Word: ulbricht
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Among the hundreds of German and Austrian Communists who went to Spain in the '30s to fight in the civil war, the man to fear most was a taciturn, cold-eyed German named Walter Ulbricht. In Albacete, far behind the Republican lines, Special Agent Ulbricht set up a German section of the OGPU and, on Moscow's orders, proceeded to rid the Communist ranks of Trotskyites. For those special cases which did not respond to the lash, the pliers, the hot wires and the other accepted tools of his craft, Ulbricht fashioned a tiny cell of granite blocks...
...Walter Ulbricht moved on to bigger things. With mortar made in Moscow, he built a stone coffin for a land of 18 million people and called it the German Democratic Republic...
...hardly execute or jail 18 million East Germans. Their best bet was to conciliate where they could, in hopes that the hatred and yearnings which still smoldered beneath the surface might die out for lack of political oxygen. In daily spurts of breast-pounding and backtracking, Premier Grotewohl, Walter Ulbricht the No. 1 Red, and their henchmen carried out orders to ease policies which had brought East German workers and peasants to the pitch of revolution...
...Vopos having failed, the Red program of East German rearmament was halted, and more than 2 billion East German marks (about $80 million) were transferred to a fund to "raise living standards" for workers. Ulbricht's relentless concentration on heavy industry, at the expense of production of things East Germans desperately need, was slowed down to allow production of more consumer goods. Some of the vast state stocks of food and clothing, a monument to Ulbricht's heavy-handed insistence on "state planning," were released to consumer retail channels. Many socialized plants and farms were returned to private...
...past and on to other places. But at Leipziger and Friedrich Strasse, where the chief government buildings stood, the mob's suppressed feelings broke out. Anger scudded in like a rain cloud. "Freedom!" they chanted. "Freedom!" "We demand the overthrow of the government." "We want the overthrow of Ulbricht...