Wünsdorf is only 60 kilometers from Berlin, but an abyss separates this east people from Germany from what the country’s political and intellectual elites think. Just when Parliament takes a run to spend everything that is needed in front of the threatening Russia of Vladimir Putin, here, in this town that during the Cold War welcomed the largest military base of the Soviet Union outside its borders, time seems to pass more slowly. Here, the twentieth century is still very present. And serves to answer many of the XXI questions.
Some 20,000 people visit the fascinating row of bunkers woven by the Nazis in 1939 in Wünsorf. From this mini -city, converted during World War II into a large communications center, Hitler’s army directed the offensive against the USSR. Outside the tunnels, in the sunlight, there are still the remains of the Wehrmacht constructions that the Soviet troops burned in 1946, after their victory in the war, as part of its commitment to eliminate any trace of the criminal regime that made Europe a great cemetery.
The Soviet inheritance marks, 30 years after the last soldier of the Red Army left, the vision of the locals on current matters such as the Ukraine War, the imperialist desire of Russia and the European urgency to rearm. His opinions, mostly, collide frontally with that of Western Germans.
Sylvia Rademacher is responsible for the company that manages bunkers in Wünsorf. At 61, he remembers like life before 1994, when the last Soviet soldiers were, a group that during the former democratic republic came to exceed half a million men. “They do not leave as occupants, but as friends,” said Foreign Minister Helmut Kohl. Those memories, and that special relationship with Russia, marks the prism with which Rademacher values events such as the large -scale invasion of Ukraine ordered by Putin three years ago. “They want to paint a panorama in which the Russians are the bad, with horns and tail. But things are more complex. Here, people, with their first -hand experiences, see things differently. We still remember what Germany owes Russia. ”
The political differences between the so -called new states – the five eastern territories that were integrated into the Federal Republic in 1990 – and the rest of the country was once again evident in the elections of February 23. If the western part of the map is tint of black – the color of the Christian -democratic union of Friedrich Merz – in the eastern one the blue of an alternative for Germany, an ultra -rightist party that, in addition to its proclamations against refugees and ecologism, has raised the opposition to the aid to Ukraine. Parties such as the left and that of Sahra Wagenknecht, critics with NATO, also received significant support.
Since the beginning of the war in 2022, the Forsa opinion institute has verified the great discrepancies in Germany on all matters related to Russia and Ukraine. “It is undoubtedly the topic that divides the two parts of the country,” says Peter Matuschek, manager of this company. The sending of weapons to kyiv receives majority support in the west and a strong rejection in the east, where the fear of an extension of the war in Europe is very evident. “Last week, we ask about the constitutional reform to increase military spending. 75% of Western Germans said to be in favor. In the east, that percentage remained at 51%. And the plans to reinstate the military service receive 62% support in the west, compared to the meager 52% in the eastern part, ”continues Matuschek.
The explanations of these differences on one side and another of the old steel curtain are very complex. The journalist and writer Sabine Rennefanz, born 50 years ago in the old RDA, has tried to explain them in books such as Iron children. The silent rage of reunification generation. “Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers left Germany without shooting. Gorbachev’s commitment not to intervene allowed us to have a peaceful reunification. I think that has molded the image that we have had for a long time of Russia, without taking into account the evolution of the country since then, ”he says in a Berlin cafeteria.
Rennefanz displays a very nuanced speech, full of chiaroscuros, in which he remembers that the boys of his age saw the Russians around him at the same time “as friends and as rulers”, and anecdotes like his grandfather’s, which despite having been imprisoned in Siberia in Stalin’s time kept a positive image of the Soviet.
The new times force Germany to face great draft debates. How to address the necessary modernization of the army in a world in which the United States has ceased to be the faithful friend. The possibility of reintroducing military service. Or the shock that weapons that can end up killing Russians, something that many Germans remembers their darkest past. “The fear of Russia is greater in the east, where there are still resonances of the propaganda of the ancient GDR in favor of peace and against NATO and the West,” certifies the historian Jan Claas Behrends.
Back to Wünsdorf, the mayor, Wiebke Sahin-Connolly, admits that shared history, the fact that many of their fellow citizens have shared vodka with the Russians, makes political debates about war and weapons almost personal. Rademacher defends the values and culture of his region compared to what he calls the “arrogance” of Western Germany, which, he says, have never treated you to you. Remember the time when tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers with their families lived in this city, then nicknamed “Little Moscow”, with their own schools, theaters, museums, a hospital and a direct train to the Russian capital.
The head of the company dedicated to keeping the memory of what happened here throughout the twentieth century denounces a corset of the media that prevents expressing discordant opinions. “Of course, war is why it has to end. But it is not the fault of a single person, ”he says and then pointing out as responsible for both the West and Ukraine, not to mention Putin at any time. And he concludes with a halo of optimism before the new tenant of the White House: “At least Trump is now trying to end the massacre after Biden did so many things wrong.”
