FACTORS IN GERMANY
THE British, American and French Notes to the Soviet Government on the action of the latter in building up a formidable armed force in Eastern Germany bring into the open and gives full precision to facts that were already generally known in less detail. There is no doubt about what is happening. Ever since the Russians began indoctrinating General von Paulus and other officers captured at Stalingrad there has been reason to wonder what their purposes were. That question cannot be fully answered even now, for'though the Allied Notes are specific so far as they go regarding the para-military formations—following disturbingly closely, the Hitler model—which have taken place in Eastern Germany it cannot be supposed that everything material is known regarding what is happening behind the barrier which divides Germany. But when it is asserted that some 50,000 Germans are embodied in military formations which include artillery, tank and infantry battalions, and are equipped in some cases with machine-guns, howitzers, anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft guns and mortars, the substantial truth of the charges cannot be questioned. Numbers are likely to be no more than approximate, but on such matters as types of weapons there are enough Germans passing from the Eastern Zone to Western Germany to make the general testimony entirely credible. That all this is a flat violation of a whole series of war and post-war agreements, notably those con- cluded at Yalta and Potsdam, needs no demonstration. The necessity for the complete demilitarisation of Germany was then agreed by everyone, and in Western Germany demilitarisation is complete. The existence in Eastern Germany of a powerful German force, with the Soviet army of Occupation behind it, constitutes a palpable danger, even though there are signs that service in the new forma- tions is by no means popular. Mr. Bevin suggested on Wednesday that Soviet policy was to stir up civil war on as large a scale as possible in Germany and Asia. There is nothing in the known facts to exclude that reading of the situation.
