You realize I’m not a tankie, right? I don’t care to defend the USSR or East Germany in any way.

the West German state was simply a continuation of the Nazi regime, employing the same officials that had administered the government during the Nazi dictatorship […] many former functionaries of the Nazi regime were employed in positions in the West German government.

Gotta hand it to them, though, sometimes they do call balls and strikes.

East German uprising of 1953 in Berlin was officially blamed on Nazi agents provocateurs from West Berlin

While I’m sure there absolutely was popular opposition to the increased work quotas, I can believe that this might have some truth to it, too. There’s absolutely shitloads of evidence that Western powers love to turn civil unrest into uprisings and attempted coups.