Sealed & Delivered

At the start of World War II, when Soviet Russia was an ally of Nazi Germany, the Russians grabbed the Eastern provinces of Poland. At the end of World War II, when the Russians were sponsoring a Communist-dominated regime in Poland, this land grab, which had greatly embittered the Poles, proved embarrassing to Moscow. The Russians suggested that Poland be compensated for her loss in the east by some choice German territory along her western borders. At Potsdam, for the sake of "harmony" with Russia, the U.S. and Britain agreed that Poland was to administer "provisionally" the strip of German territory east of the Oder and Neisse Rivers, "pending the final determination of Poland's western frontier."

The Communist-run government of postwar Poland behaved as if the cession of the disputed territory (including coal, iron and grain-rich Silesia) were final then & there. It brutally proceeded to expel more than 5,000,000 Germans from their old homes. (These bitter refugees now crowd Western Germany.)

For five years, Communists in East Germany have slyly promised the people that the Oder-Neisse territory would eventually be returned to Germany; Communists in Poland have insisted that the territory would stay with the Poles. Moscow itself kept mum--until last week. To Warsaw journeyed East Germany's Red boss, Deputy Premier Walter Ulbricht, to return with a treaty in which the East German government formally ratified the cession of the German territory to Poland.

The U.S. announced it did not recognize the new treaty. Following recent Russian announcements that no more German prisoners of war would be repatriated and that Eastern Germany would continue to pay reparations to Russia for another 15 years, the deal would further embitter Germans against Communism. But Washington believed that Moscow would try to sugar the pill for Germans by withdrawing Russian occupation troops from Germany, which would mean nothing since Russian interests in East Germany are well safeguarded by a German Communist army (TIME, Nov. 7).

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