Reaction By The East German Leadership
About 10 a.m., the Politburo met at party headquarters, the House of Unity. By 10:30 a.m., concerned about the growing disorder, the Soviet ambassador Semyonov ordered the leadership to proceed to the Soviet headquarters in Karlshorst, from which they were finally dispatched to major cities in an effort to observe and maintain political control throughout the GDR. Ulbricht, Grotewohl, Zaisser, and Herrnstadt remained in the Soviet High Commission headquarters. According to Rudolf Herrnstadt’s recollections, Semyonov at one point confronted them over how badly the situation had deteriorated. “RIAS is broadcasting that there is no government any more within the GDR,” he remarked, ”Well, it is almost true.”
The Politburo did not meet again until 20 June—at party headquarters. The afternoon session was marked by the devastating first-hand impressions members had brought back from the districts. “In the face of continuing attempts by the fascist provocateurs and the wait-and-see attitude of certain elements of the population the Politburo did not consider it advantageous to terminate martial law,” the minutes noted. The leadership hastened to declare, however, that “the decision was a prerogative of the responsible Soviet authorities and that superior international interests may necessitate lifting martial law as soon as possible.”
Certainly aware of the difficult position that military rule had placed the Soviets in internationally (and perhaps not quite sure to what degree the Soviets shared its views of the revolt’s source), the Politburo also resolved to ask Moscow not to immediately abandon “the measures to prevent the intrusion of fascist bandits from West Berlin” once martial law was lifted in East Berlin. The Politburo also decided—as it would repeatedly in the next few days—on additional measures to increase consumer goods production and the importation of raw materials and foodstuffs.
Read more about this topic: Uprising Of 1953 In East Germany
Famous quotes containing the words reaction, east, german and/or leadership:
“Sole and self-commanded works,
Fears not undermining days,
Grows by decays,
And, by the famous might that lurks
In reaction and recoil,
Makes flames to freeze, and ice to boil.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The Germans—once they were called the nation of thinkers: do they still think at all? Nowadays the Germans are bored with intellect, the Germans distrust intellect, politics devours all seriousness for really intellectual things—Deutschland, Deutschland Über alles was, I fear, the end of German philosophy.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency—indeed, 1992 was the Year of the White Middle Class Woman—but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)