Today, as socialist ideas once again gain popularity around the world, people should remember an unintentional, large-scale experiment that confirmed the superiority of capitalism over socialism. If even the Germans couldn’t make socialism work, so the saying goes, that says a lot about this idea. This story is now depicted in the film Life Behind the Berlin Wall, which was awarded the “Audience Choice Award for Short Films” at the Anthem Film Festival, the largest libertarian film festival in the world.

Germany’s partition into two states was not part of the occupying powers’ original plan, it was a result of the Cold War that broke out between the Soviet Union and the western Allies.

The Communist Party soon emerged as a dominant political force in the East. Despite the assurance that “it would be wrong to impose the Soviet system on Germany,” that’s exactly what happened over the following years. Much like in the Soviet Union itself, the economy in the Soviet-occupied zone was increasingly planned by government officials.

Contrary to the regime’s proclaimed intention to overtake the West German economy, in the late 1950s per-capita consumption in East Germany (also known as the GDR) was still 12 percent below pre-war........

© Townhall