Many contemporaries considered the two German states, established in 1949, to be temporary arrangements. The year 1952 seemed to offer a chance for reunification, but in the end, it led to a deepening of the division. For more than five decades, there has been debate over whether the proposal for a united and neutralized Germany contained in the Stalin Note of March 10, 1952, was a realistic alternative. The documents from the Soviet leadership, which Peter Ruggenthaler has evaluated for the first time on this issue, provide a clear answer: Stalin's offer for unification was not made in earnest, but rather as a disruptive maneuver against the rearmament of West Germany. Even towards Austria, the Soviet Union was not willing to pursue a policy of neutrality until the end of the note crisis. From the very beginning, Stalin and the SED were focused on consolidating the GDR. The decades-long dispute over the Stalin Note is decisively addressed in this documentation.