Since a German Communist state existed, a state peaceful and democratic by definition, it became more difficult to speak of crimes committed by Germans in general. Poles were confronted with a kind of "Marxization" of the German problem that had to be resolved in terms of classes: in the east were the good Germans because they were progressive; in the west, the bad Germsans, reactionaries, heirs of Nazism, even more-or-less camouflaged Hitlerians.