wishing to join with West Germany but rather end in negotiations with Poland around 2000 for uniting with them?

Cheers

To get such an outcome (an East Germany with a plurality of Poles rather than ethnic Germans), you'd need a POD where the Soviets had outright control of the DDR's internal affairs and immigration policy. IOTL, the DDR and other East European countries were certainly clients and satellites, but they all had considerable control of their internal affairs (the USSR only intervened if they seemed to be ditching socialism, as per the "Breznev Doctrine"). So I can't see any autonomous East German government willingly importing millions of Poles so that they would become a plurality.

 

[B_Munro]

To get such an outcome (an East Germany with a plurality of Poles rather than ethnic Germans), you'd need a POD where the Soviets had outright control of the DDR's internal affairs and immigration policy. IOTL, the DDR and other East European countries were certainly clients and satellites, but they all had considerable control of their internal affairs (the USSR only intervened if they seemed to be ditching socialism, as per the "Breznev Doctrine"). So I can't see any autonomous East German government willingly importing millions of Poles so that they would become a plurality.

Well, under Stalin, they were rather more outright colonies (you did what Stalin said, no back-talk), but the control level dropped sharply later: I can see a more we-don't-give-a-shit-what-the-west-thinks kinda leadership post-Stalin running Eastern Europe on the line of "exterior territories", but this scenario is just illogical. If the Germans can flee, won't the new Polish immigrants do exactly the same?

Bruce

 

[Deleted member 1487]

OTL there was significant numbers of Vietnamese resettled in East Berlin during the Vietnam war.
Honestly no though. It would just mean the best and brightest keep fleeing the country, even the new populations, which is what the wall was built to stop.

 

[Marko]

Ok.

Question number two: If emigration from East Germany is not prevented what would be an absolute low that the population could sink to? I doubt 0 but could it fall to as few as 3-4 million making East Germany the least populated European country outside Soviet Union?

 

[Deleted member 1487]

Ok.

Question number two: If emigration from East Germany is not prevented what would be an absolute low that the population could sink to? I doubt 0 but could it fall to as few as 3-4 million making East Germany the least populated European country outside Soviet Union?

Easily. No one outside the elite really wanted to be there.

 

[Jape]

Easily. No one outside the elite really wanted to be there.

Agreed, plus East Germany is a special case because residual national attachment isn't an issue. Yugoslavians, Hungarians, Poles etc. fleeing communism have the add cultural barriers and displacement (simplifying it I know) of heading West to put many off. East Germans and East Berliners in particular are moving a few miles down the road in (culturally) the same country.

By the 1970s, the DDR had dropped any pretense of a future united Germany and pushed a half-hearted patriotism blended with socialist exceptionalism exactly for these reasons.

If my hometown became a totalitarian hell zone, I'd be less fussed about moving over the river across an open border than travelling across the Channel to France to start a new life.

 

[Monty Burns]

Easily. No one outside the elite really wanted to be there.

Exactly.

That's why I expect that the Poles or whatever other people are brought in will go into West Germany as well. Any new immigrant into GDR will have to learn German, and that's all that is needed to learn from radio, TV or coworkers about the golden west and to go there.

 

[freivolk]

To go a bit further with the scenario (i think its ASB, but still fun) WI Stalin resettle East-Germany not with Poles, but with people from Central Asia? I assume for people from Siberia East-Germany must look lieke the promised Land and the cultural difference may be big enough, that they doesn´t want deflect directly to West-Germany. And the West-Germany propably wouldn´t want them.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

Just came across Berlin 1961 by Fredrick Kempe, arguing that the DDR might have collapsed earlier due to this very problem, had the crisis he writes about gone differently...

 

[BlondieBC]

After reading an article on the Berlin Wall I had an idea so I am looking for some answers.

By the time of the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 a fifth of its population had emirgrated. How likely is that the Soviets allow the emigration to continue and merely replace population loss my bringing in people from elsewhere beyond the Iron Curtain, especially Poland. Would it be possible to have East Germany in 1990 with Polish plurality and not wishing to join with West Germany but rather end in negotiations with Poland around 2000 for uniting with them?

Cheers

Don't forget the vast losses of WW2. The majority of the missing Jews were in Belarus/Poland, huge numbers of Russians died, etc. So the Soviets would be moving people from one "depopulated" area to another. "Depopulated" is not that it was the ideal number of people, just when an area used to have 2 million, and 7 years later it has 1 million, people would think of it as depopulated. I would say the mass moving of people is unlikely, unless Russia had some mass refugee issue from a failed revolution say in Vietnam or Africa.