Backstory to the Berlin Airlift: Collision Course
Even before the introduction of the new currency, however, the political tensions between East and West had been mounting. In retrospect, the failure of the fifth meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers held in London in Nov.-Dec. 1947 appears to have been a signal to the Soviets that the time for more forceful tactics had come.
At the political level, the most obvious manifestation of these new tactics was the fact that the Soviet representatives walked out of the Allied Control Commission and the Allied Kommandatura on March 20 and June 16, 1948 respectively. In both cases, the pretext for the walk out was petty. Furthermore, in both cases the Soviets read prepared speeches condemning the Western Allies for their stubbornness, arrogance and failure to respect the spirit of Potsdam. The insults were, however, by then so routine that they wearied more than provoked the Western representatives.
Furthermore, if the Soviets had expected the West to respond with distress to the break-up of Four Power government, they were disappointed. By this time, all four powers – with the possible exception of the French – recognised that Four Power government was moribund. The official break-up of the instruments of Four Power rule was therefore more a relief than a shock. The West was moving ahead at full steam to carry out the Currency Reform and establish institutions for German self-government in their area of occupation and the Soviets were moving ahead at full steam with their plans for a Blockade of Berlin.
In preparation for the latter, the Soviets escalated their guerrilla tactics against the Western garrisons and their terror tactics against the German population. As far back as early 1946 there had been isolated incidents of Soviet police abducting persons from the Western Sectors; three municipal judges who had refused to render judgements desired by the Soviets had “disappeared” from their homes, never to be seen again. However, by early 1948, various observers reported seeing an increased use of abduction. An American intelligence officer based in Berlin reported that Russians, disguised as German police, were arresting German officials living in the U.S. and British sectors of Berlin. Police officers who were not sufficiently loyal to the SED and Soviet Union were also targeted for such actions and disappeared. But it was not only city officials who feared abduction, German scientists were likewise kidnapped from their homes and sent to work in the Soviet Union, particularly on the atomic bomb project, simply because they had skills the Soviet Union needed. Indeed, even ordinary German workmen and skilled female labourers could find themselves deported on two hours notice. Although different in character, the Soviets did not shy away from temporarily kidnapping members of the Western Allied occupation forces. General Clay reported that 93 American servicemen were detained in the first half of 1948 and claimed few of the arrests had any justification. Nevertheless, in many instances “the Americans were held for hours under humiliating conditions….”[i]
The harassment of inter-zonal traffic also increased noticeably in 1948 and took many forms. One simple tactic of the Soviets was to send Russian soldiers dressed in civilian clothes to systematically rob passengers arriving at the train stations. On other occasions, Soviet soldiers openly held up busses of the public transport network at gunpoint and took what they liked without bothering about disguising themselves. More subtle but equally effective was the Soviet tactic of changing without notice the bureaucratic requirements for possession of a license to operate a lorry. Everyone was required to possess a license from the SMAD, but the form, shape or colour of this license could change without warning from one day to the next. When this happened, all lorry traffic came to a virtual halt while drivers and firms scrambled to get the new documents. After paying the fees and standing in lines and collecting the signatures and stamps for the new document, the owners of such documents had no certainly that the rules would not change again the next day – and naturally such documents were completely unobtainable if one had incurred the displeasure of the SMAD in one way or another. The Soviets also introduced new licenses for moving from the Western Sector to the Western Zone, and the costs and difficulties of obtaining the licenses brought such movements to a virtual standstill. The harassment of German passengers traveling between Berlin and the Western Zones also escalated, so that Germans had to dread not only intrusive searches (which often ended in official and unofficial confiscations) but also feared arrest for alleged infractions of rules they had never heard of.
Nor did the Soviets shrink from challenging the Western Allies directly. One day they might try to seize locomotives from the marshaling yards in the West, on another they tore up railway track itself – “reparations.” The pin-pricks of harassment, individually insignificant and hardly warranting reporting higher up, were increasing and the American Military Governor, General Clay, rightly sensed that all these little measures were part of an orchestrated campaign. He was quick to note the rising tensions, and he later worded it as follows:
Somehow I felt instinctively that a definite change in attitude of the Russians had occurred and that something was about to happen. From Sokolovsky down there was a new attitude, faintly contemptuous, slightly arrogant and certainly assured…[ii]
The Russians had at least one good reason to feel self-assured, and that was the victory they had just enjoyed in Czechoslovakia. The elected government there had been brought down by mobilizing Communist supporters in the streets. But given the evident inability of the SED to mobilize similar troops of militant supporters, the Soviets may in fact have planned to strike at the Allies’ weakest point – their presence in Berlin – right from the start.
In January 1948, an American medical officer overheard a drunken Soviet general brag that: “if those swine (the Americans) aren’t out of Berlin by June, we’ll close every access there is.”[iii] It was also reported that Soviet automobiles carrying high-ranking Soviet officers frequently cruised around the Western suburbs apparently selecting their future residences. More indicative still of the change in policy was an official press release by the Soviet controlled press in March 1948 in which the right of the Western Allies to be in Berlin was explicitly dismissed, and it was predicted that they would soon leave.
On the first of April 1948 the Soviets struck. They announced that henceforth they would board all trains passing through their Zone and “check papers.” When the Western Allies refused to allow Soviet inspectors to board their trains, the latter were simply side-tracked and held. On the same day, the Soviets also tried to establish a road blockade within the British sector and the following day attempted to place their own guards around the central railway station in the American sector. Both these attempts were foiled by a show of force by the respective Allied forces, but clearly the Soviets were testing how far they could go without provoking a response stronger than they were prepared to tolerate.
On April 5, a Soviet fighter buzzed a regularly scheduled passenger aircraft making a routine approach into Gatow. In close, aerobatic maneuvering around the BEA airliner, the Soviet pilot apparently lost control of his aircraft and crashed into the passenger plane killing all on board. The British and Americans immediately ordered fighter escorts for their civilian aircraft.
Confronted by the British Commandant, General Robertson, General Sokolovsky said it had been an accident. Although the Soviet tone harsher in the days that followed, and the Soviet press claimed the "aggressive passenger plane" had attacked a "harmless Soviet trainer," they still privately insisted that the collision had not been intentional. All accounts, whether British, Russian or German support this, but the fact that the Western Allies initial response had been to order fighter escorts – not ground their aircraft – may have sent a critically important signal to the Soviets. The Allies were not going to sit by and let their aircraft be shot down; they would defend their right to the air corridors with force if necessary.
On April 10, Der Tagesspiegel, an independent newspaper published in the American sector of Berlin, responded to rumours it had heard by asking Clay if the Americans would allow the Russians to control the cargoes and passengers on their aircraft by landing in the Soviet Zone while in transit between Berlin and the West. Clay replied that the West would reject any measures that restricted the freedom of air traffic between Berlin and the Western Zones. The very next day, the same newspaper reported a new and different tactic by the Soviets to restrict Allied access to Berlin. Capitalising upon the accident with the BEA airliner, the Soviets recommended “in the interests of air safety” that all Allied passenger flights and all night flights to and from Berlin should be prohibited, and only “technical” flights be allowed. The Allies rejected these proposals out of hand, but the Russians specifically reserved the right to raise them again.
Meanwhile, on the ground, the harassment continued. On April 20, restrictions on barge traffic were introduced; a cargo manifest had to be produced and each barge was inspected individually leading to hour-long delays. On April 24, two passenger coaches were detached from an Allied train departing Berlin for the West. On April 25, new rules for documenting freight traveling to and from Berlin were introduced without warning. On April 30, a British road convoy was stopped and denied transit. Throughout the month, disruptions to mail and telephone services between Berlin and the West increased dramatically. On May 20, barge traffic was again disrupted by demands for yet another form of documentation. On June 1, train traffic between the West and Berlin was temporarily suspended without warning or apparent reason. On June 4-6, twenty six railroad cars full of mail from Berlin destined for the West were seized and confiscated by Soviet officials. On June 10, five coal trains for West Berlin were stopped by the Soviets for alleged deficiencies in their documentation. On June 12, Allied trains are stopped because of improper “labeling” of freight. On June 15, the Autobahn bridge across the Elbe was closed indefinitely “for repairs.” On June 18, the Soviets cancelled all internal motor-coach licences and suspended passenger trains and mail service between the West and West Berlin. On June 21, U.S. trains were stopped and returned without explanation.
As has already been noted, the increasing level of Soviet harassment did not go unnoticed. Clay sent a warning to Washington, which set off a mini war-scare in the U.S.. Furthermore, during the four days in April in which all trains had been halted, Clay had asked the USAF to bring in the most urgent supplies for the U.S. garrison in Berlin by air. While the tonnage carried was ridiculously tiny compared to needs – and what would later be achieved by the subsequent Airlift – it did allow the USAF to learn a number of valuable lessons. First and foremost, the USAF recognized the need to have some entity in Berlin that would determine requirements and assign priorities. The USAF also identified the need to have a control agency in the Western zones to control cargoes before they left for Berlin. Last but not least, the restrictions on the movement of goods induced the European Command to start building up stocks of supplies. Most notably, the amount of coal imported into Berlin jumped from just 1,541 tons in March to 10,062 in April and 10,443 in May.[iv] Meanwhile the British Army of the Rhine and RAF Transport Command made contingency plans for flying in supplies to the British garrison and flying out dependents and non-essential personnel.
Yet while the Allies and civilians in Berlin both sensed the rising tensions and noted the increasing harassment of the Allies, no one really expected the Soviets to completely sever the lifelines of vital materiel that kept the Western Sectors of the city supplied with everything essential to mere survival. Likewise, while the Allies knew they were vulnerable and it was increasingly obvious that the Soviets wanted the Western Allies out of Berlin, no one seriously considered the possibility that the Soviets would risk starving the civilian population of over two million just for the purpose of driving the Western Allies out of Berlin.
In retrospect, the Soviets probably never thought they were threatening the survival of the West Berliners either. They probably believed in all sincerity that the chosen method of confronting the West was the one that was most “reasonable” and least aggressive. After all, the blockade did not call for any outright use of force. Indeed, for months the Soviets stubbornly denied that there was any blockade at all. There were simply “technical difficulties” that simultaneously prevented the movement of goods into West (but not East) Berlin by road, rail and water. At the same time, the Soviets hinted that these purely technical difficulties could miraculously all be solved simultaneously, if the Western Allies would simply withdraw the “D” (and “B”) mark from circulation – at least in Berlin.
Clay himself doubted that the Soviet intent was to drive the Allies out of Berlin by threatening to starve their dependent subjects. He thought the Soviets simply intended to scare the Berliners into rejecting the Western currency. Another theory was that the Soviets wanted to stop the Western Allies from including Germany in the European Recovery Program and from creating government institutions for a new Germany. Yet there could be no doubt that the Soviets were now repeating with monotonous consistency their claim that the Western Allies had “no right” to be in Berlin at all. And whatever Soviet motives, on 24 June 1948 the Soviets shut down all land access routes and the West had to deal with an immediate emergency: how to sustain their garrisons and a civilian population of over two million people in a city that was cut off from its sources of food, fuel and other necessities.
The Berlin Blockade had started; the Berlin Airlift was still two days away.
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.
Buy now on amazon or Barnes and Noble.
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
Comments
Post a Comment