Walter Ulbricht - Creation of The GDR

Creation of The GDR

In April 1945, Ulbricht led a group of party functionaries ("Ulbricht Group") into Germany to begin reconstruction of the German Communist party along orthodox Stalinist lines. Within the Soviet occupied zone of Germany, the Social Democrats were pressured into merging with the Communists, on Communist terms, to form the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands or SED), and Ulbricht played a key role in this.

After the founding of the German Democratic Republic on 7 October 1949, Ulbricht became Deputy Chairman (Stellvertreter des Vorsitzenden) of the Council of Ministers (Ministerrat der DDR) under Chairman Otto Grotewohl--i. e., deputy prime minister. In 1950, as the SED restructured itself into a more orthodox Soviet-style Communist party, he became General Secretary of the SED Central Committee; this position was renamed First Secretary in 1953. After the death of Joseph Stalin his position was in danger for some time, because of his reputation as an archetypal Stalinist. Ironically, he was saved by the Berlin Uprising of 17 June 1953, because the Soviet leadership feared that deposing Ulbricht might be construed as a sign of weakness.

At the third congress of the SED in 1950, Ulbricht announced a five-year plan concentrating on the doubling of industrial production. As Stalin was at that point keeping open the option of a re-unified Germany, it was not until 1952 that the party moved towards the construction of a socialist society in East Germany.

By 1952, 80 percent of industry had been nationalised. Blindly following an outmoded Stalinist model of industrialisation – concentration on the development of heavy industry regardless of the cost, availability of raw materials, and economic suitability – produced an economy that was short of consumer goods, and those that were produced were often of shoddy quality. Growth was also hampered by a deliberate exclusion from the higher educational system of children of 'bourgeois' families. One consequence was the flight of large numbers of citizens to the West: over 360,000 in 1952 and the early part of 1953.

In 1957, Ulbricht arranged a visit to an East German collective farm at Trinwillershagen in order to demonstrate the GDR's modern agricultural industry to the visiting Soviet Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan. Following the death of Wilhelm Pieck in 1960, the SED abolished the function of President of the GDR and instead created a new institution, the Council of State. Ulbricht was named its chairman—thus becoming, in name as well as in fact, the supreme leader of the country.

He managed to achieve this position despite having a peculiarly squeaky falsetto voice resulting from a diphtheria infection when he was eighteen. At times, his speeches would be incomprehensible, owing to the combination of this very high register with his Saxon accent.

Although modest economic gains were being made, emigration still continued. By 1961, 1.65 million had fled to the west. Fearful of the possible consequences of this continued outflow of refugees, and aware of the dangers an East German collapse would present to the Soviet Union’s Communist satellite empire, Ulbricht pressured Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in early 1961 to stop the outflow and resolve the status of Berlin. During this time, the refugees’ mood was rarely expressed in words, though East German laborer Kurt Wismach did so effectively by shouting for free elections during one of Ulbricht’s speeches. When Khrushchev approved the building of a wall as a means to resolve this situation, Ulbricht threw himself into the project with abandon. Delegating different tasks in the process while maintaining overall supervision and careful control of the project, Ulbricht managed to keep secret the purchase of vast amounts of building materials, including barbed wire, concrete pillars, timber, and mesh wire. On 13 August 1961, work began on what was to become the Berlin Wall, only two months after Ulbricht had emphatically denied that there were such plans ("Nobody has the intention of building a wall"). Ulbricht had sent out GDR soldiers and police to seal the border with West Berlin overnight. The mobilization included 8,200 members of the People’s Police, 3,700 members of the mobile police, 12,000 factory militia members, and 4,500 State Security officers. Ulbricht also dispersed 40,000 East German soldiers across the country to suppress any potential protests.

The 1968 invasion by Warsaw Pact troops of Czechoslovakia and the suppression of the Prague Spring were also applauded by Ulbricht – East German soldiers were among those massed on the border but did not cross over, probably due to Czech sensitivities about German troops on their soil – and earned him a reputation as a staunch Soviet ally in contrast to Romanian leader Nicolae Ceauşescu, who condemned the invasion.