Eastern Bloc

“ THUS THE ATTACKERS, AND THOSE WHO WERE TO REMAIN NEUTRAL, IN THE DRAMA ABOUT TO BE PLAYED. HERE NOW THE DEFENDERS. P-KN3 The former Eastern Bloc nations of Europe had remained closely linked economically after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and surprisingly, as often as not, politically allied with their former oppressor.
The great "Decade of Change" which shook the Kremlin in the late twentieth century had forever changed the face of Marxism, and for nearly half a century the Russians had abandoned all thought of communism. ”

“ The war aim of the Allies in Eastern Europe is to create in the place of the present Austro-Hungarian Empire a larger synthesis of associated States, something in the nature of an 'East Central European League,' within the League of Nations, a confederation that might possibly reach from Poland to the Black and Adriatic Seas, and have also access to, if not a port upon, the Baltic at Danzig. ”

“ Tragically, even as the wave of freedom and democratic reform sweeps across Eastern and Central Europe, former Soviet bloc countries, and nations in South America, Asia, and Africa, there are still governments that derive their strength, not from the consent of their citizens, but from terror, repression, and exploitation. Too many leaders still fuel the fires of racial, ethnic, and religious hatred; too many people still suffer from ignorance, prejudice, and brutality. ”

“ In their new chairs at international conferences, East German diplomats have generally concentrated on the issues at hand and have avoided polemics and chauvinistic challenges to their West German colleagues. While looking westward, the East German Government is by no means relinquishing its role as loyal supporter of bloc policies. Both as observers at the United Nations and in the preparatory Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, East German representatives have staunchly - if quietly - supported Soviet initiatives. ”

“ The Conservatives and Junkers, on the other hand, favour annexations to the East; especially do they eye greedily the Baltic provinces where great estates are in the hands of landowners of German blood. What a reinforcement to the conservative cause would these Junkers of the Baltic be and, in the Conservative view, if there are to be annexations in the West which would increase the number of industrial subjects and, undoubtedly social democrats, there must be a balancing accession of agricultural interest on the Eastern frontier. ”

“ On November 9, 1989, the citizens of East Germany finally triumphed over their Communist oppressors, and the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. As the hope of freedom spread, the Soviet empire collapsed, the Iron Curtain was lifted, and Eastern and Central Europe were liberated from decades of cruel tyranny. ”

“ While, most pessimistic of all, a cosmopolitan Jew considered that the result of breaking up Austria and barring off Germany must be to Balkanise Central and Eastern Europe first, and to Bolshevise it afterwards. All one can say, is, that where such revolutionary forces are loosened as are now at large in Central Europe, German nationalism offered us a stronger line to hold than that of Lithuanian or Ukrainian or even Polish independence. ”

“ But the national group is, especially [p. 20] as against the Slav and even as against western and southern Europe, one body; and within that body Prussia, with its capital of Berlin, is the organizing and directing centre.
Are there anomalies to be discovered with regard to this curiously shaped body? There are; but they are of less importance than is often imagined. Thus there are beyond Eastern Prussia and within the Russian boundary the so-called “German” Baltic provinces of Russia. ”

“ For when we descend into the political arena as a recognized and organized and disciplined unit, our moral influence and our power to rally and shape opinion on questions of world import which is otherwise our greatest strength is compromised and dissipated. Bloc action implies, within the group, the exertion of pressures upon recalcitrant members, the compromise of positions, the sacrifice of principle for political expediency, the trading of votes for votes and adherence to the rule of the quid pro quo. ”

“ We take up where we broke off 600 years ago. We stop the endless German movement to the south and west, and turn our gaze toward the land in the East. At long last we break off the colonial and commercial policy of the pre-war period and shift to the soil policy of the future.
“If we speak of soil in Europe today, we can primarily have in mind only Russia and her vassal border states.”
The political portion of this economy or purpose is clearly reflected in the stated purposes of the organization which the Defendant Rosenberg set up to administer the Occupied Eastern Territories. ”

“ Bremen was entered by force, after fighting; and the other towns opened negotiations. On the eastern frontier a front was formed against the Poles, who had occupied nearly all Posen province, and fighting continued until the Allies stopped it. Great efforts were made to get together some sort of effective force as a basis for government; and the resultant Frei-Corps, though at this early date still few and inferior, were already enough to give check to the "Bolshevist" menace within and without the frontier. ”

“ 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 ”

“ This plan of the Allies can only consist in an energetic endeavour to liberate the Non-German nations of Central Europe.
Central Europe comprises the East of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Balkans and the Eastern part of Russia (Poland) . The restoration and liberation of Poland, of Bohemia comprising the Slovak country of North Hungary, and the organisation of Greater Serbia is the first and essential task of the Allies; all other questions will be solved easily if the Allies perform this task. ”

“ We, the Western nations, have incurred such tremendous sacrifices in this conflict that we cannot afford to trust to anything that may happen at Berlin; we must be secure in any case. In other words, we must settle this question between the Germans and Slavs, and we must see to it that East Europe, like West Europe, is divided into self-contained nations. If we do that, we shall not only reduce the German people to its proper position in the world, a great enough position for any single people, but we shall also have created the conditions precedent to a League of Nations. ”

“ We have recently become so much accustomed to hear of the antagonism and rivalry of interests between East and West—as if all Eastern countries represented one set of immutable ideals and all Western countries another—that we are apt to lose ourselves in a mist of generalities. The East has problems of its own to solve, some of which reproduce in a more restricted area the racial problems that are beginning at a late hour to agitate the minds of statesmen in Europe and America. ”

“ The German blunder, under compelling destiny, having given us Victory, it is essential that we should focus our thought on the stable resettlement of the affairs of East Europe and the Heartland. If we accept anything less than a complete solution of the Eastern Question in its largest sense we shall merely have gained a respite, and our descendants will find themselves under the necessity of marshalling their power afresh for the siege of the Heartland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Article II. Germany recognizes the rights historically acquired by Russia in the Balkan peninsula, and particularly the rightfulness of a preponderating and decisive influence on her part in Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia. The two courts pledge themselves to permit no modification of the territorial status quo in that peninsula without a previous agreement between them, and to oppose, as it arises, every attempt to disturb that status quo or to modify it without their consent. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is particularly necessary in the treatment of the workers from the East. In this instance the hitherto prevailing treatment of the Eastern workers has led not only to a diminished production, but has most disadvantageously influenced the political orientation of the people in the conquered Eastern territories and has resulted in the well-known difficulties for our troops. ”

“ Remarkably, the East-West dichotomy, as if an invisible hand dealt the right cards, still persists to determine world affairs and history despite long and enduring phases of centrism, trials of expansion, colonialism and empire, alliances and ganging-ups, rivalry or false beliefs in superiority. What makes us think then that the disparity of East and West can be best explained by anything other than a law of nature? ”

“ Rosenberg, on 27 July 1942, solved the Eastern problem in this fashion, and I quote:
“The Eastern problem consists in bringing the Baltic peoples under the influence of German culture and in preparing widely conceived military frontiers for Germany. The Ukrainian problem consists in securing food supplies for Germany and Europe and supplies of raw materials for the Continent.
“The problem of the Caucasus is primarily a political task, and its solution means the expansion of continental Europe, under German leadership, from the Caucasian isthmus to the Near East.” ”

“ But however great these differences which tend to prevent the East from simply repeating the events of the West of a century ago, the similarity is still great enough to make it certain that the East is now entering upon a revolutionary period of a similar character—a period of conspiracies, coup d'etats, insurrections, reactions and renewed insurrections and continuous transformations that will continue until the conditions of a peaceful development and a secured national independence is obtained for this portion of the world. ”

“ The territorial readjustment of Eastern Europe will, as a rule, be carried out according to the principle of nationality; but in each case due regard must also be paid to present economic conditions, and to historical peculiarities. The great complexity of the national problem makes each concrete national question a distinct political problem of its own. ”

“ The revolution imposed by the Communists has restratified the society and abolished or brought under Communist control all traditional German institutions capable of commanding a separate loyalty from East Germans or linking them with their countrymen in the West. Using the Soviet Union as their model, East Germany's Communist leaders have established a political and social order which has its primary goals the perpetuation of one-party rule by the Communists and the establishment of even closer links with the Soviet Union, the principal guarantor of the GDR's durability and stability. ”

“ What chance would the Allied powers, exhausted by a deadly peace, have against the thirty million soldiers of Pan-Germany, when Berlin, refreshed by a short respite, should choose to renew her hold over those western territories which she had temporarily relinquished?
Is it not plain what depths of deception lie beneath that formula, ‘peace without annexations and indemnities,’ which the Russian Socialists, ignorant of the vast advantages accruing to Germany from the war, have adopted at the suggestion of Berlin’s Leninist agents? Let us look at the facts, not at the words. ”

“ Appearances can make happy, indeed. What appears to the integration-based Eastern nations as a continuation of their own traditional search for ‘oneness’ and ‘harmoniousness’, that same process appears to the Europeans and Americans as the ingenious, creative deconstruction of the East, the processes of total ‘westernization’. ”

“ By the early sixties the Soviets began to allow the East German regime greater freedom of movement on some issues affecting Berlin, apparently in response to pressures by the Ulbricht regime. The regime hoped a more active Berlin policy would enable East Germany to carve out for itself a more important role in determining the future of both East and West Berlin. During most of the mid and late sixties the East Germans - undoubtedly at Soviet behest - were careful to avoid serious threats to Allied rights in West Berlin and concentrated instead on disrupting West German ties with the city. ”