Divided Germany
By MARK ARNOLD-MRS-WI Bonn, Berlin and Leipzig. March IF the Occupying Powers really want to reunite this country, they will have to do it soon—for the links which bind the Germans into a nation are weakening. In seven weeks' time Germany will have been split for six years. Since they were last united, in appalling adversity in the last few weeks of the war, the Germans have been receiving instruction from their conquerors in two incompatible philosophies. The result has been that the two sections of the nation are finding it more and more difficult to understand each other's problems.
Whatever their politics, people whose whole existence is regu- lated by the East German five-year plan cannot be expected to imagine the real meaning of the social and economic systems of the West German State. In the West the citizens of. the Federal Republic find it equally hard to appreciate what life in the Soviet Zone is like. Every year 250.000 East German children are con- sidered by the authorities to have completed a Marxist education. Some of these children at least (and some of their elders, too) will not even try to understand what is going on across the zonal border because, as their teachers have told them, it is wicked to run into temptation. At present they are still children, but their loyalty to Russia is absolute. Together with older but equally enthusiastic Communists they form a small but growing minority.
It is still a minority because most inhabitants of the Soviet Zone have learned, in the last six years, all that they will ever want to know about Russian Communism. The only thing that Stalin has said with which they agree is that it is time their country was united. They are supporting the current Russian campaign for German unity not because they agree with Com- munism. but because they wish to Be rid of it, and they believe that their only chance of liberatton lies in the election of an, all- German Parliament. No German anywhere would admit that such a Parliament, if freely elected, would include more than a handful of Communists.
All the same, some of them in Western Germany seem to be wondering whether it would yet be wise to reunite the country even if all-German elections can be held. They share with the Americans serious doubts about the advisability of leaving Ger- many, unarmed and unoccupied, as a vast European temptation to the Russians. They do not share these doubts with the inhabitants of Eastern Germany. Shipwrecked sailors hate listening over the radio to a discussion of the hazards involved in their rescue. In the Soviet Zone people feel, reasonably enough, that the Western Allies and the West German Government should stop talking and find an acceptable method of preserving the security of a future German State. They know that they can defeat the Communists in any ordinary election, and are waiting, not very patiently, to be given the chance to do so.
In West Germany. so far, people have only been discussing the essential preliminaries to an all-German election. The Federal Parliament has insisted, unanimously except for the Communists and two Right-wing Deputies, on the release of the political prisoners in Eastern Germany and on the freedom of the Press. They agreed that all political parties must be free to operate, before, during and after the elections, in any part of Germany, and that their members and supporters must be pro- tected against reprisals. Only under these conditions, said the Federal Parliament in its message to the occupying Powers, can the German people be asked to elect a Constituent Assembly. But neither the Federal Parliament nor the German people as a whole has yet begun to consider in any detail the situation with which such an Assembly would be faced. The Americans seem to be so pessimistic at the moment about the chances of their agreeing with the Russians that few Germans have even bothered to consider what they ought to do if, by any chance, the Foreign Ministers succeed. Those who have done so, and they include the Federal Chancellor, Dr. Adenauer, seem to feel that an unoccupied, defenceless Germany would be a menace to the peace of Europe. Dr. Adenauer has been warning audiences all over the country of the dangers of " neutralism," and in London one of his supporters, Dr. Gerd Bucerius, said recently : " We are praying that Germany will not be neutralised."
By " neutralism" they do not appear to mean what would normally be called " neutrality." What they fear, and are trying to prevent, is a state of affairs in which a weak Central German Government would still be subject to political interference by the Occupying Powers. Germany, meanwhile, would have been evacuated, and, at the insistence of the Occupying Powers, would remain disarmed. It would not, therefore, be politically inde- pendent. nor would it have the forces to defend its frontiers, as the frontiers of Switzerland are defended, against all comers. Moreover, as the-Hamburg weekly, Die Zeit, has pointed out, Germany cannot maintain its economic independence without the eastern territories. Another economic fact which has been partially concealed by events since the war is that the Federal Republic and the Soviet Zone are no longer economically inter- dependent. For nearly six years the two parts of the country have been incorporated in independent economic systems. The prosperity of the Federal Republic now depends on the Marshall Plan and may soon depend on West European rearmament. The Soviet Zone derives most of its raw materials from Russia and the " People's Democracies " many of its most important factories belong to the Soviet Government and most of the others have been nationalised. The two systems are not complementary and could not be combined at all easily into an efficient whole.
These and similar reflections seem to have been troubling Dr. Adenauer and his friends in Bonn. Although they all pay lip-service to the conception of German unity, many of them are nearly ready to admit that the country must remain divided. perhaps for generations. They realise that this will please no one in Germany (except the French authorities), but are now resigned, or nearly resigned, to what they conceive to be the inevitable. Their resignation is, of course, unacceptable to Dr. Adenauer's opponents. Several members of his own party, notably Herr Jakob Kaiser, his Minister for All-German Affairs, disagree with what they consider to be the Chancellor's immoderate devotion to the idea of a West European federation of Roman Catholic peoples. Nearly all the Social Democrats, the entire population of Berlin and most of the inhabitants of the Soviet Zone firmly believe in the need for German unity. In 1947 it was safe to assume that the Governments of Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States were genuinely anxious to unite the country. The Potsdam Agreement had already been administered in different ways in different parts of the country, the nation had been divided and the national economy, which had in any case been wrecked, had not been given a chance to recover from the war. Having experienced in different ways the unfor- tunate consequences of their own decision to divide the country. three of the Occupying Powers were anxious to unite it. The main reason why this common desire for unity could not be realised was that the division of Germany had harmed their interests in different ways.
Moreover, they had different conceptions of the whole purpose of the occupation. The Russians did not care what happened to the German people, but were vexed that the factories in the Soviet Zone could not produce enough goods of the kind they wanted most. Having taken the ready-made plunder which was there when they arrived, they were seeking new methods of exploiting the Germans' industrial abilities, and were soon to find that East German production could not be expanded quickly or easily without the Ruhr.
In the West in 1947 neither the British nor the Americans had forgotten about reparations, but their chief concern by then was the cost of keeping Germany alive. The economic distress in the British and American Zones had forced British and American taxpayers to pay large sums in order to support their former enemies. In 1947, therefore, the British and the Americans hoped that, by uniting the country and by stopping the exploita- tion of the Soviet Zone, they would at least be able to reduce their own expenditure. The Russians, on the other hand, were hoping to unite the country in order to increase their revenue. The Moscow Council of Foreign Ministers in 1947 proved to be the first of many occasions on which the views of the occupying Powers were incompatible. Their ruling motives, as the Germans realise, seem to have changed in the meanwhile, but they still do not coincide. If the Council meets again, its task will be a great deal harder than at any previous meeting. Since their last serious attempt to reunite the German State the occupying Powers have divided the German nation. The division may last.
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