Foreign News: Greatest Little Zone

The Russians last week staged a boosters’ get-together. At Karlshorst, some 40 German administrators of Germany’s Russian zone discussed progress and problems with 30 Soviet colleagues. There were three days of dinners, concerts, ballets and pep-talks. With Babbittical zeal, Marshal Georgi Zhukov strove to show the delegates that theirs was the greatest little zone in all of Germany. Said he: “. . . Our zone will, by virtue of its own achievements . . . command respect and assume a position of leadership.”

Stockings & Coal. Booster Zhukov had something to boast about. The Rus sian occupation was heavy-handed but effective. Results, to date:

¶ Though the Russians had plundered industrial equipment at will, they had started the wheels of what economy eastern Germany had left. By last week, industrial production was at 20% of the 1938 level, as compared to 5 to 10% in the U.S. zone. Brown coal output was at 50% of 1937. The first new-model automobiles were in production, as were stockings, underwear, gloves, tiles for Germany’s millions of roofless houses. Even pots & pans were being made—from helmets.

¶ The Russians had energetically pushed socialization. About half of the factories were now run by Workers’ Councils (often arbitrarily appointed by the Russians).

¶ Above all, the Russians had smoothly given the Germans a large amount of self-government, from an all-zone cabinet down to provincial presidents and mayors.

Potsdam’s End. Clearly, the Russians, still yammering at the Western powers for coddling Germans, were promoting German good will toward Russia. At the Karlshorst conference, the German delegates got Zhukov’s word that by year’s end removals of industrial equipment would cease. Declared the Marshal: “Stalin has said we did not intend to destroy the German people. . . . We are now bent on aiding [Germans] in reconstruction.”

As the four powers entered a new and more important occupation phase, the Russian rough-stuff was about finished. Britain, France and the U.S. were just about beginning theirs, with large-scale industrial destruction and removals.

The failure of the Potsdam plan to coordinate Allied policy was generally conceded. The U.S. had sponsored the Potsdam formula; now it had neither a substitute proposal nor even a coherent plan for bearing its share of responsibility after military government ends next spring. From the first, the British had considered Potsdam too harsh. Now they, too, lacked plans for the next phase. Only the Russians had what they wanted: 1) German machinery and 2) the beginnings of German respect.