In this situation, the Soviets used a system of rewards and
punishments. A secret Tyulpanov dossier from April of 1948 reveals how
the Soviets tried to entice reluctant politicians with food. "The most
progressive leaders of the LDP," the document reads, were to frequently
receive "food packages, food stamps, gifts and sometimes money, as an
expression of 'concern for their health.'" On the other hand,
"compromising material" was to be used against "leaders and party
officials with reactionary views," as well as against the press, for the
purpose of "cleansing the party leadership."
Anyone who fell into disfavor with the Soviets had to flee. In
December 1947, the Soviets deposed Berlin CDU leaders Lemmer and Jakob
Kaiser, who just three months prior had portrayed their party as a
"breakwater against Marxism" at a CDU convention in eastern Berlin. In
early 1948, Berlin's CDUn was split into two parts, one in the west and
one controlled by the Soviets. The branch in East Berlin issued the
slogan: "Ex oriente pax," or "peace from the East." The LDP was also
split in two at the beginning of 1948.
In early 1947, Berliners already had an idea of what was in store for
them. In a March 1947 cable to Moscow classified as "secret," Tyulpanov
reported: "There is a vigorous discussion within the population of
Berlin over whether Germany will remain a single country or be broken
into pieces. At the same time, there is a growing fear that Germany
could be divided up due to the opposing political views and ambitions of
the Allies."
Berliners faced the dilemma of having to align themselves with either
the United States or the Soviet Union. In September 1948, Tyulpanov,
writing in the SMAD newspaper
Tägliche Rundschau under the German
pseudonym "R. Schmidt," demanded that Berliners show loyalty to Moscow:
"It is very clear that, in a zone occupied by the troops of a socialist
country, only truly democratic parties stand a chance of further
development."
Behind this statement stood the threat of violence. In Berlin's
eastern sector, the Soviets also had personnel who knew how to treat
political adversaries with ruthlessness.
In January 1946, the Soviet State Security office in Germany,
headquartered in Berlin, managed 2,230 employees and 2,304 German
informants. Ivan Serov headed the German branch. The short general, son
of a czarist prison supervisor, specialized in the deportation and
subjugation of resistant peoples, from the Baltic Sea to the Caucasus.
Eastern German Prisons Swell
In Germany, he remained true to his reputation. In July 1947, there
were more than 60,000 prisoners in camps in the Soviet occupation zone
awaiting a court sentence. These prison camps included "Special Camp No.
3" on Genslerstrasse in Berlin's Hohenschönhausen district.
Until late 1945, the camp was primarily used to incarcerate
low-ranking Nazi officials as well as prominent sympathizers, such as
actor Heinrich George, who had played leading roles in films meant to
boost morale during the war, such as "Kolberg." But starting in 1946 and
1947, more and more Social Democrats, Christian Democrats and Liberals
ended up in the cells without heat, running water or windows.
Many inmates didn't make it. According to official statistics, 886
prisoners died in Hohenschönhausen between July 1945 and October 1946
alone, most as a result of malnutrition and disease.
In the Soviet-controlled sector of Berlin, the phrase "they picked
him up" was synonymous with the despotic rule under which Soviet
citizens had already suffered in the past. By March 1948, 6,455
Berliners had "disappeared." Neither attorneys nor courts could do these
people any good, and the families often never learned what had happened
to their loved ones.
As documents from Moscow that were long kept secret reveal, Soviet
generals were fully aware of the devastating consequences of these
methods. Major General Ivan Kolesnitchenko, the head of the SMAD in the
eastern state of Thuringia, wrote in a November 1948 report: "The
'disappearance' of people as a result of the activities of our operative
sectors is already the cause of great dissatisfaction within the German
population. I would venture to say that this approach by our security
officials elicits severe anti-Soviet propaganda and hatred of us among
the Germans."
The Soviet occupying power faced a dilemma: Its option of a neutral
Germany, with Berlin as its undivided capital, was obsolete by December
1947, in the wake of failed negotiations among the foreign ministers of
the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain over the
future of Germany.
Soviets Misjudge the Berlin Airlift
The Americans and the British prepared for the creation of a West
German nation, one that would be part of an alliance they dominated. A
key step in this direction was the monetary reform enacted in the
western zones on June 20, 1948. The Soviets responded by cutting off the
road and rail connections between West Germany and West Berlin.
Meanwhile, emissaries from Moscow were explaining the purpose of the
measures to SMAD staff. As Alexander Galkin, who is now 90 and was a
major in the SMAD at the time, recalls: "We were told that the Soviet
zone was being destabilized by the presence of Western troops in this
zone, West Berlin, and that the troops were an interfering factor and
had to disappear."
But Galkin sensed early on that the blockade would fail. "It could
only have been devised by people who knew nothing about the mood in the
western part of Berlin, or the transport potential of the British and
American air forces," he said.
At the end of June, the Western Allies began bringing supplies into
West Berlin through three air corridors. The "raisin bombers," as West
Berliners soon called them, brought grain, powdered milk, flour, coal,
gasoline and medical supplies to the western part of the city.
Authorities in East Berlin used their weekly newsreel, "Der Augenzeuge"
("The Eyewitness") to remind Germans of the Allied bombardments ("Back
then, these philanthropists showed up with bombs and phosphorus"), but
the propaganda was ineffective in West Berlin.
While American Douglas DC-3s roared over the skies of Berlin, the
city was breaking into two parts. When the Berlin city council refused
to defer to the SED, the party began organizing riots against the
assembly, starting in late August 1948. On September 6, the delegates
moved the city's parliament to West Berlin, despite the protests of the
SED parliamentary group.
Three days later, Mayor Ernst Reuter, speaking at a rally of more
than 300,000 people in front of the Reichstag building, made an appeal
to the West for solidarity: "You people of the world, you people of
America, England, France and Italy! Look upon this city and recognize
that you may not surrender this city and this people -- that you cannot
surrender them!" The partition had begun. In November 1948, the SED
formed a separate "Democratic Municipal Administration," by acclamation
of coerced "workers."
Blockade Over, Division Just Beginning
It's an irony of history that the Communists in East Berlin chose as
their mayor Friedrich Ebert, the son of the first president of the
Weimar Republic and a former Social Democrat, while a former top
Communist official, Ernst Reuter, led the resistance against the Soviets
in the West. In Lenin's day, Reuter was a people's commissar in the
USSR's Volga German Republic, and in 1921 he was briefly the general
secretary of the KPD.
The political air war over Berlin ended in defeat for the Soviets. On
May 12, 1949, after about 280,000 airlift flights, sometimes at the
rate of one flight a minute, the Soviets ended the blockade. It had cost
39 Britons, 31 Americans and 13 Germans their lives.
West Berliners, relieved that they had escaped Stalin's grasp, tried to
ignore the other side. The city was divided for the long term. West
Berlin remained a dependent entity and a protectorate of the occupying
powers for decades. The occupiers' intelligence agencies could spy on
Germans as they pleased, and they had veto power over the appointment of
department heads, including those at the Federal Office for the
Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic intelligence agency.
The SED, which now controlled East Berlin, initially emphasized
patriotic fervor. "As the mayor of Greater Berlin," Ebert said at an SED
party conference in January 1949, "I repeat the pledge of the people of
the capital not to end the fight for German unity and the creation of a
unified, democratic republic with Berlin as its capital a single hour
before this goal is achieved and the banner of German unity and German
freedom flies over the entire country."
But Ebert could hardly have imagined the circumstances under which German unity would be achieved 40 years later.
Sessão de constituição da Câmara Popular da Alemanha Oriental em 1949
Casa evacuada à força na década de 1970 em Mecklemburgo, junto à fronteira entre as duas Alemanhas
Bandeira e brasão da extinta República Democrática Alemã (RDA)
