How did the communist GDR survive for forty years, and why did it collapse so suddenly in 1989 to 1990?
The German Democratic Republic 1949 to 1990: the SED dictatorship and the Stasi, the Berlin Wall, economic problems, and the collapse and reunification of 1989 to 1990.
A focused guide to the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and reunification for AQA A-Level History (Germany). Covers the SED dictatorship and the Stasi, the building of the Berlin Wall, economic weakness, and the collapse and reunification of 1989 to 1990.
Reviewed by: AI editorial process; not yet individually human-reviewed
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What this dot point is asking
You need to explain how the communist GDR (East Germany) survived for forty years through the SED dictatorship, the Stasi and the Berlin Wall, and why it collapsed so quickly in 1989, leading to reunification in 1990.
The SED dictatorship
The regime survived the June 1953 uprising, a workers' revolt against higher production quotas, only because Soviet tanks crushed it, exposing from the start its dependence on the USSR. Legitimacy was always thin: the GDR claimed to be the anti-fascist German state, but its citizens could compare their lives to a visibly richer West.
The Stasi and the Wall
Before the Wall, around three million East Germans, many of them young and skilled, had fled west through the open border in Berlin, a haemorrhage that threatened the state's survival. The Wall stabilised the GDR for a generation but at the cost of imprisoning its own people, with border guards ordered to shoot those who tried to cross.
The economy
The GDR ran a centrally planned command economy, the strongest in the Eastern bloc, and it provided full employment, subsidised basics, housing and welfare that gave a real, if grey, security. But it lagged ever further behind West Germany in quality consumer goods and technology, a gap West German television broadcast nightly into Eastern homes. Honecker's policy of buying social peace through consumer subsidies and Western credit ran up unsustainable hard-currency debt by the late 1980s, so that the regime was effectively bankrupt and dependent on the very capitalist West it denounced.
Collapse and reunification
The end came rapidly in 1989:
- Gorbachev signalled the USSR would not intervene to save satellite regimes.
- East Germans fled west through Hungary once it opened its border, and mass protests spread (the Leipzig demonstrations).
- The Berlin Wall was opened on 9 November 1989, and the SED regime collapsed.
- Reunification was completed on 3 October 1990, after the East voted decisively for the parties favouring rapid union, with the GDR absorbed into the Federal Republic and the international terms settled by the Two Plus Four Treaty.
Try this
Q1. Why was the Berlin Wall built in 1961? [2 marks]
- Cue. To stop the mass flight of East Germans to the West.
Q2. When was Germany reunified? [1 mark]
- Cue. 3 October 1990.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of AQA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
AQA 202120 marks'The collapse of the GDR in 1989 was caused mainly by economic failure.' Assess the validity of this view. (Component 2, depth essay, rescoped from 25)Show worked answer →
Weigh economic failure against the Soviet factor and popular pressure, and rank them.
Argue for economic failure: mounting hard-currency debt, the inability of the command economy to match Western living standards seen on West German television, and the regime's dependence on Soviet subsidy made the GDR fundamentally unsustainable.
Weigh other factors: Gorbachev's refusal to use force (the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine), the exodus of citizens through a newly open Hungarian border, and the mass Monday demonstrations in Leipzig that the regime dared not crush, leading to the opening of the Wall on 9 November 1989.
Reach a judgement. Markers reward ranking, for example that economic weakness was the underlying cause but the Soviet withdrawal of support was the decisive trigger, since the GDR had survived economic weakness for decades. A top level answer sustains that argument.
AQA 20226 marksWith reference to a Stasi internal report on public opinion in 1989 and your own knowledge, assess its value for studying the collapse of the GDR. (Component 2, source skill)Show worked answer →
A short source question rewards judging value through provenance, content and context.
Provenance: an internal Stasi report was written for the regime's own use, not for publication, so it is more candid than propaganda and gives privileged insight into how the security state read the crisis, though it may flatter the leadership or miss the scale of dissent.
Content and tone: weigh what it records about protest, the exodus and falling morale against your knowledge of autumn 1989.
Judgement: a historian could reliably learn how the regime perceived its own loss of control, but must allow for the surveillance state's blind spots. Markers reward a clear value judgement set against context.
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- The structure of Component 1 (breadth) and Component 2 (depth), the three assessment objectives, the marks and timing of each question, and how source, interpretation and essay tasks differ.
A clear map of the AQA A-Level History (7042) papers: what Component 1 and Component 2 contain, how the three assessment objectives are split, the marks and timing of each question, and how the source, interpretation and essay tasks differ.
Sources & how we know this
- AQA A-level History (7042) specification — AQA (2015)