64th Anniversary of the DDR

Today highlights the 64th Anniversary of the founding of the German Democratic Republic and accordingly a great step forward in the economic and political practices and potentialities of socialism within Europe. Thank you comrade Adenauer for forcing Ulbricht's hand.
I would quite like to examine the creation myth of the state over the coming months or whenever I have time free and the inclination to do something on it.

Have you read a book called Stalin's Unwanted Child, by Wilfried Loth? It's certainly an entertaining read although, as the review I link to shows, a bit dated by the discovery of Molotov's private papers in the Soviet Foreign Ministry shortly after its publication. The controversy over Stalin's intentions in this matter still continues.

I have, and much of the rest of Loth's work, it gave me quite the headache this last year for my dissertaton. I tried to broach the topic in a chapter of it, I found it easier to talk out my argument from the side of Stalin and Beria. I did so as I found it amusing for my tutor to constantly tell me it was impossible to paint Beria as any kind of nobly intentioned man. The jury's out on that one, I didn't find much at all in Molotov's letters that show anything extraordinary, other than differing views within the Soviet Politburo. I side with Loth.
Recently, Vandenhoek and Ruprecht have released a book on Tyulpanov's report on the state and how the SMAD/SBZ's work should continue in the eventuality of the initial "Stalin Note" being ignored. I haven't gotten hold of it yet, but it should be interesting reading.

I could link a load of things, but they're in German and I would only bother translating them if the publishers gave me the go ahead and paid me.