After the Reich (102 page)

While the blockade was in force neither Bevin nor Marshall would communicate with the Soviets. The Soviet foreign minister had stayed away from the meeting of the Brussels Treaty Organisation in September. The Western powers decided that the case would be referred to the United Nations.
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Soviet deputy foreign minister Andrei Vyshinsky in New York denied the existence of a blockade or any threat to peace. Meanwhile the Soviets were also trying their hand at propaganda by broadcasting their own peace plans from Moscow. They offered an all-German government, a formal peace treaty, a united Germany west of the Oder-Neisse Line, four-power control of the Ruhr, higher industrial output and, most important of all, higher rations.
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The Americans, however, had a new trick up their sleeves. They were going to win over the children: Harry King, the president of the confectioners Huylers, had obtained ten tons of sweets and some parachutes, and on 26 October Clay saw the chance for some excellent propaganda. The ‘morale value would be real if candy could be flown out’.
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This was the cue for Operation Little Vittles when airman Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen’s ‘Candy Bombers’ dropped packets of sweets for the children by parachute into Berlin. Some even fell in the Eastern Sector.

The new airfield at Tegel opened on 5 November when the top brass flew in. The French commander General Jean Ganeval thanked his workers for their ‘almost Egyptian labour’.
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The city was suffering from TB, with 84,000 recorded cases. By November the Magistrat was divided in two with the Soviet Sector meeting in the Red Rathaus and the Western sectors meeting in the town hall in Schönefeld. The situation was formalised on 1 December. Clay predicted that the Berlin elections that were due to take place on 5 December ‘will almost certainly result in a split city’. It was a chance to take back the promise of abiding by the Soviet-inspired Eastern mark. This would ‘necessitate immediate issue of western currency’. Clay’s prediction came true that time.
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As Germany polarised, so did Berlin. In the East they elected a mayor to be the counterpart of Reuter in the West. It was Friedrich Ebert, ‘a fat, repulsive man’ according to Howley,
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who was to remain in the post for twenty years.

The process of making two Berlins was accelerated by the establishment of a ‘Free University’ in the buildings of the old Kaiser Wilhelms Gesellschaft in Dahlem, with General Clay’s blessing. The pretext was provided when the Soviet-backed authorities at the Humboldt University in the Linden had expelled three students, Otto Hess, Joachim Schwarz and Otto Stolz, although all three were wholly above board, and Hess had the added advantage of Jewish blood. Clay wanted the new university to open its doors by the autumn.
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The Allies distributed coal that December. Each household received 18 kilos, and those with children were allocated four times that amount. In the woods 120,000 cubic metres of trees were felled to provide fuel. Even this largesse was hardly able to stave off the cold of Yuletide in Berlin, and as many as 2,000 Berliners died of cold and hunger that winter. It was second only to the winter of 1946-7.

General Ganeval brought the French glory in the long run. The antennas of the Soviet-controlled Radio Berlin posed a danger on landing and take-off at Tegel. Ganeval decided to seize the initiative. He requested that the directors of the radio remove the masts as being a danger to planes. When they did nothing, Ganeval coolly blew them up at 10.45 on the morning of 16 December. The Russian General Kotikov was furious, and demanded to know how he could have done such a thing. The Frenchman replied, ‘With the help of dynamite and French sappers.’
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The Russians exacted their revenge by making off with the outlying village of Stolpe, which up to then had lain in the French Sector.
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At Christmas the SED leadership was summoned to Moscow. On his return Pieck announced that the East was not ready to embrace popular democracy. There were no immediate plans to create an East German state. Stalin made it clear that it was not just the Western orientation that needed to be fought in Germany, he wanted the Americans out.
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In West Berlin they had a treat in the form of a visit by Bob Hope and the aptly named Irving Berlin. The stars performed at the Titania Palast in Steglitz. At the end of the year electricity was pumped out between 11 p.m. and 0.30 a.m. to allow the Berliners to welcome the New Year.
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It was in January 1949 that the diarist Speer alluded to the airlift for the first time. He noted that the Alliance had broken down and that had led to the blockading of the roads to Berlin: ‘day and night transport planes roar over our building’. They were on their way to the British airfield at Gatow near by. As they toiled in the garden, the Spandau Seven wondered what the events meant for them. They came to the conclusion that they would be handed back to the countries that captured them. Speer was comforted by the idea he would be returned to the British.
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It meant no such thing: the only real effect it had on the men was that their wives were unable to pay them visits because they could not reach Berlin.
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The battle for Berlin had descended into mud-slinging. The Russians condemned the Anglo-Americans for the barbaric bombing of Dresden. Clay again saw the possibility of propaganda: he seemed to recall that the bombing had been carried out ‘at the specific request of Red Army’. He wanted to know if there were any written communications along those lines that might be leaked.
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On 30 March, Moscow decided that Sokolovsky had failed and had him replaced by Vassily Chuikov. The Western Allies had no more problems dealing with the emergency:
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the Russians might as well let the trains run unmolested.

George Kennan visited Berlin on 12 March that year. He went to stay at Harnack House in Dahlem, once part of the Kaiser Wilhelms Gesellschaft; the Americans had taken it over as a social club that mirrored Marlborough House in the British Sector. The city was not a pretty sight. Not only was it still ruinous, but it was dead - ‘a ghost of its former self’. Harnack House was one of the few places that was still alive. It was ‘like a garish honkey-tonkey that has stayed open too late in a sleepy provincial town. It was Saturday night . . . A German band was faithfully whacking out American dance tunes which they knew by heart. The faces of the musicians were drawn and worn . . .’ Kennan observed a major studying the bill of fare: ‘Look what’s on de menu. Tuna fish. Tuna fish, for God’s sake. We been feedin’ it to our dog. He don’t even like it any more. He jes’ looks at me and says: jeez, tuna fish again.’
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He went to see the mayor. Reuter told him, ‘this is the hardest time of the year. Fresh food is at its lowest. The grippe season was upon them. But morale could be maintained as long as we Americans evidenced determination to remain.’ Kennan learned that, contrary to all appearances, the housing situation in Berlin was far from being the worst in Germany. Berlin had lost 40 per cent of its accommodation, but it had also seen a 25 per cent drop in its population. When the airlift reached a consistent 8,000 tons a day the Russians would have to concede. That night there was a colonial-style dinner party. The conversation addressed ‘the price of antiques, the inadequacies of servants, and the availability of cosmetics at the PX’.
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During the eleven months of the airlift, Berlin had returned to wartime conditions. There was an evening curfew, and lack of gas and electricity obliged its inhabitants to live by candlelight and eat the dehydrated food provided by the Western Allies. The city was deserted in the evenings and there was no street lighting. There was no work. The Russians decided to drop their demands for the scrapping of the new Deutsche Mark, but they still insisted that the West cease its attempts to create a West German state. The Russian blockade failed. The Soviet operation had been both a waste of time and a loss of face. One recent historian has called it ‘a harvest of blunders’.
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On the night of 11-12 May 1949 road traffic was resumed. ‘Hurrah, we’re still alive!’ shouted the grateful Berliners, who were driven into the arms of the West in gratitude. One of the main streets of Berlin-Zehlendorf was renamed in Clay’s honour. The Anglo-Americans could now congratulate themselves that they were winning the propaganda battle for Berlin. The citizens of the former capital were turning against communism. Even the slowest Germans now began to understand that they were best off with the Western Allies. Not all West Berliners, however, supported the American and British action, and 120,000 of them registered for food rations in the East. Howley dismissed them as ‘spineless backsliders’.

The Americans celebrated in Hollywood too, where three films had been made by December 1948. The most popular of these was
The Big Lift
with Montgomery Clift. In the Berlin streets the urchins played a new game: Airlift.

Austria

The airlift had its echoes in Austria.
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Methods were used that were once again reminiscent of the Berlin blockade. In April 1946, the Soviet acting commander, L. V. Kurasov, demanded the removal of the radio-control tower at Tulln. The main road to the airport was often closed. The Russians caused difficulties for the British in Semmering and at the airport in Schwechat that they shared with the French. They tried to board the Mozart Express which linked the American Zone with the US sector in Vienna, and which was run for the exclusive use of American personnel. This led to an incident in the winter of 1946 when two Russian officers boarded the train and pulled a gun on Specialist Sergeant Shirley Dixon; Dixon replied by drawing his own gun, shooting one of the men dead and injuring the other. The Russians were naturally furious, and demanded that the Americans hand Dixon over for trial. The Americans refused. They tried Dixon themselves and acquitted him. The Russians demanded a fresh trial, but by that time Dixon was out of harm’s way. The Russians then began to cut up the air traffic arriving and leaving Tulln, going so far as to fire on the aircraft. General Mark Clark responded by arming the planes coming into Tulln and informing the outgoing Soviet commander Koniev that he had done so. Clark says there were no more incidents.
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Contingency plans were drawn up to withdraw the Western Allied forces to a line along the River Enns,
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and the Western Allies considered transferring their administrations to Salzburg. As the Cold War dawned, Béthouart was conscious of his inferior strength when it came to resisting the Russians. From the autumn of 1945 he possessed no more than a weak division of mountain troops.
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The situation was similar for the other Western powers: for Soviet divisions you read Western battalions. Washington and London were sceptical of the need to reinforce the armies in Austria. London refused to countenance the idea of a Russian attack and Washington believed the likelihood to be remote.
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That changed once the Soviet Union began to topple the post-war regimes in Budapest and Prague and flex its muscles in Berlin. Béthouart was summoned to a meeting at the Hôtel Matignon in Paris, attended by General Revers, chief of the general staff, and Koenig, Béthouart’s opposite number in Berlin. The government wanted to know how the French Zone could protect itself. As a result mines were provided to blow up the roads in the event of a Russian advance; there were parachute exercises in the mountains and stocks of weapons and food were built up for use by Austrian resisters.

The Americans were also ready to fight any Soviet aggression, but the British, who were defending the port of Trieste, were much more reluctant. On 5 August 1948 General de Lattre de Tassigy organised a conference of the Western powers in Strasbourg, where the possibility of rearming the Germans was voiced for the first time.
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It was the first step towards bringing West Germany into NATO.

There was much bandying about of accusations. Like Zhukov north of the Inn, Koniev indicted the British for keeping the Germans under arms. The political commissar, Colonel-General A. S. Zheltov, half in jest, focused on factories capable of making buttons for military uniforms. The Soviet Union could not be satisfied until Austria’s ability to make such buttons was eliminated. The Western Allies were also dragging their feet over denazification. In the circumstances Austria would have to wait for freedom.
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The Russians pointed to cases of rape and theft by American servicemen in Vienna in October. Over a number of days the Soviet-backed
Österreichische Zeitung
reported beatings of black American troops by their white comrades, robberies, hold-ups and sex crimes. On 16 September Americans were alleged to have raided a nightclub shouting ‘Niggers out!’ The US minister, John Erhardt, neither accepted nor denied the stories. The British were not well regarded in the East either - they were accused of collusion with anti-Tito partisans who had been engaged in armed activity and shoot-outs on the border with Carinthia.
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There was some fear that Vienna would become the victim of a full-scale blockade, but the Americans comforted themselves with the reflection that the operation in Germany had not been a shining success. Feeding the Viennese was also the responsibility of the Austrian government even if there were no airfields suitable for the use of the Western Allies within Vienna. The ructions were many and annoying, but the situation never came close to war as it did in Germany, and the co-operation between the four powers continued.
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