World: Ironic Request

East Germany was also forced into a galling admission of its economic straits. Only five months after Walter Ulbricht's cock-a-hoop announcement that his regime was tightening its economic links with the rest of the Soviet bloc in order to reduce its dependence on the West, East Germany asked Bonn for a ten-year, $687 million credit to be used for coal, machinery and food. The request suggested that Russia cannot be openhanded toward East Germany without causing serious damage to its own economy.

There was grim irony in the Ulbricht regime's asking for help from Konrad Adenauer while it continues to attack West Germany as fascist and keeps shooting down East Germans trying to escape to the West. But Bonn is inclined to grant the request as a means of delaying East Germany's complete integration with the Communist bloc and as a possible way to exact guarantees of free Allied access to West Berlin.