This will largely cover the first two decades of the GDRs history and the delineation between Socialism and Communism within the GDR. The first big thing to pay attention to is that the GDR emerged from the ashes of Nazi Germany and for the leaders of the GDR they had to achieve a shift from Capitalism to Socialism and then to Communism. As Marxist-Leninists they believed that Communism was an end goal and not something immediately achievable.

The Socialist Unity Party (SED), which led the GDR fully believed in Communism. They were dedicated to the eventuality of Communism, but fully believed that Socialism was a stepping stone on the path to Communism. They spent from their foundation in 1946 up to 1961 building a path to socialism, and in their minds achieving it. This first period was focused on economic changes and ideological shifts towards a socialist society. To complete this the SED believed that it had to build a fully Socialist economy and a fully socialist population. The people of the GDR then had to embrace Socialism in order for it to exist.

The 1950s saw the emergence of People's Own Enterprises (VEB) which were state owned industries. This were considered completely socially owned and the economic backbone of developing socialism. With the economy being socialized the basis for the declaration of the achievement of socialism existed. However the party leadership, namely Walter Ulbricht, believed that the people had to be socialist as well. This was to be achieved with the emergence of socialist culture and the ideological indoctrination of the masses via socialist art.

The drive for this came through every form of art, but predominantly through film. The SED concerned itself heavily with creating socialist film and with using that to being the masses to socialism. With the creation of a socialist populace, they could then focus on the creation of Communism, but this was only a theoretical concern after the achievement of socialism. The concern then for the party was largely with getting people to embrace Socialsim, and thereby to create it. By focusing on this the party, and in conjunction the state, spoke predominantly about Socialism and not Communism. This was not out of disbelief in Communism, but instead out of a deep belief that first came Socialism and then Communism.

At the same time the very name of the SED, Socialist Unity Party, was a literal description of the party, which came from the unification of the Socialist Party and Communist Party in the Soviet Occupied Zone, on April 21,1946. As a result the party, at least at first, could not self-identify as pursuing Communism. They instead identified as a broad anti-Fascist party that pursued Socialism. It wasn't until the 1950s that the SED leaders, who were all former Communist Party members, pursued a policy of targeting former Socialist Party members as disloyal to the state. This led to party wide purges, which were not violent in the Stalinist way but rather involved demotions and firings. This purging created a shift towards a focus on Communism.

However, first Socialism had to be achieved, and conveniently the GDR was able to achieve just that! They declared the achievements of Socialism in 1961, and internally the party declared that they would now focus on achieving Communism. This, though, was never accomplished and as they had achieved Socialism the party then could speak of that accomplishment. The GDR then could speak of itself as the "Land of Real Existing Socialism" which delineated the GDR from both the West and implicitly from other Socialist states as well. This separation became a key internal ideological point for the SED. They may not have Communism, but they had Socialism and it was real.

In summation, the ability of the SED to achieve Socialism in the GDR formed the basis of the most of their public discourse. They had accomplished the first half of their project and were explicitly on the path to Communism, but hadn't achieved it yet. As the end goal would come at a undefined point in the future, Communism would be referenced broadly but not as specifically as Socialism. Instead the SED could, and did, speak of what they had achieved in the creation of Socialism.