Losing the Little Finger

In East Germany after World War II, some 700,000 Social Democrats, influenced by feelings of comradeship for the Communists during the bitter struggle against Hitler, accepted the Communist slogan--"Democracy v. Fascism"--at its face value and joined a popular-front organization called the SED. Among them were hundreds of top Socialist leaders, including ex-Editor (of the anti-Nazi Brandenburger Zeitung) Friedrich Ebert, fat, pink-cheeked Max Feehner, onetime toolmaker, and gaunt, ambitious Otto Grotewohl. When skeptics called the SED a Communist maneuver, Grotewohl laughed and said that the Socialists, outnumbering the Communists three to one, would take over the SED.

A fortnight ago, as the SED celebrated its tenth anniversary in East Berlin's Metropol theater, a count by West German Socialists showed that 657 top Socialist leaders were in East German or Soviet prisons. In the lower echelons, the number of former Socialists jailed or killed could only be estimated, but it amounted to thousands. Socialists had been removed from all positions of importance in East Germany. Communist in all but name were Grotewohl, now the jowly Premier of East Germany, and Ebert (son of the Weimar Republic's first President), now the alcoholic mayor of East Berlin. Far from being embarrassed by the fact that so many of his old Socialist comrades were in prison, Grotewohl maneuvered to make capital out of them. He offered an "amnesty" for imprisoned Socialists as a means of "reaching an understanding," i.e., another popular front, with West German Socialists. As a gesture of good will, he released Max Feehner, a broken old man after three years in East German jails.

Last week Grotewohl got his answer in a pamphlet issued by the West German Socialists. The founding of the SED, said the pamphlet, was "the darkest day in the German workers' movement." It solemnly warned: "Whoever tries to make a pact with Communists will perish doing so ... Whoever lets the Communists have his little finger will lose his whole hand . . . Whoever tries to remain neutral towards Communism gives himself up."

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