Denied the right of free expression themselves and prohibited from obtaining information freely from outside the Soviet Zone, they naturally turned to alternative sources. Since the Soviet motivation was to isolate the East German people from the rest of the nation, the infringement of the principles of free flow of information and political activity has not been corrected. On the contrary, the Western radio stations have been jammed, and Western media and legitimate information-gathering organizations have been branded “espionage centers” and sources of “subversive activity.” Heavy penalties have been exacted for listening to Western radio stations or visiting “fascist agencies” such as the offices of newspapers, licensed political parties, and legal advisory societies established in West Berlin or West Germany for the purpose of providing advice and assistance to East Germans. The numerous “show trials” of “confessed agents” who wanted free information or assistance or advice are direct evidence of the mechanisms used by the U.S.S.R. and the East German regime to prevent the reestablishment of essential human freedoms in the largest nation in Europe outside of the U.S.S.R. itself.
IV. Reparations
Soviet Allegations:
The Soviet note says the Western powers began to follow a policy in Germany counter to the provisions of the Potsdam Protocol about a year after the war. The note specifies this was due to a heated ideological struggle which reversed wartime cooperation. It charges that the Western powers refused to give the U.S.S.R. reparations due from Germany. The note says:
The first violation of the Potsdam Agreement was the refusal by the governments of the USA, Great Britain, and France to honor their commitments under the aforesaid agreement regarding the transfer to the Soviet Union of the agreed amount of industrial equipment from West Germany, as partial compensation for the destruction and damage inflicted upon the national economy of the U.S.S.R. by the aggression of Hitlerite Germany.
The Facts Are:
1. The Potsdam Protocol provided that the U.S.S.R. should receive from the Western occupation zones 15 percent of specified types of such industrial capital equipment as was unnecessary for the German peace economy in exchange for an equivalent [italics in original] value of food and other raw materials plus an additional 10 percent without exchange. Payment of reparations should leave enough resources to enable the German people to subsist without external assistance [italics in original]. It also provided that Germany should be treated “as a single economic unit.”
2. The Soviet Union did not deliver food and other raw materials in return for large shipments of capital equipment from the Western zones.
3. The United States suspended reparations shipments because of the failure of the Soviet Union to implement the Potsdam Protocol as a whole.
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