Leadership Quote by Walter Ulbricht

Ulbricht’s line is a masterclass in moral rebranding, the kind politicians reach for when a nation’s reputation has been burned down to the studs. “Let us show” is not a plea for pacifism so much as a command performance: unity on cue, results on display. He’s staging peace as a product demonstration, something measurable and exportable, meant to reassure “our fellow countrymen” while auditioning for “the entire world.”

The subtext is unmistakably postwar. Germany is the problem child of Europe; Ulbricht wants Germany to become the proof of a new order. The phrase “what the Germans can do” reaches back to an older, loaded idea of German competence and discipline, then snaps it into a safer frame. The same national capacity that once powered militarism is recast as an engine for reconstruction and “peace.” It’s not accidental; it’s political judo.

Context matters: Ulbricht wasn’t speaking for a unified Germany but for East Germany, a state that had to justify its existence against West Germany and under Soviet oversight. “Work for peace” is a socialist catchphrase with teeth, implying mobilization, obedience, and productivity in service of state-defined virtue. Peace here is less a condition than a campaign: labor as redemption, legitimacy as a public relations victory. The line flatters the nation while quietly narrowing what counts as patriotism. If peace is what “the Germans” can do, dissent becomes the thing that keeps Germany from proving itself.