Two Germanys React to Poland

...Warsaw's response could have been anticipated: The Party organ Trybuna Ludu replied to Adenauer's—and John Foster Dulles's—comments with a sharp warning against interference "in the development of our freedom...

...The affair was little more than camouflage for the fading influence of professional expellees in West German politics...

...on the other hand, the demand for return of all Gorman territories lost to Poland is heard less and less...

...The weight of history and the power of ideas are prevailing against mere ideologists...

...Moreover, since Gomulka succeeded in blocking incipient Soviet military intervention and Nagy was forced to accept the popular demand for withdrawal of Soviet troops, this question of troop withdrawal has matured overnight into a vital issue...

...The Federal Republic would like to begin peace negotiations with a demand for restoration of the German boundaries of 1937...

...Gomulka now wants the Polish Parliament to investigate these contracts...

...Industrial production in East Germany is already being curtailed by a fuel shortage caused by Polish failure to deliver, and East Germany cannot fulfil its foreign-trade obligations...

...The injustice is eleven years old, many of the expellees have emigrated, and a good majority of those living in West Germany now prefer to remain where they are...

...Through a network of economic and trade relationships, the Soviet Union established a system of foreign exploitation in the satellites...

...In Poland and Hungary, the people have regained a sense of their own sovereignty...

...The democratic states should persuade the peoples of Eastern and Southeastern Europe that they have no intention of interfering in their domestic affairs...

...The Social Democrats' reunification expert, Herbert Wehner, warned against taking malicious pleasure in what is happening: "One can only hope that a cold struggle for power will not again force Poland's working people to the ground...

...Ulbricht and his virtually unreconstructed East German Communist party must depend for survival completely on the kind of Soviet political and military interference that Gomulka has rejected for Poland...

...New prospects for reunification Two Germanys React to Poland By Harold Hurwitz Berlin The events in Poland and Hungary may shake the world as thoroughly as did ten Russian October days 39 years ago...

...Democratic Germany has a long way to go to dispel this fear...

...one East Berlin paper that carried too revealing an account from Warsaw was confiscated on the newsstands...

...He also gave an official stamp to the respectful caution urged by Opposition leaders: "The Poles know themselves what they have to do and what they understand by 'freedom.' " The most farsighted expression of the new attitude was offered by Willy Brandt, President of the Berlin City Parliament and a promising young Social Democratic leader whose loyalty to Germany's allies is beyond question...

...The development in Poland and other states ruled by Communists repudiates the inflexible thinking that hitherto has predominated not only in the Kremlin but in the West as well...

...The free elections apparently slated to be held in Poland and Hungary will put enormous pressure on the German Communist regime...

...Now that Schmid had taken the plunge for them, political leaders breathed more easily...

...Hitherto, the Bonn Government has separated the two questions by recalling the Potsdam Agreement provision that the border must be settled by a peace treaty?and the latter must be signed by the government of a united Germany...

...However, it has already made vague moves to lay the groundwork for a future compromise, although neither Government nor Opposition has felt it safe to go further for domestic political reasons...

...Responsible politicians here and in Bonn have shown sincere respect for Gomulka's difficult position and have refrained from smug jubilation at the expense of Moscow...

...He said that Polish-held German territory could he regained only through negotiations in which both sides revised their claims, and added: "It is a mistake to assume that the problem of reunification can be solved without first securing agreement on the territory beyond the Oder and Neisse...

...it is significant that the celebrated Pravda article denouncing the Polish press as "anti-socialist" was reprinted by Party papers in East Germany and Czechoslovakia...

...It is in the interest of her Western allies that she do so, for the domestic reforms promised in Warsaw and Budapest may well provide a foundation for the restoration of a democratic European order reaching far beyond the Elbe...

...The question is: How much are the rulers of the Soviet Union prepared to tolerate...

...Two weeks later, Walter Lippmann, reacting to the events in Warsaw and impelled by similar fears, suggested that a neutral belt from Scandinavia to the Balkans be created as a step toward German unity—a plan backed by the German Social Democrats...

...However, the threat to Poland from a free united Germany would surely be far less than that from the Soviet Union and her East German satellite...

...German unity has also acquired a new perspective, as has the eastern Harold Hurwitz is an American journalist who has lived in West Berlin since the close of World War II...

...The brilliant and unconventional Social Democratic Vice President of the Bundestag, Carlo Schmid, grabbed the bull by the horns at a French-German gathering in the first week of October...

...Recently, 500 chartered buses brought German Central and Eastern European expellees (not refugees from East Germany) to Bonn for a session of ultra-nationalistic speeches and slogans...

...Sweeping statements from Washington were privately criticized...

...The consequence is a rebirth of European libertarian traditions that cm exprex itself in revolution or evolution of economic and political iuslitutions...

...Views similar to those he expressed had been discussed widely in responsible circles, but only in private...

...A spokesman of the Free Democratic party, also in opposition to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's foreign policy, followed by saying: "The sparks of freedom should not be blown out by premature trumpet blasts...

...Soviet friendship'' means vastly different things to an Ulbricht and a Gomulka...

...unrest in industrial centers is undiminished...

...The reaction to Carlo Schmid's remarks—even before revolutionary developments in Poland and Hungary had made evident the need for a basic revision of Western policies ? was remarkable...

...It is the key to the independence of many nations and to German unity...

...Moreover, the more feasible German reunification appears in negotiations with Poland, the less adamant Germany's claims for the return of lost territory will become...

...Adenauer's first, doubtless well-intentioned statement contained some unfortunate remarks...

...A meeting of the "People's Parliament" has been canceled and a military alert announced...

...he expressed admiration for Poland's Christian foundations and spoke optimistically of a solution of the Oder-Neisse border issue with "a free Poland"—a term he clearly did not apply to Gomulka's Poland...

...Official Warsaw at the moment is even more bound than Bonn to reject any concessions in principle...

...Collapse of this system would also raise problems between the remaining satellites and the independent Communist states...

...The Polish development suggests that this may be an antiquated formula...

...Gomulka may also suffer Soviet economic sanctions, which could prove disastrous...

...It is too early for any government in Bonn or any democratic party to declare how far Germany would be willing to go in negotiations of the kind Carlo Schmid has urged...

...Yet, Poland's new "national Communist" leadership is surrounded by far less de-Stalinized neighbors on whose good will Poland must depend...

...Schmid's remarks were intended to allay French fears that a united Germany might involve France in a war with Poland...

...They should offer to normalize and expand international cooperation with them, above all in the economic field...

...Poland's fear of German expansionism is very great...

...like France, she feels safer when Germany is divided...

...The prospect of an independent "liberal Communist" Poland affects German interests on at least three levels: the stability of the Ulbricht regime, German reunification, and the Oder-Neisse border question...

...These trends should help to ease Polish fears...

...The same process of acclimatization to life in the prosperous Federal Republic is occurring among political refugees from the East Zone...

...He said: "Gomulka has certainly not ceased to be a Communist, but he is a courageous man with an alert feeling for the interests of his people...

...The Polish reaction to Schmid's statement was to repeat the formula that the Odei-Neisse line is the final border guaranteed by the Soviet Union and the "German Democratic Republic," although the Trybuna Ludu was pointedly not unfriendly to Schmid...

...The Chancellor's press chief, Felix von Eckardt, hastened to prevent future misunderstandings by defining "a free Poland" in terms that Gomulka would approve: a Poland that can independently govern its own foreign policy...

...East Germany has been slow to exploit the possibilities opened by the 20th Soviet Party Congress last February, though Ulbricht's "Tito-ist" opponent Franz Dahlem has been rehabilitated...

...The meeting was conspicuously boycotted by members of the Federal, state and local governments, and the verbal outbursts were roundly censured by responsible newspapers...

...Whether a national Communist Poland would be willing to enter such a system without Soviet agreement remains an open question...

...Naturally, Government party spokesmen called Schmid's suggestion inappropriate and "premature," but Erich Ollenhauer, speaking for the Social Democrats, endorsed it...

...and even Hans Joachim von Merkatz, of the right-wing "German party," defended Schmid by saying that there was nothing worse than slandering a politician for courageously taking up a critical question...

...border issue...

...As a political issue in West Germany, reunification is steadily becoming stronger...

...Non-intervention, unstinting economic assistance, and modest, un-dogmatic thinking may help the Western democracies to deal successfully with a revolutionary situation which they did not anticipate...

...His policies can serve to promote the cooperation of the peoples of Europe...

...The East German press has tried to suppress the news of Moscow's humiliation and sweeping concessions to the new Polish regime of Wladyslaw Gomulka...

...Eugen Gerstenmaier, leader of Chancellor Adenauer's Christian Democratic Union and President of the Bundestag, declared that "my friend Schmid took hold of this thing with manly courage...

...In a situation at once so promising and so complex, German democratic leaders, matured by responsibility for their divided country, are exercising admirable discretion...

...Gomulka's liberal program is bound to release popular forces that will strengthen the hand—perhaps decisively—of Ulbricht's opponents in Party and Government...

...They have thrown Germany into a state of extreme suspense, for anything less than violent Soviet repression of Polish freedom—which now seems unlikely —will leave Walter Ulbricht's East German satellite jeopardized as never before...