GERMANY: The Apparatus

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Pancake on Legs. Ernst Wollweber spent the last years of the war in Russia. In 1946, he came back to Germany and stepped into his seemingly legitimate job in the Ministry of Transport. He has a glowing bald spot, and his once rugged frame has grown so fat and flabby that his staff refer to him covertly in the Berlin dialect as "Pfannkuchen uff Beene"—pancake on legs. But inside, as the West is learning to its discomfort, Ernst Wollweber is still the tough and brutal plotter, still a master of his craft. His diligent Red troublemakers and riot-prompters speckle Western Germany. His saboteurs have infiltrated West Germany so extensively in recent months that West German industrialists announced last week they were planning a mutual security program to protect their plants. His smooth exploitation of the West Germans' desire for trade and of the opportunities for smuggling was working so well that occupation authorities were considering stringent measures. As a sample, the U.S. ECA mission to Germany took steps last week to withhold 6,000,000 marks in ECA counterpart funds from a Ruhr steel firm that has been engaging in illegal trade with the Communists. It was the first, but probably not the last, real countermeasure against the Wollweber apparatus.

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