Whitsun in Berlin
By MARK ARNOLD-FORSTER Berlin, May 30th
THIS sixth post-war Whitsun was the first occasion on which Berliners and the world in general have been able to judge the effect of five years' Communist education on the youth of Eastern Germany. In themselves the results were impressive enough, but it was their similarity to those achieved by Hitler which was startling. All last Sunday history was repeating itself as the columns marched and sang their way along the shattered length of Unter den Linden, into the brand-new " Stadium Walter Ulbricht," across the "Ernst Thaelmann Platez or back down the " Stalinallee " to their quarters in the eastern suburbs. For the first time 500,000 members of the Free German Youth came to town from all over the Soviet zone to demonstrate that, in five years, the Russian system of political education has succeeded just as easily as Hitler's very similar system succeeded in the 1930s. Their Whitsun rally must have convinced the most sceptical observer that the Free German Youth Movement is one of the biggest and most promising foreign political investments that the Russians are ever likely to make. On the other hand it is equally clear that the firmness of the West Berlin authorities, the Berliners' stoical attitude to politics and the presence of Allied troops in the western sectors effectively deterred the Communists from keeping their ,promise to " capture all Berlin." The Free German Youth did not invade the western sectors, they did not " conquer Berlin " and, above all, they failed to " teach the warmongers a lesson unprecedented in German history."
The real lesson of the rally has many precedents in Germany. Once again, a uniform, martial music, and the German desire to belong to a community, however strictly regimentel, has enabled a ruthless Government to command the absolute obedience of German youth. The ceremonies enacted in the Soviet sector, and Sunday's parade in particular, showed that the Communists have managed to inspire nearly 2,000,000 German children with a faith in the Soviet Union, Communism and the East German Govern- ment which cannot easily be shaken. The Free German Youth enjoyed their Whitsun not because they were the centre of attraction but because they thought that they were making history. They marched behind their bands cheerfully but with a purpose. Their military bearing may have been inferior to that of the Hitler Youth but their conception of what they were about was clearer and their youthful ideas on politics were more advanced.
When Wilhelm Pieck, President of the East German Republic, opened the rally on May 29th many people were shocked and others may have been surprised, to hear him warning little boys and girls between 8 and 12 years old to beware of " reactionary church dignitaries " who attack the Free German Youth because " the schools base their teaching on dialectical materialism." Besides attacking the churches Herr Pieck took care to remind his young and adoring audience of the horrors which most of them experienced during the war. He said that they must never forget the bombs which killed their relatives because each bomb had earned a lot of money for someone in Britain or America. " The same people," he told his youthful audience, " are threatening you again."
To the eight-year-old, ten-year-old and twelve-year-old boys and girls who listened to these words, their President's theme was familiar rather than shocking. Wilhelm Pieck was only repeating, in a memorable fashion, what they knew already. To them his speech was the last of a long series of " indoctrinations," a series which began five years ago. The Free German Youth Movement was first planned in Moscow during the war. The Russians and the local German emigres decided then and there upon a plan to eliminate Nazi ideas from the minds of young Germans and to substitute a belief in Communism. As soon as possible the plan was executed. In 1945 the Russians decreed the establishment throughout the Soviet zone of " non-party youth committees." These committees were dominated from the start by Communists. The committees themselves were controlled by the so-called Central Youth Committee in Berlin, which consisted almost entirely of faithful Communists, most of them trained in Moscow. In 1946 the committees were transformed into the so-called Free German Youth Movement, which became the only youth organisation in the. whole of the Soviet zone. Like its predecessor, the Central Youth Committee, the Central Council of the Free German Youth has always exercised rigid control over all the local branches.
The Council pays the closest attention to what is called " uniform indoctrination." The indoctrination programme is considered to be the most important of the movement's many functions and activities. It is controllled exclusively by the Central Council itself. In its Directive on Ideological Re-inforcement " of October 17th, 1949, the Berlin Central Council decreed that " once a fortnight each district committee must be indoctrinated. The curriculum has been drawn up by the Central Council and will be forwarded to the districts. . . . The lecturers for this indoctrination will be appointed exclusively by the executive. . . . The executive will send a list of the necessary books approved by the second meeting of the Central Council." The Communists argue that this kind of educa- tion is bound to produce a given annual quota of enthusiastic party members. They calculate that the process must inevitably give them a genuine majority by 1970.
It should not be supposed, however, that the Free German Youth is a mere machine for making Germans into Communists. The Russians think that it ought to be possible to accelerate what is, in fact, an arithmetical progression. They also think it essential that the movement should retain its original momentum, and believe that the East German Republic needs its younger generation's energy not in 1970 but now. For this reason the movement has been encouraged, these last twelve months, to further its members' interests as rapidly as possible. Its methods of doing so are peculiar to the People's Democracies, and are designed to reflect the greatest possible credit on the movement itself and on Communist members of the East German Govern- ment. From time to time the Free German Youth have asked the Deputy Prime Minister responsible for the country's youth, Herr Walter Ulbricht, to do his best on their behalf ; and Herr Ulbricht, one of Stalin's most faithful adherents, has always made the appropriate gesture. In this way the young people of eastern Germany have been granted the right to vote at the age of eighteen as well as the " right to work, education, recreation, happiness and a share in the administration and the nation's economy." (Recently, too, they have been granted the right to build and fly their own gliders.) - The full effect of all these measures will not be felt for some years. All the same, they already provide the Communist leaders in eastern Germany as well as the Russians with the soundest possible kind of insurance for the future of their new State. The Free German Youth will purify as it renews. Unlike any other Communist Party outside Russia, the east German " Socialist Unity Party " will one day consist of people trained, in effect, by the Russians themselves. At the moment, as the Russians know, there are far too many potential rebels in its ranks. Like the faithful German Communists, the Russians have always realised that the Socialist Unity Party was bound to be an unsatisfactory instrument of Marshal Stalin's policies in Germany. It was formed in 1946 in order to deal with an emergency, and, unless it can be purified, is bound to cause the Communists anxiety if nothing worse. They only agreed to its creation because they could see no other way of silencing the Social Democrats' determined opposition. When it was founded on May 1st, 1946, the party consisted of 550,000 Social Democrats and 571,000 Communists. Since then the Communists have gained control, but they realise that former Social Democrats are unreliable allies at the best of times. The Russians calculate that the Social Democrats will all be dead by 1970. and that, by then, their places in the party will have been filled by former members of the Free German Youth.
The Russians' calculations are depressing. They show, as General Taylor, the American Commandant, said on Monday, that the Whitsun rally of the Free German Youth " was only one episode in the struggle for Berlin to which the Communists are committed."
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