People who were not active in the intellectual life of the country could go on without feeling restricted, except they could not go where they wanted. They could not cross the border to the West whenever they liked.

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

A foreman in the East wouldn't know how many workers he would have the next day, because part of his working force had left the system to go to West Germany.

People who were not active in the intellectual life of the country could go on without feeling restricted, except they could not go where they wanted. They could not cross the border to the West whenever they liked.

If we had had time and the occasion to develop a new socialism in the GDR, socialism with a human face, with democracy, this might have been an example also to West Germany. The development would have run the other way.

People in the East looked toward the West with longing. They would have liked to have the same comforts, the same goods, the same chances. They saw a system that demanded of them sacrifices with nothing but promises for the future.

A great number of people in the East German parts had been Nazis, so the change of mind was not altogether there.