Again Berlin

One morning last week, a truck loaded with blue-shirted toughs from the Freie Deutsche Jugend (the Communist youth organization) rolled through a tiny hamlet near Dresden in Germany's Russian zone. As it ground to a stop, the blue shirts piled out shouting: "Farmer Fritz Merkel is a doppelzuengiger Reaktionaer (two-timing reactionary)." Two trucks that followed disgorged half-frightened, vodka-drunk workers. On Communist orders, they rushed out to Fritz merkel's farm, smashed and scattered farm tools, opened chicken coops and rabbit hutches. some of them broke down the heavy door of the farmhouse and seized Farmer Merkel. He was beaten and kicked until he signed a paper admitting that he was a "saboteur" and agreed to resign his local offices n the Christian Democratic Party. that night, Merkel and his wife and daughter left their snug farm and, carring only a rucksack apiece, set out on foot for the safety of the West.

The attack on Farmer Merkel was duplicated last week in hundreds of villages in East Germany, Red terrorists bore down on all known or potential leaders of non-Communist opposition. The Reds' aims: to eliminate the Christian Democratic Party in East Germany, including three cabinet ministers in Laender goverments, had made their way to the West. Factory managers, non-Communist foremen, and workers also fled before the Reds. Said one refugee: "This isn't a purge any more--it's a pogrom. Germany hasn't seen anything like it since the Kristallnacht of 1938, when the Nazis ran riot against the Jews."

Behind the assaults loomed the stocky, swarthy figure of Georgy Maximovich Pushkin, Soviet ambassador to the German Democratic Republic. Pushkin had successfully directed the Red rape of Hungary; in 3 1/2 years as Russian ambassador in Budapest he had discreetly masterminded many a Communist coup, including the trials of Cardinal Mindszenty and ex-Foreign Minister Laszlo Rajk. Last December he took over his duties in Germany. Last week U.S. officials in Germany were wondering if Pushkin's pogrom might be prelude to a new Russian plan to seize all Berlin.

A Smoke Screen? For five months the Communists had kept the heat off Berlin. With their wiggling disruption of truck traffic from the West and the launching of Pushkin's pogrom, the heat went on again. Sly Gerhart Eisler, now propaganda boss for Eastern Germany, announced a Soviet Youth March for Whitsuntide (May 27-30). With flag and fife, said he, special "people's police" units would lead half a million members of Communist youth groups in a demonstration into Western Berlin. German anti-Communists were sure that the Reds would try to take the opportunity to provoke violence, and if they could, to seize Western Berlin. Some Western observers thought that the Whitsuntide demonstration was only a smokescreen, that the Communists would actually try some sort of a coup before that.

Communist youth were already busy scribbling "Go Home!" on walls near West Berlin's Allied offices and clubs. In the daytime they paraded through the streets bawling "Go Home! Go Home!" In a rash of Red political rallies along the Soviet sector boundary, Communist leaders called on West Berliners to join the fight for a "united, progressive" Berlin.

Russia's "Little Blockade," set up four weeks ago, was still spasmodically slowing truck traffic between Berlin and Western Germany. Last week the Russians also threatened a large blockade when they announced that the locks on the Mittel-land Canal, main waterway from the West to Berlin, were in need of "repairs." U.S. High Commissioner John McCloy announced: "By June i, West Berlin will still be here and so will we." But behind their reassuring statements, many U.S. officials had begun to worry.

West Berlin was in a bad position to resist a new Russian drive on Berlin if it should be made. Its economy was all but paralyzed. More than 300,000 men were out of work, twice as many as at the time of the Russian blockade. The bedraggled postwar figure of the Kippensammler (Cigarette-butt collector) was back on the streets.

A Gesture? Western observers were amazed that with a third of the city on the dole, there had been no riots or demonstrations against the Western occupation forces. A drab, middle-aged man in one of the unemployed queues gave the reason: "I'd rather eat dry bread in the West than have my mouth shut for me in the East." But West Berlin's morale had gone down badly since the days of the airlift. People were looking hard for a sign that the U.S. was preparing a firm stand against a potential Red offensive. Some Berliners thought it best to hedge against a Russian takeover; theater producers were cautiously considering putting on some plays by Maxim Gorky.

Some U.S. officials felt that the situation required a dramatic gesture; e.g., a move, at least temporary, by the Western high commissioners from Frankfurt to Berlin. Said one U.S. observer: "A tangible show of personal courage would make the Russians reconsider. If the West is unwilling to take a little chance in Berlin now, the Soviet will soon draw a deadly conclusion: the Allies talk like lions and act like mice."

It was leather-faced Franz Dahlem, one of Eastern Germany's top Communist leaders, who himself had reminded the U.S. what was at stake in Berlin. To a rally of 3,000 Communist stalwarts he shouted: "The battle for Berlin is the decisive factor of the battle for all Germany."

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