Word: ulbricht
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...quick glance at TIME's Aug. 25 cover of Ulbricht, and I thought the story was on Satan. A brilliant drawing of the goateed German gnome! I guess my initial impression wasn't far from the truth...
...Communists' East German wall was virtually complete. Behind it, Red Boss Walter Ulbricht could whip his sullen millions into line without fear of an other mass exodus. But barricading Berlin was just the first surprise Old Spitzbart (pointed beard) had in mind for the West. Last week, pointedly, arrogantly, he began to reach for more, and as a result, on the tense and anxious Berlin frontier more and more armed men faced each other with weapons at the ready...
...heavy industrial equipment to the rest of the Soviet bloc; East Germany is the machine shop for Russia (it produces one-half of the Soviet Union's total ma chine imports) and half a dozen other satellite nations. So great is the strain on the economy that Ulbricht's planners last March abruptly put East Germany's airplane industry out of business so that raw materials and labor could be used elsewhere...
Despite his age and occasional bouts of ill health (liver and gall bladder), Ulbricht runs his country with undiminished authority, working as many as 18 hours a day. barking rapid-fire orders in his high-pitched voice. There is only a bare pretense of democracy. Technically, Ulbricht's S.E.D. rules not alone, but with four other parties (including a sham offshoot of West Germany's Christian Democratic Party) in a National Front whose united list of candidates is presented to voters at each election with no other choices. After the election rituals, the S.E.D. always gains control...
Still Hope. Walter Ulbricht will never be happy until his troubled land is elevated from occupied status to become a full-fledged, sovereign nation. This Nikita Khrushchev has promised time and time again since 1958, as he has threatened to sign a peace treaty and let the German Democratic Republic take over its own affairs (including control of the West's presence in, and access to, Berlin). The current mood in Moscow is to give Ulbricht his treaty this fall. So far, virtually no important non-Communist nation has recognized the G.D.R. diplomatically, but Ulbricht is working feverishly...