by Heinz Kohler
I thought all the fuss was absurd and even hilarious, but Helga didn’t agree. At the time, her piano concerts were appearing on the East Berlin radio and, for some reason I couldn’t understand, she took her employer’s propaganda quite seriously. Before long, the Cold War infected us as well. We argued a lot about politics and I made things worse by sharing with her the draft of my first book, entitled Soviet Reparations Policy in East Germany, 1945-1953. I also showed her two of articles of mine that were slated to appear in Kyklos, the International Review for Social Sciences, and dealt with the same subject.
Helga read the summary of my forthcoming book:
Chapter 1. The Legal Basis.
The subject of German reparations was first discussed at the Yalta Conference, in February 1945. The Allies were determined not to repeat the errors of 1919. The Versailles Treaty which had demanded the impossible–namely, that Germany make huge cash payments in dollars–and had precipitated Germany’s hyperinflation, massive redistributions of wealth, and the rise of Hitler. At Yalta instead, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin agreed to exact future reparations in kind only and to do so with the goal of destroying Germany’s war potential. For this purpose, Stalin demanded 1) the removal of capital resources–factories, equipment, inventories of finished goods and raw materials, and the like–over the course of two years, 2) annual deliveries from current production, over the course of twenty years, and 3) the use of German labor, without specifying details as to where and when. Roosevelt and Churchill wanted to stick with (1) alone.
At the Potsdam Conference, in July/August 1945, only point (1) entered the formal agreement signed by Truman, Attlee, and Stalin. But Stalin insisted that Potsdam had confirmed Yalta, which led to constant frictions in the new military government of Germany, the Allied Control Council, and its ultimate demise in March 1948 when the Soviets decided to boycott it.
Helga looked up.
“Surely,” she said, “given what Germany did to the USSR, comrade Stalin had a valid point. You are being tendentious.”
“No, I’m not,” I said. Comrade Stalin? I thought. I couldn’t believe it.
“Look at the Preface!” I said, “this is what I say: ‘The Communist press, with great vigor, skill, and consistency depicts the Soviet Union as East Germany’s greatest benefactor. Quite the contrary is true. At least until 1953, the overriding Soviet goal in East Germany has been the taking of reparations in all forms and ways imaginable. However, the enormous extent of Soviet exploitation is quite understandable if one looks upon it as, perhaps, a small payment for the appalling physical and human wreckage visited upon the Soviet Union by the German invaders.’ Surely, that’s not tendentious. Unlike Neues Deutschland, I’m just telling the truth.”
“Alright,” Helga said and returned to my summary.
Chapter 2. The Trophy Campaign.
From the moment of occupation to the end of 1946, special Red Army ‘trophy units’ were busily gathering war booty. Unit commanders were personally responsible for the success of these operations, which accounts, perhaps, for the waves of physical violence that accompanied them. An estimated 2–8 billion RM of goods were confiscated, including equipment and stores of the German military, agricultural and industrial inventories (stores of grain, potatoes, semi-finished and finished industrial products), animals, agricultural machinery, telephone lines, rolling stock and signaling equipment of railroads, lumber derived from cutting down entire forests, and all sorts of items taken from hospitals, university laboratories, museums, and the homes of the civilian population.
“Goods worth 2–8 billion Reichsmark?” Helga asked. “How could you possibly know?”
“It’s an estimate,” I said, “but not entirely off the wall. Both the Russians and their East German friends are keeping meticulous accounts of everything–the good old Teutonic compulsion we know so well–and sooner or later these pieces of paper make their way into West Berlin. There are thousands of classified documents at the Free University, and I’ve been studying them for over a year. It’s fascinating stuff!”
“So, basically,” Helga said. “you are working in a nest of spies.”
Nest of spies? I thought, where is this coming from? There was a chill in the air and I wished I hadn’t brought my manuscript.
“I wouldn’t put it that dramatically,” I said. “I am just trying my best to find and tell the truth. Keep reading.”
Her balcony door kept rattling and gusts of wind were banging on the windows.
“Alright,” Helga said.
Chapter 3. Official Dismantling.
According to the Communist press, ‘the greatest part of East Germany’s industry had been destroyed by the end of the war; hence dismantling has had minimal impact.’ Not true. In fact, much of housing and transportation facilities had been destroyed, but industrial facilities were in fairly good shape even by the end of the war. An estimated 17 % of East Germany’s 1936 industrial capacity was destroyed by bombing and ground fighting. However, massive new investments had been made between 1936 and 1944, leaving East Germany’s 1945 industrial capacity at least equal to 1936, possibly 50% higher. Soviet reparations teams targeted this prize in waves:
1) A first wave dismantled coal mine installations, railway repair shops, power plants, highly developed technical plants, such as Zeiss optics at Jena, Ohrenstein and Koppel locomotives at Potsdam, and the electro-technical works of AEG and Siemens-Halske.
2) A second wave dismantled railroad tracks, sugar factories, breweries, and installations for the production of building materials, textiles, and paper.
3) A third wave dismantled chemical and shoe factories.
4) A fourth wave dismantled the synthetic rubber works Buna Werke Schkopau.
An estimated 5 billion RM of equipment was so removed, but the procedure was chaotic and it is unlikely that a comparative gain occurred in the USSR. Much of the material was destroyed during the dismantling process or later by the weather, inept transportation, and feeble attempts to reassemble it at a time when many parts were missing, along with blueprints and technical expertise.
This time, Helga said nothing. She had been there when we dismantled Ziesar’s power plant and she had seen parts of it rusting by the railroad station for years. Perhaps, she remembered. I kept having the weirdest thoughts while she read, like what one would have to do to disable an unexploded incendiary bomb. “Bury it with a pail of sand,” they had said in Berlin, “or douse it with water if it’s already sparking.” But that’s not what Captain Werther, our werewolf teacher in Ziesar had said. “Adding water will make it explode.” I didn’t know what to say to Helga.
Chapter 4. Deliveries from Current Production.
Military Order #167, On the Transfer of 213 Enterprises in Germany into the Property of the USSR on the Basis of Reparations Demands of the USSR, set up the so-called SAGs, Soviet Stock Companies, the entire output of which was delivered to the USSR or the Red Army stationed in East Germany. Officially, this policy improved upon dismantling by ‘acquiring reparations, while preserving jobs for the German working class.’ The companies involved produced gasoline, machinery, nonferrous metals, steel, and ships, as well as food, drink, tobacco, textiles, and, last but certainly not least, uranium ore (Wismut Co.). From 1945 to 1952, these reparations totaled over 39 billion RM/DM-E, an amount equal to somewhere between a quarter and a third of East Germany’s GNP.
“What’s GNP?” Helga interrupted my thoughts.
“The gross national product,” I said, “the total value of all commodities and services produced during a period.”
She kept reading and I kept thinking of the perils of unexploded bombs.
Chapter 5. The Use of German Labor.
Thousands of civilian specialists were arrested and moved to work in the USSR; hundreds of thousands of German POWs were retained in the USSR for years, long after the release deadline agreed upon by the wartime Allies. Almost everybody in East Germany knew of someone in this category.
In addition, of course, additional thousands of Germans performed services for the Red Army stationed on German soil.
Helga read silently, but the silence seemed to demand to be filled. That rattling balcony door was of no help. With each gust of wind, it kept opening just a tiny bit, filling the room with a momentary chill.
“You don’t have to read all of this,” I said, “certainly not right now.”
“I want to,” Helga said.
Chapter 6. Unfavorable Terms of Trade.
Before the war, the area now called the German Democratic Republic traded almost exclusively with countries in the west. Since then, commercial foreign trade has been reoriented towards the Communist bloc, with the USSR becoming East Germany’s major trading partner. According to the East German press, ‘in this trade, the Soviet Union has to a high degree been the giving partner,’ meaning that the USSR has favored East Germany in foreign trade pricing compared to how she would have fared in trading with the capitalist west. But nothing could be further from the truth! Even foreign trade has become a new form of Soviet exploitation.
Based on 110 import and 176 export commodities–all measured in physical units and then evaluated at world market prices–a calculation of East Germany’s gross barter terms of trade, the ratio of import quantity index over export quantity index, shows this: East Germany could have gotten more imports if she had sent the same exports to the west rather than to the USSR.
I looked over Helga’s shoulder. “Almost done,” I said.
Chapter 7. The Consequences.
The consequences of the Soviet occupation policies are best seen by comparing the economic performance of East and West Germany since the end of the war.
Even by 1953, East Germany’s annual output had not regained the same area’s output of 1936. West Germany’s annual output was 50% higher than in 1936. The explanation is fairly obvious. East Germany’s poverty, which any visitor can see and which these numbers reflect, is the result of two factors. First, the huge reparations exacted from East Germany took away precious capital and labor resources, the key ingredients needed to produce output, and, in addition, by also claiming a large percentage of the lower output, they reduced the country’s ability to make new investments and restore its capital stock. Second, the replacement of the market economy with an awkward system of central planning, which, among other things, directed foreign trade into unfavorable channels, did its part to slow economic growth.
“Wow!” Helga said. “And you really trust all these numbers?”
“They’re the best we have.” I said.
“And if you walk through East Berlin and then West Berlin you surely see the difference?” I asked.
“All this makes me feel uncomfortable.” Helga said. “You better don’t let anybody catch you with all this stuff. You could get 20 years as a spy.”
That’s what my mother said as well when I got home. She was very upset.
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My mother also said I should never go to East Berlin again. I promised, but I lied. I had my reasons. For one thing, I wanted to see Helga; for another, after Stalin died, East Berlin had become much more interesting. Despite the fact that East Germany’s secret police or Stasi [Staatssicherheitsdienst = State Security Service] was said to be larger than the Nazis’ Gestapo, people everywhere were grumbling openly and comparing their miserable lives with the glittering showcase that was West Berlin. There were acts of defiance. One day in early June, Helga and I went to a restaurant near her apartment and they were openly playing RIAS, the West Berlin radio station. Everyone listened to the crowning of Elizabeth II and to the story of the gift she had received from a New Zealand beekeeper, Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide, Tensing Norkay. They had conquered Mount Everest and planted the British flag. But that was nothing compared to things to come.
On June 17, 1953–no one in Germany can forget that date–all hell broke out. I was with Helga at the time and we woke up because of all the shouting in the street. When we looked out, we couldn’t believe our eyes. The whole street was filled with people, and some of them were climbing up on Stalin’s statue. They put a rope around his neck and pulled hard. It fell! A shout of great joy rose to the heavens, and then the steel workers came around the corner with their trucks. They had on yellow hard hats and carried steel pipes. By then we were in the street ourselves and saw the workers march up to the police station, mocking the officers with a sign they had torn from a border crossing.
“End of the Democratic Sector,” it said. A nice pun.
The workers made a lot of noise, shouting slogans about the government leaders, like
“Goatee [Ulbricht], Belly [Pieck], and Glasses [Grotewohl] Are Not the Will of the Masses!”
We heard windows being smashed and saw cars being overturned. The Party offices down the street were on fire. Someone hooked up a big loudspeaker to RIAS Berlin, and the voice said that the red flag had been torn from the Brandenburg Gate, workers were singing the West German national anthem outside the Soviet Embassy at Unter den Linden, and the whole country was up in arms!
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Later that day, in another part of town, the tanks came, and they fired over our heads. They rolled over a man, crushed him and squeezed him out like a tube. A second tank drove over a large pool of blood. I felt dizzy, my pulse raced, and we ran.
Behind us, people screamed, and the workers took their steel pipes and stuck them into the chains of the tanks. The chains twisted a lot and the tanks stopped. The Russians came out and ran. Some people put black smoke into the tanks. Others threw cobblestones at the Russians.
Verein des 17. Juni 1953, e. V., Berlin, Germany
I asked Helga to come with me to West Berlin, but she wouldn’t. I asked her again; she refused.
“Be smart,” I said. “Please.”
She wouldn’t and my life changed. At that very moment, my life changed. I decided to leave while I could. The buses and street cars weren’t running–they had in any case long since stopped crossing the border–and I walked along streets filled with thousands of people, walked past the Columbus House on Potsdam Square; it was on fire. So was a newspaper kiosk across the street and workers were tearing up the border installations. At the corner, on the poster column, a policeman was posting a notice:
Measures taken by the government of the German Democratic Republic with the aim of improving the life of the people have been answered by fascist and other reactionary elements in West Berlin with provocations and severe disturbances of law and order in the democratic sector.
The riots which have now occurred are the work of provocateurs and fascist agents of foreign powers and their accomplices in German capitalist monopolies. The government asks the population:
1) To support all measures aimed at restoring immediate order and to create the conditions for normal and peaceful work at all places of work.
2) To arrest the provocateurs and hand them over to the organs of the state.
Those guilty of disorderly conduct will be held strictly accountable and will be punished severely.
The Government of the German Democratic Republic
Otto Grotewohl, Prime Minister
Berlin, June 17, 1953
I found another notice as well; this one from the Russians:
Order of the Military Commandant of the Soviet Sector of Berlin
Re: Declaration of a State of Emergency in the Soviet Sector of Berlin
For the sake of maintaining public order in the Soviet sector of Berlin, I command:
1) As of 13:00 hours of June 17, 1953, the Soviet sector of Berlin is in a state of emergency.
2) All demonstrations, meetings, pronouncements, and other assemblies of more than 3 persons in the streets and squares and public buildings are forbidden.
3) Any traffic by pedestrians and vehicles is forbidden between 9:00 hours in the evening and 5:00 hours in the morning.
4) Those who violate this order will be punished in accordance with t
he laws of war.
Military Commandant of the Soviet Sector of Berlin
Major General Pavel Dibrova
Berlin, June 17, 1953
On the next day, the West Berlin evening papers carried copies of another poster yet. Knowing that I had been in the middle of it all, my mother was almost hysterical.
Notice of the Military Commandant of the Soviet Sector of Berlin
Berlin, June 18, 1953
It is hereby noted that Willy Göttling, a resident of West Berlin, who acted on behalf of a foreign intelligence service and was one of the active organizers of the provocation and unrest in the Soviet sector of Berlin, and who has participated in the bandit-like excesses directed against the government and population, has been sentenced to death by firing squad.