Turning Enemies into Allies Part II: The British

 Of Germany's wartime enemies, none had been more tenacious than the British. The Soviets had been Germany's Allies for the first 20 months of the war, and the United States waited until Germany declared war on it in December 1941 before officially taking sides. Britain not only declared war 1 September 1939, it remained in the conflict to the end. Yet that very tenacity tempered British attitudes toward Germany. As one British Airlift veteran put it to me: "We'd both been bombed."

At both official and personal levels, British policy was more subtle and the attitudes more differentiated than America’s. Even during the War, the British recognized to a greater extent than the Americans that there were many shades of grey among “Nazis.” They were likewise more sceptical of the Soviet Union and so more sensitive to the need to maintain Allies on the Continent of Europe. Britain did not ever embrace the concept of “collective guilt” to the same degree as America and so from the beginning was always willing to utilise capable German specialists in efforts to re-establish a working German administration. As a result:

The British occupiers in Germany behaved less as conquerors, more like conscientious colonial civil servants. They were dedicated to sound administration, the creation of democracy in industry and government, the inculcation of liberal values, a mission to instruct and improve….The Zone was treated as a colony for which the administrators felt responsible, but for whose inhabitants they had no affection and little understanding. The British remained aloof in their clubs and requisitioned houses, viewing the Germans as natives…British intentions were basically decent and benevolent, but tended to be concealed by reticence.[i]

These official attitudes were reflected in the personal remembrances of British Airlift veterans. At the Royal Air Force Historical Society Proceedings in Sept. 1989, Sir Kenneth Cross, who was with BAFO during the Airlift, reminded participants:

We didn’t have a great deal of affection for the German nation and it would be wrong for anyone to have any views to the contrary. When it came to doing the Airlift, it was a professional job and whether it had been Hindus or Germans, the Air Force would have done it.[ii]

Many ordinary pilots and airmen felt the same. A civilian flight engineer, Victor Bingham, remembers that the Airlift had nothing to do with humanitarian efforts: “if it had been flying to Timbuctoo we would have been just as interested.”

And yet they were human too and many – even or particularly former Bomber Command personnel – remember being shocked and appalled by the scale of destruction found in Germany. Many RAF ground personnel were post-war conscripts who had never known war first-hand, and even for the veterans the scars of war had started to heal and were not so raw. Virtually every observer admits that in Germany they were confronted with destruction far worse than they had known at home or had expected to find. One RAF conscript described what he found in Germany as follows:

The troop train…wound its way through a neat, clean and tidy Holland into a truly devastated Germany. Like most of my friends I was absolutely horrified at the scenes which met my eyes – every town it seemed, consisted only of piles of rubble with just an odd fireplace or wall still standing. Where, and how, the occupants lived I never knew, but conditions must have been terrible for them, war or no war. The war still loomed large in our minds but to see such ruin three years after it had ended was shocking. My friend lived in Stepney, London and I’d seen a lot of bomb damage there, but nothing on this scale. Even today it makes me shudder.[iii]

Even returning aircrew often admitted that they had not truly pictured the effects of their raids until confronted with the results. Few men felt guilty for what they had done – they still believed in the cause they had fought for and they had too many friends whose deaths they did not want to consider wasted  – but there seems little doubt that the scale of destruction produced the first hint of sympathy for the Germans.

Friendships are not built on pity, however, and many observers reported with alienation the way in which the Germans huddled in their ruins, listless and - in the eyes of many - sullen. The sight of appalling devastation may have paved the way to a change in attitude, but the change itself was sparked by the unexpected defiance of the Berliners to the Blockade. As has been recorded earlier, the Allies seriously expected the Berliners to give in to the Soviet pressure. The assumption was that the Germans, who had wantonly trampled on their own freedom just 15 years earlier, would not value it now. When they unexpectedly chose freedom, they surprised the world and ignited a new interest in Germany and especially Berlin.

Suddenly the images of Germany presented to people in Britain weren’t the Nuremberg Trials, but rather the speech of Ernst Reuter defiantly demanding support in the cause of Freedom. Berlin rubble women were no longer portrayed as the piteous defeated enemy or an economic burden, but rather as heroic foot-soldiers in the struggle against Communism. The degree to which the Berliners were willing to suffer hardships – and even joke about them – made them seem human in a positive sense. Lingering wartime distrust and dislike and post-war pity and contempt gave way to outright enthusiasm.

For those actively involved in the Airlift, however, personal contacts were most important. Unsurprisingly, given the notorious reserve of the British, many RAF personnel retained an ambivalent attitude toward the Germans well summarized by a sergeant of the Signals regiment, who put it this way:

Most of the communications network stations were manned by Germans and supervised by Royal Signals personnel. Many had worked for the German post office, were very knowledgeable and could speak good English. None of them were ever Nazis, to hear them tell it, and although I could not forgive them for the hurt they had caused this world, individually they could be nice people. But collectively, Nazis or not, they had been a bunch of real bastards.[iv]

The British engineer in charge of building a bridge across the Havel was more neutral. He remembers that he could not speak a word of German and the German engineer working under him could not speak English but “both of [us] could read plans and got on very well.”[v]

Likewise, when the British charter companies turned to German mechanics for DIs and emergency maintenance conducted in Germany they discovered that the German mechanics hired to help service aircraft shared a common language despite their lack of English – namely a devotion to aircraft and flying. One of the civilian charter employees remembers: “[The Germans] were extremely keen to do even the most menial tasks around the aircraft. Flying was in their blood.”[vi]  Although earning far less than their British counterparts, by all accounts, they worked with the same dedication.

An RASC Lieutenant remembered:

I thought I knew about Germans – that they were obedient to authority, with little sense of humour, hard-working and dull…These fellows were half-starved, yet cheerful, and cracking with repartee. I never understood the quick Berliner Deutsch, or the reasons for the gusts of laughter that erupted from the stevedores as they toiled over the salt bags…[but it was always there.] [vii]

 Yet one of the RAF mechanics remembers in addition: 

…all my RAF colleagues noted with some amusement that all the Germans we met had fought against the Russians, none against the Western powers.[viii]

On the other hand, it could be the reverse - the shared experiences of war - formed a bond. RAF Bomber Command pilot, DFC, AFC, reports:

I became friendly with a German wood-carver who had a nephew working with him who had been a FW190 Night Fighter Pilot. We got on very well. We used to exchange reminisces and found we had both been involved in the same operations on the same nights as each other. [ix]

Another former member of Bomb Command aircrew, Master Signaller Robert A. Hide, had been shot down over northeast Germany following a raid on Berlin in March 1944. He was badly burned on his hands and face, but treated with “unbelievable compassion, sympathy and first aid” by the Germans who first found him. Throughout the Airlift he felt that he had “to reciprocate the compassion and sympathy that had been afforded [him] in the hour of [his] need.”[x]

Ultimately, it was the tangible gratitude of the Berliners to the foot-soldiers of the Airlift that changed attitudes most. Every day thousands of Berliners gathered on the street outside Gatow Airfield "clapping and cheering as the four-engined Yorks taxied in.”[xi] People climbed on the rubble, perched in the trees, stood upon parked cars and trucks, and waved from balconies and the roof-tops at the landing planes.

At Gatow, the Station Commander has received many gifts for presentation to the aircrews, and most of these were touching in their simplicity. Captain Edward Hensch, working for one of the civilian charter companies, remembers receiving a package sent anonymously to a “Blockade Flier” which contained a porcelain snail, a few flowers and a toy walrus made with rat fur. Another pilot tells how two small boys collected broken pieces of marble from the ruins and set them in metal bases to make bookends dedicated in thanks to the Airlift crews.

The humbleness of the gifts brought home to the aircrews just how little the Berliners had left to give. In consequence crews were touched by the gift of a watch that had survived Soviet plundering, or by a piece of china that had survived the air raids, by a handmade carving or a beat-up teddy bear….

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[i] Ann and John Tusa, The Berlin Airlift, Sarpedon, 1988, p. 52-53.

[ii] RAFHS Proceedings No. 6, Sept. 1989, p. 53.

[iii] Peter Day, letter to the author, Jan. 2006.

[iv] Sgt. John Overington, quoted in Edwin Gere, The Unheralded, Trafford, 2003, p. 147.

[v] Robert Rodrigo, Berlin Airlift, Cassel and Co., 1960. p. 81.

[vi] D.G. Upward of Flight Refuelling, quoted in Rodrigo, p. 190.

[vii] Lt. Courtney Latimer,  RASC, quoted in Gere, p. 63.

[viii] Peter Day, letter to the author, Jan. 2006.

[ix] Fl/Lt Rusty Waughman DFC AFC, letter to the author 21 September 2005.

[x] Robert A. Hide, quoted in Gere, p. 144.

[xi] Arthur Pearcy, Berlin Airlift, Airlife, 1997, p. 16.

 

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

The Berlin Airlift is the subject of Bridge to Tomorrow, a trilogy of novels starting with Cold Peace.

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