The Other Germany

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29716, 9 January 1962, Page 10

The Other Germany

The cold-war debate on principles of international conduct sometimes overshadows realities such as the consolidation of Communist power in East Germany, the State created by the Russians in 1949 from their post-war occupation zone. Primarily, East Germany is important to the Soviet bloc for reasons other than its size or population —16.5 million people, occupying 41,646 square miles—or even its industrial output, which (according to the Communists) makes it the sixth biggest industrial producer of the world, after the United States, Russia, Britain, Japan, and West Germany. East Germany’s existence asserts the spread of Communist might into the heartland of Europe; and one of Mr Khrushchev’s principal objectives is an understanding with the West that this situation cannot be reversed. The closing last August of the border between East and West Berlin was a necessary preliminary to the stabilisation of this East German State. Not only has East German manpower ceased to drain towards the West—about 3.5 million East Germans had fled through Berlin in 12 years—so that industrial plans may now be prosecuted more vigorously; but ready comparisons with Western progress and freedom have also been stopped. In spite of its heavy loss of manpower, East Germany is no shadow State, politically or economically. The regime has survived at least two uprisings, in 1953 and 1958. Since the Berlin border was closed there have been no reports of new rebellions, even if the people are still restive under a harsh bureaucracy. Like other Communist countries. East Germany maintains elaborate paraphernalia of apparently representative government. Incfeed, this farce is accentuated through a “ coali- “ tion ” regime of five parties, the dominant one of which—Mr Ulbricht’s—masquerades under the name of the Socialist Unity Party, to symbolise a postwar merger forced on the Social Democrats. For all this Mr Ulbricht’s administration is blatantly Communist, backed not only by the East German militia, police, and factory guards, but by more than 20 divisions of Russian troops. Its achievements have been considerable in raising living standards and expanding industry. With the zonal border closed, the many thousands of East Germans who will never become Communists but who bow

to Communist rule as the consequence of a bad postwar bargain are likelier to drift into permanent apathy. Nobody knows what genuine indigenous support the East German Communists command; wellinformed Western diplomats’ most generous estimates put it at 5 per cent, of the population, with perhaps another 10 per cent, moderately sympathetic. Mr Ulbricht’s dependence on the Soviet Union does not eliminate differences within his own party on both ideological and economic issues. These differences found expression during a recent conference, when much time was devoted to reviewing the country’s crises of 1953 and 1958. There were echoes of Moscow’s own polemics on Stalinism and the “ cult of “personality”; but Mr Ulbricht apparently was exonerated of suspicion that he had deviated from the correct party line. Among reports received by the conference were criticisms of the lagging progress of farm collectivisation. The conference, however, was most notable for Mr Ulbricht’s declaration that the East German economy must be integrated as closely as possible with that of the Soviet Union. Trade generally, said Mr Ulbricht, must be replanned to make East Germany completely independent of the West, and, presumably, to end commerce between the two Germanies that in recent years has totalled about £2OO million annually. All this, reflecting the desires of Mr Ulbricht’s masters, augurs very badly indeed for the reunification of Germany.