Unless I'm mistaken, it seems that only *some* German soldiers (the border service of the DDR's Nationale Volksarmee) we're doing the shooting, and only from their side. And as recent trials have demonstrated, most of them didn't do this "easily," though some surely did. We can't know yet, of course, how many DDR border guards didn't shoot at all when they "should have" or how many shot and missed on purpose.
And it seems to me, too, that it must have been *strength* rather than "weakness" that helped Krenz avoid bloodshed in Leipzig in 1989 by not ordering the army and police to shoot. I doubt that stars had anything to do with this, but rather a sense of moral justice. (OK, so moral justice is perhaps out of place on the EJ list, but what the hell . . .) Scott Denham > This little anecdote reminds me of what I used to think end of the eighties, > that German soldiers in west and east would easily obey (Prussian?) and shoot > at their own people as it happend on the border with fugitives - luckily when > it came to it, the leaders were to weak to give respective orders (Aquarius?, > comet?, ...) > > Walter Hedderich > [email protected] > Scott Denham Associate Professor of German, Davidson College Resident Director, 1996-97, Davidson College Wuerzburg tel: 0931-784 0374, fax: 0931-784 0272 Trautenauer Str. 42 a 97074 Wuerzburg GERMANY (after August 5 1997): Dept of German, Russian & Japanese Davidson, NC 28036 USA tel: 704-892-2000 fax: 704-892-2005 [email protected]
