Die Sowjetunion und die deutsche Frage: Studien zur sowjetischen Deutschlandpolitik von Stalin bis Chruschtschow (review)

In 1994 the German historian Wilfried Loth published his highly controversial book Stalins ungeliebtes Kind [Stalin’s Unloved Child], which argued, on the basis of newly released East German sources, that the Soviet dictator and his immediate successors had never wanted a separate Communist state in the east and instead had sought a united, liberal democratic, and neutral Germany. Thirteen years later, Loth has written a second book, based largely on Soviet sources, reaffirming the main conclusions of the first. He cites documents from six Moscow archives, the most important being the archive of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the State Archive for Socio-Political History (the former Central Party Archive), and the Presidential Archive. Fifteen translated documents pertaining to the genesis of the so-called Stalin Note in March 1952 and excerpts from the remarks of Soviet Prime Minister Georgii Malenkov on 2 June 1953, are included in the appendices. These run to 67 pages and should prove invaluable to historians. However, as Loth himself concedes on page 70, he did not gain access to the archives of the Russian Defense Ministry and the state security organs.

The book is divided into nine chapters: Stalin, the German question and the German Democratic Republic (GDR); planning during the Second World War; the German question at the end of the war; the road to division; the foundation of the GDR; the origins of the Stalin Note; the end of a legend; the 17 June 1953 uprising in international context; and Stalin, Beria, and Khrushchev. Six of the chapters appeared as articles or chapters in edited volumes a few years ago. Three others are original pieces. All are thoroughly researched, highly informative, and well written. Chapters 2 and 3 are particularly impressive, demonstrating that until late March 1945 Iosif Stalin wanted to split Germany into a number of states. Chapter 7 is also convincing, dispensing with Hermann Graml’s argument that Stalin’s offer to reunify Germany as a neutral country (the so-called Stalin Note of 10 March 1952) was nothing more than a propaganda stunt.

As far as the secondary literature is concerned, one important book is missing from the bibliography: Dirk Spilker’s The East German Leadership and the Division of Germany: Patriotism and Propaganda, 1945–1953 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Spilker’s book appeared the year before Die Sowjetunion und die deutsche Frage went to press, probably too late to be included. The omission is unfortunate because Spilker convincingly refutes Loth’s central thesis and his book is destined to become an authoritative work on the subject.

Contrary to Loth’s assertion in the introduction (p. 8), the Soviet sources do not necessarily support his main contention that Stalin advocated a united, liberal democratic, and neutral Germany in the first decade after the Second World War. All they show is that the Soviet leader countenanced a united and neutral Germany that was not yet fully Communist. The difference between these two positions is crucial. After all, the GDR itself did not officially become “socialist” until the collectivization of agriculture had been completed in 1960. Until then the GDR was officially deemed to be in a period of transition. Malenkov’s statement to a delegation of GDR leaders on 2 June 1953 that Germany should become a “bourgeois-democratic republic” with a constitution similar to that of the Weimar Republic (pp. 218–219, 302) hardly corroborates Loth’s argument. After all, East Germany’s 1949 constitution also resembled that of Weimar but served as a fig leaf for totalitarianism.

What Loth fails to grasp is that Stalin and his immediate successors (with the possible exception of Lavrentii Beria, the Soviet minister of internal affairs from March to June 1953) favored a united and neutral Germany only if it was run by a left-wing government committed to the building of Soviet-style socialism. If such a government could be freely...