After the Reich (101 page)

On 28 June American soldiers arrested Sokolovsky - allegedly by mistake - for speeding in their sector. He identified himself, but they still held him for an hour. Sokolovsky told Robertson that the blockade was about the currency, and he could draw his own conclusions. The Russian was unconvinced by the game his countrymen were playing in Berlin. Rumours flew this way and that. Clay was later told that the Russians intended to put up barrage balloons to impede landing.
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When the first proper banknotes were issued in the east, the SBZ further exacerbated the plight of the westerners by making them go deep into their sector to convert their old coupons. The dollar was now worth DM28, and a flight to the West cost $28. No one had DM784. Anyone who might be able to scrape together such a princely sum had left. Even Ruth Friedrich, who had endured the worst of it, now thought it was time to go.

Clay’s airlift was as much a propaganda success as the Soviet blockade was an own goal. In West Berlin and Western Germany the wholly negative picture of Soviet aims never disappeared. The crisis also accelerated the polarisation of the two sides. Otto Grotewohl addressed the SED Central Committee on 30 June to affirm his clear commitment to an ‘Eastern orientation’, even if this did not change the Party’s policy on unity.
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Currency anarchy continued. The Eastern ‘coupon mark’ was now worth ten Reichsmarks. It could also be used in the Western sectors, but not for everything. A money market grew up around the Zoo Station. Certain currencies were used for different goods: matches were paid for with Western money; onions half and half; raisins Western; sugar Eastern. You bought a newspaper with Eastern money, but the printing had to be paid for with Western currency.
⁵⁸

The Western authorities prevented the new currency from reaching Berlin, but the SBZ did not call off the blockade. ‘Technical problems’ had required the closing of land routes and waterways to Berlin. As Lucius Clay put it, ‘the technical difficulties would last until the Western Powers buried their plans for a West German government’.
⁵⁹
On 2 July the Russians cut off the water to the Western sectors, claiming the need to repair the locks. Howley pointed out that water was needed to make bread, although once again he was unclear about how much.
⁶⁰

A great disappointment to the Berliners was the craven behaviour of Wilhelm Furtwängler, who cancelled his appearance with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra on 7 July 1948. The conductor was due to direct the orchestra in Potsdam with American soloists. He evidently thought it would be too risky, even though the Americans had agreed to lay on the transport. The Berliners had to be satisfied with Leopold Ludwig.
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As a result of the airlift, the Russian-occupied Radio Station could no longer be used. Eventually the Soviet authorities gave up their island in the British Sector and built themselves a new station in Adlershorst in their own fief. The next day the blockade claimed its first life when an American Dakota crashed. The second crash occurred two weeks later on the 25th when a C-47 ploughed into a house in Friedenau killing the crew.
⁶²

On 14 July the Russians dropped all pretence about ‘technical difficulties’.
⁶³
A week later a plane was landing every three minutes, but the situation was dire, and in November and December the operation was often hampered by fog, even if the weather miraculously improved when the food situation was at its worst. Radar allowed some planes to land. The lack of landing space had meant that the French airstrip at Tegel was being rapidly made ready for aircraft. As many as 17,000 men were working on the runway, on the promise of a hot meal every day. Berliners received at best a couple of hours’ electricity at day, and often had to wait until the middle of the night to cook. The short-lived burst of electric light brought the same sort of euphoria as a glass of wine. The lucky ones lived in an Allied-occupied building. They had power and light.
⁶⁴

On 23 July Clay reported to Truman in the White House. It was not going to be a repeat of Potsdam. Truman was not to be bamboozled. He returned to the idea of supplying the city by armed convoys. Clay was not so keen, but he did not think the Russians were prepared to go to war.
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In America voices were raised calling for a break with the Russians. ‘These people did not understand that our choice was only between negotiations and war,’ Truman said. ‘There was no third way.’
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The real reason for the blockade must have become obvious to all and sundry on 27 July when the Conference of Foreign Ministers in London decided that they had agreed on the creation of a West German state. All that was needed now was a ‘basic law’ to serve as a constitution. The basic law (
Grundgesetz
) would be ratified by the provincial assemblies or Landtage. There would be no vote in the east, as the ministers had decided the people were not free to express their opinions and might vote against. Clay concluded once again that the Germans needed the responsibility of self-government. Germany was to have its own administration
before
the peace treaty. This little bombshell made the Western Allies reconsider evacuating some Berliners who might otherwise have been abducted.
⁶⁷

The West had finally had enough of the Soviet-controlled Markgraf Police and on 26 July organised their own force under Johannes Stumm, Markgraf’s former deputy. Three-quarters of the Markgraf Police promptly deserted to the Stumm. When on 29 July the Magistrat or town council tried to meet at the Red Rathaus they were met by SED members chanting, ‘We want just one currency!’ Members of the council were intimidated and beaten up, and Western policemen were carried off by SED thugs. One who was manhandled was Jeanette Wolff, a Jewess who had survived two concentration camps. She was called a ‘Judensau’ ( Jewish pig) in the Rathaus carpark. ‘I have only one life to lose, and this life belongs to freedom,’ she exclaimed. The communist stooges stormed the council chamber. The future author of Berlin’s constitution, Otto Suhr, refused to begin the session until they left. Louise Schröder, standing in for Reuter, told the communists to be reasonable, and to go home and listen to the session on the radio. The SED men withdrew. ‘The storming of the Bastille’ was over.
⁶⁸

Berlin was sealed off by road, rail and water. Contingency plans were made to withdraw the Allied armies to the Rhine. On 2 August Stalin said he would lift the blockade if both Eastern and Western marks were allowed to circulate freely throughout Berlin. It was also the ‘insistent wish’ of the Soviet government that the Allies ‘postpone the next stages planned in the integration of the Western Zones’. The Russians admitted that the West was in Berlin ‘on sufferance’, but would not concede that it was ‘there by right’.
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The next day Clay said he was prepared to compromise on the currency issue. Molotov wanted more: on 10 August he demanded control of exports from the Western sectors. Clay told Washington to reject this request.
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In the meantime the Markgraf police were being increasingly tough on people seeking Western currency. On the 12th they arrested 320 on the Potsdamer Platz. On the 24th Stalin changed his mind, and once again requested the withdrawal of the currency, but the West said no: it had been a success. That same day there was a mid-air collision between two C-47s. Both crews perished.
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The four military governors met on 1 September. Sokolovsky was concerned that the air transports might be used to flood Berlin with new Deutsche Marks. Three days later the Russian commander came clean: the restrictions were the result of the London Conference and were aimed at the splitting of eastern and west Germany’.
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Berliners were getting by with dried potatoes and other vegetables and tinned meat. The suicide rate rose again. There were now around seven a day. Sokolovsky also announced that the Soviet Union would start air-force manoeuvres over Berlin on the 6th. This was, he said, normal practice for this time of the year. Clay noted in his report to Washington, ‘This is amusing since in the four summers we have been in Berlin we have never heard of these manoeuvres previously.’ Robertson expressed the hope that the Soviet manoeuvres would not interfere with the air corridor. Sokolovsky replied, ‘Certainly.’ Clay was not certain whether that meant ‘Certainly yes’ or ‘Certainly no’.
⁷³

On 6 September there was an attempted
coup d’état
at the Stadthaus. Clay naturally had a report of the new outrage:

Meanwhile their [that is, the Soviets’] tactics in Berlin are getting rough. Yesterday a communist mob prevented City Assembly from meeting. It manhandled three American reporters at the scene. Today a well-organised mob was on hand again. The deputy mayor foolishly took forty-odd plain clothes men from western sectors to keep order. Uniformed police of the Soviet sector under direct orders of Soviet officer started to arrest them. They rushed into offices of three western liaison representatives where some are still at siege. However, Soviet sector police broke into our office and led about twenty of the poor devils off to death or worse.

Pride is a cheap commodity, thank God, or I could never hold my head up. We are being pushed around here like we were a fourth class nation. My impulse was to send our military police in to restore order as Americans were being pushed around by Germans.

Clay thought there would be more ‘inspired rioting in western sectors’. Robertson was optimistic. Clay was not.
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The meeting was the last one held in the Red Rathaus. As the Western delegates were unable to make it through the Soviet Sector they met in the Taberna Academica on the Steinplatz in the British Sector instead. The Russians responded by kidnapping some of Stumm’s men, and the intimidation did not stop there: even Howley suffered from anonymous nocturnal telephone calls.

In Washington General Draper expressed concern. Clay thought there would be more of these Goebbels-style ‘spontaneous demonstrations’. ‘I think mob-violence is prelude to Soviet-picked city government taking over the city; then spreading mob-violence into western sectors.’ When Clay protested to Sokolovsky’s deputy Kotikov on 8 September the Russian said the ‘mob’ were workers proceeding legitimately to the town hall. The Western police had attempted to stop them. He accused the American MPs of being drunk and disorderly.
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In fact Sokolovsky was innocent of the outrage, which had been organised by Tulpanov and Ulbricht off their own bats.
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The Westerners responded with a massive demonstration of support for democracy before the Reichstag on 9 September. ‘On Thursday hundreds of thousands of Berliners demonstrated on the Platz der Republik for democratic freedom and against the shocking events at the Stadthaus . . . women deserted their cookers, hairdressers left their clients in the lurch under their wave machines and the newspaper-sellers closed up shop. All of them ran thinking I must demonstrate; we belong to the West. We must prove it.’
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The response had been impressive: 300,000 Germans staged an anti-communist rally. The Berliners were rallied by their mayor, Reuter. Before the ruined Reichstag he told them, ‘Look at this city and admit that you cannot abandon it!’ The city under siege became the symbol of moral renaissance and contributed greatly to German rehabilitation.
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The red flag was torn down. Fifteen-year-old Wolfgang Scheunemann was killed and 222 people injured when the Russians fired into the crowd. The volleys ceased, however, when the British deputy provost calmly walked over to the Russians and pushed them away with his swagger-stick.
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The Russians took it out on five men they had arrested at the scene. On 9 September these unfortunates were sentenced to twenty-five years’ hard labour.
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Clay was slow to see the significance of the Reichstag demonstration. He noted that a communist counter-demonstration was planned for the Soviet sector. He seemed doubtful of the wisdom of the British in issuing a permit for the rally. ‘The huge attendance was I am sure a great surprise even to the Germans and led the German political leaders to inflammatory speeches.’ Clay thought they were ‘playing with dynamite’. He saw a risk of the whole business blowing up in their faces - such demonstrations ‘could turn into mass-meetings against the occupying powers and could develop into the type of mob government which Hitler played so well to get into power’. He concluded that it had set ‘a dangerous, habit-forming precedent’.
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Accidents continued to occur. The British crashed an Avro York on 20 September killing five, and a month later a C-54 went down in Frankfurt. But the situation had now become static. The Allies needed to bring in a minimum of 4,500 tons a day, though 5,500 were ideal. As it was there were days when the tonnage reached 8,000. It was now a question of who would back down first. ‘The airlift has been a magnificent success and can keep us in Berlin through the winter. As long as we pursue diplomatic means to gain a settlement the airlift adds to our prestige.’ Clay still had acute reservations about the French and apparently had problems with the Labour government in Britain: ‘Our difficulties with the French continue. Neither is being in partnership with the British a bed of roses.’
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