The Memory of June 17

With iron fist and velvet glove, the rulers of Communist East Germany sought to erase the memory of the 17th of June. From the massive Soviet embassy in Unter den Linden streamed decrees and orders.

Some were to the firing squads: by week's end, 30 Germans had been liquidated for participating in the strikes and riots which shook Red Germany. The Reds reported daily that more "provocateurs" and "strikebreakers" had been clapped in jail--at least 10.000, according to estimates of the well-informed West German Socialists. The commissars turned ferociously on the Volkspolizei, the big (145,000) German Red army disguised as a police force, to purge it of hundreds who had themselves proved rebellious, or reluctant to shoot down fellow Germans on the streets.

So far, 130 Vopos have fled to the West; these knew personally of another 250 Vopos who had been broken in rank or jailed. The Vopo army had failed the puppet regime and the Kremlin. "We alone would never have been able to defeat the provocateurs," confessed Quisling Premier Otto Grotewohl last week, in slavish thanks for the intervention of Red army troops and tanks.

Red Appeasement. But the Russians could hardly execute or jail 18 million East Germans. Their best bet was to conciliate where they could, in hopes that the hatred and yearnings which still smoldered beneath the surface might die out for lack of political oxygen. In daily spurts of breast-pounding and backtracking, Premier Grotewohl, Walter Ulbricht the No. 1 Red, and their henchmen carried out orders to ease policies which had brought East German workers and peasants to the pitch of revolution.

The Vopos having failed, the Red program of East German rearmament was halted, and more than 2 billion East German marks (about $80 million) were transferred to a fund to "raise living standards" for workers. Ulbricht's relentless concentration on heavy industry, at the expense of production of things East Germans desperately need, was slowed down to allow production of more consumer goods. Some of the vast state stocks of food and clothing, a monument to Ulbricht's heavy-handed insistence on "state planning," were released to consumer retail channels. Many socialized plants and farms were returned to private operation. In the Leipzig area alone last week, according to a Communist announcement, 70 shops, 40 factories, 15 wholesale houses and 46 collectivized farms were handed back to their old owners. Crop, livestock and food quotas imposed on farmers were cut back as much as 25%. Release was promised to "the great majority" of workers who were arrested after the June 17 strikes if they would promise to be good in the future. In frantic, almost comic haste, the Red puppets toured factories to explain and apologize.

Rain & Cliches. In East Berlin itself, expiation took an especially bizarre course. One morning last week, 15,000 dutiful workers and young zealots of the FDJ (Free German Youth) gathered at the government's command and marched in docile rows over the still blood-marked streets where their countrymen a few days before had marched in the name of freedom. They took the same route--from Stalinallee to Marx-Engels Platz. It rained, just as it had on June 17, and again there were sagging, rain-streaked banners and placards. But these spoke of abiding loyalty to the Red regime and offered "Greetings and Thanks to the Soviet Army," while the marchers cheered damply, on signal, the speeches of the puppet overlords.

In suburban bivouacs, unseen but ready to roll at a moment's notice, sat lines of Soviet tanks and gun trucks, the real rulers of East Germany now. Over a sullen land, the law of the T-34 prevailed.

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