Aid for Ulbricht ?
From SARAH GAINHAM
THE East Zone of Germany (DDR) wants a credit in goods from Federal Germany to the value of about £100 millions for five years to be repaid mainly in oil deliveries, as well as some other goods. The goods, unspecified so far, may turn out when we get down to details to be food. They are not likely to be heavy industrial goods because purchases of steel, machinery and so on in West Germany have, up to now in this year, been considerably less than formerly while purchases of other goods have remained about normal; the barter deliveries from East Germany have also remained normal so that at May 15 the credit balance was about £3 millions ire favour of East Germany.
It is known here that at least another year will b.! needed by Ulbricht's planners to free East Germany from the need to buy heavy indust- rial goods from the Federal Republic and com- plete the turn-round towards integration with the Eastern bloc which is one of the causes of the bad living conditions in the Zone. The original feelers for a credit would not mention food, even if that is what Ulbricht wants, for propaganda reasons. The other interesting de- tail is that oil is suggested as a major part of repayment so that, looked at cruelly, the whole manoeuvre may be the using of brotherly feelings and German patriotism, apparently to help the seventeen million Germans in the Zone and ac- tually to further the marketing of Russian oil.
On the same day this news was first men- tioned, a fifteen-year-old schoolboy, trying to escape by swimming the Spandau ship canal in Berlin, was shot at with a fusillade of several hundred shots by the Volkspolizei and received seven wounds, several of them serious, including lung, arm and spinal wounds. To cover the last yards of his thirty-five-yard swim, the West Berlin Police had to open fire and most un- fortunately, but innocently, killed one People's Policeman and wounded another. These events, coming at the same time, bring up again sharply the question—should West Germany try to alleviate, with credits and advantageous trading conditions, the suffering in the East Zone and thus help the Communist apparatus to maintain its hold over the population and perpetuate itself?
The situation in China, or what little is known of it, is quoted as a comparable case. They are in fact quite dissimilar. For starvation and misery have been the common lot of the Chinese for many years and are at least partly due to natural causes which require long-term planning, huge investments and irrigation operations to over- come them. Whereas East Germany, though it probably never could feed itself literally and directly, cut off as it is from its traditional food- lands, east and west, is perfectly capable of earn- ing its living to buy food up to the living stan- dards of Western Germany, if those in power in the area were in the least concerned to do so. The arguments that Christians ought to supply wheat to China may well held water and Mayor Willy Brandt of West Berlin believes that any possible trade and cultural contact with East Germany should be carefully tended for the same Christian and humane reasons. It has also to be borne in mind that the request for a credit may be a feeler by the East German Government to determine how much co-operation they—remain- ing in power—can expect as a counter-weight to concessions they may be being forced by the Russians to make over traffic between Berlin and the West. But there is not yet the slightest evidence that a West German credit in food or other goods would help people in the Zone; and, even if it did, that anyone there would be allowed to know the source from which it came.
There is a further point. The people in the Zone, as far as their opinions can be known, are not in favour of help from the West because they know that it helps not them but the hated apparat. And even if the Wall is now an undeniable fact, is it possible on humane or Christian grounds to give support, direct or indirect, to a Police State that tries to stop runaway schoolboys with machine-pistol fire?
The conflict of conscience here is so complex that there seems to be no clear answer. This con- flict is typified by an editorial comment in Die Welt which asks itself if the policeman so tragic- ally killed on the. Eastern side was perhaps shoot- ing his sub-machine-gun wide of the target on purpose, as many of the People's Police are known to do, rather than one of those whose well-aimed shots actually hit the boy. Did the West Berlin police, bound as they were to answer• the fire after warning the East Berlin police already firing on the boy, kill an innocent man, themselves innocent of any intention but to cover the wounded youngster? How can they know?
In contrast, the tone of belated press and radio reports of the incident from East Berlin are in the usual vulgar, hateful tone; in contrast to the Western press they use terms such as 'assassin' and refer to the West Berlin police as OAS ban- dits; while the schoolboy is referred to as 'a male person trying to violate the frontiers of the German Democratic Republic by force.' Neither the age of the male person nor the fact that he was trying to get out and not break in is men- tioned; nor what force the unfortunate youngster was using apart from his arms and legs.
We are back once more with the historical German dilemma, crisis of conscience. Between a natural indignation at the coincidence of timing of these two events; fury at the cool cheek of Ulbricht murmuring his `Icleitte Bilte' through a hole in the sweet and lovely wall; and the thought of something that might affect for the better the lives of cousins, parents, in the East. A crisis, in fact, of a nation embroiled in civil war—if only cold.
Previous page
