The swift colonization of East Germany through the “unification” process amounted to nothing short of an Anschluss through political and administrative control and through the economic shock managed by the now infamous agency Treuhand. The agency was established in 1990 with the goal to rapidly privatize the former GDR’s assets. Destruction of the existing East German economy went through merciless fire sale privatizations favoring Western capital and not paying the slightest attention to the wants and needs of East Germans. The results were soon visible: economic depression followed by massive emigration to the West, demographic decline, social depression and the rise of the extreme right.
Igor Štiks, A Europe Too Far: The Myth of European Unification
