EAST GERMANY
The Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic) was a European state that was created in 1949 when the northeastern zone of occupied Germany under Soviet control became its own country after World War II. Accordingly, it was Commie Land. The leaders of the freshly founded GDR were Walter Ulbricht ("the guy with the Lenin beard"), Wilhelm Pieck ("the guy with the potbelly") and Otto Grotewohl ("the guy with the glasses"—not this one, obviously). As early as 1953, shortly after Josef Stalin's death, the state had its first big crisis when workers rose against the government on June 17th. It didn't end too well. Even Communist author Bertolt Brecht criticized the government in his poem The Solution: "Would it not be simpler then for the government/To dissolve the people and elect another?" Under considerable Soviet influence (and with a huge Soviet military presence, the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany), East Germany is b...