The Soviet Military Administration and East German Elections, Autumn 1946

Even before the capitulation of Germany in 1945 the Soviet Union had begun to make preparations for a step-by-step communist seizure of power in the territories it controlled. This paper shows that the elections in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ) in autumn 1946 were part of this radical change. Unpublished Russian documents provide evidence that Soviet military authorities had planned almost every detail of this campaign to ensure that the Socialist Unity Party of German (SED) headed the poll — and this was even more evident after the crushing defeat of the communists in Hungary and Austria in 1945. In any case the Soviets were determined that such defeat should not happen again due to Stalin's postwar plans to establish a predominantly communist Germany.