Foreign relations of East Germany
According to the state ideology, foreign policy had to serve the worldwide realization of socialism (Aufbau des Sozialismus) and the world revolution.
The subversive methods included political and military support for armed movements and the espionage activities of the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance of the Ministry of State Security (Stasi).
After this was completed, Ulbricht carried out internal party purges against the existing remnants of social democracy on behalf of Stalin, whereby he was rewarded by the Soviets with the role of leading politician in the German Democratic Republic, which was proclaimed in 1949 after an East-West agreement over the future of Germany had failed to materialize and the Cold War had begun.
After its founding, the GDR remained closely linked to the Soviet Union by joining the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) and initially functioned as a bargaining chip for the possible neutrality of a united Germany.
On March 25, 1954, the Soviet government declared the recognition of the sovereignty of the GDR, which from now on was to decide “at its own discretion about its internal and external affairs”, but remained closely tied to the Eastern Bloc via the Warsaw Pact founded in 1955.
In 1967, the establishment of diplomatic relations with the West Germany by the People's Republic of Romania led to disputes between the East German and Romanian party leadership.
The attempts in the Prague Spring of 1968 to establish reform communism or “socialism with a human face” were dogmatically condemned by the GDR leadership and perceived as a threat.
The GDR indirectly supported the military suppression of the Czechoslovak reform movement by securing supplies for the Warsaw Pact intervention troops.
During the negotiations that began in 1969, East Berlin found itself caught between the fronts of both powers, with Moscow rejecting any excessive rapprochement between the GDR and the FRG.
[2] The GDR used the new international recognition in the second half of the 1970s to deepen economic and political contacts with numerous developing countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas.
In 1981, the Soviets reduced their oil deliveries, whereupon West Germany offered aid payments in return for an agreement on easier travel for GDR citizens.
Contact was finally made for the first time under Kurt Georg Kiesinger in 1967, after the construction of the Berlin Wall in the early 1960s had created facts.
Under Chancellor Willy Brandt, the old German policy positions were abandoned and the basic treaty of 1972 laid the basis for cooperation between the two states.
[12][16] Despite the ongoing official assurances of mutual friendship, there was also an underlying mistrust on both sides, which was based on the difficult shared legacy of the Second World War and the GDR's great dependence.
In the final phase of the GDR, the government even had Soviet media such as Sputnik censored because they began to report critically as part of Gorbachev's reforms.
[18] The East German leadership watched the emergence of the anti-communist Solidarity movement with concern and in 1980 the GDR stopped free travel with Poland as a “cordon sanitaire” against the “Polish fever”.
[19] The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic diplomatically recognized the GDR in 1949 and both states subsequently concluded several agreements on economic, cultural and military cooperation.
In the Treaty of Prague of July 1950, both states renounced mutual territorial claims, declared the Munich Agreement of 1938 invalid and the resettlement or expulsion of the German population of the Sudetenland as “final” and “just”.
The GDR supported the Soviets' suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956 diplomatically, as the SED cadres feared for their own power in the event of a successful revolution.
It was possible for East German citizens to travel to Hungary, which is why the Stasi established cooperation with the Hungarian security authorities in order to prevent flights to the West and to monitor overly close East-West contacts.
The break came when Hungary opened the border with Austria in 1989, allowing many GDR citizens to escape to the West, which the East German leadership decried as "betrayal of socialism".
[2] Under Josip Tito, Yugoslavia was a member of the Non-Aligned Movement and maintained good diplomatic contacts with the West, although it was nominally socialist.
However, due to its independent line, Yugoslavia remained largely taboo as a holiday destination for East German citizens until the fall of the Berlin Wall.
However, when Romanian President Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej took a course independent of the Soviet Union in the 1960s (national communism), relations became more distant as the GDR continued to align itself closely with the USSR.
Erich Honecker saw the danger of a split in the socialist camp and tried to mediate between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic during a state visit in 1986, but the latter had long since turned towards the West as part of its reform and opening policy.
The GDR developed close economic ties with Cuba and imported citrus fruits such as oranges and lemons at inflated prices and in return donated machinery and engines and also helped to set up the education system.
[37] Mozambique acted as a frontline state against the apartheid regime in South Africa, with East Germany providing military training to the African National Congress (ANC).
[39] The GDR supported the Marxist MPLA in Angola in the fight against the Portuguese colonial power and during the Angolan Civil War with weapons and ammunition.
[44] In 1975, East Germany supported UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which condemned Zionism as “a form of racism.”[44] A change only occurred in the final phase of the GDR, when the first freely elected Volkskammer passed a declaration in June 1990 in which it "formally apologized for the anti-Israel and anti-Zionist policies that had been practiced in this country for decades.
In terms of actual political influence, the Foreign Minister was behind the respective Central Committee Secretary for International Relations, Hermann Axen from 1966 to 1989.
