(7 of 9)
As mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt has duties no ordinary mayor has—protocol responsibilities as the head of a quasi-autonomous state, and the responsibility for liaison with Allied commanders in the city. He also has a unique set of problems. According to East German officials, some 48 Western "terror," espionage and propaganda organizations operate out of West Berlin. Inevitably, their endless, shadowy war with the 60,000 Communist agents operating out of East Germany creates clamorous incidents in West Berlin, exposes the city to endless complaints from Moscow. Willy, like most Berliners, has come to regard some of the underground groups as "grownups playing cowboys and Indians," would like to find a way to rid his city of "certain undesirable activities in the twilight zone of political propaganda."
What worries Willy even more is the flood of refugees who pour daily into West Berlin, most of them ultimately to be flown out to the "mainland" of West Germany. Since the majority of the refugees are young, their flight is turning East Germany into a nation of oldsters; it is also creating a labor shortage in East Germany. Since 1949 more than 2,000,000 people have fled East Germany—more than three times the natural population increase. Says Willy Brandt: "When East Germans ask me what to do ... I tell them to stay as long as they can manage." His reason: the fear that if the population drain continues, the Russians may begin to resettle East Germany with other people, bringing the Slav tide to the edge of Berlin.
Intellectuals' Flight. So far, the Russians have shown no signs of going to such lengths. They no longer so onerously exploit the East Germans, who now have what is probably the best standard of living in the Communist world. Many of East Germany's vaunted economic gains are all show: the bulk of the new housing in East Berlin is on the spectacular but dead Stalinallee. And with a total automobile production last year of 36,000, East Germany still has a long way to go to catch up economically with West Germany, which produced more than 1,000,000. But it has been a year since East Germans needed ration cards to buy food.
Nonetheless, the flight to the West continues. Increasingly, the refugees are members of the intellectual elite essential to the functioning of a modern state—teachers (3,400 in 1958), doctors (more than 850), scientists (375). Most refugees flee
East Germany not because of hunger or poverty, but because they find Communist political restrictions intolerable to themselves and to their children. Says Willy Brandt: "I have factual evidence that each time the Russians scold the East Germans for not getting ahead with this or that plan, the East Germans answer: 'Berlin, Berlin, Berlin.'"