SXSW: Historian Peter Keup unearths the traumas of his past to reveal the nefarious actions of the secret police and the ...

Throughout the summer of 1989, the Communist regime found itself under enormous pressure because huge numbers of East Germans were slipping through to the West by avoiding East Germany's lethally ...

Thousands of people were subjected to forced labor for Western companies while imprisoned in the former communist East Germany under a system that operated almost right up to reunification in 1990.

The mainstream parties that have long dominated politics in the West, like the SPD and CDU, are less deeply rooted in the former East Germany due to its communist past. This leaves the playing field ...

The party has always been more popular in German areas that were once under Soviet rule ... with a prosperous economy, while East Germany was a communist country with a very poor economy.