II.

The Ulbricht Years

Walter Ulbricht, a long-standing member of the German Communist party, presided over the destiny of East Germany for more than 25 years. He helped found the Socialist Unity Party (German, Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands), a communist organization, in 1946 and was general secretary of the party from 1950 to 1971, first deputy premier of the republic from 1949 to 1950, and chairman of the Council of State from 1960 to 1973.

Determined to transform his country, ravaged by World War II, into a major communist power, Ulbricht designed a foreign policy to foster friendly relations with other communist states. In 1950 East Germany made a treaty with Poland ratifying the Oder-Neisse border, and joined other communist nations in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance. In 1954 the republic’s stature grew when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) ended its demands for reparations and granted East Germany diplomatic recognition. The next year East Germany helped found the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet answer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and in 1956 East Germany formed an army. Ulbricht made a pact with the USSR in 1964 to maintain communism in Eastern Europe, and negotiated a trade agreement in 1965 in return for Soviet political support. In 1968, Ulbricht sent East German troops to help the Soviets crush the Prague Spring movement in Czechoslovakia.

In 1950 the Stasi (Staatssicherheit), East Germany’s ministry for state security, was formed. A repressive organization, it became infamous within the country and in the world at large for its surveillance tactics. The Stasi spied on East Germans and recruited many (estimates suggest 500,000) to spy on fellow citizens. The Stasi, aligned to the Soviet KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti), was finally disbanded in 1989. Many of its files have become the subject of historical interest.