Your cousin Eric has been telling you to read this book for a few years now. He usually reads the books you suggest to him, but you're kind of a jerk sometimes and don't always reciprocate, so he yanked the rug out from under your lame excuses and bought you a copy. That guy is awesome. So was "The Candy Bombers." You had heard of the Berlin Airlift before but you'd never heard of Andrei Cherny. It turns out that he is the youngest US Presidential speechwriter in history. President Clinton was impressed by his writings in the Harvard Crimson and quoted him in his second inaugural address before he'd even hired him. So... the man can write.
After the Second World War ended the Allies were determined to not let Germany rise up and start another devastating war. The former homeland of the Kaiser and the Nazis was divided into two halves, with the western half run by the Western Allies (the US, England, France) and the eastern half run by communist Russia. Berlin was similarly divided, even though it was deep inside the Russian held eastern half of the defeated nation. Three years after the end of the war, relations between the Russians and the Western Allies had begun to chill. The Soviet Union was gobbling up countries they had "liberated" from German occupation. Communist rule was falling over Eastern Europe with an iron fist. Assassinations and coups became commonplace news. Soon, West Berlin had become an island surrounded by a sea of aggressive Soviet armies.
And it was an island in ruins. British and American bombers had hit the city relentlessly for the last few months of the war. What little remained of the city was demolished by a Russian invasion that ended the war in Europe with the stuff of nightmares. The Red Army spared no one as they raped, killed, pillaged, and burned their way into the heart of Nazi Germany. In a city that was once called the capital of the world, nothing remained but the skeletons of buildings, the stench of thousands of corpses, and a desperate and dominated population that had lost all hope in humanity.
It is important to remember the attitude the American occupiers held when they entered Berlin. They absolutely hated the Germans. It is frequently spouted common wisdom that the harsh treatment of Germany by the Allies after World War One directly lead to the instability that allowed the Nazis to rise to power and thus caused World War Two. Hitler said so himself. But in the summer of 1945, most of the men who had fought against the Nazis felt that the only reason they had needed to re-fight their fathers' enemies was because, in fact, the Allies had been too soft on Germany, too easy and too trusting after The Great War. The men who had seen the Nazi death camps with their own eyes were not inclined to be merciful to their defeated, genocidal enemies. They felt it was their duty to never allow Germany to rise to power again. For the first few years, the Americans did very little to help the German people to rebuild their country and they cared even less about allowing the Germans to form their own government. The citizens of Germany were still the enemy.
As the post-war situation in Berlin became more and more tense, the American soldiers there became acutely aware that they were vastly outnumbered if the situation ever escalated to a real live shooting conflict. Once WWII was over, the US had demilitarized. They'd sent their sons home and given them money to go to college to get good jobs and build the greatest economy the world had ever seen. The Soviet Union did no such thing. They kept their sons in uniform and in active service throughout Europe and Asia. In 1948, American forces in Berlin were outnumbered by their former allies turned rivals by a factor of sixty two to one! There were more Russian soldiers within a few hours of Berlin than there were active American soldiers on the entire planet. In the spring of '48 the Russians staged a coup against the government of Czechoslovakia, the last nation still standing against the red tide. In one fell swoop, everything from the Elbe river eastward all the way to the shores of Alaska on the other side of the world was now Soviet territory. Everything except Berlin.
On June 24, 1948, the Russians cut off all shipments of supplies to the western sectors of Berlin. One of the biggest cities in the world was now cut off from everything its citizens needed to survive. There were over 2 million civilians living in Berlin. No food, coal, medicine, or water was allowed to be driven by truck or train from the western half of Germany into Berlin. Nothing.
The commander of the Russian forces in Berlin, still presumed to be an ally of the United States, stormed out of the Allied Council meeting under the false claims that the Americans were not adhering to the terms of the agreements to run the city's affairs together with the Russians. The Russians moved quickly to try to force the Allies out of their city-turned-island stronghold. The American commander insisted he wasn't going anywhere, that abandoning West Berlin would inspire the Germans to acquiesce to communist control.
On March 31st, recognizing the strategic futility of a few hundred men defending an isolated outpost against millions of enemy soldiers, James Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defense, had ordered the US Air Force to bring B-29 bombers (the only planes capable of carrying a nuclear bomb) out of storage. He knew there was a good chance they would be needed to help the Americans level the playing field if the shooting started. More ominously, the production of nuclear bombs jumped from the paltry 50 the US had in her arsenal up to 133 within a few months. The nuclear arms race that would come to characterize half of the 20th Century started on that day. The situation was so serious that President Truman suggested mandatory military service for all boys and instituted a civilian peace time draft. The blockade (or siege, more accurately) made Berlin feel for the first time like two cities. Two governments. Two philosophies. Two police forces. The city would keep that feel for the next half century.
The airlift started as a temporary and disorganized measure. A few dozen American aircrews flying inadequate cargo planes tried to keep Berlin meagerly supplied while General Clay, in charge of the American occupation of Germany, tried to prepare an armed convoy to break through the Russian blockade, guns blazing. The Pentagon and the State Department tried to convince President Truman to abandon the city arguing that the ruins of the former capital of Nazi Germany wasn't worth starting another World War over. No one thought an airlift could possibly be a long-term solution. It was impossible. Every attempt to do anything like it had failed every time anyone had ever it tried before. But there were no better options. The Russians so far had proved unwilling to shoot American planes out of the sky. Soon, American cargo planes from all over the world were converging on Germany.
"The Candy Bombers" goes deeply into the minds of the men running the crisis. Commanders on both sides had to deal with orders from far off politicians meeting the reality of a new conflict unlike anything the world had ever seen. There had been foolish brinksmanship before, but never brinksmanship with nuclear weapons in the heart of Europe. The new first US Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, was shaping the American response to the Soviet threat in a way that would echo for decades. He was also slowly going insane. General Clay, commanding the American occupation of Germany, was a man who had been desperate to find combat during WWII, but instead had been placed in charge of acquisitions for the entire war effort in the United States. He was the one who was responsible for setting both production quotas and public rationing of goods. By the end of the war, his name had become notorious among housewives and CEO's alike. Many cheered his deployment to Europe, even as they pitied the Germans. Clay was an authoritarian hard ass compensating for feeling of inferiority and would not take no for an answer. By the end of the Berlin Airlift, his name would become revered among the people he had been sent to rule.
President Harry Truman was losing his first bid for the White House. Most Americans realized that he had lucked into the position of FDR's Vice President. In the upcoming election, he was being challenged on the left by Roosevelt's previous VP, Henry Wallace. The prospect was that the ticket would be split and the decade and a half of Democratic dominance would come to an end. The Republicans had nominated Thomas Dewy, a candidate with star power and a masterful stage presence. He sold out massive venues with every speech and drew celebrity endorsements by the handful. Almost every American thought he was a sure thing. The story of how Truman won helped explain that image you grew up watching during the opening credits of "Cheers;" the one with a victorious Harry Truman holding a newspaper with the banner headline "Dewey Wins!" over his head. He didn't win. Truman was reelected. The Berlin Airlift had more than a little to do with that famous political upset.
But the story of "The Candy Bombers" is not about the men in positions of authority. It is about the acts of one man and the others he inspired. Gail Halvorsen, called "Hal," flew one of the cargo planes coming in and out of Berlin. He and his men made that treacherous, stomach-dropping dive over a cemetery and passed the windows of a massive apartment building down into the Tempelhoff airstrip. Hal noticed the small crowd of children at the head of the runway every day. They gathered to watch the huge planes bringing supplies to their families. He went out to meet them one day and was so moved by the humanity he saw in their eyes that he promised to throw them some candy the next time he flew into the city. This was crucial. An American looked into the face of the children that his fellow airmen had, only three years before, bombed into the Stone Age... and he did not see the enemy. He saw fellow humans, desperately in need of compassion and kindness.
The next time he made his approach into Templehoff, Hal wagged his wings like he said he would to tell the kids to get ready. The candy, a week's worth of rations from Hal and his whole flight crew, floated into the hands of the children below on parachutes made out of handkerchiefs. It was against the rules of the airlift and broke all the anti-fraternization laws of the occupying American military. The kids loved it. They were starving and had suffered through a decade of privation and rationing. Most of them had never tasted candy. The size of the crowds at the airport's fence line grew. Hundreds of Berlin's children gathered in hopes of another candy drop. Hal and his crew dropped two more loads on the kids before they were found out by a reporter. Instead of being punished, Halvorsen was ushered in front of a press conference. This was a publicity coup for the Americans. Soon he would be touring the United States on publicity tours. It would be hard for the Russians to paint the Americans as the aggressors when the face of the Airlift was a smiling kid from Utah who just wanted to give candy to excited little kids.
Soon, Halvorsen's was the only plane allowed to deviate from the perfectly timed assembly line of transports flying into Berlin. He made his candy bombing runs over school yards and stadiums, anywhere he thought there might be children. Americans sent him candy donations by the hundreds of pounds. A Jewish candy tycoon from New York sent him over 2 tons to distribute to the children of a society who had grown up being told they were the Master Race, that Jews were inhuman. Hitler's last hope for a thousand year Reich, the children inculcated by the youth movement that bore his own name, the brain washed kids of Nazi fanaticism, the minds shaped by the propaganda of Goebbels and Himmler... they had all that hate cleaned away by small acts of sugary mercy. These children stood upon the ruins of their city and experienced something other than hatred or fear or exclusion. They experienced the power of compassion. Some of them, for the first time maybe, experienced joy.
It made a difference. For years before the crisis, when polled, Berliners had answered that they would have preferred economic prosperity over political freedom. They said that, if it came down to it, they would overwhelmingly choose the Soviets over starvation. But the Airlift changed their minds, or maybe it opened their eyes. Those polls began swinging solidly towards democracy, even as the prospects of starvation became even more real. On September 6th a mob of 3,000 hired thugs broke into Berlin's City Hall and unsuccessfully attempted a coup. Within days 300,000 Berliners held a huge rally at the burned out ruins of the Reichstag, the site of the final titanic battle of WWII. They listened as their politicians (many of whom were not allowed to hold the offices they had been elected to) dedicated themselves to self-determination, to living in freedom. The citizens of Nazi Germany had seen the promise of a robust democracy and they were now recoiling and fearful at the prospect that it would be snatched from them. They had glimpsed hope for the first time in decades and they were determined to hold on to it, even if it meant more suffering. They had known suffering most of their lives. They had never known freedom.
The key to a successful blockade by the Russians required the people of Berlin to give up on any aspirations for democracy. If they had, they would have placed blame for the suffering they endured squarely on American shoulders and would have kicked out the Allies from the city. There would have been nothing the Americans could have done in that case. Instead, the Berliners flocked to the standard of freedom. Again, Maslow's hierarchy of needs was proven to be incorrect. As resources became more scarce than they had ever been and the people's situations more desperate than they had ever known, the crime rate in the city plummeted. Even as they starved and even as they froze, the people of Berlin became passionate, even zealous for their own freedom. The Russians offered hundreds of pounds of coal to warm them and mountains of food to feed their starving families if the Berliners would only sign away their American issued rationing cards, effectively declaring themselves subjects of the Soviet occupation. Almost none of them did so. As the winter set in, it became evident that the whole justification for the blockade had backfired. The Berliners were far more pro-democracy after the Airlift than they were before it.
A specialist was eventually brought in to streamline the operations of the Airlift. General William Tunner had figured out how to supply Allied forces in China by flying cargo planes over the Himalayas during WWII. He was methodical, logical, and calculating to a fault. He took all the romance and fun out of flying. Pilots had to maintain strict discipline and no one (other than Halvorsen) was allowed to deviate from their assigned flight paths. He turned the swashbuckling seat-of-your-pants adventure of the Airlift into a monotonously boring and formulaic assembly line. But his plan worked. He had one plane landing or taking off from Templehoff airport every 90 seconds. He performed what everyone who knew anything about aerial logistics considered to be impossible. He kept millions of people relatively well supplied from the air.
In November Tunner was stymied by the worst fog Europe had ever seen. Every airport from Dublin to Prague was shut down for weeks and weeks. But as soon as it lifted, he had the men flying again. Eventually Tunner, the most unsung of all the heroes to come out of the Berlin Airlift, figured out how to deliver even more supplies than the people of Berlin had requested. Tunner figured out how to do the impossible. And in doing so, he broke the Russians.
Almost 50 American and British airmen died in crashes during the ten month siege. The Soviets did everything they could think of to undermine Allied efforts. They staged elaborate "aerial exercises" dangerously close to the Allied air corridors, even going so far as to fire shots across the noses of some of the cargo planes coming in for that, already treacherous, landing. They hired a mob 3,000 strong to break into City Hall and attempt a coup. West Berlin policemen disappeared with alarming regularity, victims of Soviet abduction and intimidation. Their efforts failed.
The Cold War is thought of as a primarily military conflict, even though no 'Hot War' ever broke out among the primary belligerents. But it wasn't. There was sabre rattling to be sure, but the conflict was primarily staged within the hearts and minds of the citizens of the world. The Berlin Airlift was the opening salvo, the shot heard round the world, only without any bloodshed. It set the tenor for the conflict to come. The next forty years would be characterized by the two greatest powers on Earth vying for territory, but only because that promised to expand their base of influence and power. The two sides would wage a war of opposing views of the world. One side sought equality of wealth distribution through intimidation and aggressive police states. The other promised freedom of expression, movement, and religion. They presented the world with the excesses that a robust democracy and a booming capitalist economy could create. The Berlin Airlift was not won with the use of bombers and nuclear weapons. It was won with Rock 'N Roll and blue jeans. It was won with endless highways and a victorious Civil Rights movement.
It was won with cargo planes and candy.
On May 8th, 1949, on the fourth anniversary of the fall of the Third Reich, the new nation of West Germany adopted a constitution that embraced the ideas of individual liberty, inalienable human rights, freedom of faith, an independent press, and freedom of speech. Two days later, the Soviet blockade of Berlin was lifted. The Russians would never make any more advances into Europe. They had gone as far as the rest of the world would allow. Berlin would go on to become the main symbolic battleground of the Cold War, a metaphor for what both sides were fighting for. And it would be the sight of this division coming down, the fall of the Berlin Wall almost forty years later, that would signal to the world that the Cold War had ended. It is remarkable to think that it all started because one American named Hal was able to see his old enemy as a human being rather than a monster. He had inspired his fellow Americans to turn his aircraft from a weapon of fearsome destruction into a force for good and an image of altruism. The United States had showed the world what the difference was between liberty and totalitarianism.
On to the next book!
P.S. Historians often make a big deal of the moment that American and Russian forces split the Third Reich in two. It was on April 25th in 1945 in the middle of a bridge over the Elbe river in a city called Torgau. There were photographers there to record the whole scheduled event and everyone smiled and celebrated. The real first meeting of the soldiers from the US and USSR happened earlier in the day 16 miles south of the official celebration. An insubordinate American named Lieutenant Kotzebue had defied his orders and lead his motorized patrol far beyond where they were supposed to scout. As they drove east they passed crowds of civilians headed west, fleeing the Russian onslaught. The Americans drove through swarms of German soldiers desperate to surrender to comparatively merciful American rather than face the furious vengeance of the Russian Red Army. Kotzebue and his rebellious patrol reached the river Elbe and rowed across to meet the men in brown uniforms they could see on the other banks, Soviet infantrymen. The Russians had enforced a brutal and complete retribution on the Germans, on soldiers and civilians alike. The eastern side of the river was a different world from the western side. Dead civilians lay everywhere the Americans walked. The Americans were appalled at what the saw, but the Russians were their allies so they kept their judgements to themselves. And so it was that American and Russian forces, allies through the bloodiest war in human history, finally met one another on a field of battle with the dead children of their vanquished enemy at their feet. Personally, you would rather remember the the amicable and photo friendly version on the bridge in Torgau, but the truth is not always easy to stomach. And photo ops are not a legitimate way to study history.
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