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Nationalism as a Heavy Mortgage: SED Cadres Actions between Demand and Reality*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
In May 1951, students at the District Party School of the Socialist Union Party of Germany (SED) in the southern Thuringian city of Suhl evaluated the agitation and propaganda assignments that they had recently completed. Such assignments were a regular exercise in the instruction of future cadres. From these discussions, the difficulties that traditional German nationalism posed to the SED become clear. One student cited words of a party comrade he had talked to on the question of befriending the Polish and the Czechoslovak peoples. Instead of sticking to the official ideological line that rejected chauvinist ideas, this comrade had responded: “[…] I will never make friends with the Czech people. To me they are not human beings.” This anger directed against the Czechs by a German communist may have arisen from the frequently brutal deportation of Germans from Czechoslovakia after 1945: the Czechs had not made exceptions for German anti-fascists. It could also be explained by continued anti-Slav sentiment dating from the Nazi years. The file does not elaborate how the incident was resolved. Nevertheless, it demonstrates that nationalist sentiments had survived the collapse of Nazism even with members of the SED. How did the SED counter this heavy national mortgage?
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