How A territorial anomaly could mean that East Germany Still Exists

Germany has had a tumultuous history throughout its entire existence, but the story of that tumultuous period seemingly ended after the reunification of Germany in the 1990s. Put simply, following World War Two, Germany was occupied by the four major Allied Powers, France, Britain, The US, and The USSR, with the latter becoming alienated from the others, a variety of crises ensue, and a fifty-year, “Cold War” begins, which Pitts the USSR and it's Satellite and the Allied States against the United States and their Allies. Germany was ground Zero for this tension with Germany being split in two by the occupying powers, with West Germany being the U.S. aligned and East Germany being allied with USSR. Although these satellite states and the USSR itself no longer exists and following years of tension, Germany is reunited, but there is always some sort of loop-whole, one of which was stumbled on by me, I became obsessed, and now I am writing an article.

To understand we need to dive into what East Germany, or the GDR, was. The GDR was a largely Soviet Run, Communist, and USSR Aligned Nation which emerged after WWII, but the GDR was also close to other Communist Nations beyond the Soviet-based ones. I am someone who will just run into strange territorial anomalies and will just get hooked on them for the longest time and East Germany had many, just like Germany as a whole. But my most recent discovery is a single Cuban Island, which could be read into as the final hold out of one of the most famous Communist Nations in the Cold War. You see, there still is and was at the time a Communist Nation I’m sure you’ve heard of if you haven't lived under a rock for years, Cuba, and Cuba and the GDR were ‘good chums’. At the time the leader of Cuba, one Fidel Castro, who decided to as a gift to East Germany, give them a “Best Friends Forever” symbol, an entire island, Cayo Blanko Del Sur, or as Fidel Castro would re-inaugurated it as, “Ernst Thalmann Island”, the perfect name for an Iguana loaded tropical island in the Caribbean. Castro wasn’t joking however and would even hold a remarkably communist ceremony for the Island’s handover. Hilariously enough, despite being given a tropical Island, all the GDR gave Castro on his visit to Berlin was a Teddy Bear, interestingly enough, that Teddy Bear is actually in his Mausoleum to this day.

The Transfer was although official, for all intents and purposes symbolic, as besides iguanas, there was nothing but uninhabited lands on the island and besides sending a musician there for a music video in the 1970s, nothing really happened on the Island, human-related anyway. But since the German Government did send someone there, that does necessarily indicate that it was theirs. This was pretty much forgotten as a holdout of Germany though, so much that when Germany reunified, there was not a single document that discussed or even indicated as to what Ernst Thalmann Island should be in status or in terms of borders. So in theory this means that it never re-joined Germany, which theoretically means that East Germany still exists in a land which is on quite nearly the other side of the world, with a 100% Iguana population, or so people like to think at least. In the early 2000s, one German News Paper, like me after them, suddenly remembered hearing about some random East German Caribbean Island filled with Iguanas and decided to look into it. They even contacted the Cuban Government, to which they responded that the transfer had only been symbolic and was part of Cuba, when the German Government was asked, they agreed, and they have a lot bigger fish to fry as of now than an Iguana filled island, but who knows. Is this the next big international dispute? Could this be considered the last holdout of the Eastern Bloc? As always it depends on who you ask, and what you think.