From under the ruins

In the collection of articles “War and Society in the 20th Century Vol. III”, the most interesting article, in my opinion, is “Socio-political transformations in Germany and Austria in the first post-war years” by A.M. Filatova. The remaining articles on Vietnam, the Middle East and the French colonial wars are just at school level.

These are the goodies Filatov has.

The American historian N. Neimark in his monograph “Russians in Germany” writes that until April 1945, any elections “the communists would have won with an overwhelming majority,” but then the Russian rapists destroyed “all legitimation for the Communist Party of Germany, whose chances on a European scale could be considered the best." The thesis is 180% contrary to the popular axiom that it was the wild Russians who instilled in the Europeans communism that was alien to them.

Further, Filatov himself claims that Western aid began to flow into the American, British and French occupation zones after they were thoroughly “cleaned” of valuables through black market mechanisms. Only when the hungry Germans began to look to the east, where they were fed porridge from field kitchens, did the Americans begin to change their policy.

Even more curious is the fact that for the first four years after the end of the war, economic recovery in the Soviet zone of occupation proceeded faster than reconstruction in the West. One of the reasons for this was that the Soviet occupation administration immediately launched the idle factories, while the Western powers were apparently still thinking about turning the Reich into a potato field?

As a result, in 1945 the index of industrial production in the American zone of occupation was 19.0, in the Soviet zone 22.0; in 1946 41.0 versus 44.0, in 1947 44.0 versus 46.0, in 1948 63.0 versus 72.0 and in 1949 83.0 versus 72.0 (according to other sources, 87.2).

American historian Yu. Davidson wrote: “Production in the western zone stagnated at an equally low level. With the permitted release limit of 5.8. million tons of steel, in fact, only 2 million tons were produced in 1946... Unemployment in the American zone increased by almost half a million people, while in the eastern zone it decreased from 372 to 182 thousand people...”

Influenced by these successes in the West, individual local parliaments decided to nationalize industry, but these decisions were canceled by the Allied military governors. True, in 1952 the Law “On the Equalization of Hardships” was passed, which provided for the confiscation of 50% of the wealth of those who increased their wealth during the war. So much for the “sacred right of private property.”

Very interesting information is provided regarding the atrocities of the bloody Gebnya. For war crimes, American justice handed down 800, and Soviet - 756 death sentences. But here’s what the head of the SVAG department in Thuringia, Major General I.S., wrote about this. Kolesnichenko: “After all, the Americans, the British and the French in their zones arrest no less, but more Germans than we do. Moreover, it is not so much fascist criminals who are arrested as democratically minded elements, especially communists. And yet the Germans are less sensitive about their arrests, because they follow the usual German procedure: they do not make a stunning secret out of it. On the contrary, they announce it at press conferences, in newspapers, on the radio, and inform relatives. Therefore, the Germans in the western zones cannot say that their people are “disappearing” en masse. And in our zone they say so and will continue to say so until the practice of arrests and treatment of those arrested changes.”

Discussing how this problem could be solved at a meeting of the Soviet part of the Control Council (in Austria) in May 1948, Siomanchuk, a representative of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, said that local media “are currently using the facts of disappearances of people, blaming the authorities Soviet Army... Is it possible to instruct these bodies to write appropriate comments in the newspaper?” To this, the USSR High Commissioner in Austria, General Kurnosov, replied: “What can be reported is written about. Instructing these bodies to write to the newspaper would mean the same thing as instructing you to conduct command post exercises.”

It is even more noteworthy that if in the western zone of occupation all political activity was prohibited, then in the east there was a multi-party system represented by the left parties of the KPD and SPD and the right parties - the CDU and LDPD. Of course, real hell was going on in politics. “The communists advocated bourgeois-democratic transformations, the social democrats demanded the immediate introduction of socialism, sometimes expressing a rather cold attitude towards democracy (“democracy brought the Nazis to power”), Christian democrats opposed “collectivism”, but also rejected capitalism, liberal democrats stood for freedom, meaning primarily freedom of enterprise..."

The celebration of democracy in the east continued until the autumn of 1946, when the Communists received few votes in the elections in Berlin. From that moment on, the screws began to be tightened in the Soviet zone of occupation.

The Americans manipulated the politics of their zone much more cleverly. First of all, they did not bet on one game, but on several. Secondly, targeted deliveries of humanitarian aid from “non-governmental” organizations depended on the election results. such as CARE. It is clear that the results of the democratic expression of will were somewhat predictable.