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For himself, Ulbricht reserved only a deputy premiership, one of six in the "Presidium," which rules East Germany on behalf of a rubber-stamp Parliament. But in reality the SED runs the government (always subject to word from Moscow), and Walter Ulbricht runs the SED. He became the party's secretary general (the job on which Stalin built his power in Russia), as well as a member of its eight-man Politburo and its Central Committee. He whipped it into an organization of 1,300,000 members and bestowed on it a constitution which said baldly: "The party of Lenin and Stalin, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, is to enjoy among members and especially functionaries of our party absolute authority . . ." From Moscow to Soviet occupation headquarters in East Berlin to the squat SED House of Unity in Karl Liebknecht Platz, where the proconsul established quarters more fitting than a shabby carpenters' hall, flowed the mandates which sealed 18 million East Germans into the stone coffin.
Kindergarten & Up. From bedroom to locomotive cab, kindergarten to rocking chair, the plain German was jerked and jacked into the service of the state.
YOUTHS were enticed and bullied into the Free German Youth (FDJ), which now has 2,500,000 members. They were treated to blue-shirted uniforms, military training, daily Communist indoctrination and the old Nazi-Communist privilege of bullying their elders and informing on those who proved uncooperative. Example: FDJ bands raided churches at night to vandalize and cow East Germany's Strong (16.6 million) Protestant community into submission. The youth who did not join found himself ostracized, barred from athletics (all run by FDJ). The classroom, from lowest country school to the once famed University of Berlin, was taken from Euclid and Goethe and given to Marx, Lenin and Stalin. The study of Russian was made compulsory in all schools and universities. "Tnere is no education separate from politics," explained the basic text for teachers' colleges. "Education and study form philosophies in people's minds."
WOMEN were organized into the Democratic Women's Federation (1,150,000), and put to work in mills and shops on behalf of "peace and unity."
PEASANTS were coerced into the Association for Mutual Peasants' Aid by the old Communist method—nonmembers pay high prices for goods and machinery, higher interest on loans. At least 70% of all farmland is by now splintered into holdings of 50 acres or less, and much of that was later caught up in the grim jumble of forced collectivization. If his bulls and heifers refused to respect the state-decreed "cattle reproduction" quota, the farmer was liable to imprisonment for sabotage; if his fields fell below the "delivery quota," his family stood in danger.
WORKERS were forced into a trade union that robs them of the right to strike, on the ground that ". . . the state protects the rights of workers." Around 80% of East German industry was confiscated by the Russians or nationalized; from Ulbricht's state planners came decree after decree expanding East Germany's production of heavy goods and cutting down on the quantity and quality of the shoes, clothes, utensils and other consumer goods the people needed.