NS-Staat und SED-Staat unter Honecker - Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten bei der Bewältigung der Finanzierungsprobleme von Sicherheits- und Sozialausgaben

“Third Reich” and GDR both required considerable amounts of money which both states payed for “inner and outer security”, among them repression and in the case of the NS state also aggression towards the outside world. At the same time, both states paid considerable amounts of money for increasing or keeping up the standard of living. With resources becoming increasingly tight, priorities had to be set or additional earnings had to be opened up. The NS regime solved this problem at the expenditure of third parties, while keeping up the living standard of the population. In the GDR under Honecker competition among the two fields of state spending and thus the setting of priorities was avoided by the GDR building up debts in foreign countries, by reducing the growth in security spendings, and by redistributing spendings in favour of social policy and at the expenditure of investments.