If, as has been argued in the preceding chapter, Germany had effectively become divided into two separate countries with very different socioeconomic and political structures by the late 1950s, the question arises as to the most sensible way of covering the most recent period of Central European history. It was difficult enough to condense the gradual division of Germany and the development of the two emergent states into the space of the preceding chapter. Logically, the rest of this book should devote two chapters to the 1960s and 1970s – one to East Germany and the other to the Federal Republic. Lack of space prevents the addition of another one hundred or so pages, and there is room only for one chapter divided into five sections. The first two sections will deal with East Germany up to the early 1980s. Given the larger size and greater economic and political weight of the Federal Republic, it seemed justified to use the three sections remaining thereafter for a discussion of West German society in its economic and political context.

The development of the East German economy, 1960–1980

From the point of view of the East German government, the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 and the closing of the country's border with West Germany between Travemünde on the Baltic Sea and Hof in Upper Franconia were vital for the economy and, inseparable from this, for the political survival of the regime.