The pattern in Italy and France can also be seen in neighboring Belgium. The Communist Party there had some support at war’s end and joined the first coalition governments, which came and went quickly. By early 1947 the party claimed to have 100,000 members, had won 23 seats in the most recent elections out of 202 deputies, and had four members in the cabinet. However, in order to bring more stability to the government, the majority parties wanted them out. Premier Camille Huysmans insisted on increasing coal prices and thus raising the cost of living, maneuving the Communists into rejecting the proposal. They resigned in protest on March 12. As with their French and Italian comrades, it would be their last time in government.33
COMMUNISM IN OCCUPIED GERMANY
Soviet occupation policy was laden with a major contradiction in Germany and Austria, as indeed it was all across Eastern Europe. On the one hand, the Kremlin wanted to champion Communism and win over the people. At the same time, it was determined to collect reparations, which in turn alienated possible supporters. Already in mid-1945, to mention but one example, in its zone in Germany, the USSR introduced a modest land reform to please landless and poor peasants, just as it had done elsewhere.34 However, simultaneously Soviet authorities pressed on with dismantling factories—including some needed locally to process fertilizer and thus to make the new farms productive. German Communists who dared ask their leaders to intercede in this “exceptional” case were shouted down.35
On June 5, 1945, the four military commanders of the victorious powers, the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and France, signed a “declaration regarding the defeat of Germany and the assumption of supreme governmental authority.”36 Each of the four commanders in chief of the occupying powers was to have “supreme authority” in their zone and “also jointly, in matters affecting Germany as a whole” as members of the Allied Control Council (ACC). The latter was also responsible for governing divided “Greater Berlin.” Decisions of the ACC had to be unanimous to ensure “uniformity of action” in each of the zones. In effect, that stipulation meant that each of the four had veto power and could hold up everything.37
The next day in Moscow the Council of People’s Commissars—in fact, Stalin—decided to set up the Soviet Military Administration of Germany (SMAD). Order No. 1 on June 9 put Marshal Georgi Zhukov in charge. The military commander and war hero announced that the task of the new body included supervising the surrender, administering the Soviet zone, and implementing Allied decisions.38
The Soviets were first off the mark on the political front because they had a well-tuned agenda and almost immediately allowed political parties to organize. The Americans permitted some district-level activities in August, the British followed suit in September, and the French in December.39
General Eisenhower remained supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces from his headquarters. In April he delegated General Lucius D. Clay as deputy military governor. Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery initially ran the British zone, and General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny the French.40
In October 1945 the U.S. finally created the Office of the Military Government, United States, or OMGUS, the equivalent to the SMAD. Occupation guidelines were formulated as Directive JCS 1067, which had been worked out by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and signed by President Roosevelt on March 23, 1945. The orders bluntly stated that “Germany will not be occupied for the purpose of liberation but as a defeated enemy nation. Your aim is not oppression,” the directive cautioned, but to realize “certain important Allied objectives. In the conduct of your occupation and administration you should be just but firm and aloof. You will strongly discourage fraternization with the German officials and population.”41 The War and Navy departments went so far as to insist on separate toilets for German and American staff in the buildings of the Military Government.42
The declaration issued at the end of the Potsdam Conference in August 1945 confirmed the agreement of the Big Three as to “the political and economic principles of a coordinated Allied policy toward defeated Germany during the period of Allied control.” The stated intention was not “to destroy or enslave” the people but to give them “the opportunity to prepare for the eventual reconstruction of their life on a democratic and peaceful basis.”
Although the specific aims included disarmament, demilitarization, and denazification, each occupying power pursued them differently. Dealing with Nazism and all its expressions was complex, given that so many millions of Germans were involved. American efforts took on the dimensions of a moral crusade, the French were not as rigorous, and the British less again. Soviet occupation policy was going to be used, as in Eastern Europe, to extract reparations where possible, to enhance Moscow’s political control, and to assist local Communists.43
The three leaders at Potsdam noted with approval their separate decision to prosecute all Nazi war criminals. Germany’s own legal, educational, and political systems had to be transformed, the economy decentralized and controlled, and its industrial capacity and production strictly limited. The vanquished nation lost much territory, and along with its allies, it was expected to pay reparations. The lion’s share was to go to the Soviet Union, which would be permitted to dismantle and take industrial capital equipment (like whole fertilizer factories) not only from its own zone but, after negotiations, also from the three Western zones. President Truman said the United States wanted no reparations at all.44
Since 1919 Communism had been a major factor in German politics. Some good citizens found it menacing and were pleased when Hitler dissolved the Communist Party and sent many of its leaders to concentration camps. Some Communists had found refuge in Moscow while they prepared for their return, and on April 30, 1945, three “initiative groups” were sent home. The first of them, led by Walter Ulbricht, headed for Berlin; the other two went to different parts of the Soviet zone. Their task was to reorganize the party and to advise Red Army leaders on whom to appoint to “antifascist” slots in local and regional administrations. On May 26 Moscow gave the go-ahead for trade unions and a few anti-Nazi political parties to start up.45
Stalin called the leaders of the three “initiative groups” back to Moscow, and on June 4 he, Molotov, and Zhdanov met with them. Also present was Wilhelm Pieck, who like Ulbricht was a veteran Communist. To escape Hitler’s persecution, he had spent almost a decade in Moscow, where his loyalty to Stalin had been unswerving.
The Kremlin appointment book shows that they met for a total of seven hours, and though no Soviet records survive, we have Pieck’s notes from their meeting. Stalin’s “advice” was similar to much he gave all other returnees, with the notable variation in this case to tell their people that the West had wanted to dismember Germany. At this point in time, he was beginning to think a divided Germany would likely emerge, and he told them to fight it. Their party should bring together not just workers but all the gainfully employed, including peasants and intellectuals.
How did the Kremlin Boss visualize the struggle ahead? The German Communists’ first duty was to fight fascism and to complete a bourgeois revolution that would finally break the “power of the land-holding nobility and eliminate the remnants of feudalism.” These words became themes that ran through the history of East Germany for decades. He then approved the list of appointments to the leading organs of the German party, including to its major publications.46