Politics in Blockaded Berlin

 Politics in Blockaded Berlin were fundamental to the outcome. While only the Allies could defeat the Soviets by maintaining the city of Berlin, at any time during the crisis, the Berliners themselves could have chosen surrender instead of suffering. Thus, while the aircraft droned overhead, a struggle for the loyalty of the Berliners took place in the streets below. 

The Soviets opened a new offensive for winning control of Berlin with the announcement on July 24, 1948 – exactly one month after the start of the Blockade - that henceforth West Berliners could avoid the rigours of the Blockade merely by registering for rations in the East. In other words, they did not actually have to find housing in the East and then pick up their entire household and move in order to qualify for Soviet rations. All they had to do was “register;” they were even told where to go.  Since Soviet rations were larger and better (because fresh) than the rations available in the blockaded Sectors of the city, the Soviets expected people to “vote with their stomach” and register in the East. Even the staunchly anti-Soviet SPD, good Marxists that they were, stoically expected that most people would accept the Soviet offer. Yet the stampede of hungry West Berliners beating down the doors of the East Berlin authorities, just like the hunger riots, failed to materialize. The Berlin Representatives to the Bi-Zone Economic Commission reported the following figures:

	# of West Berliners registered for rations in East Berlin	% of West Berlin Population
August 1948	21,000	1,0 %
Sept. 1948	32,000	1,5 %
Nov. 1948	50,000	2,4 %
Dec. 1948	54,835	2,6 %
Jan. 1949	68,959	3,3 %

Although the early numbers appear to be rounded and may only be estimates, the later figures suggest precise information – possibly from an East Berlin source. They clearly show that even in the darkest and coldest part of the year, the West Berliners were not prepared to barter their freedom for a marginally better diet. With a degree of amazement an East German wrote to a friend after visiting a family in West Berlin:

Dear Jack…yesterday we visited a family in West Berlin and asked them whether they wouldn’t rather register [for rations] in the East, now that winter was here. They rejected the suggestion for the following reasons: In winter there were better rations in the West (noodles, rice, peas) than the East. Recently there has even been fresh meat in the West. But the main reason – and this pleased me – was from principle. They simply hate the Russians. To be sure they don’t have any illusions about the Western Allies, but as one put it expressly, “one has to choose the lesser of two evils.” And they say this although they all work in Russian factories in the Eastern Sector….”[i]

In other words, the West Berliners were not taking the carrot. That left only the stick.

The Soviets started cracking down on the unofficial movement of goods between the Sectors as soon as the trend became evident. They had stopped all official deliveries of goods with the imposition of the Blockade, now they started to control personal vehicles and individuals as well. This meant the frequency with which passengers on trains returning from the surrounding countryside were stopped and searched increased. Likewise there were increasing controls on the inner-city trams and busses that crossed Sector borders. People travelling on foot or by bicycle across the borders were also stopped and searched ever more frequently. These searches could be brutal and above all humiliating. They ended in, at a minimum, the loss of any goods being transported in violation of the blockade, and often in the loss of other things as well (i.e. anything from watches to jewellery that caught the fancy of the Red Army soldiers performing the inspections.) It also became common practice for the conductors on trains and busses to confiscate all Western newspapers.

All these actions led to rapidly escalating tensions, including increasing incidence of Soviet Military and East Berlin civil police crossing Sector borders “in hot pursuit” of smugglers and black marketers. This inevitably led to confrontations with British and American MPs. Soon the British and Americans started to erect barriers on the Sector borders to prevent these incursions and reduce the risk of direct confrontation. 

Meanwhile the elected City Council of Berlin suspended the Chief of Police, Paul Markgraf, a man who had been appointed to his office by the Soviet Military Administration before the Western Allies arrived in Berlin. While the Western Allies recognized the authority of a professional Police Chief appointed by the City Council, Johannes Stumm, the Soviets continued to view Markgraf as the Chief of Police. Stumm set up his HQ in West Berlin and invited volunteers to join him in forming a new police force, but the Soviet-controlled police still ventured into the West, often leading to resistance, mini-riots and confrontations with citizen, the Stumm police force or military police of the Western Allies.

The Soviets had also turned up the volume in the propaganda wars as well, and the tone turned threatening . The Soviets warned they would soon clamp down harder – implying that they weren’t already doing all they could to stop goods from getting into the Western Sectors of Berlin. They hinted that people would soon starve, implying that if a “real” blockade started the “pitiful” Western airlift would collapse in chaos. Soviet tanks manoeuvred ostentatiously in the areas surrounding Berlin and paraded through the streets. The message was unambiguous and unremitting: we have the power to make you starve, either join us now or pay the consequences.

The elected government of Berlin, so overwhelmingly anti-Communist in its make-up, was clearly an articulate and powerful voice of defiance. It was also vulnerable. Since the Berlin City Council was not an Allied institution but composed entirely of subject Germans, the Soviets felt that actions against it would not provoke the West. Furthermore, the City Hall was located in the Soviet Sector. On August 26, 1948, the SED called upon shock troops of Party loyalists to demonstrate against the City Council. Appeals by the City Council to the police to clear the mob were ignored. The mob broke into the Council chamber and the session was disrupted. All representatives (except those sitting for the SED) left the chamber. The SED members then gave rousing speeches condemning their colleagues to the hand-picked audience that cheered them enthusiastically. A second attempt to open a plenary session of the City Council followed on the next day with the same result. Since no police protection was forthcoming and many councilmen felt seriously threatened, it was decided to postpone the next session until Sept. 6. – and to take some Western Sector policemen in plain-clothes with them for protection when they appeared on that date.

The SED sensing victory, however, increased the strength of their forces. Bussed in by lorry and coach, the agitators of September were reputedly rowdier than those of the week before. Their force was estimated at 3,000. After the Council session began, the mob stormed the City Hall, smashed the glass doors and again surged into the council chamber. They overwhelmed the 46 Western policemen, and the councilmen fled out back and side doors or barricaded themselves in their offices. The Soviet Sector police, however, having achieved the objective of disrupting the plenary session then cleared the building. They arrested the Western police but sent the councilmen and –women, who were not members of the SED, away. These representatives, following a plan they had worked out before-hand, met that same evening in a locale in the British Sector. They convened a plenary session of the City Council in which they agreed that henceforth the City Council would meet in a place where it could conduct its business in peace and safety. The city government had been split in two.

But just how “representative” was the city council? It had been elected long before the imposition of the Blockade. It was only fair to question whether it still reflected the sentiment of the Berliners. The SED had been able to rally at least 3,000 loyalists to disrupt the sitting of the Council. It was clearly time to test the sentiment of the Berliners by asking them to rally in support of their Council.

The SPD called on supporters to assemble in front of the ruins of the Reichstag, the Parliament building of the old Weimar Republic located in the British Sector. Built under Bismarck to house Germany’s first unified parliament, it was here that SPD leader Friedrich Ebert had proclaimed the first German Republic. It had been gutted in a fire set by a Communist agitator in early 1933 – a fire which  Hitler used as an excuse to impose dictatorial powers. At this historic venue, the SPD held a rally on Sept. 9, 1948. Without the help of the Occupying powers, and without bussing in supporters from far and wide, a crowd of over 300,000 gathered. The principle speaker was the SPD Mayor of Berlin, Ernst Reuter. He gave one of the most important speeches ever delivered at this historical site.

Today is the day on which neither diplomats nor generals speak and act. Today is the day on which the people of Berlin raise up their voices. Today the people of Berlin call out to the entire world. We know what has been going on at the negotiations in the Control Commission on Potsdamer Platz…and in the palaces of the Kremlin in Moscow. We know that [everywhere] at these negotiations our future is at stake. When these negotiations began, the appetite of the Russian bear was greater than for Berlin alone. He wanted to negotiate about Germany as a whole, and with the deceitful pretence of not wishing to divide Germany, sought to lay hands on that half of Germany which he does not already possess.

Now the negotiations have returned to Berlin. ... it is important that the world hears what it is the people of Berlin really want. … We want to make it absolutely clear: we do not want to be bartered!

We cannot be bartered, we cannot be negotiated, we cannot be sold….Whoever would surrender this city, whoever would surrender the people of Berlin, would surrender a world…more, he would surrender himself….

Look to this city and realise that you must not and cannot forsake us! There is only one possibility for all: to stand together until this battle has been won, until the enemy has been defeated by a victory over the powers of darkness.[ii]

Inspired by Reuter’s speech, some of the crowd tried to storm up Unter den Linden – i.e. into the Soviet Sector. The Soviet flag was torn down from the Brandenburg Gate and a Soviet jeep pushed over. The Soviets responded with force, killing a 15 year old boy and wounding three other demonstrators as well as arresting thirty. 

The Soviets could not be pushed back or overwhelmed. They still had the overwhelming preponderance of force on their side, but from that point forward, no one in the West questioned that Reuter spoke for Berlin. Two weeks later, U.S. Secretary of State Marshall promised the United Nations that the United States would not “trade away” the rights or freedom of any other people. Berlin had not only found a voice, it had been heard and heeded.

Meanwhile, however, the political unity of the city was being torn apart. Elections for the City Council had been scheduled for Dec. 5, 1948, but the Soviets too had heard Reuter and the cheering crowd before the Reichstag. They were not prepared to suffer a renewed humiliation at the ballot box. And why should they? Other methods had proved so much more successful in Warsaw, Prague and Budapest. Of course, the continued presence of the Western Allies in Berlin complicated things a little.

The Soviet Commandant made a show of supporting elections – but only if no “militaristic” or “fascist” elements were allowed to stand for election – as defined by the Soviet Military Government. This meant, in practice, that only members of the SED or its sympathizers would be allowed to run for office. Since the Western Allies were not about to accept these conditions, the SED called publicly for a “boycott” of the elections and privately ordered the SED to establish a “revolutionary” city council. 

The SED promptly declared the elected City Council “dismissed.” The reasoning was that the elected City Council had, by holding its sessions in the British Sector, “abandoned their post in an irresponsible manner and in the crudest way violated their duty to the People of Berlin.”[iii] The SED then called for a constitutional assembly composed of “representatives” from Berlin’s “democratic mass organisations” and “industrial combines” – effectively disenfranchising anyone who was retired, self-employed, a homemaker or otherwise not “organised.” This assembly duly convened on Nov. 30, composed entirely of representatives “unanimously” elected by a show of hands at meetings organized and managed by the SED. This unrepresentative assembly then “unanimously” elected a new government for Berlin.

To the delight of West Berliners, this sham assembly was held in the Opera. So the City Council it elected was referred to popularly as the “opera council.” The Western Allies referred to the entire process as sheer “theatre” and immediately stated that they did not recognize this council as legitimate. Thus from the start, the “opera council” exercised authority only in the Soviet sector. Here, however, its power was absolute. The day after it assumed power, the purges began. Any civil servant or other employee of the city who was not prepared to sign an “oath of loyalty” to the new council was fired immediately. The stated objective of the council was to “create the conditions that would enable the reconstruction of Berlin and an improvement in living conditions for the working class.”

Meanwhile in the West, the long planned city council elections were held on 5 December. Fears of Soviet intervention – despite their Opera Council – induced the American Commandant in Berlin, Howley, to warn the Soviets via public radio that any use of force to disrupt the elections would be met not by the German police but by the U.S. Army. The Soviets, meanwhile, both forbade the elections from being held in their Sector, and also attempted to reduce participation in the West in the hope of discrediting the results and minimizing their own humiliation. To do so the Soviets called not only for a boycott of the election by all “democratic” and “patriotic” West Berliners, but also made open threats against anyone with ties to the East, most especially those residents of West Berlin who were employed in the East. Workers were warned that those who participated in the elections “would be noted” and were urged “not to endanger” their future. Furthermore, Dec. 5 was declared a “Working Sunday” at which special rations and free food were promised. The idea of the latter was to prevent those workers who lived in the West but worked in the East from voting. Workers were required to report for the “voluntary working Sunday” before the poles opened in the West.

The Western Allies expected a disaster, but once again they had under-estimated the determination of the Berliners to exercise their democratic rights. The Soviet scheme to keep West Berliners employed in the East from voting was foiled by a traditional weapon of the “revolutionary proletariat” – a strike. The transport workers staged a “strike” from six am until ten am on the day of the election thereby giving all workers in Eastern factories a legitimate excuse for being late without having to admit that they had used that time to vote in the elections. By the end of the day more than eighty-six percent of West Berliners voted, and they voted overwhelmingly (with 64.5%) in favour of the SPD, the most articulate – and vehement – opponent of the SED at this time.

Two days later, Reuter himself was re-elected mayor of Berlin. He immediately formed a “grand coalition” with the other parties represented on the Council, the CDU and the LDP.  Berlin was now also irrevocably divided as a political entity. 

 NOTE: The content of this blog post is based on Helena P. Schrader. The Blockade Breakers. Pen & Sword, 2008.

[i] Institute für Zeitgeschichte, München, ED 215 Translation by the author.

[ii] Ernst Reuter, Speech before the Reichstag, Sept. 9, 1948. Translation by the author.

[iii] Neues Deutschland, Nov. 30, 1948. Translation by the author.

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