East Germany's Fate
There can no longer be any doubt about the fate reserved by their Russian masters for the people of East Germany. The arrest of the Foreign Minister, Herr Dertinger—the third East German Minister to fall in the course of a few weeks— has confirmed the lesson already taught in Poland and Hungary, that in Communist countries there is no room at the top for anyone except Communists. Mere sympathisers, or fellow- travellers, or harmless mediocrities who sit in high places and make no trouble meet sooner or later the same fate as those accused of the worst anti-Communist crimes. It is not parti- cularly easy to be sorry for them, for, in their own miserable way, they have asked for it. But the new Communist pressure in East Germany has not been applied only at the high levels. The sudden quickening of the flow of refugees into West Berlin, where they already represent a considerable social problem, is a sure sign of the reality of the threat to Jews, to the unfortunate occupiers of land on the Berlin city boundaries who are under the constant threat of tieing moved out so that a no-man's-land may be created between West Berlin and the Russian zone proper, or to anyone else who has reason to fear the Russians. The decision to turn the Russian zone of Berlin, in effect if not in law, into a fifteenth district of East Germany is another indication of the Communists' determination to tighten their grip whatever the cost may be in veiled dis- content and human misery. The only consolation in all this is the long-term one that, Germany being Germany, this policy is bound to fail sooner or later. But the chances of the ultimata re-unification being achieved without a violent upheaval are being very rapidly reduced.
