Forgotten Heroes of the Berlin Airlift - Ernst Reuter
In
late August 1948, the Western Allies believed Stalin had signaled a readiness for compromise on the "Berlin crisis."
The military governors were instructed to meet again in the
Allied Control Council and hammer out the details in
the first week of September. Historians later characterized the
resulting negotiations as nothing more than the usual Soviet tactics of
misleading and bamboozling their counterparts, but at the time rumors of
a "breakthrough" were rampant. It was at this moment, when the West
seemed eager to "do a deal" with Stalin that Ernst Reuter threw down the
gauntlet and forced the West to respect the wishes of the Berliners.
Speaking before a crowd of roughly 300,000 Berliners assembled in front of the Reichstag, Reuter called out:
Today is the day on which not the diplomats and generals speak and negotiate. Today is the day on which the people of Berlin lift up their voice. ... It is time for the world to see what Berliners really want. And we say clearly: in all the deals and counter-deals we don't want to be a trading object!
You cannot exchange us, you cannot trade us in, and you cannot sell us!
It was a decisive moment. Thereafter, no one in Washington or London dared to "do a deal" that did not take the will of the Berliners for freedom from Soviet oppression into account. It was also a decisive moment in the transition of Germany from an enemy to an ally. But just who was Ernst Reuter and how did he come to be the spokesman for BerlinPeople of the world, look to this city and recognize that this city and its people cannot be sacrificed! People of the world, do your duty and support us not only with the roar of aircraft, not only with the transport of goods, but also with a steadfast and unwavering commitment to our common ideals -- ideals which alone can secure our future and yours! People of the world, look to Berlin!*
Technically, on the date of Reuter's speech, 9 September 1948, Ernst Reuter was the elected but "unseated" mayor of Berlin. He had been elected in June 1947, but the Soviets simply vetoed the election and would not allow him to take his seat as mayor. Elections did not hold any weight in the Soviet Union.
Reuter's colleagues, however, respected him and continued to defer to him. Then in December 1948, after the city had been torn in two by the blockade, Reuter won re-election by a huge margin and although the SPD had taken 64.5% of the votes, formed a coalition with the other democratic parties to rule Berlin jointly through the crisis -- much as Churchill had done in 1940.
Yet there is irony in Reuter becoming the voice of freedom and democracy in the face of Soviet aggression because as a young man, Reuter had actively supported the Bolshevik Revolution. At the start of WWI, he had been a pacifist but was drafted. Serving on the Eastern Front, he was wounded and taken prisoner by the Russians. He was still in captivity when in October 1917 Lenin and Trotsky launched the Bolshevik Revolution, and Reuter formed a Soviet among the prisoners to support the revolution. Thereafter, he was named a "Peoples' Commissar" to help form the Volga Commissariat for German Affairs.
He soon returned to Germany, however, where he joined the Communist Party and advocated revolution for Germany as well. This put him in conflict with the party leadership at the time and despite Lenin's patronage, he was expelled from the Communist Party. He briefly joined the Independent Socialist Party and then returned to the Social Democratic Party to which he had belonged before the First World War.
In 1926, Ernst Reuter was given responsibility for Berlin's transportation system by the Berlin city government. He consolidated the transportation systems into a single organization the Berliner Verkehrs Betrieb (BVG) and introduced a number of efficient innovations as well as extending the subway network. From 1931 to 1933, he was mayor of Magdeburg. He was elected to the Reichstag in 1933 and immediately fell foul of the Nazis. He was interned in the Concentration Camp at Lichenberg for two years. On his release, he went into exile in Turkey.
Reuter was appointed to the faculty of the University of Ankara and there founded the school of urban planning. At the end of the war, he returned to Berlin and in the first post-war election was elected to the Berlin City Council with responsibility for transportation again. He was elected mayor a year later and re-elected (as noted above) in 1948 and again in 1951. He was acting Lord Mayor of Berlin at the time of his sudden death from a heart attack on 29 September 1953.
Yet
the bare resume of his life explains neither why the Soviets were so
afraid of his influence that they vetoed his election nor how he rose to
so effectively embody the spirit of a free Berlin in the post-war era.
Reuter's influence must rest on a powerful charisma that inspired and
motivated others.
* Translated and condensed by the author based on the original text of the speech in German.
The Berlin Airlift is the subject of Bridge to Tomorrow, a trilogy of novels starting with Cold Peace.
1st Runner up for BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 and winner of GOLD in the Category Wartime Fiction. Historical Fiction Company,
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Berlin 1948. The economy is broken, the currency worthless, and the Russian bear is
hungry.
In the ruins of Hitler's capital, war heroes and resilient women struggle in
the post-war doldrums -- until they discover new purpose in defending Berlin's
freedom from Soviet tyranny. When a Russian fighter brings down a British
passenger plane, the world teeters on the brink of World War Three. The first
battle of the Cold War is about to begin.
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.
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Their chances of survival were less than fifty percent.
Their average age was 21.
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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.
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