With the rapid economic development in West Germany, 550,000 people left East Germany. What is the reason?

West Germans left East Germany for three main reasons:

The first reason is historical reasons. These Germans who went from West Germany to East Germany for historical reasons were mainly divided into two parts, both of which were related to the biggest war in human history.

Part I: Returning to the homeland.

After the Soviet Union invaded Germany in the late World War II, a large number of Germans originally living in East Germany fled to West Germany with the defeated troops. After the partition of Germany, some people who fled to West Germany and originally lived in East Germany wanted to return to their ancestral homes in East Germany.

Part II: Reunion with family.

During World War II, the Soviet Union captured about 4.42 million German prisoners of war. These prisoners of war got rid of 360,000 prisoners of war who died in custody, and about 2 million people were detained by the Soviet Union for a long time in China for reconstruction and mining.

By 1948, in order to provide manpower for East Germany under construction, nearly 2 million German prisoners of war were released back to East Germany by the Soviet Union. A large part of these German prisoners of war came from West Germany. For family reunion, some relatives of former West German prisoners of war moved to East Germany.

The second reason is economic. Thanks to the forefront of capitalism and socialism, the United States has given great assistance to West Germany in order to create a window to show that capitalism is superior to socialism. Because the economic foundation of West Germany itself is better than that of East Germany, which is full of farms and swamps, and the Soviet Union plundered satellite countries, the economic development of East and West Germany gradually widened the gap.

But this gap was not opened in a day.

The Soviet Union also wanted to build East Germany into a window to show the superiority of socialism to the outside world, so the Soviet Union also gave great assistance to East Germany. With the assistance of the Soviet Union, East Germany jumped from a backward agricultural area to the most economically developed socialist country.

For Germans who knew that East Germany was backward, the economic miracle of East Germany was very attractive to them, prompting a group of West Germans to choose East Germany for a better tomorrow.

East Germany's economic miracle could have continued, but because the Soviet Union decided to compete with the United States for hegemony, it shifted its domestic production capacity to military and heavy industry, and plundered civilian products from satellite countries in Eastern Europe in the form of IOUs. This led to the lack of vitality of East Germany's economy because of "anemia", thus widening the gap with West Germany.

As a result, fewer and fewer West Germans immigrated to East Germany for economic reasons.

Of course, for economic reasons, some of them are talents absorbed by Dongfang Group from West Germany with high salary and high quality of life.

The third reason is social value orientation. In the world at the end of World War II, the tragic World War II gave people great psychological impact at that time.

People generally have a sense of mission and impulse to change the world, so various values collide fiercely, which also makes people's enthusiasm for material pursuit at that time far less than now. Dedication to one's ideals was the pursuit of many young people in that era. In order to pursue this ideal, they don't care about giving up a better life. Ernesto Guevara, who was born in an Argentine family, is a typical representative of these people.

So many West Germans who love socialism chose to go to East Germany.

There are many reasons for West Germans to go to East Germany, but most of them are for these three reasons.