I defended myself at the first opportunity I had, which was a meeting of writers in which I proved that Honecker had based his whole attack.

I not only saw the possibility of nuclear war, I feared it very much. If they started a military conflagration, it would automatically lead to nuclear warfare.

Show me one place where a whole government is concerned with a book of a writer and is concerned enough to suppress it.

Even in West Germany in the beginning, people wanted a kind of socialism.

And one of the worst effects was that by suppressing critical thought, it also suppressed critical thought in the field of economics and hampered the development of economics - and the country would fall back further and further in the economic competition with the West.

I was in psychological warfare in World War II, so I know psychological warfare when I see it.

I did not oppose unification, I knew unification would have to come, but not in the form in which it did come. There were two ways of doing it and they took it the radical way, the forceful way.