The GDR’s Westpolitik and everyday anticommunism in West Germany

West German anticommunism and the SED’s Westarbeit were to some extent interrelated. From the beginning, each German state had attemted to stabilise its own social system while trying to discredit its political opponent. The claim to sole representation and the refusal to acknowledge each other delineated governmental action on both sides. Anticommunism in West Germany re-developed under the conditions of the Cold War, which allowed it to become virtually the reason of state and to serve as a tool for the exclusion of KPD supporters. In its turn, the SED branded the West German State as ‘revanchist’ and instrumentalised its anticommunism to persecute and eliminate opponents within the GDR. Both phenomena had an integrative and exclusionary element.