A fair point, despite the downvotes. The DDR could correctly be described as a one-party state, a totalitarian regime, or a puppet state of the USSR, but not a

A fair point, despite the downvotes. The DDR could correctly be described as a one-party state, a totalitarian regime, or a puppet state of the USSR, but not a dictatorship. Some good evidence for this is that you can't (without Wikipedia's help or a very serious background in European history) name a single leader of the state, the dictator. I don't think this is just a pedantic point. It's good to push back against the labelling of "everything you don't like" with the most convenient wrongthink labels: see the trend towards labeling $BAD_THINGS as communism, terrorism, or more fashionably these days, fascism.