So who are you accusing of doing the wrong thing

I’m saying the FRG broke its own laws to annex the DDR. I haven’t said that this is inherently “the wrong thing”, I note it being illegal because liberals pretend to care about such things.

The government of the GDR or the FRG Government, because is it still illegal annexation if the country being annexed signs a legally binding contract that it will become part of germany without a plebiscite.

There is no provision for this in the FRG’s provisional constitution at the time. I linked to it and explained the two options already.

The first reunifucation document cites article 23, indicating that the GDR would enter as states (Laender) adhering to the FRG constitution, which was subject to article 29. The only other option for reunification provided for in the FRG constitution was a negotiated rewrite of the constitution, itself requiring a plebiscite, which they did not do. The “contract” does not mention article 29, but it is subject to the only two provisions in the FRG constitution for the reunification (accession if states via plebiscite and negotiated rewrite of the constitution, also requiring a plebiscite).

After the fact, liberals began coming up with explanations for why this blatantly illegal “contract” was actually fine, including things like the sourced document conflating general elections of parties with a plebiscite.

Can you please point out where in my source it states that it was the type of election you say it is because to me it seems to say they made public votes about the unification.

If you were interested you could read it yourself and look at the dates and what they are referring to with their proper nouns. Every election they listed was a general election of parties / candidates, not a plebiscite on reuniting.

“Bei der einzigen freien Volkskammerwahl am 18. März 1990 erzielte die Allianz für Deutschland, das Wahlbündnis für eine möglichst schnelle Vereinigung, 48 Prozent der Stimmen”

Do you know what Allianz fuer Deutschland was? It was a coalition of parties. When they refer to them getting 48% of votea, they are referring to their party coalition getting those votes. Liberals go on and on about this election, they even xall it the first free election in the GDR since the Nazis took over.

“Dieses Ergebnis wurde in den Kommunalwahlen am 6. Mai 1990 der Größenordnung nach bestätigt: Wieder wurden die Parteien der Allianz für Deutschland mit landesweit 35 Prozent am stärksten, hinzu kamen die Liberalen mit nun sogar 7,3 Prozent.”

This is the local elections in the GDR a little later. Again they are referring to political parties receiving votes.

“Die dritte Wahl fand am 14. Oktober 1990 statt, elf Tage nach dem Vollzug der staatlichen Wiedervereinigung. Die CDU errang teilweise zusammen mit der FDP in vier der fünf neuen Bundesländern die klare Mehrheit, die Einheitsgegner der PDS verloren leicht. Ein ähnliches Ergebnis brachte die erste gesamtdeutsche Bundestagswahl am 2. Dezember 1990.”

This is referring to elections after reunification day. This time at the state level and national. Again they refer to parties getting percentages of votes: CDU, FDP.

Maybe there is something lost in translation as I am reading the german version and you might not be or something else.

I can read German.

This is also the part I need a source for: That the elections were made out to be a vote about the unification process.

Your own source is saying exactly that. Its examples are all general elections for party representation in legislative bodies. Your own source calls this, “Im Einheitsjahr 1990 stimmte die Bevölkerung der DDR zweimal vor und zweimal nach dem Stichtag über die Wiedrevereinigung ab.” For those who do not speak German, this is saying, more or less, “in Unification Year 1990 the citizens of the GDR voted twice before and twice after the reunification deadline”. It says they voted for unificatikn four times but every example is a general election of parties.

The Article you stated from the GG just states what we already agreed on: That there was a vote to be held and if the vote turns out not in favor it will not happen.

No vote on the decision was held. None. Article 29 is quite cleae that the people must vote explicitly on the decision to join. It even says there cannot be more than 2 choices presented on the ballot.

My source said that there were four equal elections in which the population voted in favor of the unification

Your source said that and then proceedes to list four votes of the type I had already described. They voted for parties for general elections. For national elections in the GDR, for local elections in the GDR, for new state elections, and then federal elections with everyone in the FRG as well (which makes even less sense but I avoided quibbling). I already explained this to you two comments ago when I went through how the bullshitting worked: the law called for plebiscite but they instead just claim the results of normal elections for parties counts instead.

You have also been bamboozled by this illogic. I said it was illegal, thos source clsims it was popular and there was a hand-wavy proxy vote, and they successfully convinced you to not question the legality.

although 55 percent thought it happened to fast, 80 percent were in favor.

Polling in the GDR was very poor and you should not trust any of the polls. Many of the attempts at polling showed supermajority rejection of reunification and you shouldn’t trust those, either. Funny enough, this is actually one of the practical benefits to having a plebiscite on these kinds of questions: you don’t have to guess.

I need sources because we are talking about facts in history that you claim to be false

Again, for what topica do you need sources? Which things can you not look up on your own and would prefer me to grab for you? Your source was just the things I was already saying happened, it did not add anything to the conversation, though people with Reddit brain always get excited by a link and some quotes.

You can review Article 29 (the one used to absorb the GDR) here. From this translation:

“(3) The referendum shall be held in the Länder from whose territories or parts of territories a new Land or a Land with redefined boundaries is to be established (affected Länder). The question to be voted on is whether the affected Länder are to remain as they are or whether the new Land or the Land with redefined boundaries should be established. The proposal to establish a new Land or a Land with redefined boundaries shall take effect if the change is approved by a majority in the future territory of such Land and by a majority in the territories or parts of territories of an affected Land taken together whose affiliation with a Land is to be changed in the same way. The proposal shall not take effect if, within the territory of any of the affected Länder, a majority reject the change; however, such rejection shall be of no consequence if in any part of the territory whose affiliation with the affected Land is to be changed a two-thirds majority approves the change, unless it is rejected by a two-thirds majority in the territory of the affected Land as a whole.”

Though again, you:

have

not

told

me

what

sources

you

need.

Di you understand now?

Do you have a source for what the elections were because I provided one.

The one you provided supports what I said. You do not seem to be understanding what I am saying. Please ask for clarification if you are having trouble understanding.

Also in representative surveys after the unification 90% of east germans were happy about it, which indicates that it was in favor of the east german population. Source: the article above

And? Doesn’t make it legal.

I think your point doesn’t really have power if there is no proof of there not being the public votes.

I think it does because liberals are all about feigning belief in rules and the rule of law. Right until they don’t.

I will reply to you as soon as you have sources for your claims

What sources would you even need? Do you know how to talk to other people and ask them questions when you want to know something?

How was it an illegal annexation if the rulers of the country signed a contract that was literally about uniting with western germany.

I just explained how. You can review the articles governing West Germany to verify this if you’d like. Are you being obtuse or did you just not read what I said?

I will ignore everything else you said until you clarify.

Edit: actually I will reply quickly to the rest because it is just quotes from one article doing the bullshitting I mentioned. They play fast and loose right off the bat, saying the peolle voted four times for reunification, twice before and twixe after. Let’s look at their examples.

1. The one I alreasy described to you and that you are obtusely avoiding thinking about: the vote for members of their analog of a parliament. This is not a plebiscite for joining West Germany.

2. The exact same thing but for local elections.

3. The exact same thing but for newly entering state elections.

4. The exact same thing but for the whole of Germany.

Poland being part of germany and east germany are very different things.

Not based on what parent said. Their simplistic rationale was that it was somehow legal and fine because it used to be part of Germany before WWII. That applies equally to both.

There is a much larger gap between poland being part of germany than east germany being part of united germany.

Only about 35 years or so. East and West were split from the end of WWII to 1990. You seem to be exaggerating and drawing an arbitrary line.

So anyways, by your logic you think it would have been legal and good for Germany to annex the parts it lost to Poland so long as it did so before 1990? Are you sure you’ve thought this through?

Also, the GDR literally agreed to the unification contract so it’s not an annexation.

Incorrect. There were two process options:

1. Carry out the creation of a new nation via negotiations between states and the draftinh of a new constitution.

2. Absorb states into West Germany if their populations produce a majority vote in favor.

They “chose” the latter and then didn’t do the vote. They did the usual annexer thing and just fudged some bullshit to claim that the GDR government following its first Western-style (and massively Western influenced via cash and NGOs) counted since it was a ruling coalition and therefore represented the majority. Again, this is just inventing some bullshit to get what they wanted. This is somewhat like voting for a pro-Brexit party that says they want to start the process of Brexit and then, lo and behold, they are forcing an immediate and unfavorable Brexit that you would not have supported and against the law of both the EU and the UK. Only the result is that instead of breaking treaties, you no longer have a country or basically any of your laws, you are simply annexed. So you cross your fingers and hope the Western propaganda is true and your previous state’s was false (spoiler: it was the opposite).

Now, generally speaking, I am not a “but the rules say otherwise!” nerd. But liberals do think of themselves this way and their propaganda tells them that everything they do against the authoritarian commies is actually for democracy and the rule of law. So when they see a basic fact like this, they either go into denial mode based on vibes, twist themselves into a pretzel (like the official legal logic), or acknowledge the reality and start to question their assumptions.

The first point is a fairly common opinion among communists, who understand “DEI” to be a liberal cooption of liberationist language and thought that tokenizes identities and reworks the concepts in favor of exploiters (and was doomed to be shed the moment it was less profitable for exploiters).

It may be beneficial to consider the second point with some nuance that is often neglected in order to agitate. Again with communists, you will find many that hate their country’s cops but acknowledge the necessity in a post-revolutionary framework, either in their own visions for their own revolution or in defending the actions taken by their comrades that rapidly discover the need for some form of organized enforcement. One way to think about this is that the police are an arm of the state, and who that state serves via its structures and nature changes how they operate. In OECD countries, cops primarily serve capital. They protect profits based on shop owner complaints, shut down capital-inconvenient demonstrations, etc, and spend little time helping average people. In many capitalist countries, cops are underpaid and openly corrupt, so they do the same things while being more obvious bribes. In countries run by socialists, cops of course still do many cop things, but you will find them spending more of their time on other tasks, there are fewer per capita, and the job of being a cop in capitalist counties has been split into many different jobs that don’t involve having a gun or otherwise carrying out the worst actions taken by cops. So, in short, it is entirely coherent to hate your local cops as an arm of capital that will beat you for protesting while not condemning the mere existence of cops in other countries while also understanding that we want to create a society free of them.

For the third point, it really depends on what you mean by accepting. Socialists need to educate people where they are, warts and all, but you also cannot be taillist and morph your work into accepting reactionary positions. That defeats the entire point of rejecting reactionary positions. Patience in explaining is valuable, tacit agreement with racism/xenophobia/sexism/homophobia/transphobia/etc is counterproductive. In addition, getting dunked on can and does create results. Despite growing up conservative and getting dunked on by those to your left, you now think of yourself as non-conservative. Are you sure none of those dunks ever led you to question your positions?

Wut? Germany was a singular country until the Soviet Union occupied half of it.

This is a non-sequitor, it does not change whether West Germany illegally annexed East Germany, which it did. Germany included parts of what are now Poland prior to the Nazis’ invasions. Would you also write off Germany illegally annexing them as a righteous revanchism?

Re-uniting the occupied territories with the rest of the country is literally the opposite of an illegal annexation.

You should learn your basic history before trying to lecture others. Germany was cut down and the remaining pieces split into regions governed by 4 countries (France, UK, USA, USSR). With the rise of the US the first 3 of course rapidly became de facto one region and the legal mumbo jumbo followed to create West Germany.

West Germany was created from this as an “independent” country, still under the thumb of the US, excluding East Germany. The USSR proposed full reintegration of Germany as a neutral country, but the US had already committed to a policy of isolation, preferring their NATO-pushing givernors of West Germany.

Regarding illegal annexation of East Germany, it was done against the consent of the people who lived there and against their own supposed legal framework.

The East is in a poor state because The West illegally annexed it, threw away their welfare state, outlawed the communist party, and gave all of its industry to exploitative West German companies. Indicators of quality of life plummeted after the fall of the USSR and the Berlin Wall. The West also trashed East Germany’s liberating policies towards women and LGBTQ+ people. East Germans that were older have nostalgia for the better times. Patronizing and ignorant liberals, rather than understand the truth in their experiences, have invented a fantasy called Ostolgie to explain this away, doing their best to pretend that this is just old people being silly rather than remembering tangibly better experiences.

This fictionalization is a necessary part of anticommunist thinking: no aspects of “the enemy” can ever be good or beneficial for anyone. All seemingly good things done by that enemy must either be attributed to a “brainwashed” population or a devious plot to appear better than they really are for propaganda purposes. It is important to recognize that these patterns of thought are not usually effectively exported and are instead intended for a domestic audience to make sure they don’t actually understand and sympathize with the designated enemy.