Agriculture in East Germany
As early as the 1960s the third phase of specialization and industrialization began, in which the GDR leadership tried unsuccessfully to demonstrate the superiority of socialism through forced collectivization and economic structures which originated in opposition of the so-called capitalist foreign countries.
The KPD leadership was most experienced in urban environments and, due to their origins, wasn't able to precisely makes plans for agriculture and therefore limited themselves to applying Marxist theories.
Edwin Hoernle was one of the few members in the KPD with any agricultural expertise and had warned Moscow of the economic consequences, however the expropriations persisted despite this.
During and directly after World War II the state administrations and the citizens they governed needed to manage scarce resources, and in particular food produced from agriculture.
The goal of Moscow's structural changes in regards to agriculture, with the creation of a new social group, was realized, in so far as these new small farmers were natural allies of the party (in the opinion of the KPD leadership).
The spontaneous uprising hoped for by the KPD, with wild expropriations by local groups, did not materialize despite attempts to artificially stage it.
The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin personally ordered the expropriation of all farms above the arbitrary limit of 100 hectares.
Many serious problems arose from the fact that neither the Soviet occupying force nor the German communists could provide sufficient means of production (seeds, fertilizer, or animals) for the new farmers to work the land to the extent that was necessary.
Immediately after the end of the war, larger farms were much more economically successful than the smaller new farmers, due to the established infrastructure and technology that was available to them.
Although the state benefited from the larger farms, due to their high delivery rates, beginning in 1946 they were declared class enemies and massively disadvantaged, compared to the new farmers, who were often barely able to generate their own needs.
From January 1, 1949, new laws were passed in quick succession that required farms over 20 hectares to supply operating resources and machines.
Pre-war agricultural organizations, especially Raiffeisen, in which most leading positions were held by successful farmers, were abolished from 1949 onwards.
Beginning in April 1952, from Moscow, Josef Stalin called for a definitive demarcation with the West in the GDR, as well as closing the borders and building an army of their own.
The rural population took this as an admission of the incompetence, and leading up to the unrest in big cities, there was resistance in the villages against their local SED functionaries.
Throughout the year of 1956, de-Stalinization was occurring throughout the Soviet bloc, and in the GDR, intellectual discussions about the ultimate fate of collectivization were held.
These "advertisers" used methods such as smashing windows, breaking in doors, or psychological torment with loudspeaker-vans around the clock, among other things.
While the origin of the lack of success can be attributed to excessive administration and many individual functionaries' addiction to image, other problems were systematic and affected the overall organization of agricultural policy.
The intended effects were not achieved, and on the contrary, there was competition between the plant-based agriculture and animal husbandry cooperatives for scarce resources such as labor.
