Crackup, Crackdown

In the Russian master plan for satellites, East Germany was long ago selected to be the showpiece of industrialization. Undeterred by the fact that the area had traditionally been Germany's breadbasket, the Russians installed Walter Ulbricht to make their policy fact. Last week reports smuggled out of East Germany made clear that Ulbricht's ruthless drive to make over East Germany into an industrial complex had brought the country close to bankruptcy, was the basic cause of the recent split in Communist leadership.

At the last meeting of the East German Politburo, then Deputy Premier Fred Oelssner. whom Ulbricht put in charge of production and distribution of consumer goods in 1955, bluntly declared that as things were going "the country can expect a total collapse of its economy by 1960." The whole Ulbricht philosophy of export-at-any-price, and of imposing impossible production goals upon industry, had led "to an economy of permanent crisis." The country was grievously short of raw materials, can not even depend on the cheap coal that Poland now sells to the West.

R: Frankness. Ulbricht promptly denounced Oelssner as an "ideological mole." But Oelssner kept slashing away. He demanded that East Germany frankly explain its predicament to Moscow. He also prescribed frankness with the East German people. "We can get by," he said, "with promising the masses the lifting of rationing a fifth, possibly a sixth, time. But the seventh or eighth time, no one will believe us."

Karl Schirdewan, long considered Ulbricht's heir apparent, rose to back up Oelssner. What had Ulbricht's policies actually accomplished, he asked, but the alienation of "the bourgeoisie, the youth, the intelligentsia, the housewives, and 2,000,000 refugees?" Ulbricht replied by kicking Oelssner and Schirdewan out of the Politburo.

Flops & Fiascos. In the first half of 1957 alone, East Germany lost 7,400,000 man-hours because of a lack of raw materials, broken-down machinery, and all-round bad planning. The Ulbricht obsession with increasing exports has had some preposterous results. Items: P:EastGermany offered to build oil tanks for Sweden, even though its industries were totally unprepared to produce them. The tanks cracked, some collapsed, and the whole venture became such a fiasco that its director committed suicide. P:East German experts offered to build water works in the Sudan. Pipes and drills were shipped out, but no water was found, and losses rose to at least 1,500,000 marks. P:East Germany exported hundreds of tractors to Red China. When the tractors broke down by fleets, it was found that no provision for supplying spare parts had been made. The Chinese angrily called the whole deal off.

In spite of such fiascos, stubborn Walter Ulbricht seems determined not to change his ways. Last week the Trade Union Federation, obediently toeing the Ulbricht line, announced a frenetic campaign to spur worker production and "to call to account trade union and economic functionaries in the event of nonfulfillment of obligations."

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