The Soviet Government fully understands the position of the German Democratic Republic, which does not want to see the democratic and social gains of the German working people destroyed, the property of capitalists and landlords restored, the land, plants, and factories taken away from the people, and the GDR subjected to a militarist regime. The recent elections for the People's Chamber and local bodies of the German Democratic Republic are yet another striking indication that the population of the GDR unanimously supports the policy of its Government, which is aimed at preserving peace and reuniting Germany on a peaceful and democratic basis, and is fully determined to defend its Socialist gains. The Soviet Union expresses complete solidarity with the GDR, which is firmly defending its lawful rights.
If one is to face the truth, one should recognize that other countries are not too eager either to support the plans of the Government of the FRG for unifying Germany by force. And this is understandable, since peoples including those of France and Great Britain, are still smarting from the wounds inflicted on them by Hitlerite Germany.
Traces of the last war are far from erased from French towns and villages. The ruins left in the capital and in many cities of Great Britain after the bombings by Nazi planes have not yet been removed, and millions of Britons cannot forget the tragic fate of Coventry. The peoples that were subjected to occupation by the Hitlerite army fully understand these feelings. They lost millions of men and women killed or tortured to death, and saw thousands of cities destroyed and villages burned on their soil. The Soviet people will never forget what happened to Stalingrad, nor will the Poles ever forget the fate of Warsaw, nor the Czechoslovak people that of Lidice. American families also came to know the grief of losing their kith and kin. Germany twice unleashed world wars and in both cases dragged into them the United States of America, whose sons were compelled to shed their blood in lands thousands of miles away from American shores.
Mindful of all this, the peoples cannot and will not permit the unification of Germany on a militaristic basis.
There is another program for uniting Germany, which is advocated by the German Democratic Republic. This is a program for uniting Germany as a peace-loving and democratic state, and it cannot fail to be welcomed by the peoples. There is but one way to put it into effect, that is, through agreement and contracts between the two German states and through the establishment of a German confederation. The implementation of this proposal would, without affecting the social structures of the GDR and the FRG, direct into the single channel of a peaceful policy the efforts of their governments and parliaments and would ensure a gradual rapprochement and merger of the two German states.
The Soviet Union, as well as other states interested in strengthening the peace in Europe, supports the proposals of the German Democratic Republic for the peaceful unification of Germany. The Government of the USSR regrets that none of the efforts made in this direction has as yet produced any positive results, since the governments of the United States and other NATO members, and, above all, the Government of the FRG, do not, in fact, display any concern either for the conclusion of a peace treaty or for the unification of Germany.
Consequently, the policy pursued by the United States, Great Britain, and France, directed as it is toward the militarization of West Germany and toward involving it in the military bloc of the Western Powers, has also prevented the enforcement of those provisions of the Potsdam Agreement that pertain to Germany's unity.
Actually, of all the Allied agreements on Germany, only one is being carried out today. It is the agreement on the so-called quadripartite status of Berlin. On the basis of that status, the Three Western Powers are ruling the roost in West Berlin, turning it into a kind of state within a state and using it as a center from which to pursue subversive activity against the GDR, the Soviet Union, and the other parties to the Warsaw Treaty. The United States, Great Britain, and France are freely communicating with West Berlin through lines of communication passing through the territory and the airspace of the German Democratic Republic, which they do not even want to recognize.
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