SOVIET AND GERMANY

Chronicle (Levin), 1 April 1948, Page 6

SOVIET AND GERMANY

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Effort to End Potsdam Agreement

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The Soviet Government has _ cusmantled the quadripartite maehinery sot up by the Potsdam Conference for governing Germany. That is the effect of Marshal S6koloVsky5s exit from the Control Council and of the absence since then of Eussian members from the Council Secretariat and Committees. I say that they have dismantled the maehinery, not that they have prevented it from. working. Beeanse, »in £ act, . it had not been working to aiiy purpose for a long t'ime. It.had, indeed, hardly worked from the very beginning. Even in the autumn of 1945 that was already outstandingly visible. ' ' The four zonal administrations were funetioning. But the Allied Control Council and its subsi'diary organisations were doing little or nothing that had any positive influence 011 anything. The reason was they could concern themselves only with ' 'matters aft'ecting Germany as a whole." And from the heginning there was no such thing as "Germany as a whole." The Russians had dropped an "iron curtain" which cut the* country ett'ectively m two; to the i^ast of it they carried out their choseii policies without heed either t® the allies or • to the Control Council. ,In a partitioned Germany, the joint control maehinery could not really function. Except *111 a very limited range of subjeets there were no common policies for it to formulate. Such laws as it promulgated, such "directives" as it, issued, were merely those which would in any case have been promulgated or issued by the four .Commanders-iu-Chief separately. They represented the small common denominator of allied policy. In all major issues, policy in the fcloviet Zone difl'ered diametrically from the policies of the tliree Western Zones, while there were differences though less wide ones, betweenjhe three. So that a year after Potsdam, a former control commission ofiicial could say and substantiate with'full evidence that, "Executive power rests solely with each C0111-mander-in-Chief who can, and in fact does, run his zone on his ovvn or his' Government 's Jines. The work ' of the control authority for the wliole of Germany only really runs in denazification and demilitarisation and in some small matters lilce posts and telegraphs, taxes 011 beer and matclies, the banning of military sports and wearing of miXitary uniforms. ' ' And it has been so ever since, excc£)t that it has becoine a matter of liot controversy wliether even the Control* Council ;s decrees on denazification and demilitarisation are in fact enforced in the zones. That the organs of joint contrpl should eease, even any pretence of functioning therefore makes little ii any practical difference. Neither poiicy nor administratiOn 'in any "zon^' Will" hh' at all affected or in any way changed as a consequence. The importance ot the Eussian aetion lies rather in its significance as a gesture and in its timing. v As a gesture it is intended to make a definite ending of the Eour-PoWer cooperation in the ruling of Germany. It is the liquidatipn of the« • Potsdam system, an open ayo wai of "the policy of partition which unavowedly the Soviet Government'. has followed ' from thc first beginnings. And it is 110 coincidence that it comes at a moment of signiiiciince in the development of policy in the Soviet Zone itsell'. The Three-Pow'er talks in London were merely a pretext for Marshal Shkolovsky's action. It was, in fact, clearly limed to' accompany the setting up of the " People 's Council" and its " pracsklium. " Botll are oft'slioots of the " People 's Congress," a gathering of carefullv selected delegates all of tliem either CoJilmunisls or subservient and well "screened" auxiliaries. The People 's Council or " volksrat" — the vvord is deliberately cliosen, for "rat" is quite a customary German translation of "Soviet" — will consist of some 300 selected members: its praesidium — another vvord culled from Soviet institutions — of 30. They are plainly designed for the roles of parliament and cabinet in a puppet "German Govern- ' ment." And already their leaders are beginning openly to claim that they represent — as if they represented anybody! — not only the Eastern Zone but also all Germany; and that they will ioncern themselves with the economic and political questions of all Germany. It is the simultaneity of these two operations which is significant. On the oue hand, the last pretence of optratiiig the Potsdam system is abandoned. On the other hand, a puppet organisation is created which claims, though as yet only tentatively and in a shadowy fashion, to deal not only with the Soviet Zone but also with the whole of Germany. The two steps together are, as it were, a declaration of political war ir the German field. From now on, one oi the cardinal facts of;European policy is that the Soviet Government has dropped all profession of desiring allied cooperation in Germany and 'has set itself and its German "red quislings" the task'of converting all Ger mafty into a totalitarian vassal., Statt of the Soviet Empire." The offensive has begun.