ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book seeks to fill several gaps in the history of East German-Polish relations in the context of the Cold War. It introduces the interwar links between the Polish and German communists, and postwar relations in the context of the communist takeover in Poland and the German communist movement in the Soviet zone. The chapter examines the Oder-Neisse problem from 1945 to the creation of the German Democratic Republic in 1949. It examines the period after Stalin's death in 1953 to 1956, when the Kremlin's more liberal New Course allowed the Poles to raise many of these outstanding issues in public. The chapter describes the ongoing ideological debates between the SED and the Polish United Workers' Party over agricultural policy, trade, religious and artistic freedom, and the East Germans' constant sermonizing about the virtues of their road to socialism.