Germany

ATLANTIC

September 1955

on the World today

A SINGLE day in Berlin is enough to bring home forcefully even to a casual foreign visitor why the issue of reunification is on the mind of every German. To the German it is not a question of diplomacy, as it may be in Washington, or powerful political bait, as it may be in Moscow. It is everpresent and it pervades the life of the individual as it pervades the life of the nation.

You go to a theater in the American sector of Berlin and you see two box offices, even two checkrooms: one for residents of the British, French, and American sectors, and another one for visitors from the Soviet sector of the city or the Soviet zone beyond it.

Why? Because the two parts of Germany have different currencies and because one West mark is worth five East marks. If an Easterner bought a theater ticket priced at 4 Deutsche marks, that would mean 20 marks in his currency; and since his wages are the same as, or a little below, the Western pay scale, the cost would be prohibitive. To check his coat and hat would cost him about as much as the ticket costs his more fortunate neighbor from West Berlin.

Therefore theaters and movies accept East marks — at special box offices and checkrooms — as equivalent to the Western currency. The city of West Berlin takes the loss, refunding the enterprise which accepts the East marks. In the course of a year this runs into money; yet the total is small compared with the other losses West Berlin has to assume because of the partition.

For example, there are well over 30,000 people whose places of work or stores are in the Soviet area, while their homes are in the Western part of the city. If they came home with their daily earnings in East marks, they would find that the money had lost four fifths of its purchasing power as they crossed from one side of a street, still in the Soviet sector, to the other, under Western occupation. So the city again takes a heavy loss by exchanging from 80 to 100 per cent of their earnings — according to the amount of their income — at a rate of 1:1. An East Berliner boarding the subway in the Soviet sector pays in Eastern currency and then can travel for miles in the Western part of the city even though he has paid only one fifth of the fare.

Schizophrenic Berlin

These and other losses have to be carried by a city which is an island in the Russian zone of occupation, separated from the German Republic in the West by more than 100 miles of Communist-ruled territory. Before the war some 600 railroad trains entered and left Berlin every 24 hours; today the number is 16. Every truck, freight car, or river boat arriving from or leaving for the West must have the permission of the Communist guards at the Iron Curtain. This involves endless red tape, inconvenience, and confiscations. Every so often the Communists lock the gate under some flimsy pretext. It takes little imagination to realize what such an arbitrarily used throttle must mean to production and business.

Despite heroic efforts, Berlin has not quite reached pre-war production rates, while West Germany has more than doubled hers. Food consumption is still below the 1938 level, and about 15 per cent of the city’s working force are unemployed, not to speak of the tens of thousands of underemployed. baking the 1936 level as 100, wages are at a level of 125 to 150, while prices have jumped to 170. The situation is aggravated daily by the influx of hordes of refugees, East Germans, fleeing the Communist rule. The city cares for some of them in homes and camps operated by the Red Cross. But many are left to fend for themselves; and since they do not have labor permits, they work at whatever wages an employer is willing to pay.

Democracy’s show window

Despite all these difficulties, West Berlin has not only survived Soviet blockades, restrictions, and chicaneries: it has rendered the West an invaluable service by keeping that Western beacon shining in the midst of the fear, hatred, frustration, apathy, and poverty of the Soviet sector and zone. One has to see the difference in buildings, store windows, and the mood of the people on one and the same street — left side Soviet, right Western sector — in order to realize that West Berlin is the most convincing evidence to friend and foe as to which is the superior way of life: democracy or Communism.

Every month 12,000 to 14,000 people of all ages leave behind whatever they own or love, determined to start anew in the free air this side of the Iron Curtain. These people have rendered the verdict on Communism. Most important: they have made their decision after watching democracy and Communism side by side for years. This is the tremendous contribution Berlin has made in the struggle of our age.

Moscow’s major objective is to extinguish this beacon which penetrates the Iron Curtain, to close this Western show window which is before the eyes of any hapless Communist-ruled satellite who either walks across the street into West Berlin or takes a subway ride from one world into the other. Force has failed to achieve this Kremlin objective in the past ten years. Now Russia has tried another tack. The latest maneuver has been a trial balloon for a “unified Berlin” that would be neutral and under a neutral governor. What this suggestion does not say, but implies, is that a neutral Berlin — East and West merged — would still remain a lonely island in the Soviet German zone, still at the mercy of the Communists surrounding it and cut off from the West even more thoroughly than today.

This is not the unification the German people want. To them Berlin remains the capital even though Bonn has been boosted into this spot for the time being. But most people feel that the arrangement is merely “for the duration.”A reunified Germany cannot be run from that charming small university town on the Western fringe of the country. In the hearts and minds of the Germans, Berlin remains and will remain the capital.

Reunification: Germany’s dream

Reunification raises a number of questions. What about the part of East Prussia which Russia has tacitly annexed and resettled with Soviet citizens after giving German cities Russian names (for example, Koenigsberg is now Kaliningrad)? And what about the areas under Polish occupation up to the Oder-Neisse river lines? If these provinces should remain Polish and Russia should return East Prussia, a sizable part even of the reunified Germany would be isolated except for sea-borne traffic across the Baltic, and reunified Berlin would be a mere 40 miles from the permanent Polish border.

Thus reunification of Germany involves much more than withdrawal of occupation troops and fusion of two halves of a country. It would mean the retreat of the Soviet Union and its Polish satellite behind the 1939 border and it would sound the deathknell for the German puppet regime which now controls some 18 million people. The repercussions of such a decision would be widespread throughout the Communist empire. Even the neutralization of Germany would be a low price for it.

A citizens’ army

For the German people reunification is the most passionately desired achievement , and it was merely a matter of tactics whether it should be tackled before or after the decision on rearmament. Chancellor Konrad Adenauer felt that Germany should become a member of the Western defense bloc and create her army first. In his opinion this would permit negotiations with the Russians from a position of strength. The Social Democrats — traditionally less keen about an army anyway — put reunification talks with Moscow first. The reason given was that Russia might trade the pawns she holds, for a German promise not to join the Western defense bloc. In other words the Social Democrats championed a reunited fatherland over a rearmed fatherland.

Public interest in the new German army is tied to the problem of whether it will or will not delay unification, whether it will or will not mean subservience to foreign dictation (that is the U.S. State Department). Even top Social Democratic leaders frankly admit that they have full personal confidence in Defense Minister Theodor Blank and in his associates, Generals Speidel and Heusinger, though both had high positions in Hitler’s army.

No one doubts that the government plans to create a defense corps which will break with the ill-famed militaristic tradition of the past two centuries. They want citizen soldiers under civil administration, with all the privileges of civilians, with pay equal to that of other civil servants, and with their officers coming up from the ranks.

The main objections raised by the opposition have been the speed with which Dr. Adenauer wanted to push the bill through Parliament, the idea that not the President but the Chancellor would be the real commanderin-chief, and certain loopholes which would permit the return of the military ghosts of yesteryear, eventually leading to an army which would throw off civilian control and once more become a state within the state, if not the master of the country.

The economic miracle

What will happen to the present prosperity when industry shifts to military production? For years now the German economic miracle has astounded the world. Seven years ago Germany’s currency was the American cigarette and the chocolate bar; today its currency is as sound as Switzerland’s. The nation which then would have starved and collapsed, had it not been for American aid, has in this short time become the world’s third largest trader, with exports five times what they were in 1948. Anyone who saw the bombed, burned-out cities after the war hardly believes his eyes when he sees the beautiful homes, modern plants, and luxurious shops which have sprung up like mushrooms practically over night. Puddings are being constructed or repaired at the rate of one a minute.

All this is as remarkable and admirable as it sounds. But it does not give the whole picture. Despite the feverish building activities which account for a large part of the current business boom, twenty to thirty years and $50 billion will be required to bring Germany to the standard of 1939. This is what escapes the casual, admiring observer. Neither does he pause to think that aside from the billions of dollars the United States has poured into Germany, the country has been in a position to spend every ounce of energy and raw material, employ every tool and every machine, on productive work, while all other European nations have been compelled to set aside a considerable part of their wealth, labor, and production facilities for defense. Now for the first time Germany will be at the same disadvantage.

Will the Germans be able to turn out enough for export to keep a favorable trade balance and a sound currency? And will they be able at the same time to produce enough consumer goods for the home market to prevent scarcity, runaway prices, inflation?

Help wanted

A rough estimate is that Germany will have to spend some 6 billion marks (equal to about one fourth of her annual export revenues) on investment for armament plants. She will need a minimum of 300,000 workers for these new factories. Economists wonder where the money and labor will come from. Capital is tight and labor is even scarcer. Every German newspaper carries pages of large advertisements offering positions in stores and factories. There are ten jobs for each applicant because unemployment is at an all-time low.

With such a tremendously increased demand for labor, will it be possible to hold wages at the present comparatively low level? The UN EconomicCommission reports that despite the economic miracle, German workers eat less, drink less, and drive fewer cars than their comrades in Britain or France. Their living standard is estimated to be about 15 per cent below the French. In order to give a German worker the living standard of the average American, his income would have to be boosted three times over. And this is what he gets for a work week which runs from 46 to 53 hours.

There has been some pressure for better wages and above all a 40-hour week. Businessmen doubt that the economy could stand either, especially when the country is recruiting a 12division army and creating a brandnew armament industry. In other words, while Germany’s physical reconstruction has been well under way for years, social and political reconstruction is going to face its toughest hurdles in the next few years. The fate of the post-war democratic experiment will depend on whether and how these hurdles can be taken.