Germany is the key sector of the cold war. It is there that the stakes are highest, that victory promises the richest fruits, that defeat would be nothing short of catastrophe. Looking first on the optimistic side, let us imagine that the appearance of the new army of the Federal Republic, deployed along the zonal boundary, the bands playing the old German military marches, lets loose an uncontrollable wave of sentiment for reunion in freedom in the Soviet Zone. Desertion from the Soviet Zone armed forces, already considerable, assumes a mass character.
Given these assumptions, itisbyno means incredible that, even though the Red Army would be strong enough, in theory, to hold down the Zone, the situation would become politically unmanageable. Germany would be reunited in the only manner that would make reunion worth while, by the complete collapse of the Soviet puppet regime. Such a development would represent a real and probably decisive turn in the tide of the cold war. Some eighteen million Germans, most of them passionate anti-Communists as a result of their experience under Soviet domination, would be transferred from the camp of totalitarianism to the camp of freedom.
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