Moscow's Note on German Unity
HAHN, WALTER F.
Moscow on German Unity By Walter F. Hahn In Warsaw on Tuesday, October 23, Wladyslaw Gomulka announced the inauguration of a new "independent" policy for Communist Poland. In Budapest, the first...
...And in Bonn the German Federal Republic received the official answer to its recent request for a Soviet bill of particulars on German unity...
...It took cognizance of Western differences over the future of Germany...
...Even before the Polish and Hungarian explosions, the ferment caused by de-Slalinization had brought wide-ly advertised changes to all of Eastern Europe in the form of the release and 'rehabilitation' of political prisoners and freer expression of opinion...
...We are not going to change the Government because it is the fashionable thing to do," Premier Otto Grotewohl warned...
...the Soviet Union is overtly on the defensive...
...According to diplomatic sources, Marshal Tito agreed during his recent talks with the Soviet leaders in Yalta that he would not try to influence Poland, Czechoslovakia and East Germany to follow their own roads to socialism...
...Germany continues to offer the perfect launching site for a full--eale Western offensive...
...In addition to the Soviet forces stationed there, some 270.000 local troops and security police were reported on a stand-by basis...
...The Soviet note thus solemnly closes the door on unification ("Talks about German reunification through all-German elections no longer have any factual foundation") but conspicuously refrains from locking it...
...Because it enjoys relations with both German states, the Soviet Union magnanimously offers to "assist" in this rapprochement...
...The possible explanation for this difference in treatment is supplied by a New York Times dispatch from London...
...With a modicum of prodding on the part of the Soviets, the Germans would eventually tire of "empty" Western promises and take unilateral action...
...East Germany promises to become the last area west of the Soviet Union under direct Red Army control...
...The first move must be a new and imaginative proposal on German unity...
...This could possibly be dismissed as standard fantasy by standard anonymous sources...
...The continued occupation of East Germany not only provides some justification for maintaining token Soviet forces in Poland, but, more significantly...
...Significantly, however, the changes in East Germany had been relatively small...
...While these new circumstance-may not be a boon to the chances of German unification, they provide a perfect opening for Western initiative...
...Whatever the outcome of the transition in the satellite regions, one certain result will be the drastic constriction of the political area favorable to Soviet military operations...
...The Soviet timetable anticipated a definite sequence of events...
...The establishment of relations with the Bonn Republic enabled Moscow, on the one hand, to lend its official imprimatur to the status quo and, on the other, to provide the Germans with ready-made machinery for bilateral negotiations bypassing the Western capitals...
...It would be more than presumptuous to suggest a categorical answer at this early juncture of events...
...Nevertheless, the fragmentary evidence available leads to some tentative conclusions...
...More specifically, may not the present revolutionary wildfire spread to East Germany...
...In Budapest, the first demonstrators were gathering in the square before the Hungarian Parliament building...
...A further exchange of opinions between Bonn and Moscow is deemed "desirable," but預nd here is the key...
...The Adenauer Government, already weakened by the defection of two coalition partners, is facing the greatest challenge of its long political life...
...First of all, the chances of East Germany becoming a battleground appear remote at the moment...
...And then the direct wire between Bonn and Moscow would be ready...
...The Soviets came to realize that they had more to gain by keeping the German problem alive than by settling it葉hat time and the prevailing trends within Germany and the West were in their favor...
...There has been increasing talk in Bonn about the possibility of a Crosse Koalition which would include the Social Democrats...
...Whatever the form of this coalition, two results would be certain: the removal of Chancellor Adenauer from leadership, and a palpable deviation from the course of unqualified cooperation with the West...
...Or, even if the "German Democratic Republic" is effectively insulated against insurrection, will not the increasing weakness of the Soviet Empire modify the Kremlin's determination to hold on to its German satellite...
...Will it force a drastic change in Moscow's approach to the German problem...
...But it conforms to the general dimensions of circumstances confronting the Soviets...
...The questions that have to be answered now, therefore, are: How will the transition behind the Iron Curtain affect the Soviet position in East Germany...
...To begin with, the Soviet approach to German unity must be analyzed in the general context of the shift from Stalin's brutal directness to the more fluid policy of his successors...
...West Germany is now in the process of preparing for Bundestag elections next spring...
...According to the Kremlin, "there can be only one way to approach the problem of German unification葉he two German states must come to terms with each other...
...If the elections do not succeed in defeating the present coalition directly, they may very well create circumstances which will have the same ultimate effect...
...These safeguards are more than simply ad hoc measures against the possibility of spontaneous events...
...A lengthy and carefully worded document様argely reiterating the stand Moscow has maintained since the Geneva Foreign Ministers' Conference in October 1955葉he Soviet riposte obviously had been drafted before the events in Poland and Hungary reached the crisis stage...
...It continues to blame the Germans for the European stalemate...
...It is up to the West to drive its advantage home...
...The agreement is reported to have resulted from Soviet insistence that it would be dangerous for the security of the Soviet Union to permit too much liberalization in the areas immediately adjacent to the NATO powers...
...These differences, the Kremlin believed, would prevent the West from pressing for a German solution so long as Russia's benign countenance in Europe promoted Western inertia...
...If this structure of assumptions has been obscure in the past, the present Soviet note dispels all doubts...
...Moreover, as soon as violence erupted in Poland and Hungary steps were taken to head off a similar outbreak in East Germany...
...The Kremlin can no longer withdraw voluntarily from East Germany for the simple reason that it has nowhere to go but home...
...Since the omens of these events had been on the horizon for some time, however, the Kremlin's note must be considered part of the same drama...
...By joining NATO, Bonn has "sacrificed the national interests of the German people" and is now "reaping the fruits of its own policy...
...The Pankow regime has done an effective job of erecting elaborate safeguards against a recurrence of the events of June 17, 1953...
...at the present moment the conditions for such [all-German] elections do not exist in Germany...
...More than ever, therefore, the Soviets will have to hold on to their German satellite...
...By conditioning any German settlement on a prior "understanding" between the two German states預 condition which the Kremlin knew could not be accepted by the present German leadership葉he Soviets simultaneously established an official alibi for doing nothing on the German question until circumstances appeared propitious for separate negotiations with Bonn...
...Here the question arises: Is it not possible that the entire complexity of the German problem will be changed by present events...
...Numerous economic concessions have been made to reduce discontent...
...The hint is unmistakable...
...For the first time since the advent of the cold war...
...We do not want any fashionable illnesses...
Vol. 39 • November 1956 • No. 46
