The Berlin airlift : the salvation of a city

245 Pages·2008·5.13 MB·English

by  Canwell

Dedication
In loving memory of our father and airlift veteran,
John Francis Sutherland (1926–2005).

First published in Great Britain in 2007 by
Pen & Sword Aviation
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
Copyright © Jon Sutherland and Diane Canwell 2007
9781781594483

The right of Jon Sutherland and Diane Canwell to be identified as Authors of
this Work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE - Prelude to the Blockade
CHAPTER TWO - Meagre Beginnings
CHAPTER THREE - Black Friday
CHAPTER FOUR - Berliners and Volunteers
CHAPTER FIVE - Flying the Corridor
CHAPTER SIX - Airlift Airbases
CHAPTER SEVEN - Easter Parade
CHAPTER EIGHT - End of the Airlift
CHAPTER NINE - Political Settlement
CHAPTER TEN - Legacy of the Airlift
APPENDIX I - RAF Units used During Operation Plainfare, June 1948–
September 1949
APPENDIX II - The Airlift in Figures (Figures from British Sources)
APPENDIX III - Chronology
APPENDIX IV - Statistics for the First Year of the Airlift
APPENDIX V - Soviet Harassment Incidents during the Airlift Operations
APPENDIX VI - Documents Regarding the Partitioning of Germany and
Berlin
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
It seems abundantly clear that the victorious Allies in 1945 had very different
expectations of a post-war Germany than Europe. On the one hand, the Soviets
wanted to exact punishment on the Germans for the carnage that they had
inflicted on Russia since 1941. On the other hand, the Western Allies, led by the
British and the Americans, wanted to rebuild Germany, stabilize Europe and
stop the spread of Communism to the rest of Europe.
It had already been agreed at Potsdam that the Germans would have to pay a
price for waging two world wars in three decades. For the Western Allies this
did not mean that the German population would starve to death. The Soviets, it
seems, had little interest in whether or not the Germans lived or died. The
Soviets were more intent on taking anything that could be loaded onto a train or
the back of the truck; the Western Allies were more concerned with getting
Germany’s economy back on its feet. As US Secretary of State, George C
Marshal said in 1947:
‘There is no question in my mind whatever that the German economy is the
heart of Europe.’
The first violation of Potsdam as far as the Soviets were concerned was the
joining economically of the American and the British zones of occupation in
Germany. This was as a direct response to the Russians staging a coup in
Czechoslovakia and was the first major rift between east and west.
The Allies also squabbled about imports and reparation payments. The Soviets
simply took whatever money was available. The Western Allies, on the other
hand, set some aside to provide vital imports to keep the German economy
going. Ultimately it was an economic straw that broke the Soviet camel’s back.
The Western Allies wanted to create a West German currency. This would help
to stabilize the economy and give the Germans some buying power. The Soviets
were offered the currency but they wanted to print their own money. It had
already been proven that the Soviets were happy to print as many notes as they
needed to pay for things during the initial occupation phases of Berlin, so the
Western Allies were set against this path. When Berlin City Council adopted the
western currency the Soviet blockade started to be put into place.
western currency the Soviet blockade started to be put into place.
Once the Soviets started their harassment and blocking of Western Allies into
and out of Berlin it became abundantly clear that the way in which Germany had
been divided was impractical. It had simply not been thought through.
Admittedly there had been no expectations of crisis arising between the West
and the Soviets, but the Allied Control Council, or at least the Kommandatura
should have solved the problem. But in the event they, too, had been poorly
conceived and were dissolved as soon as an impasse reared its head.
As the blockade closed in only an airlift could sustain the garrisons and the
inhabitants of the western parts of the city. The Soviets felt they had to shut
down access to Berlin in order to force the issue in their favour.
The Berlin airlift began the first large-scale humanitarian effort to ensure the
survival of a city’s population. It was also the first international humanitarian
coalition. Ultimately the success of the Berlin airlift would bring about the end
of the Soviet blockade, but there would be no firm handshake or real end to the
political tensions between the Soviet Union and the other, victorious allies.
Whilst the Western Allies created a democratic and self-sufficient West
Germany, the Soviet Union created a tightly controlled East Germany. Berlin
would remain partitioned for another forty years. There would be increasing
force to control the border and, in effect, for four decades, East Berlin and East
Germany would be cut off from the western world.
The city was permanently partitioned in the early 1960s, when the Berlin Wall
became the dominant symbol of east-west tension and the Cold War. The East
German government fell in 1989 and immediately the hated Berlin Wall was
stormed and, for the first time since the Berlin blockade, the city was free for its
inhabitants to roam at their will.
The reunification of Berlin and Germany as a whole was really the end of the
crisis that had begun forty years before with the Berlin blockade and airlift.
During the Berlin airlift life for the Berliners was hard. The winter of 1948 to
1949 left homes cold and industry idle, yet the Berliners in the allied sectors
were determined not to capitulate. They had seen what it was like to live under
the heel of Soviet soldiers. The Western Allies too were determined that Berlin
would not be sacrificed just because they could not bring in supplies by
conventional means. Brave and exhausted pilots flew fleets of aircraft around the
clock into inadequate and dangerous airfields around the city. Mechanics worked
day and night to ensure that the aircraft remained air worthy. At the height of the
effort any aircraft that was not being stripped down for inspection or repair was
effort any aircraft that was not being stripped down for inspection or repair was
aloft.
As Mikhail Semiryaga, a Russian who was of the Soviet Military
Administration during the Berlin blockade and airlift said:
We expected that the Allies could introduce the army, and some
military units might accompany trains and cars. And we realised
what might be the result. There might be some incidents with the
soldiers, it might be used to start a fight between the armies. We felt
it. And we had a directive from Moscow to have our families leave
Berlin. That was the situation. And we also knew that some British
and American people left their zones. Tension was high. Using that
air corridor airlift, one plane arrived every minute. Where I was
living they flew twenty, fifty metres over my house and touched
down at Tempelhof, which was 2km away. We couldn’t sleep,
because the planes were huge B-29s. They brought everything to
Berlin. Not only bread, meat, milk, but even coal and wood; and
they saved the situation.
So in a Russian’s own words, the airlift had averted what could easily have
dragged the world into another cataclysmic conflict. This time former allies
would face one another and with the spectre of atomic bombs in the background,
who can know what may have happened?
The Berlin airlift, seen initially as a stopgap measure whilst political
negotiations continued, proved for the first time that a city could be supplied by
air. The Germans had failed to do it at Stalingrad during the war and the Soviets
had lacked the aircraft to supply Leningrad, but now the full weight of the
British and American air forces, supported by civilian aircraft flown by veteran
pilots, would prove once and for all that humanitarian relief was an international
peace policy in the post-war world.