24 June 1948: City Under Seige

Just before midnight on the evening of June 23, 1948, the electricity network in the Western Sectors of Berlin collapsed without warning. Shortly afterwards, In the early hours of June 24^th, the sole railroad artery into the city from the Western Zone, roughly 100 miles to the west, was closed to rail traffic. At the same time, the autobahns by which the Western Powers moved personnel, goods and equipment to their garrisons in Berlin were shut down and all barge traffic into the Western sectors of the city was brought to a complete halt.

The Western Sectors of Berlin were under siege.

As the city awoke to a new day, the Russian controlled radio dryly announced to Berliners that: “Due to technical difficulties,” the Transport Authority of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) had been forced to suspend both passenger and goods traffic on the railroad between Berlin and Helmstedt, the latter being the closest point in the British Zone of Occupation.

But Berliners rapidly realized that much more was a stake. The triumphant Soviet Union, which had defeated the once invincible German Wehrmacht, captured Berlin, and annexed large portions of what had once been Germany, was making a move to take over that irritating patch of territory, deep within its own Occupation Zone, that was not completely under its control: the Western Sectors of Berlin. The Soviets had chosen not to use their vastly superior military strength, but to employ an economic weapon instead.

Just how powerful the chosen weapon was, however, was recognized at once by those with insight into the situation. The managing director of the utilities monopoly in the Western Sectors of Berlin, BEWAG, reported that without electricity supplies from the power plants controlled by the Soviets, demand for electricity in the Western Sector could not be met. Furthermore, not only had the Soviets cut off the electricity produced in their own zones of occupation, they had halted the deliveries of coal needed to keep the few small and obsolete power plants located within the Western Sectors of Berlin operating. Therefore, even if electricity consumption was drastically reduced, the Western power plants would only be able to operate for roughly 10 days before their reserves of coal ran out. After that there would be no electricity in the Western Sectors of Berlin at all.

No electricity would mean that the city’s water pumps and sewage systems would cease to function. It would mean that the most important components of the public transport system, the trams and the underground railway, would come to a halt. The factories would have to close down and massive unemployment would ensue. In short the economy would collapse.

But this was not all. The Russians also announced that all deliveries of goods, including food, medicine, coal and liquid fuels to the Western Sectors of Berlin from the Soviet Zone of Germany and Soviet Sector of Berlin were forbidden. Goods from the Soviet Zone, which completely surrounded Berlin, would henceforth only be delivered to and distributed in the Eastern (Soviet) Sector of the city. Control-points were established on the roads leading into the Western Sectors of Berlin from the surrounding Soviet Zone and all along the inner-city border between the Soviet Sector and the Western Sectors of Berlin.

These measures, it must be noted, were not aimed solely at “capitalist industry” but rather at every man, woman and child living in the Western Sectors of Berlin. To take just one simple example, the children of West Berlin were dependent upon the surrounding rural areas of the Soviet Zone for daily deliveries of 50,000 litres of milk. From one day to the next, that vital source of nutrition was cut off.

Throughout the city, stores, factories and private households had reserves of one sort or the other. Shop-shelves and warehouses, household cupboards and pantries were not all empty, but the inhabitants recognised how precarious their situation was. Berlin had not been self-sufficient in food, much less energy, for decades. Traditionally, both came from the surrounding regions, near and far. With these abrupt measures, the Soviets had cut off the Western Sectors of Berlin, in which between 2.1 and 2.2 million civilians lived, from all sources of food and energy. Like a medieval city surrounded by a hostile army, the Western Sectors of Berlin were under siege.

The economic situation in the city was already dangerously fragile. At the end of the Second World War industrial production in Berlin had been reduced by bombing and the final battle for Berlin to just half of 1936 levels. During the period of exclusive Russian occupation, industrial capacity had been reduced even farther by the systematic deconstruction of anything that appeared still functional and the wholesale removal of their components from Germany to Russia in the name of “reparations.” Although by 1948 factories were struggling to re-establish themselves, the economy was still frail and vulnerable. Furthermore, that industry was completely dependent upon raw materials and component parts imported into the city.

In consequence of the war, vast portions of the city’s housing were also uninhabitable. The public transport system was severely lamed by the destruction of the city and the expropriation of rolling stock and rails by the Soviet Union. Telecommunications had been cut to less than 1% of pre-war levels in the immediate post-war era and had far from recovered in the subsequent three years. Unemployment was high, over 15%, but wages were almost worthless because of the currency situation. As of June 24, 1948 there were two currencies in circulation in Berlin; one of them was illegal in half of the city, while the other was virtually worthless. It was therefore hardly surprising that the Black Market was flourishing - while honest workers fainted from inadequate nourishment. The daily ration was still only ¾ of the daily minimum recommended by the Red Cross.

Coupled with this dire economic state was an explosive political situation. Although the vast majority of the elected members of the city council were members of non-Communist parties,* the Communist Party of Germany exercised an effective veto over all political decisions via the Soviet Union, which possessed a veto in the occupation administration of Berlin, the Kommandatura. The Russians had, among other things, prevented the democratically elected mayor from taking office. To make matters worse, the council members found it increasingly difficult to meet and take decisions because they were subjected to harassment and physical abuse from crowds of pro-Soviet agitators when they tried to attend council meetings. Indeed, the delegates representing the vast majority of the Berlin population found that they were repeatedly prevented from going to their offices and performing their duties because their offices lay in the Soviet Sector and violent protesters blocked their way. They were accorded no police protection from the Russian controlled police force.

Politicians who not the only victims of terror. Ordinary citizens – journalists, professors, and scientists – “disappeared” with increasing frequency. They were dragged from their beds in the dark of night by men often wearing the uniform of the city police. They were arrested without warrant and sent without counsel or trial to Siberia or the still operating concentration camps in the Soviet Zone.  

Yet while the Western Sectors were clearly surrounded by an enemy army, they were “defended” by the enemy as well. The Army which surrounded and besieged them, the “Red” Army of the Soviet Union, was still officially allied to the United States, Great Britain and France, whose armed forces occupied the besieged sectors of the city. The Western Allied Forces of Occupation in Berlin numbered roughly 8,500 men. They faced 18,000 Red Army troops inside the Soviet Sector of Berlin and roughly 300,000 Soviet troops in the surrounding Soviet Zone.

It was these foreigners, the wartime Allies of the Soviet Union, which were the actual target of the Russian measures. The method chosen to dislodge them from the Soviet zone was, however, indirect. The immediate victims of the Russian siege were the civilians living inside the Western zones, yet the transparent objective was to make life within the Western Zones so intolerable that the civilian population would force the Western Allies to retreat, leaving the Soviet Union in control of the entire city.

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* Social Democrats (SPD)-63 seats, Christian Democrats (CDU) – 29 seats, Liberal Democrats (LPD) – 12 for a total of 104 seats vs. 26 seats for the Socialist Unity (Communist) party.

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