And with hindsight knowledge of how that story ended, we can only congratulate the author on a job well done. Churches were relatively safe havens for dissent b

And with hindsight knowledge of how that story ended, we can only congratulate the author on a job well done. Churches were relatively safe havens for dissent because despite fundamentally different ideology, the actual ideals were pretty much aligned. And they knew and respected that, on both sides. For a state with torture prisons (edit: and with mandatory paramilitary classes at school, almost forgot about that), a state that routinely had the army shoot its own citizens, the GDR was surprisingly committed to peace.