It's important to understand that everything, even fairytales went through censorship / ideology conformity reviews, especially in those years ("normalisation", after the events of 1968/9). Many movies were either not produced at all or banned after production, others were heavily cut.
Yes, even fairytales had to adhere to the communist ideology - for example the poor were usually shown as being morally superior, while the rich were decadent and mostly stupid, etc.
It's also important not to forget that West Germany wasn't immune to the censorship either, and bans, beside what realistically was a Soviet propaganda, also included some really good documentaries and artwork even by today's standards.
Not sure why are you singling out West Germany here since the same applies to many other countries and tbh there is no particular issue with filtering content coming from totalitarian enemies interested in destroying you.
The very important distinction here is that were the same policies as in Czechoslovakia applied in West Germany, people like Rainer Werner Fassbinder would not be able to create their movies. Not distribute, create.
> tbh there is no particular issue with filtering content coming from totalitarian enemies interested in destroying you.
Both sides were very much interested in destroying each other (and worked actively on that), but problem is that whenever you have bureaucrats doing censorship in the name of the national or social interests, it ends up affecting far-wider circle of (innocent) people than officially intended, and often can be misused for other (political) purposes. The main reason I even commented on this is that few days ago I've seen an East-Germany documentary on German nazis working as mercenaries in South Africa, which was banned in West Germany, even though it had nothing "communistic" or anti-western - but it touches some not-so-popular subjects on nazis and nazi supporters in West and particularly W. Germany that (although true and well documented) they didn't want people to hear about. So they censored it as "communist propaganda", no questions asked...
Eastern block certainly had a lot more censorship and oppression than West, but it's important to be aware that lots of dirty s** happened in the West too, things were never as black and white as some people like to simplify it now.
