Different ways of expressing freedom of thought, expression and information

in the course of history  with reference to national facts

by OSZ TIEM, Berlin, Germany

 

 

In the year 1933 Adolf Hitler took the lead of Germany. He established a dictatorship, where the people were oppressed and couldn't state their own opinions. After six years the Second World War began. A lot of German people supported fascism, others were scared and a lot of people offered re-sistance, but it wasn't impossible to disempower Hitler and offering resistance was really dangerous, too. We want to concentrate on the resistance against Hitler's regime. One of the most famous resis-tance group was the ' White Rose (Weiße Rose) '. The head of the group was in Muenchen and there were connections all over Germany. They printed many flyers in which they called upon people to resist. But they were caught and killed by the Nazis. There were many attempts to kill Hitler directly. The most important attempted murder was made by Stauffenberg. He failed and was shot. All these things couldn't stop Hitler to continue the war and the Holocaust.

This time influenced the thinking of the Germans dramatically but not all people supported the Holocaust and the system.

 

 

 

Berlin Wall

 

 

 

 

 

The Berlin Wall is a symbol for limitation of freedom, the Cold War and for the divided Germany for 38 years. Around 200 people were killed while trying to leave the eastern part of Berlin.

After Germany split into West and East Germany in 1949, 2.6 million East Germans left to go to West Germany: In Berlin 1.6 million people escaped to the west. To stop this, on August 13 1961, the Communist government of East Germany built a wall separating East and West Berlin. But the Soviets and East German Government said it was to keep capitalism out. In the area of the GDR (German Demo-cratic Republic) the people were not free to say their opinion. A lot of people were shot by trying to cross the wall. People that were caught alive when they tried to flee over the wall had to go to prison for at least 5 years.

Most people in communist countries were unhappy. Because of Gorbatchov's new reforms many so-cialist countries opened their borders. That's why Erich Honecker, the leader of the GDR government, resigned. The new government opened the borders on 9^th November 1989 and thousands of inhabitants of East Berlin started to leave East Berlin. After the fall of the Berlin Wall the freedom of opinion is back again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Course Polotical Sciences, OG 91, April 2009

 

←