Bandits - II

Source: here

The picture shows another individual who certainly deserves a place in my series of Bandits. He is the disgusting Walter Ulbricht, leader of East Germany until he was "retired on health grounds" in 1971 by Leonid Brezhnev (another one who who not be out of place around here).

Here is a person who was indeed a committed communist and was a vassal of Stalin and his secret police the NKVD, who were able to assist Ulbricht in his ambitions by "liquidating" his rivals who had escaped to the USSR in the 1930s. The deeply sinister Lavrenty Beria (who will have to feature here soon) but who at least had a brain, described Ulbricht as "The greatest idiot I have ever seen."

A useless bureaucrat of the rigid Stalinist type, his career was very nearly cut short in June 1953, when exasperated by the régime's economic incompetence, there was an uprising of the workers - about 100,000 of them - in East Germany. This mass protest was ruthlessly put down at Ulbricht's request by his Russian friends - 20,000 soldiers and tanks were brought in. Many were killed and over 1000 imprisoned.

Berthold Brecht composed an excellent poem after the end of the protest:

The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th June

The Secretary of the Writers Union

Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee

Stating that the people

Had forfeited the confidence of the government

And could win it back only

By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier

In that case for the government

To dissolve the people

And elect another?

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Source: here

After his death in 1973 he was honoured with a state funeral; what a joke. Am I surprised? No. Am I appalled? Yes.

Until the next time