Two Germanies?
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
PERSPECTIVES Two Germanies? By William Henry Chamberlin "ONCE we fix it in out minds that the two Germanys cannot be reunited by Soviet surrender, the only conceivable way, I submit, is to...
...Moreover, negotiations between the Federal Republic and Ulbricht would not only be humiliating but futile...
...But it is not only Lippmann and Khrushchev who favor proceeding on the assumption that there are two German states...
...with private property respected on one side and outlawed on the other...
...Thus wrote Walter Lippmann in his syndicated column of October 18, 1962...
...Should there be the kind of half or quarter revolution in the Soviet Zone that occurred in Poland in 1956, should Ulbricht be replaced by a more moderate and conciliatory leader able to gain more political and economic freedom from Moscow, there might be some limited value in informal conversations...
...with a multi-party system prevailing in the West, a single party system in the East...
...By William Henry Chamberlin "ONCE we fix it in out minds that the two Germanys cannot be reunited by Soviet surrender, the only conceivable way, I submit, is to start from the situation as it is...
...The second has been the movement of 3.7 million Germans from the Soviet Zone to the Federal Republic—one of the most striking examples of "voting with their feet" any people have ever given...
...At the height of the Cuban crisis, it will be recalled, he went on record favoring an abandonment of American bases in Turkey if the Soviet Union would withdraw its bases in Cuba—a suggestion subsequently advanced in a communication from Premier Khrushchev and promptly and properly turned down...
...Alongside the Federal Republic there is a Soviet occupation regime, completely dominated from Moscow, and without the least semblance of political and civil liberty...
...It is impossible to imagine an effective common German sovereignty with one part of the country closely associated with the West, the other with the East...
...What all the talk of two Germanies fails to recognize is that one can no more mix freedom with totalitarianism than water with oil...
...Ulbricht's foreigndominated tyranny has no more legitimacy than the occupation regimes set up by the Nazis...
...To grant diplomatic recognition to Ulbricht's Quisling government would be a Munich...
...Superficially, the idea of Germans talking to Germans and settling their own conditions for reunification may seem reasonable...
...And indeed it would be if there really were two independent German states, one committed to a free economy, the other to state ownership and control...
...There are other advocates of this view: many in the United States, probably more in Britain, and even a few in the German Federal Republic itself...
...To date this exodus, slowed down but not halted by the erection of a wall, has involved 20 per cent of the Zone's inhabitants and made it the only area in Europe with a declining population...
...it would violate an obligation the United States, Britain and France assumed in 1954 to recognize the Federal Republic as the only Government of Germany...
...This is not the first time Lippmann, in his pontifical way, has associated himself with a viewpoint favored by the Kremlin...
...The East German dictator could never consent to German reunification in freedom: First, because he is a narrow-minded Stalinist...
...But a worthwhile restoration of German unity is not tenable as long as one part of the country is free and the other totalitarian...
...There have, of course, been many impressive demonstrations of what the people in the Soviet Zone think of their rulers, but two in particular stand out...
...This means recognizing that there are two German states and then providing ways and means by which they can live side by side and, as Germans with Germans, work out in detail and by concrete experience their national unity...
...There is only one genuine German Government, the Federal Republic, which has been legitimized by repeated free elections held under conditions of freedom of speech, press and assembly...
...Such, however, is emphatically not the case in today's divided Germany...
...The first occurred in June 1953, when Soviet tanks had to be called in to put down a general strike that paralyzed the whole administration and was on the verge of sweeping away the regime...
...and second, because he would have to buy a one-way ticket to Moscow as soon as the Germans under his control had any means of political expression...
Vol. 46 • January 1963 • No. 1
