A Glimpse of Freedom: Allied Occupation and Political Resistance in East Germany

Luis Martinez (), Jonas Jessen and Guo Xu ()
Additional contact information
Guo Xu: UC Berkeley

No 15606, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper exploits the idiosyncratic line of contact separating Allied and Soviet troops within East Germany at the end of WWII to study political resistance in a non-democracy. When Nazi Germany surrendered, 40% of what would become the authoritarian German Democratic Republic was initially under Allied control but was ceded to Soviet control less than two months later. Brief Allied exposure increased protests during the major 1953 uprising. We use novel data on the appointment of local mayors and a retrospective survey to argue that even a "glimpse of freedom" can foster civilian opposition to dictatorship.

Keywords: East Germany; political resistance; protest; autocracy; spatial RDD; World War II (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F51 H10 N44 P20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 75 pages
Date: 2022-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-his, nep-pol and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: American Economic Journal: Applied Economics , 2023, 15 (1), 68-106

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp15606.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: A Glimpse of Freedom: Allied Occupation and Political Resistance in East Germany (2023)
Working Paper: A Glimpse of Freedom: Allied Occupation and Political Resistance in East Germany (2022)
Working Paper: A Glimpse of Freedom: Allied Occupation and Political Resistance in East Germany (2020)
Working Paper: A Glimpse of Freedom: Allied Occupation and Political Resistance in East Germany (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp15606

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().