Backstory to the Berlin Airlift: Brutal Economics and a Inspiring Solution
The crises that resulted in the Berlin Blockade and Airlift did not come overnight. It evolved over three years as the United States, Britain and finally France came to recognize the hopelessness of cooperation with Stalin -- and the risks to the world economy if Germany was not given a chance to recover. It was ultimately "enlightened self-interest" that led to the Marshal Plan, but the road to that seminal policy was slow and torturous.
It started in Berlin.
The United States was, of course, in the enviable position of not suffering from any kind of war damage and having a powerful domestic economy. As it become increasingly evident that there was no progress being made toward post-war reconstruction, it could have turned its back on Germany and Europe and washed its hands of the whole mess. That it did not do so is to the credit to President Truman and his Secretary of State, General George Marshall, and to the American Military Governor in Germany, General Lucius D. Clay.
As he admitted openly in his memoirs, Clay came to Germany with profound distrust and dislike of Germans. He arrived with an equal conviction that the Russians were a fine, down-to-earth people with whom he, as a soldier, would be able to get along. He saw the problems with the Soviet Union as superficial and diplomatic. Less than a year later, by May of 1946, he summarised the situation in a cable to the Department of State in which he wrote:
After one year of occupation, zones represent airtight
territories with almost no free exchange of commodities, persons, and ideas.
Germany now consists of four small economic units which can deal with each
other only through treaties, in spite of the fact that no one unit can be
regarded as self-supporting, although the British and Russian zone could become
so.[i]
Clay recognised that both the United States and the United Kingdom were pouring food into their zones in Germany while the Soviets and French were not only making their respective zones subsist on their own resources they were also withdrawing huge quantities of raw materials, industrial capacity and finished products. Clay concluded that the situation could not be allowed to continue because “it represented indirect payment” of reparations to the French and Soviets by the U.S. and UK, and because it would keep German in poverty indefinitely, a permanent drain on the U.S. and British treasuries.
If the United States taxpayer had every reason to object to being a milk-cow for the Soviet Union and France while being called upon to sustain Germany in poverty eternally, the situation in Britain was graver still. At the start of the Second World War, Britain had possessed abundant gold and dollar reserves and had carried a public debt of just £ 469 million; by the end of the War Britain had no reserves and the national debt was £ 3.5 billion.[ii] For the average British citizen, the national debt was less disturbing than the high rate of unemployment and the continued rationing. In fact, due to bad harvests across the globe a worldwide wheat shortage had developed in early 1946 and bread and potatoes had to be rationed in the UK – something which had not been necessary at any time during the war. Pure self interest, in other words, dictated that British policy favour the reconstruction of German manufacturing and agricultural capabilities. This in turn could only be achieved if the foundations for a self-sustaining German economy were laid, starting with a functioning infrastructure, a sound currency and civil government. Thus, “the British government was desperate to stop the economic hemorrhage that its zone in Germany had become and was growing increasingly concerned about Soviet designs on post-war Germany and the world.”
And so was the U.S. Department of State. The then Undersecretary of State, Dean Acheson, latter wrote: “life in Europe as an organised industrial community had come well-nigh to a standstill and, with it, so had production and distribution of goods of every sort.” Furthermore, agricultural production was “lower than at any time since the turn of the century.”[iii]
And then came the winter of ’46-’47. This proved to be the most severe winter in a century. Temperatures dropped far below freezing and stayed there for weeks on end. In Berlin the water supply froze and that meant the sewage system collapsed. So did the railway, preventing the importation of coal. Unable to provide coal for private consumption, public places from pubs and cinemas to air raid shelters were turned into public warming halls. Schools were put on short-weeks and factories were closed. Over 1,000 Berliners literally froze to death, 60 on one night alone. One Berliner who lived through the winter measured the temperature in her kitchen at -6 degrees centigrade and described how her bread was frozen solid. She went on to say:
Most of the families which sold their porcelain,
carpets, and furniture to get money to buy fat and meat on the black
market…have nothing more to sell and are no longer able to buy black market
food. People have no coal to heat rooms…Old people are dying like flies…There
is no water in the houses because all is frozen.[iv]
In Britain the situation was only marginally better. The frigid winter, even more unusual in the UK than in Berlin, exhausted coal reserves, leading to power shortages. In December, England’s largest auto plant was forced to shut down. Then the Thames froze all the way from Windsor to the sea, closing London to coal barges and preventing the supply of coal to power stations. Electricity to households was reduced to six hours per day, three in the morning and three in the afternoon. By February, the crisis was so acute and widespread that the Government ordered all non-essential factories to close for three solid weeks. Unemployment shot up to 2.3 million. Welfare payments for these unemployed drained the already depleted treasury. Meanwhile the Government had also been forced to cut food rations to below wartime levels.
The cold receded, but the mood of despondency remained. Doctors reported an increase in TB, pneumonia and other illnesses. By now most urban dwellers in Germany (and that was the majority) had not seen milk, sugar, fat or vegetables since the end of the war. Chronic under-nourishment had become a problem, causing a drop in industrial production per worker by 20%. People, particularly the elderly, were dying of hunger still. A social worker summed up the situation by saying: “The energies of the people are spent in pursuit of a loaf of bread and a pair of shoes. Hope is alien.”[v] Rations were now set at 1,275 calories per day in the U.S. zone (still less than half what Americans then considered normal) and at 1,040 calories in the British zone, which was more industrial and had less agriculture than the U.S. zone. In the French Zone the rations were set at just 925 calories – causing the Germans to refer to it as the “FZ” in a play on the German term for Concentration Camps, “KZ.” It was now “a vicious circle in which the Germans starved because they could not produce enough, and could not produce enough because they were starving.”[vi]
But the problem was not confined to Germany, rather it emanated from Germany. There was a need to rebuild every where, but the former occupied countries, starting with the Soviets and French, demanded German reparations to enable them to start their economies. Germany, on the other hand, could not pay reparations if it did not produce anything it could sell. Nor could it produce anything if it didn’t receive the agricultural products necessary to feed its workers or the raw materials to feed its factories.
Perhaps the most cogent example of the situation was the state of German coal production. Coal was Germany’s principle post-war asset and export commodity. It was the fuel needed to fire not only its own but much of the rest of Europe’s power and industrial plants. Without German coal, Europe could not recover. However, because of inadequate rations, the miners in the Ruhr produced on average just 711 kilos of coal per shift in 1947 rather than the 1,547 kilos they had produced before the war.[vii] Germany could not increase coal production and exports unless its workers had enough to eat and had shoes on their feet and coats on their backs. Nor could Germany increase coal production unless there was electricity to light the pits and keep mine equipment working, unless there was rolling stock and track, barges and lorries on which to move the coal from the pithead to the ports of export. And Germany could pay for none of that unless it could export more coal to earn hard currency with which to purchase all those things.
One of America’s most brilliant diplomats, George Kennan, assessed the situation as follows: “To talk about the recovery of Europe and to oppose the recovery of Germany is nonsense. People can have both or they can have neither.”[viii] With this analysis, Kennan brought the entire State Department into a position directly opposed to the policies of two of its wartime allies, France and Russia, but fully in line with the British position. After the catastrophic winter of ’46-’47, Britain was desperate to stop the hemorrhaging of scarce resources into Germany and was fully cognizant of the need to restore industrial production: the British Zone was the heartland of German heavy industry.
Thus both the UK and the U.S. sent their delegates to the Council of Foreign Ministers in April 1947 determined to establish a sound framework for German recovery such as had not been attained at Potsdam. This meeting, held in Moscow, gave the U.S. Secretary of State, George Marshall, the first opportunity to meet with Stalin personally. According to Charles Bohlen, who acted as Marshall’s interpreter and advisor at the meeting, Marshall “came away with the conclusion that Stalin, looking over Europe, saw the best way to advance Soviet interests was to let matters drift. Economic conditions were bad. Europe was recovering only slowly from the war. Little had been done to rebuild damaged highways, railroads, and canals. Business alliances severed by years of hostilities were still shattered. Unemployment was widespread. Millions were on short rations. There was a danger of epidemics. This was the kind of crisis that Communism thrived on.”
In short, to the pure economic imperative of fostering German economic recovery was added a political component of stopping the spread of Communism. The spread of Communism was feared not out of ideological bigotry as historians on the Left are wont to suggest. It was feared precisely because observers like Clay and Marshall, who had expected to work well with the Soviet Union, were appalled by what was happening in those countries which the Soviet Union occupied.
While the “Iron Curtain” made it difficult for journalists or private citizens to see what was happening behind the lines of Soviet Occupation, diplomats and intelligence services were able to gather enough evidence of what was going on to send chills down the spines of civil servants and politicians in the U.S. and Britain. The gulags not only continued to exist, but it was now clear that Soviet POWs and forced labourers, who had been captured and forced to work as slaves for the Nazis, had not been reunited with their families but rather loaded into cattle cars and sent to gulags as traitors. The long-suffering Soviet troops still in uniform, many of whom had not been home on leave during the entire war, were not sent home like their Western brothers either. Instead they were kept under arms in occupation of “liberated” countries. Nor was the Soviet economy turning to the production of the consumer goods of which the Soviet people were starved. Instead the production of arms continued. Meanwhile across Eastern Europe people were not being given the opportunity to exercise self-determination, but were instead having “Soviet-friendly” governments imposed on them by the weight of Soviet tanks. Soviet sponsored “insurgent movements” were starting to threaten the elected governments in Greece and Turkey, while Norway had also been told by the Soviets that closer “friendship” was expected -- or else. The Norwegians knew what Soviet “friendship” meant for the Finns, and they wanted none of it.
But while much of this was happening either far away or behind an almost impenetrable “iron curtain,” what was happening in Germany was very visible to Western observers and occupation authorities alike. Not only had the Soviet authorities refused to respect the will of the SPD members as recorded in the referendum on merging the SPD with the KPD, they were increasingly interfering in the Western Sectors of the city too. Officials appointed to office during the period of Soviet occupation, most notably the Police Commissioner, were with increasing frequency refusing to take orders from the Western Commandants. They only carried out those orders which have been approved by SMAD. The radio station, located in the West but controlled by the Soviets, allowed the British and Americans only one hour of air time per day: for 22 hours of every day it broadcast what the SMAD ordered. SED activists, who accepted the opinion and wishes of no one other than their superiors, disrupted the efforts and activities of Union, Youth, and Social Welfare organisations to function as democratic organisations. Perhaps most demoralising of all, Soviet troops continued to loot and rape everywhere in the city and were not called to account by the Soviet-controlled police forces; only U.S. and British MPs – who could not be everywhere at once – offered the population protection from uniformed Soviet predators.
Then in Oct. 1946, just six months after resisting the attempt by the KPD to absorb it, the SPD won a resounding victory in the first free municipal election since the War. The SPD poled nearly 50% of the vote (48.7%), while the new CDU, a party just 15 months old and lacking any support from the outside, came in a respectable second, with 22% of the vote. The liberals took nearly another 10% and so the non-communist parties combined had an overwhelming majority in the Berlin city council of more than 80%. But they found their power limited at every turn by the SMAD. On June 24, 1947, the Berlin City Council elected Ernst Reuter, a former Communist turned Socialist, as Lord Mayor – only to again have their choice vetoed by the Soviets in both the Kommanatura and the Control Council.
It was now crystal clear that the Soviets did not recognize the Will of the People – not their own or that of any of the liberated peoples of Eastern Europe, much less the conquered Germans. Equally clear was that they were not willing to work together with their former Allies to re-establish a viable economy throughout Europe starting in Germany. In retrospect, and worded negatively, it could be argued that it had taken the Western Allies roughly 18 months to discover what should have been evident at Potsdam: that the Soviet Union had stopped co-operating with them had reverted to warfare against the “reactionary” Western Powers.
But better late than never, and once the U.S. and UK recognised this fact, the response was comparatively swift -- for two Democracies dependent on political consensus. Already on January 1, 1947, the American and British Zones were administratively merged into a single entity affectionately known as “Bi-Zonia.” Typically, the United States had offered to join up with “any other Zone” interested in co-operating, but only the British had responded positively. Nevertheless, the move enabled at least the pooling of resources and reduced some of the burden of duplication, although it is important to note that Bi-Zonia also lacked the agricultural resources to sustain its population of 32 million normal residents plus 7 million refugees. Thus the need for a sound economy capable of paying for the import of raw materials remained critical.
Then on June 5, 1947, the U.S.
Secretary of State publicly announced the establishment of a “European Recovery
Program,” better known to posterity as the Marshall Plan. This was a plan
designed to put the vast resources of the U.S. at the disposal of a still destitute
Europe. Marshall stated very explicitly: “Our policy is directed not against
any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.”[ix] He said
its purpose was “the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit
the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can
exist.”[x] Again
the offer was made to all European states, and the only prerequisite of the aid
was that the European countries work together and come up with cooperative
system for allocating, administrating and distributing the aid so that the
United States would not have to work bi-laterally with each recipient country. As
was to be expected, the Soviet Union declined to co-operate, but the French were
lured out of their absolute obstructionist position. In summary it can be said
that throughout 1947, while the Unites States decided to do what it thought was
necessary to foster European recovery, it was by no means openly confronting
the Soviet Union. It was only after the failure
of this November 1947 Foreign Minister's Conference in London, that Clay and his British counterpart, General Robertson, started
to move consciously toward the establishment of a West German government (at
least for “Bi-Zonia”) regardless of the position and policies of the Soviet
Union. They were now headed for open confrontation with the Soviet Union.
[i] Clay, p.73.
[ii] Haydock, p. 77.
[iii] Thomas Parrish, Berlin in the Balance, pp.99-100.
[iv] Richard Cutler, Counter Spy, p. 142
[v] Collier, p.10.
[vi] Robert Jackson, The Berlin Airlift, P. 24.
[vii] Tusa, p. 44.
[viii] Roger G. Miller, To Save a City, p. 8.
[ix] Parrish, p. 120.
[x] Parrish, p.121.
*****
NOTE: The content of this blog post is based on Helena P. Schrader. The Blockade Breakers. Pen & Sword, 2008
The Berlin Airlift is also the subject of Bridge to Tomorrow, a trilogy of novels starting with Cold Peace.
Berlin 1948.
In the ruins of Hitler’s capital, former RAF officers, a woman pilot, and the victim of Russian brutality form an air ambulance company. But the West is on a collision course with Stalin’s aggression and Berlin is about to become a flashpoint. World War Three is only a misstep away.
View a video teaser at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTuE7m5InZM&t=5s
My novels about the RAF in WWII are intended as tributes to the men in the air and on the ground that made a victory against fascism in Europe possible.
they took the war to Hitler.
Their chances of survival were less than fifty percent.
Their average age was 21.
This is the story of just one bomber pilot, his crew and the woman he loved.
It is intended as a tribute to them all.
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MORAL FIBRE is the WINNER OF A HEMINGWAY AWARD 2022 and was a FINALIST for the BOOK EXCELLENCE AWARD IN HISTORICAL FICTION.
"Where Eagles Never Flew" was the the winner of a Hemingway Award for 20th Century Wartime Fiction and a Maincrest Media Award for Military Fiction. Find out more at: https://crossseaspress.com/where-eagles-never-flew
For more information about all my aviation books visit: https://www.helenapschrader.com/aviation.html
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