Ja I dunno. You have to remember that "the victors write the history books" and if the USA was defeated and it's CIA files were all cracked open, a pretty grim picture could be spun a well.

It's interesting to see "East" propaganda against the West. They would paint poverty and crime and violence as the "tyranny" of capitalism. And they would argue that they had to be hard (they would call it "vigilant") or else the West would take over their way of life.

They would also point at the wars as being part of "Imperialist Tyranny". They could certainly point to lots of global examples of homegrown socialist movements being squashed by US-backed forces.

The East also pointed at the race issues of the West as examples of the "tyranny" of it's system. There have surely been a lot of victims there, no?

The standard of DDR life was not bad by the 70s - 80s. And there were opportunities to travel. You just had to go "East". Although there were more and more possibilities for people to cross west legally.

In opinion polls, most East Germans think back on their lives in the DDR as "not perfect, but on the whole .. good". I think a lot of them would trade the uncertainty of today's life for their secure little flawed socialist dream back behind the Wall.