"Line of
Separation” -1st-2nd
Seasons directed by Alex Dierbach, 2015-2019 on PBS
This series
is based on the transformation of East and West Germany after the end of the 2nd
World War. It focuses on a small rural
town in Bavaria, a ‘little’ Berlin called Tannbach, split down the
middle by a small stream, then politically between East and West, then by an
actual wall. The first two seasons cover
the period between 1945 and 1968, ending with the Warsaw Pact intervention into
Czechoslovakia.
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| Crossing the Line |
The series
starts with the defeat of the Nazis, who linger on in Tannbach, a stronghold of
rural Bavarian fascists who resist U.S.
soldiers and kill a Countess who wanted to surrender even after the Nazi
collapse. Hidden Nazis slip away, many
of whom eventually end up in the Western sector, though a few hide in the
German Socialist Unity Party (SED) in the east. The Western ex-Nazis play a
hardline role as the most anti-Communist, sexist, cruel and right-wing. Even with evidence, they are not convicted of
war crimes as they have become useful to the West. The handsome war criminal and
former Nazi Count becomes an agent for West German intelligence. He later
becomes a target of East German intelligence himself.
Of most
interest to leftists and Marxists are the developments on the eastern side,
which is handed over to the Soviet Army after the departure of the Americans. They have less truck with Nazis.
The series
shows the initial idealism of the East German Social Democrats and Communists,
who want to transform the East into a place without rich people, large
landlords and exploiters. An experienced
Communist from Berlin
arrives to supervise the transition.
Given the rural nature of the town, farming plays the key role. The large estates are broken up and wealthy
landlords are deported – to where we do not know, but perhaps to the USSR. Their land is given in too-small allotments of
5 hectares to the landless. Cooperatives
are later formed, the main one centered on the former massive estate of the
local Count. A preacher in East Tannbach who is a former Communist continues to run
a cheery church, even though the official ideology is non-religion. As CP control tightens, small private businesses
like cafes or food stores are also turned into cooperatives. Later a fashion show is shut down by a new
hard-line local leadership. One loyal
Social-Democratic baker is expropriated too. Small private milk farmers that own under 80
or so hectares are allowed to function, but then some of them are expropriated
due to their closeness to the border.
One of these ends in a singular tragedy.
Some of
these clumsy didactic moves reduce productivity and food production, resulting
in food shortages. Petrol, tractors and
spare parts are in short supply from the industrial sector over different
periods as well. This reflects the whole industrial policy of the Warsaw Pact,
when production and trade cooperation between the new workers’ states was
vetoed by the bureaucrats in the USSR,
so they mostly had to rely on their own resources & cash or the USSR. As a
result, a shortage of consumer goods is also apparent. Residents resort to smuggling goods from the
West and aiding people leaving for the West. Though as one person explains,
without the Marshall Plan West Germany
might have been as poor as the East, so international capital is key. West Germany
begins to develop a commodity economy and East Germany suffers in
comparison. A left-wing Jewish smuggler going
to a Christening is shot going through the wire, the first in the sector, which
is blamed on the Western guards until the truth is known.
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| The Countess Confronts the Last Nazis |
As the
years go by, the initial leftist enthusiasm dims as more restrictive and
military steps are taken against the population, as well as the building of a
wall along the river in the middle of this little town. Before that families could travel back and
forth, but now some are split. Though one grandmother yearns for the quietness
and low-key life of the Eastern sector and returns from the West. The wall originates because of the realities
of sabotage and perhaps an overblown threat of an invasion by U.S./German
armies, which are caught stockpiling arms near the border. The leading agricultural
comrade is demoted and sent back to Berlin
because of his closeness to the population, and he’s replaced by a rigid former
Nazi. The leading Communist characters, Friedrich
and Anna, begin to have conflicts with the harder line and this is shown in
Friedrich’s opposition to foreclosing on a small farmer and Anna being forced
to sign a petition supporting the Czech intervention. Anna is demoted from being head of the farm
co-op for her changing views. Berlin ultimately gets
its own wall in 1961 as people vote with their feet and flee the East. This exodus is the equivalent of a union
being slowly decertified by its own members.
Erich Honecker
was the leader of the SED after 1971, and organizer of the Berlin Wall in
1961. East
Germany was the first to volunteer troops to invade Czechoslovakia
and stop Dubcek’s ‘socialism with a human face,’ so in the Warsaw Pact they
were the most hard-line. The two seasons
end with this intervention, which undermined the bureaucratic Communist claim
to be ‘for the people,’ especially among the eastern population. Support for ‘socialism’ dropped precipitously
in the Czech and Slovak populations after the military move into Prague.
The third
season starting in August 2020 will supposedly follow the story from 1968 until
1989 and the collapse of East
Germany.
It is clear the writers are trying to give a partially-balanced picture,
but they cannot really do that given their mostly capitalist sympathies. After 1989 and the absorption of East Germany
into Germany, the standard of living of the whole German working class
deteriorated, and that remains to this day. Only the upper 10% of the western population ultimately
gained. The collapse of East Germany
severely weakened the labor movement in both West and East Germany
and that story will not be told by this series.
Eastern Europe became a cheap labor and
raw materials sink for European capital, which was always the point.
What is
clear is that East Germany
was in a difficult position – a country split in half, like Vietnam and Korea. It was controlled by Soviet troops, then
Soviet political control, so it had limited autonomy. Economically the failure to fully integrate
the Eastern European countries hobbled them.
So did bureaucratic control by the USSR, which transported their
methods of top-down Party control and reliance on military actions into each
country. Soviet or workers’ democracy
was off the table. Investments went mostly
to security, with consumer goods somewhat ignored, which actually undermined
each deformed workers’ state in a more subtle way. Opposing blue jeans, rock music or other
trivial ‘westernisms’ was a pathetic culture war version of real class struggle. In spite of the initial enthusiasm by
Communist and Social-Democratic workers, farmers and businessmen, the East
German imitation of Stalinism was inadequate to win this battle in the class
war.
This series
is a good dramatic introduction to some of these issues, as the former workers’
states are consistently ignored in the U.S. as if they didn’t exist or when
depicted, shown as repressive cartoons.
Other prior
reviews on this subject, use blog search box upper left: “Russia and the Long Transition to Socialism,"(Amin) "All Power to the Councils!" "Ghost of Stalin," (Sartre) "US/EU Meddling," "The Contradictions of Real Socialism," "Secondhand Time," "Welcome to the Desert of Post-Socialism."
Or
reference movies and series: “Goodbye Lenin,” “Deutschland 83,” “Deutschland
86,” etc.
The Kulture
Kommissar
July 6,
2020
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