Fully agree. Like all AES states, the DDR was also shaped by a state of siege, and that was particularly pronounced due to being a frontline state in the Cold War, coming with threats such as one of the world's absolute hotbeds of spy activity in Berlin, being the designated staging ground for the opening moves of WW3, or a constant propagandistic onslaught of incredibly hostile BRD media, which were able to broadcast across almost the entire DDR territory. It's unbelievable how vitriolic west German anticommunism was, i think we're one of the few continental western European nations that already rivaled the US in that regard even before capitalist realism choked any meaningful dissent in the imperialist core.

So there was an unbelievable amount of pressure on the DDR from the very start and i think that contributed a lot to the need to supress dissent. "Divided" Germany was such a weird place. I still grew up with the notion that there's this alternate universe version of my country, people a bit older than me grew up with the perspective of having to fight a war against their own relatives in the east.