123 faddle
Posted by Gordon on July 24, 2008
A great waste of time and/or excuse to show off.
There was never any prospect of the Communists gaining control of the country or even the Soviet zone except by force. In the Berlin city elections on October 20th 1946, Communist candidates came far behind both the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats. With that, Soviet policy perceptibly hardened.
I mistakenly typed up p 122 so you may as well get it.
Beyond this level of general common intention, however, the difficulties began. Thus it was agreed to treat the German economy as a single unit, but the Soviets were also granted the right to extract and remove goods, services and financial assets from their own zone. They were further accorded 10 percent of reparations from the Western zones in exchange for food and raw materials to be supplied from eastern Germany.
It’s a great book (Postwar, Tony Judt) but I don’t know that either quote by itself would persuade you. Which just goes to show that you can’t judge a book by the page 123 meme.
