East Germany

“ Germany itself might well be content to suffer a temporary blow to her prestige if in fact her scheme of Central Europe were established and her corridor to the East kept open. The Austro-Hungarian scheme is a will-o’-the-wisp and a snare. ”

“ THE GERMAN BURNS. The extreme southwestern corner of Germany is an irregular right-angle, formed by the course of the Rhine. Within this angle and an hypothenuse drawn from the Lake of Constance to Carlsruhe lies a wild mountain-region—a lateral offshoot from the central chain which extends through Europe from west to east—known to all readers of robber-romances as the Black Forest. It is a cold, undulating upland, intersected with deep valleys which descend to the plains of the Rhine and the Danube, and covered with great tracts of fir-forest. ”

“ In particular, East Germany relies on the other Eastern European countries to support the regime's drive to gain membership in various international organizations and to encourage other nations to establish official relations. The Communist nations of Eastern Europe have been willing up to a point to support the GDR in attaining these objectives because they clearly regard the existence of a separate East German state to be essential to their own security arrangements. ”

“ Still it must be borne in mind that the new German Empire is in no sense a continuation or restoration of the Holy Roman Empire which fell sixty-four years before its creation. But it may be fairly looked on as a restoration of the old German Kingdom, the Kingdom of the East-Franks. Still, as far as geography is concerned, no change can be stranger than the change in the boundaries of Germany between the ninth century and the nineteenth. The new Empire, cut short to the north-west, south-west, and south-east, has grown somewhat to the north, and it has grown prodigiously to the north-east. ”

“ The first and principal point of the German eastern policy is to hold Austria-Hungary; Austria is to Germany a bridge, as the title of a Pangerman pamphlet has it—the bridge to the Balkans and Turkey, and therefore to Asia and Africa. Germany in union with Austria presses into Russia; the nominal freedom of the Baltic provinces, of Russian Poland and the Ukraine, is a temporary expedient. Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, and the West in general, have, as the world situation stands to-day, a much smaller importance for the Germans, if they succeed in winning the East ”

“ But a glance at the map shows that, whereas previously Germany enjoyed by alliance with Austria political control eastwards to the Carpathians and Balkans and economic control to the Ægean and Black Sea, now Germany is barricaded on the east at its national frontier by strong national States; and by union with German-Austria would receive an extension of its [219] own national frontier not eastward but southward. The effect of union with Austria would be to add to Germany not another East Prussia or Silesia, but another Baden or Bavaria. ”

“ The frontier of August 3, 1914, between Germany and Austria from its junction with the old administrative boundary separating Bohemia and the province of Upper Austria to the point north of the salient of the old province of Austrian Silesia situated at about 8 kilometres east of Neustadt. ”

“ The erection of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 enabled the government to establish firm control over the society and proceed with overdue economic reforms, which within a decade provided the population with the highest standard of living in Eastern Europe. By the early 1970s East Germany had become the world's ninth largest industrial power - second to the Soviet Union in the eastern bloc - with a concomitant growth in prestige which gave added strength to its demands for recognition as a sovereign state and a voice in international councils. ”

“ The greater prosperity and stability of West German remained an obsessive attraction to the East Germans - particularly the trained and the educated - who continued to flee to the West in large numbers. By the early 1960s it had become apparent to the leadership that it could not consolidate control over the political and economic system as long as some of the nation's most valuable workers "voted with their feet" and moved west. ”

“ The east is the only region in the world which is not yet appropriated by any one of the expanding nations. If Germany does not let slip her chance, but puts it into her pocket before the Cossacks can dip their hands into it, she will soon have the best share in the partition of the world. As soon as some thousand armed German colonists begin to till the splendid soil, the fate of near Asia will be in the hands of the Emperor. ”

“ Although as a result of the Thirty Years’ War the German Empire is far less Nordic than in the Middle Ages, the north and northwest of Germany are still Teutonic throughout and in the east and south the Alpines have been thoroughly Germanized with an aristocracy and upper class very largely of pure Teutonic blood. ”

“ Their special mention will come in their special place; we must here mark that modern Germany has largely formed itself by the gradual conquest and colonization of lands which at the end of the ninth century were Slavonic. The German kingdom spread itself far to the North-East, and German settlements and German influences spread themselves far beyond the formal bounds of the German kingdom. ”

“ It is obvious that the German gains on the West and the East, important as they are, are relatively small by comparison with the enormous seizures which Germany has effected at the expense of Austria-Hungary, of half the Balkans, and of Turkey. ”

“ After almost a quarter of a century of Communist rule even the most intransigent non-Communists in the society have accepted the reality of the existence of a separate East German state and come to terms with the regime and its demands. The resulting process of accommodation has led many East Germans to move from hostility to passive acceptance, and finally toward a degree of positive loyalty and a growing sense of a separate East German national identity. ”

“ Austria wants to round up her empire in the Balkans. Austria has to have outlets in the Mediterranean. England, if she stands by Germany, will be rewarded with French Northern Africa and the Dutch East India possessions. What will become of France? Reconstruction, partitioning, possibly a little kingdom, probably under the Orleans régime. France is in the lap of the gods. I know these things, for I possess them in black and white.
IX IN THE BALKAN COUNTRY
After my mission in the Black Forest, I went to Albeck, a well-known seaside resort on the Baltic. ”

“ Prussia had lost, not only its momentary possession of Hannover, but also everything west of the Elbe. Austria had yielded Salzburg to Bavaria, and part of her own south-western territory in Krain and Kärnthen had passed to France under the name of the Illyrian Provinces. ♦Annexations to France.♦ France too, beside all the lands west of the Rhine, had incorporated East Friesland, Oldenburg, part of Hannover, and the three Hanseatic cities. ♦Confederation of the Rhine.♦ The remaining states of Germany formed the Confederation of the Rhine. ”

“ Although it is now relatively easy for East German citizens to travel in Eastern Europe and millions have taken advantage of this opportunity, there is little likelihood that the tight controls on travel to the West will be relaxed in the near future. ”

“ Then the gradual settling of the eastern line, well into Russia, with all the industrial districts of Poland firmly gripped in German hands, and the certainty that though Russia had not been utterly broken and forced to a peace, yet so much had been accomplished that there was no longer any eastern menace, but both Germany and Austria might go about their business of conquest in the west, having "finished off" in the east. ”

“ The modern inhabitants of Germany, the Germans, occupy a very large portion of Germany proper and of Eastern Prussia, as well as a broad band of country to the right of the Rhine. They are found also in different parts of Hungary, Poland, Russia, and North America. The Germans of the East and South having mixed much with the peoples of Southern Europe, do not represent exclusively the Teutonic type ”

“ This process has led to the present distribution of languages, which expresses a fossilization of German colonization in the east, and illustrates in a most striking way the penetration of peoples. Poland and part of Russia, Slavonic and Magyar territories, are interspersed with small German settlements, which are the more sparse and scattered the farther east they are located, the more continuous the nearer they lie to Germany. ”

“ There must be no illusion. Nothing less than the decisive victory of the Allies will avail to make [Pg 107] Germany loosen her grip upon Austria-Hungary, for that grip is to Germany the substantial result of the war. In truth it is that grip which, by its geographic, military, and economic consequences, assures Berlin the domination of the Balkans, and of the East, hence of Central Pan-Germany, hence of Hamburg-Persian Gulf, and the vast consequences which derive therefrom. ”

“ The original German tribes, who were influenced by Western civilization early in their history, lived in the Western and Southern parts of present-day Germany. The in- habitants of the territory east of the River Elbe, however, were Slavic in origin and tongue. These Slavic groups were conquered and en- slaved 700 years ago by German knights whose descendants are the Junkers of today. They lost their cultural heritage slowly and, in fact, there is, within fifty miles of Berlin, a large group (300,000) which still retains its Slavic tongue. ”

“ A change in the administration will bring resurrection. Nay, the means and resources of the present civilisation must call forth in them an immense economical development.
Germany, with her usual foresight, has ever been on the alert.
Towards this Near East with gloomy present, but with a glorious future, the German policy has thrown covetous eyes. When Bismarck made his famous declaration—that the Eastern Question was not worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier—the German policy was already maturing a vast plan of penetration 307in the Near East. ”

“ Yet the Far East is changing with the change in conditions everywhere in modern times, and it is evident that the premises for any conclusion as to German foreign policy there may, at any given moment, be subject to modification. ”

“ The boundaries between Germany and Rome still remained the Rhine and the Danube, but on the east they were extended to the Black Sea, and in place of the invasions of Cæsar, Drusus and Germanicus, the Empire was obliged to be content when it succeeded in repelling the invasions made upon its own soil. Three hundred years of very slow, but healthy growth on the one side, and of luxury, corruption and despotism on the other, had thus changed the relative position of the two races. ”

“ Though the power of the strongest of the German princes was thus limited, yet it was in regions under the influence of such great feudatories that the nearest approach to order prevailed. Habsburg rule in the south-east, Burgundian rule in the north-west, were establishing settled States, though rather at the expense of Germany as a whole than by way of contributing to its general peace. In a similar fashion Bavaria and the north-eastern Marchland between Elbe and Oder attained comparative prosperity under Wittelsbachs, Wettins, and Hohenzollerns. ”

“ Traces of this line of defence are still to be seen. Another and shorter line, connecting the head-waters of the Main [Pg 31] with the Lake of Constance, protected the territory on the east. Their frontier remained thus clearly defined for nearly two hundred years. On their side of the line they built fortresses and cities, which they connected by good highways, they introduced a better system of agriculture, established commercial intercourse, not only between their own provinces but also with the independent tribes, and thus extended the influence of their civilization. ”

“ Each of all these new nationalities included remnants of the smaller original tribes, which had lost their independence in the general struggle, and which soon became more or less mixed (except in England) with the former inhabitants of the conquered soil.
The Eastern Empire was now too weak and corrupt to venture another conflict with these stronger Germanic races, whose civilization was no longer very far behind its own. Moreover, within sixty years after the Migration came to an end, a new foe arose in the East. ”

“ The establishment and cultivation of normal relations and cooperation between the two German states on the basis of equality are national concerns of the German Democratic Republic. The German Democratic Republic and its citizens strive in addition to overcome the division of Germany imposed upon the German nation by imperialism, and support the step-by-step rapprochement of the two German states until the time of their unification on the basis of democracy and socialism. ”

“ The occupation of Vienna or Berlin is more of a demonstrative character, whereas the occupation of Alsace-Lorraine, Poznan (Posen) and Prussian Silesia, Galicia, Moravia, Bohemia and of Croatia in the South has a great significance as a first step towards the organisation of Central Europe on anti-German lines.
The occupation of the Slav countries of Germany and Austria-Hungary is the end of Pan-German imperialism; Austria-Hungary is the weakest point of Germany, every weakening of Austria is a blow to Germanism. ”

“ France is cutting her way up with the purse instead of the sword. The great Triad might alter the map of Europe. 'The sons of Hermann' would absorb Belgium and Holland; the Muscovite swallow Constantinople with its neighbouring appendages, and Austria convey ('the wise call it') the remainder of Turkey's Slavonic provinces. But they will do nothing of the kind. Germany has proved herself the natural guardian of the Eastern frontier of Europe. ”