Could the postwar division of Germany have been averted? Dirk Spilker's study addresses this question from the perspective of the East German political elite, looking primarily at the policies, as well as the public and more private statements, of leading communist and social democratic officials from 1944 to 1953. Its main findings are easily summarized, though not particularly novel or surprising. According to Spilker, the leaders of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) “did not want (and would not have accepted) a liberal Western-style regime” (p. 5), i.e., a unified but neutral Germany with democratic trappings. Their declarations to the contrary—both before and after the creation of the new working-class party in April 1946—were merely tactical: Communist leaders were only prepared to accept national unity on their own terms, he argues, even if that meant sacrificing the whole pie in order to maintain complete control of one rather large slice. They paid lip service to the idea of “bourgeois democracy” during the immediate postwar years in an instrumental effort to win the backing of the German masses—but also because they “genuinely believed” (p. 6) that the latter would one day be drawn to and embrace the types of Soviet-style reform being introduced east of the Elbe. This was, in essence, the West German “magnet theory” in reverse (p. 94).

What accounted for their heady optimism? The “scientific” principles of Marxism-Leninism taught dedicated communists that history was on their side, of course, and the early socioeconomic difficulties of pre-Wirtschaftswunder western Germany made them believe that the internal contradictions of capitalism would, indeed, eventually lead to the collapse of the fledgling rival in the west. Stalin and the other Soviet leaders strongly concurred, according to Spilker, and at no point was Moscow or East Berlin seriously willing to abandon the new regime in order to bring about unification if that meant forfeiting communist control.

None of this is really revelatory. That East German communists actually trusted in the superiority of their system and believed, at least early on, that it would ultimately prevail will perhaps only come as a major surprise to those unfamiliar with the history of the communist movement (and especially Catherine Epstein's The Last Revolutionaries). The archival evidence that Spilker uses to get at what East German leaders such as Walter Ulbricht, Wilhelm Pieck, and Otto Grotewohl really thought is quite narrow. He conducted research in a single archive, the well-trodden Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR (SAPMO), and bases most of his findings on personal papers as well as on the minutes of high-level party meetings, especially those held by the SED's executive committee (Parteivorstand). The extent to which those in attendance spoke their mind remains unclear, given the potential sanctions for those who expressed deviant opinions. That said, there are a few refreshing glimpses of candor: Pieck admitted in the summer of 1949, for example, that “an overwhelming majority” (p. 185) would vote in favor of a recent proposal to unify Germany by attaching the Soviet zone of occupation to the Western ones.

In fact, and as this suggests, the optimism of the SED elite was tempered by repeated disappointments about actual developments on the ground, such as the failure of the People's Congress for Unity movement or the party's relatively poor showing in elections that took place in the east in the fall of 1946. Spilker does a fine job of tracing the leadership's oscillation between wishful thinking and self-delusion, on the one hand, and a realistic assessment of the SED's weaknesses and actual standing, on the other. He combines this with a chronological narrative of the major political developments that took place in Germany during the first postwar decade.

But does he have anything new to say? The study obviously takes aim at, and dismisses in no uncertain terms, older claims about the supposed “missed opportunities” for German unity, such as the so-called Stalin notes of 1952. But, as he acknowledges, these are claims that have already been put to rest by scholars, such as Gerhard Wettig, who have had access to the former Soviet archives. Spilker is especially interested in refuting one study: Stalins ungeliebtes Kind by Wilfried Loth, which appeared in English as Stalin's Unwanted Child: The Soviet Union, The German Question, and the Founding of the GDR in 1998, the same year that Spilker completed the doctoral thesis upon which his book is based. Each time that some riff on the oft repeated phrase “despite claims that” appears, it is invariably a criticism of Loth's work, which put forth the controversial claim that Stalin had no interest in maintaining a separate communist regime in the eastern half of Germany.

As Spilker points out, “this argument has been greeted with fierce hostility and even ridicule, but Loth's critics have found it hard to refute his claims” (p. 5). (It should be noted that his only source for the latter assertion is Loth's own replies to his critics. Spilker apparently has less reservations about another work by Loth, Die Teilung der Welt. Geschichte des Kalten Krieges, 1941–1955, which is the sole citation provided in a passage about American revisionist historians who wrote about the Cold War in the 1960s.) Spilker's own refutation of Loth occasionally misses the mark, such as his confusing and unpersuasive attempt to disprove the latter's claim that an East German “offer of free elections was a genuine opportunity for German reunification on the basis of a Western-style regime” (p. 223). Moreover, Spilker neglects to show how his objections differ from those of Loth's other critics, or even how his account as a whole breaks new ground. It is extremely well written and clearly organized, and the study does show that the SED was plainly willing—even before Stalin and despite the party's official rhetoric—to sacrifice national unity in order to maintain a communist stronghold in the eastern half of Germany. In the end, however, that is little more than old wine in a new bottle.