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Conclusion: How the GDR Came to Be

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Conclusion: How the GDR Came to Be Conclusion: How the GDR Came to Be Reckoned from war's end, it was ten years before Moscow gave real existing socialism in the GDR a guarantee of its continued existence. This underscores once again how little the results of Soviet policy on Germany corresponded to the original objectives and how seriously these objectives had been pursued. In the first decade after the war, many hundreds of independent witnesses confirm that Stalin strove for a democratic postwar Germany - a Germany democratic according to Western standards, which must be explicitly emphasized over against the perversion of the concept of democracy and the instrumentalization of anti-fascism in the GDR. 1 This Germany, which would have to of­ fer guarantees against renewed aggression and grant access to the re­ sources of the industrial regions in the western areas of the defeated Reich, was to be established in cooperation with the Western powers. To this purpose, the occupation forces were to remain in the Four­ Zone area for a limited time. At no point could Stalin imagine that the occupation forces would remain in Germany permanently. Dividing a nation fitted just as little with his views. Socialism, the socialist revolution in Germany, was for him a task of the future, one for the period after the realization of the Potsdam democratization programme. Even when in the spring of 1952, after many vain attempts to implement the Potsdam programme, he adjusted himself to a long coexistence of the two German states, he did not link this with any transition to a separate socialism: the GDR had simply wound up having to bide its time until the Cold War had been overcome, after which it would be possible to realize the agree­ ments reached at Potsdam. It is doubtful that the GDR state was ever a part of the "socialist community of states" in Stalin's view. This idea was originally so foreign to Stalin's longtime co-worker Molotov that he initially conceived of the Warsaw Pact in 1954-5 without the East German state. As the reason for his view, he asked Khrushchev, "Why should we fight with the West over the GDR?" Khrushchev was amazed by this.2 Stalin's successors once again made an energetic attempt to realize his pro­ gramme before they got to like the idea of "socialism in half a land" 171 172 Stalin's Unwanted Child owing to a mixture of insufficient knowledge of the original consid­ erations and pragmatic adjustment to realities. The history of Soviet policy on Germany in the first postwar decade thereby not only shows that even with all the monstrosity of his tyran­ nical system, securing the Soviet Union from dangers both real and imagined took absolute priority over all conceivable ideological objec­ tives. It also demonstrates that he was capable of constructive insights outside Leninist patterns of thought. In the attempt to harmonize realpolitical insights with ideological certainties, Stalin became con­ vinced that paths to socialism other than the Soviet one were also possible and that the path in Germany was via the parliamentary­ democratic system. From all this, there arose chances for establishing a democratic or­ der, meeting Western standards, for the entirety of occupied Germany. There also arose chances for containing the East-West conflict, whose full scope was perceived by almost no one. The internal documents show that the hopes for an "anti-fascist, democratic republic" and a "unified Germany" without the Soviet system, hopes with which young idealists such as Wolfgang Leonhard took up the work of rebuilding,3 were based not on illusions as to Soviet objectives but rather on a very exact feeling for what was possible. There were possibilities not only in the spring of 1952, but in the entire period from the war's end to the summer of 1953, and first signs of possibilities in both of the following years as well. Even if the Soviet authorities and their Ger­ man favourites again and again resorted to repression and manipula­ tion in order to carry out their commission, this does not change the fact that an understanding on a republic within the framework sketched out at Potsdam was at the top level fundamentally possible at any time - if only the Western powers wanted it. Close observation of developments within the leadership circle of the SED underscores that the partisans of Western principles had nothing to fear. Erich Gniffke reports that during the first two years after the unification of the two parties, the Social Democrats in the SED leader­ ship could "violate Marxist-Leninist fundamentals to their hearts' content". They could hold opinions different from those of the Communists, they could even oppose the Communists. Ulbricht's continual an­ swer was: "Good, comrades. We must discuss this question." And the questions were discussed with success in that the Communist arguments were softened in most instances. A front consisting of Conclusion: How the GDR Came to Be 173 Social Democrats and some Communists formed against the doctri­ naire Stalinist Ulbricht.4 The same development manifested itself in the spring of 1953: shortly after Stalin's successors had told the SED leaders that the orientation on "constructing socialism" had been wrong, an intensive discussion process began in the Politburo. This process not only aimed to make the GDR once again "ready for unity" but also thereby explicitly criti­ cized the Stalinistic methods standing in the way. Certainly, this criti­ cism did not right away encompass all aspects of GDR realities needing reform; and its partisans did not act decisively enough either in order to be successful in the end. All the same, it must be emphasized that the revision of the situation was actively pursued by the Politburo al­ though the "former Social Democrats had in the meantime become a minority in that body. Also, after some orientation problems, the over­ whelming majority of the Politburo took aim at the core power-politi­ cal question: that of eliminating Ulbricht's dictatorship. Furthermore, they did not let the events of 17 June dissuade them from these efforts. More broadly put: If the perspective for the whole of Germany had only shown itself clearly enough, Ulbricht's revolutionary programme would have fallen behind even under the exclusive control by the Soviet occupier. Under a joint regime of the four occupying powers, regard­ less of how it were to come about, Ulbricht's programme would have had no chance at all. Conversely, division and the presence of Soviet occupation forces were not sufficient conditions for pushing through the Stalinist system in the Soviet Zone. Beyond that, what was indispensable for establishing GDR-socialism could be quite vividly seen in Ulbricht's seizure of power in 1948 as well as in his rescue in the summer of 1953: on both occasions the assumption was sufficient that the consolidation of Ulbricht's position corresponded to the desire of the Moscow leadership in order for Com­ munist functionaries, but also politicians of democratic provenance who were ready to adjust, to help him put through his revolutionary fanta­ sies against their better judgement. That on both occasions their com­ pliance rested upon a delusion gives their actions a tragic dimension in hindsight, but also highlights their share of the responsibility. The manoeuvring room of the East German politicians was larger than they believed it was under the impression of the Stalinistic practice of ar­ rest and manipulation. In addition to intellectual freedom, a significant measure of willingness to take risks was, admittedly, also needed in order to perceive this. 174 Stalin's Unwanted Child Walter Ulbricht, however, must be regarded as the person mainly responsible for real existing socialism in the GDR. As little as the person and politics of Ulbricht are to be understood without the long conditioning through the Comintem, as little as he could have triumphed without like-minded comrades and fewer assistants freely offering their services: it was he who first of all sought to carry out the Bolshevik Revolution on the soil of the Soviet Occupation Zone. The GDR is inconceivable without him. Subjectively only a model student of Stalin's, he was in fact a revolutionary in his own right - one driven by a mixture of ideological sense of mission and thirst for power; since his arrival in Berlin, concerned with submission and control, adaptable but skilfully exploiting every chance to push through his conceptions. That he believed himself to be in agreement with Stalin, did not hinder him from actually pursuing his own course - by interpreting instruc­ tions from Moscow in his own way, by accepting stimulus from the SMA in so far as it fitted into his concept, and by using the frequent vagueness of Moscow's signals in order to introduce his own influence. After Stalin's death, Ulbricht regarded himself as his own master, at least the equal of the various successors in the Kremlin. Only in ex­ treme situations was he aware that his revolution ultimately rested upon the presence of Soviet troops. Apart from those situations, he only too gladly took the appearance of forced adaptation for historical progress - as he understood it. Incidentally, with his cadre regime, which cre­ ated the fiction of a "workers' and peasants' state", he contributed in a decisive degree to the perpetuation of the division between East and West - and thus to the permanent presence of Soviet troops, which were in tum the prerequisite for maintaining his fiction. Emphasis on the central role of Ulbricht in the rise of the GDR does not release Stalin from his responsibility. Even if the Soviet dic­ tator did not want the pseudo-socialistic East German separate state - for reasons of the security of the Soviet Union, as must once again be emphasized, rather than out of any sort of weakness for German unity - the GDR was in the final analysis his child, more exactly put, a child of the system he had begotten.
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