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@cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl

It fucked it up because it was never a "reunification". It was an annexation and privatisation of public assets from the East.
That was the goal of the Treuhand.
The West capitalist industrialists were never interested in improving the conditions of life for people in the East. They wanted new consumers to expand their markets and above all, fresh cheap industrial assets at bargain prices (the Treuhand was a fire sale of public goods, just like in 1990's Russia; they literally stole public funded and public built property and gave it to oligarchs) and cheap, flexible and downtrodden labour to outcompete and crush unions in the west. Furthermore, they could use the east Germans as "examples" to prevent western Germans from ever considering any temptations of "socialism", by conflating socialist policies and labour rights with autocracy ("socialism = bad").
There was never other outcome to be expected.