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"The Method of Three." For the working man, life became an Orwellian nightmare of cant and slogans, pressures and penalties. He went to a job picked for him by the government. At day's end he shuffled from the plant in shoddy shoes that cost too much (about 100 hours' wages) and wore out too soon to a home where the larder was lean (a pound of butter, when it was available, cost ten hours' wages) and hope even leaner. The regime coerced him into volunteer, unpaid "peace shifts." He had to march in parades to demand more hours' work of himself for no more pay. Plant managers and party planners raced to outdo each other with new gimmicks or old variations on the Soviet Stakhanovite system: P. Bykov's "rapid-lathe-operators' movement," J. Savitch's "rapid-grinders' movement," P. Duvanov's "movement for speeded-up baking of tiles," the "method of three" for cooperative laying of bricks—one man to slap on mortar, one to pass the brick, one to set the brick. The "work norm" became the laborer's master: if bricks laid or valves ground fell below inexorably increasing quotas set by the government, his wages fell.
And there were, of course, the police—the Volkspolizei, or People's Police. Some 90,000 East Germans were recruited into the Blue Police for plain cop duty. Another 130,000 put on the Soviet-style uniforms of the Brown Police to become the German Red army. Equipped with Soviet tanks, Maxim heavy machine guns and other modern weapons, they were organized into combat teams and an army group: some were assigned to a fleet of 31 armed ships, others to flight training in Yak-17s Behind the "Vopos" rose the secret police, some 30,000 organized in NKVD style by a veteran (60) Red of the Spanish civil war and Moscow fraternity named Wilhelm Zaisser.
Organizer Ulbricht, it seemed, had saddled the cow. The more Moscow milked it, the more he tightened the cinch belts. There was a Two Year Plan, then a Five Year Plan. Steel production went up 500,000 tons above the prewar average for Eastern Junker Germany (to about 1,700,000 tons a year). Electric power output climbed 50% in two years. New hard-coal fields were opened, chemicals output went UP 30% and East Germany seemed on the way to becoming the most important industrial area in Europe after the Ruhr.
But the squeeze was too much. What cream the cow produced went to Russia and the satellites, but nothing came back in return. The agricultural program broke down, and this spring a land historically known for surpluses fell short 600,000 tons of bread grain, 100,000 tons of sugar and 125,000 tons of the indispensable potato. Restaurants took to serving boiled potatoes only to customers who traded in an equal quantity of raw ones.