Over the next few days, the Germans met with Georgi Dimitrov to work out a manifesto, to be announced when they arrived home. On June 7 they visited the Kremlin for four hours. They wanted to impose a Soviet-style regime, but Stalin preferred that they form a bloc or coalition with other antifascist parties. In one of his favorite refrains, he even warned them “not to speak so glowingly about the Soviet Union.”47 In follow-up talks, Dimitrov advised against nationalizing property. Such steps would have to be carefully prepared so as not to alarm the farmers. It would be wiser to underline the intention of confiscating only properties of the “feudal” Junker class.48
Stalin had hoped to unify the Communists and Socialists into one party, but he briefly changed his mind and instructed Pieck to restart the old Communist Party (KPD). The Soviets then encouraged longtime Communist rivals, like the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and even some old bourgeois parties, to get organized again, in an attempt to re-create at least the illusion of political plurality. Stalin’s plan was a familiar one: when the full political spectrum of parties was up and running, then an antifascist bloc or national front would emerge, and just as everywhere else, it would be dominated by the Communists.49
The “action program” announced by the KPD on June 11 incorporated Stalin’s ideas. The goal was to establish “an anti-fascist, democratic regime”—a parliamentary republic that would ensure individual rights, including the right to private property. Among themselves, the Communists admitted that all this was for show, and they made sure that reliable comrades got the jobs in local police forces and administration.50
In December, KPD leader Anton Ackermann boasted that in the Soviet zone they could already count 300,000 members.51 He was given the green light to write about “the German route to Socialism,” as that concept was understood in Eastern Europe.52 This statement found support because it meant that not everything would be dictated from Moscow.
On February 6, 1946, when Ulbricht went to Moscow, Stalin told him that in spite of difficulties in the Western zones, he still favored a united Germany. He wanted the KPD to play the nationalist card and to use the unification question to advantage. At this very time he was concerned because the Communist parties in Hungary and Austria, both still under Soviet occupation, had experienced recent and startling electoral setbacks.53 To avert that, and changing his mind yet again, he told Ulbricht to arrange for a fusion of the KPD with the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Moreover, Stalin ordered that all signs of Communism be removed from the banners. Instead there would be a Socialist Unity Party (SED). He wanted all negotiations completed in time for an announcement on May 1, the traditional workers’ holiday.54
On April 21 the leaders founded the new SED, and in early May they called on all “German Social Democrats and Communists” to link together across the country.55 However, by August they had to admit that the attempt to attract other members was getting nowhere.56 Even in the Soviet zone, an estimated 10 percent of the Communists refused to join the SED, and the majority of the SPD, many of them suspicious about Moscow’s aims, would not hear of calls for unity.57
Stalin’s plan was to prevent the reemergence of capitalism and at the same time to take over the property of the large landowners. This effort, he reminded Ulbricht, would eventually culminate in Communism. That would not happen overnight and could not be left to “spontaneous” confiscations, whereby grassroots workers’ committees took over factories whose owners had been Nazis or had fled to the West. In October, SMAD officially confiscated the properties of the German state, of former “fascists,” and of the Nazi Party.58
In order to give a semblance of legality to “the popular will,” the SED in consultation with Soviet authorities held a referendum. They were cautious enough to restrict the voting to Saxony, known for being “red,” and just before the voting, the Soviets arranged for 1,900 smaller businesses to be returned to their rightful owners.59
In the referendum held on the last day of June 1946, people were asked whether enterprises of “Nazi and War Criminals” already seized by Soviet authorities should be transferred to the German administration. No less than 77.7 percent answered “Yes!” But not all included in this number were voting for Communism. The Soviets themselves recognized that some people went along because they feared that if the referendum failed, “there would be a sharpening of the occupation regime, sinking of food rations, and so on.” A SMAD report noted with consternation the evidence that a “substantial part” of the working class continued to exhibit “an underdeveloped class consciousness.”60 That was typical Communist “newspeak” for implying that workers were befuddled because they dared have ideas of their own.61
In the other occupation zones between January and June 1946, the Western Allies allowed elections in stages, beginning at the local, then provincial, and finally at the zonal level. The Communists participated and did poorly, in some places not making it into the double digits. The Soviets let elections proceed in their zone on October 20, 1946, but in spite of efforts to manipulate the outcome, the results were not as good as they wanted. In the five elections to provincial parliaments (Landtagswahlen), the SED won on average 47.6 percent of the vote and could not win a majority in any of them.62
The results of elections held the same day across the rest of the country were worse. The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) averaged 34.5 percent of the vote, followed by the SPD with 23 percent. The SED garnered a mere 16.8 percent, and the KPD, where it still ran independently, got only 4.8 percent.63 In Berlin, where elections were under “quadripartite inspection teams” of the occupying powers and likely reflected actual opinions, the SED received only 19.8 percent of the vote. U.S. deputy military governor Clay thought that those results “must have stunned the Soviet authorities and made them realize that their hope of gaining Germany by normal political methods was futile.” Unquestionably, he added, those elections caused them to change tactics.64
When it came to Germany’s neighbor Austria, the stakes were not as high. That country had been incorporated into Germany in 1938 and had generally welcomed being brought “home to the Reich.” Nevertheless, during the war the Allies declared that Austria was in effect the first victim of Hitler’s aggression and that, when peace came, the country’s independence would be restored. Its borders would be returned to what they had been before the “conquest.”
On April 13, 1945, Vienna was liberated by the Red Army, and Soviet occupation authorities recruited veteran Social Democrat Karl Renner to lead a provisional government and to declare a new republic on April 27. Moscow soon dispatched members of the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ), like veteran activists Johann Koplenig, Friedl Fürnberg, and Ernst Fischer. Communists obtained the ministries of the interior and education in the new government and hoped to create a “true people’s democracy.” However, in elections held in November, they were decisively rejected and managed to get only 5.4 percent of the vote.65
The Soviet occupation forces, through their deplorable behavior, did not help the Red cause, and their insistence on collecting immediate reparations caused further grief. The United States, on the other hand, tried with increasing determination to mitigate the growing desperation faced by the people. In April 1946, UNRRA took over responsibility for feeding the country, and beginning early in the new year, the United States began to provide substantial assistance, soon through what would become the Marshall Plan.66