After the death of Mayor Reuter, and prior to the recent four-power talks, Berlin’s prominent role in world news seemed to have subsided. Reuter’s name is indelibly identified with the dramatic events of the blockade and airlift, the steady defiance of free West Berlin in the face of relentless pressure by the Soviets and their German Communist puppets. The tide of refugees, the revolts last June in East Germany, and the free food operation following that revolt—these historic happenings are unthinkable without the strong part played during these decisive years by Ernst Reuter. By his eloquence, his leadership, his frequent travels, he made the world conscious of the chronic and dangerous ill in the midst of Europe which can briefly be characterized as “the Berlin situation.”
Any lull over Berlin is temporary, however, and illusory. The so-called “new course,” proclaimed by the Communist Party in East Germany just prior to the June riots in order to placate the outraged feelings of Germans both East and West, was never seriously carried out. After the initial shock produced by the riots, the regime struck back with a vengeance. Terror is again gripping the East German population, with the result that the refugee influx into West Berlin—temporarily slowed down during the summer months—increased again to over 500 a day. A monster rally of the (Communist) Free German Youth, similar to those staged in 1950 and 1951, is again being planned in East Berlin for this coming summer, with obvious implications for the security of West Berlin. The city’s communications with West Germany continue to be at the mercy of Soviets and German Communists. All these factors will continue to militate against a return to normalcy in the hard-oppressed city.
West Berlin is an island city of over two million souls, artificially kept alive with outside aid. There is at present little prospect of a change for the better; on the contrary, there is the constant reminder of the sea around them, threatening to engulf them all. The citizens become increasingly conscious of an apparently stalemate condition in their city as well as in their personal lives. They feel their destiny is in the hands of outside forces—chiefly those of the four occupying Powers, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Soviet Russia.
But there is more to the Berlin situation than this. A besieged city, it is also a fortress, and its citizens are soldiers. They have resisted the enemy again and again: in 1946 by voting against Communism, in 1948-49 when their city was blockaded, and since then in almost daily clashes with Communist mobs and Russian soldiers. While people in remoter Western countries lived securely and comfortably, Berliners have fought for and won their freedom many times over.
The foreign visitor from the West will find Berlin to be a city of tremendous vitality and glaring contrasts. To reach it, he must fly—unless he comes on government orders in a sealed military train—and will land at Templehof airfield in the heart of the city. Outside the air terminal he will notice a huge, three-pronged concrete semi-arch reaching out to the Western skies—the Airlift monument—symbolizing the “airbridge,” as the Germans called it, and commemorating the soldiers and civilians who gave their lives in the performance of duty. He will also observe many buildings under construction, usually with a Marshall Plan sign in front. But he will be far more impressed by the gaunt scene of destruction over large areas. The public buildings downtown are almost all destroyed or vanished, and the wooded Tiergarten—Berlin’s “Central Park” —has been completely stripped of its old trees (but already reforested). On the edge of the East, or Soviet Sector, is the burnt-out ruin of the Reichstag building, its gutted steel dome appearing like a huge bird cage. The dismantled Brandenburg Gate nearby is now an entrance to the Communist “workers’ paradise,” the land behind the Iron Curtain. The uninitiated visitor will at first beware of entering it, having been frightened by many reports of shootings and kidnappings. He will soon discover, however, that he can go in and out unobserved and unmolested if he conducts himself inconspicuously.
Berlin’s status is full of paradoxes. A quadripartitely occupied area by international agreement, it is de facto a split city, its Eastern half ruled by the Soviets and its Western half by the United States, United Kingdom, and France. Its two German city governments claim jurisdiction over the entire city; actually there is almost no official contact between Western and Eastern authorities. Formerly the capital of the German Reich, Berlin is now neither a part of the West German Federal Republic nor of the Communist-dominated “German Democratic Republic” in the Soviet Zone of Occupation. It is a no-man’s-land under fictional four-power rule, and each Occupying Power seems determined not to upset this precarious balance.
There is no question that the geographic isolation of West Berlin is beginning to affect the morale of its citizens. Those few who can afford it fly for a holiday to West Germany, others hazard the 102-mile journey to the West German zonal border by train, bus, or car, risking their freedom and property as they are subjected to rigid inspections by Communist People’s Police at the zonal check points. The majority, how- . ever, cannot risk or afford the journey through the Soviet Zone. These people, many of whom hail from the Soviet Zone, are suffering from this restriction in movement and the apparent hopelessness of their situation. At the same time they witness almost daily harassments by the Communists, interferences with their transports on the highways, trains, and canal barges, arbitrary confiscations of property, automobiles, and money, as well as occasional murder and kidnapping of their fellow citizens. Without in any way losing their heads, West Berliners expect action. They look to the Western Commandants for protection against recurrent violations from the East, and in many instances fail to get it. They almost frantically beg the Allies to “stand pat” on their rights, to meet Communist outrages with a firm hand, to resist force with force. Most significantly of all, they try to detect an Allied policy looking toward the solution of the Berlin problem . . . and find none beyond trying to maintain the status quo.
Political Background 1945-49
Strange as it may seem today, the quadripartite occupation of Berlin was agreed upon prior to German surrender apparently without any provision for guaranteed lines of communication through the Soviet Zone. This incredible omission, decisive both for the political and military operation of the occupation, is directly traceable to U.S. policy in 1944-45. The tripartite European Advisory Commission which drew up the plans for the occupation of the respective zones and of Berlin failed to provide for free access chiefly because of the objections of Ambassador Winant, the U.S. representative on the Commission. Winant claimed that occupation of Berlin ipso facto implied free access, and that to insist upon guarantees would only arouse the suspicion of the Soviets. In his attitude toward the Soviets Winant was certainly backed by the leading members of the Roosevelt Administration, and most of all by F. D. R. himself. This unwillingness to offend the Eastern ally at any cost, it will be remembered, pervaded the thinking of the majority of the American public in those years.
In the absence of an agreement, General Lucius D. Clay, the U.S. deputy military governor, in his early conferences with the Soviet commander, Marshal Zhukov, did his best to obtain a specific commitment granting unencumbered use of highways, rail lines, and air routes. The marshal, offering various excuses, agreed to give the Western Allies only one highway, one rail line, and three air corridors. General Clay and his British colleague, General Weeks, reluctantly accepted this as a “temporary” solution, hoping to reopen the question at the Allied Control Council (which, of course, was to be crippled by the veto). Even this temporary arrangement was merely an oral gentlemen’s agreement which would cease to hold as soon as any of the contracting parties would cease to be gentlemen. It has been argued, of course, that the Soviets, being what they are, would choose to commit an aggression whenever it suited them, whether or not a firm written agreement existed. There is no doubt, however, that a written contract would have clarified the situation and would have strengthened the Allied position in West Berlin. Our experience in negotiating with the Soviets shows that the latter can be sticklers when it comes to interpreting legal subtleties, and in many instances they have exploited situations which were juridically far from clear.
With the status of Allied interzonal communications still exceedingly vague, U.S. troops, encountering Soviet obstructions from the very start, proceeded in early July, 1945, to enter and occupy their sector in Berlin. Simultaneously, U.S. troops carried out a prompt and orderly withdrawal from Saxony and Thuringia, which they had conquered but which by previous agreement had been assigned to the Soviet Zone. One can imagine the smile of Soviet officials as they saw us parting with two industrial provinces which would have been a trump card in our hands in any future negotiations about Berlin and Germany.
The reasons for the breakdown of quadripartite rule in Berlin were similar to those which led to the failure of the occupation of Germany as a whole. From the outset the Soviets applied the same measures in their zone and Berlin that they had already employed with success in their “liberated” areas, and which aimed at the reduction of East Germany to satellite status. While the Western representatives in the Allied Kommandatura, established in July, 1945, to govern Berlin, made a genuine, almost heroic, effort to make a success of four-power rule, the Soviets lustily employed the veto, making a uniform occupation policy impossible. The latter sealed off their sector and zone as far as possible from the rest of Germany, the better to sovietize these areas. The Western commandants somewhat aided and abetted this process by agreeing to Kommandatura Order No. 1, decreeing that all Soviet regulations and ordinances launched prior to the arrival of the Western troops were to remain in force “until special notice.” Needless to say, such notice was never forthcoming, for it would have required a unanimous Kommandatura decision. It is interesting also that, despite repeated requests, the Soviets never bothered to inform the Western commandants of the exact substance of these earlier regulations.
Subsequent political events fortunately obviated a legal decision. Berlin citizens in their first free election in October, 1946, conducted under four-power supervision, repudiated the Communists (who received less than 20 per cent of the vote), and set up a genuinely democratic city government. From that moment on the Soviets realized they could never hope to dominate all of Berlin by legal, democratic means. Relying on Article 36 of the Berlin temporary constitution of 1946, which gave each commandant the right to do as he pleased in his own sector (a provision which, of course, had the unanimous approval of the Kommandatura), they withheld recognition from duly elected officials opposed to Communism and arbitrarily appointed Communists in their places. By the end of 1946, nearly all borough mayors and personnel department chiefs in the Soviet Sector were Communists.
It was about this time that the name of Ernst Reuter first became known to the outside world. He had been elected lord mayor (Oberbuergermeister) in the summer of 1947, but the Soviets, again hiding behind Article 36, refused to recognize him. The deputy mayor, Frau Luise Schroeder, a courageous and competent woman, became acting mayor for the coming difficult months that witnessed the complete split of the city. As a former Communist leader, Reuter was particularly anathema to the Soviets. He had been in Russia in the days of the Revolution, had met Lenin, Trotski, and Stalin, and had been instrumental in founding the “Volga Republic” (an area settled by Germans in the 18th century). In 1921, after he had become secretary-general of the German Communist Party, he resigned from the party and went over to the more moderate Social Democrats.
It is almost surprising that the split of the city did not come sooner in view of the fact that the city hall and government offices were located in the Soviet Sector and vulnerable to Communist chicaneries. During the summer of 1948, after the Soviets had walked out of the Allied Kommandatura, they began to interfere more and more with the municipal government. Communist mobs demonstrated boisterously in front of the city assembly building and on several occasions prevented the assembly from meeting, while the Soviet-controlled police stood idly by. On September 6, 1948, the assembly moved, therefore, to a building in the safe British Sector. Several city departments likewise moved to West Berlin. After several “spontaneous” requests by certain pro- Communist worker’s and women’s groups for an immediate session of the assembly, a mass meeting was held on November 30 at the State Opera House. The 236 members of the so-called “Democratic Bloc” parties (including 26 Communist members of the legal assembly), plus 229 representatives of the Communist-controlled “mass organizations” (unions, youth and women’s organizations), and over 1,000 delegates from East Berlin factories, dismissed the legal municipal government and “unanimously” elected a puppet “Magistrat.”
The head of this “opera Magistrat,” as the West Berliners dubbed it, became, paradoxically enough, Friedrich Ebert, the son of the first president of the Weimar Republic and one of the great leaders in German democracy. The rest of the legally-elected city government then moved into the city hall of the borough of Schoeneberg in the American Sector, where it is still located today. It was soon to be headed by Ernst Reuter, who was reelected in the December elections taking place five days after the split.
The Blockade
These dramatic events had taken place while Berlin was already in the sixth month of a total blockade. Four-power military government had long ceased to function. The meeting of the Allied Control Council on March 20, 1948, had been rudely broken up by the then chairman, Marshal Sokolovsky. Not only had no date been fixed for the next meeting, but more ominous still, the chairman had walked out without inviting his colleagues to the customary coffee and refreshments. The last Kommandatura meeting on June 16 had been broken up under similar circumstances. Allied relations, official and social, progressively deteriorated. The attitude of Marshal Sokolovsky, who was described by General Clay as “normally witty and pleasant,” seemed to have changed overnight, so that already in March Clay definitely sensed that something unusual was in the air. In his special report to General Bradley, U. S. Chief of Staff, Clay, a man not given to alarmist views, stated that he anticipated some Soviet action, and in restrained words indicated that he could no longer rule out the possibility of war. Shortly thereafter the Soviets began those interferences with our transports which by June 24, 1948, led to complete stoppage of rail, road, and barge traffic to and from Berlin.
It is difficult to realize today how the fate of the Free World hinged on the Allied decision whether or not to stay in Berlin. The atmosphere of those June days was tense in Washington as well as in Berlin. In its daily teleconferences with Berlin, the Department of the Army suggested the withdrawal of American dependents from Berlin. It is to the eternal credit of General Clay that throughout those days of anxiety he maintained an attitude of unshakeable firmness and courage. His messages to Bradley make impressive reading. “Evacuation” (of U.S. dependents), he wired on April 2, “in the face of the Italian elections and European situation is to me almost unthinkable. Our women and children can take it, and they appreciate the import.” And again on April 10,—
We have lost Czechoslovakia, Norway is threatened. We retreat from Berlin. When Berlin falls, western Germany will be next. If we mean ... to hold Europe against Communism, we must not budge. We can take humiliation and pressure short of war in Berlin without losing face. If we withdraw, our position in Europe is threatened. If America does not understand this now, does now know that the issue is cast, then it never will and Communism will run rampant. . . .
We stayed. Our decision was vigorously backed by the Berliners. All of them, except the few Communists, indicated their firm resolve to stick it out. Many of them wished that General Clay had been able to carry out what he had proposed to his superiors, namely, to send an armed convoy through the Soviet Zone. This, they felt would have brought the Soviets to their senses, but according to General Clay, the plan was vetoed in Washington.
The world remembers the miracle of the Allied Airlift organized by the Americans and the British to supply the city. During the ten months of the blockade (and a few weeks thereafter), the Combined Allied Airlift Task Force carried over 2,300,000 tons of food, coal, and other supplies in 279,114 round trips to Berlin. This served not only to keep the 2,100,000 West Berliners fed and housed—food rations were actually raised by 220 calories to 2,000 calories a day for the “normal consumer”—but also kept the most essential industries and public utilities going. The whole free world joined in this vast undertaking by donating hundreds of thousands of parcels. The spirit of camaraderie between Berliners and Allied personnel is illustrated by such gestures as the dropping of candy parachutes—“operation Little Vittles”—by American pilots. Despite the blackout and cold, the scramble for food and fuel, the anxiety and uncertainty, West Berliners almost to a man rejected the cynical Communist offers of food and milk. On September 9, some 300,000 Berliners gathered for a protest rally outside of Brandenburg Gate, and under the leadership of their eloquent mayor voiced their defiance of the Soviets. Russian soldiers opened fire when some West Berlin youths climbed up the Brandenburg Gate to remove the Soviet flag, but order was restored through the calm efficiency of British Tommies.
The real reasons behind the Berlin blockade were shrouded behind official pretexts. The alleged “technical difficulties” which put a stop to all transports were not imposed by the Soviets merely in retaliation for the currency reform in Western Germany (and later in Berlin) which the Soviets claimed would have an adverse effect on the economy in their zone. When the three Western military governors called on Marshal Sokolovsky on July 3, to express their concern over the deterioration of quadripartite relations, he let the cat out of the bag by saying bluntly that the “technical difficulties” would continue as long as the Western Powers persisted in their plans for a West German government. Such plans were, of course, in the making and had been preceded by a fusion of the British and American Zones in early 1947. After three years of fruitless attempts to get Soviet agreement on the economic unification of Germany in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement, the Western Allies had no alternative but to consolidate and strengthen Western Germany. It will be noted that when Western Germany was about to take another step toward sovereignty with the adoption of the “contractual” and European Defense agreements, the Soviets were employing similar harassment methods against Berlin in the hope of preventing, or at least delaying, these developments.
Economic Dilemma
The spiritual uplift and exuberance gained from the breaking of the blockade carried West Berliners through the trying months ahead. For, magnificent and successful as the Airlift had been, it had actually accomplished very little except a return to the status quo ante. The isolation of West Berlin continued, and its communications were precarious and subject to arbitrary obstructions as before. The effects of its dislocated economy became glaringly apparent after the lifting of the blockade. Through war damages and Russian looting, Berlin lost over eighty percent of its industrial equipment, a far higher percentage than in Western Germany. The introduction of a hard Westmark currency in Berlin, worth five to seven times as much as the Eastmark, prevented normal trading with the East Zone (but produced a flourishing black market). The number of unemployed rose from 150,000 in May, 1949 (the time the blockade was lifted), to nearly 300,000 by the end of December, or more than a fourth of the working population. It has remained above 200,000 ever since (partly due to the refugee influx), despite heroic American and German efforts and assistance. Its industrial recovery suffered a frightful setback by the blockade, so that its production index at the end of 1949 was only 25 percent of that of 1936, whereas West German production stood at about 100 percent. By the end of 1953, when West German production as a whole was nearly 170 percent compared with 1936, West Berlin’s index was around 65 percent, and has not climbed much above that today.
Although every effort has been made to boost the Berlin economy during the past three years, the city is still absolutely dependent on outside help. The crux of the problem is that Berlin must import twice as much as it can export, and this gap must somehow be made up from outside resources. Assistance from the German Federal Republic in the form of emergency taxes and regular subsidies helps to make up more than a third of the Berlin budget. ERP and MSA credits and so-called GARIOA (Government and Relief in Occupied Areas) counterpart funds have been liberally pumped into the economy to stimulate production and absorb unemployment.
To stimulate commerce an Industry Fair and a so-called “Green Week,” or Agricultural Fair (in a city without farms and farmers!), are held in Berlin each year. These vast, impressive exhibitions, which are attended by hundreds of thousands of East Zone visitors, bear witness to the initiative and capacity of Berlin industry and science. In conformity with Berlin’s tradition and also in line with its present transportation difficulties, Berlin industry concentrates on high-quality finished goods: electrical equipment, optical and precision instruments, chemicals, textiles, and clothing.
The most important requisite for Berlin’s economy is confidence. Confidence of West German businessmen in Berlin’s ability to produce and deliver is steadily increasing, but it is still far from good. The losses incurred during the past years from delays and confiscation of goods through Soviet harassment tactics have greatly discouraged West Germans from doing business with Berlin. This dilemma is being overcome gradually by providing indemnity insurance and tax cutbacks, so that with Allied and German help more orders have been channeled to Berlin than heretofore.
The Hazards of Interzonal Transportation
Uncertainties in Berlin’s lines of communication with the West continue to be the crucial factor in the city’s future development. Despite orders from the Paris Conference of Foreign Ministers in May, 1949, to the Allied commandants to take all necessary steps to “normalize” conditions in Berlin, life has been, in fact, far from normal. A catalog of incidents and difficulties caused by Communist harassment of Berlin traffic and transport (Allied and German) would cover practically every day on the calendar and every phase of transportation.
An outsider would have difficulty comprehending the red tape and the hazards involved in sending a shipment of goods from Berlin to West Germany. The documentation must be prepared weeks in advance, and must show, in addition to a meticulous enumeration of goods, the origin of the raw materials that have gone into the finished product. These certificates of origin, or Warenbegleitscheine, were just one more Soviet invention, and violated every previous procedure and agreement. It was another provocation in which we reluctantly acquiesced, and we circumvented the issue by instituting, in the summer of 1951, a little- known commercial airlift for lightweight, valuable goods.
The distance from Berlin to the West German zonal border is 102 miles, normally a comfortable 2-hour drive on one of Adolf Hitler’s super-highways, or Autobahnen. The experienced Berlin truckdriver, however, will prepare himself for several nights on the road. His first stop is at the entrance to the Autobahn outside of Berlin, where Communist People’s Police will check his papers. He then continues his journey, but he will be stopped intermittently “for inspection.” He must meticulously observe the constantly changing speed limits and other traffic directions, for the maintenance of the superhighway leaves much to be desired. The temporary, wooden bridge across the Elbe river is the same one put up in 1945 by the U.S. Army Engineers, across which our driver must drive at the un-Stakhanovite speed of 5 kilometers (3 miles) per hour, or risk a fine. If he should want to pay this fine with Eastmarks he will be guilty, as a West Berliner, of the “illegal” possession of East Zone currency; if he has Westmarks he is again considered guilty of carrying “illegal” currency in the East Zone. In either case he is apt to be relieved of his money.
As the truckdriver approaches the Russian checkpoint near Helmstedt on the Western zonal border, he may see a line of trucks one to three miles in length, at the end of which he must settle down. He will soon find out from his waiting colleagues what the situation is on that day; whether the Communist inspection officers are tough or indifferent, whether they are clearing trucks at the rate of ten, five, or two per hour, or possibly none at all. In any event, he is resigned to spend the next day or two waiting. While German and Allied passenger cars whisk by and get through the formalities in ten or fifteen minutes, the truck drivers pass away the time beside their vehicles, picnicking, playing cards, and keeping warm.
The actual checking by People’s Police involves a maliciously painstaking inspection of the contents of each container of goods, in search of goods which are claimed to have been illegally obtained from the Soviet Zone. Such goods are immediately confiscated, sometimes including truck and all. If for any reason the documentation is found to be insufficient, the truck returns to Berlin. But if all goes well, the driver is allowed to pass through the barrier, past the Russian soldier, and into the free Western Zone, heaving a sigh of relief.
The character and speed of the Communist inspection procedure, as well as all other conditions of travel on the Autobahn, vary capriciously from day to day. People’s Police may confiscate scrap metal one day, rubber tires the next, and at all times Western “subversive” literature (and what isn’t subversive?). Traffic rules may change, an exorbitant highway toll may suddenly be levied (normally use of the Autobahn is free), the U.S. and British highway patrols may be stopped by the Russians—anything may happen in this land of “1984,” and in almost every instance we have had to “take it.”
No media of communication and transport are exempt from Soviet interference (except our radio-telephones). Barges hauling large quantities of coal and scrap metal over an intricate system of canals have been intercepted and confiscated. Communist- controlled canal locks have been kept “out of order” for months. Rail freight is subjected to the same inspection and risks as trucks. Even Allied planes have been molested by buzzing and trigger-happy Soviet pilots.
There are only a few effective means of retaliation left to the West. It is true that East Zone trains and canals criss-cross the territory of West Berlin and can easily be intercepted (as has been done). But the Soviets constructed a by-pass system of rails and canals, thus eluding Western controls. There are still a number of Soviet enclaves in West Berlin: the Communist-controlled “Radio Berlin,” the headquarters building of the Reichsbahn (East Zone railroad administration) and the Soviet war memorial in the Tiergarten outside the Brandenburg Gate. These the Western commandants could occupy, as indeed West Berliners are constantly urging them to do. These Soviet islets, together with the Soviet-controlled railroad tracks throughout the city, constitute a convenient extraterritorial base for nuisance operations against West Berlin.
The only serious weapon we hold is the counter-blockade. The Soviet Zone is dependent for its ambitious Five Year Plan on the steel, machine tools, ball bearings, and other industrial products from the West. It was chiefly the counter-blockade in 1948-49 which induced the Soviets to lift the Berlin blockade. Although this retaliatory measure has lost some of its potency in view of the recent industrial advancement in the East Zone, its application would nevertheless hurt acutely. However, to be effective the wholehearted cooperation of the West is necessary, and in this respect some of our European friends, notably the United Kingdom, would have considerable reservations.
A Look into East Berlin
A brief look at life behind the Iron Curtain in East Berlin will do more to convince the visitor of the significance of Berlin to the Free World than anything else. Generally, the Germans or foreigners have had no particular difficulties entering the Soviet Sector by car, subway, elevated, or on foot. At every street corner along the sector borders are warning or beckoning signs (whichever way one looks at them): “You are now leaving the American Sector,” and “Beginning of the Democratic Sector” (as the Communists see themselves).
Though the crossing of the sector border seems inconspicuous, the contrasts between the two worlds are glaring. Streets in the Soviet Sector are dark and quiet, most of the shop windows half empty or filled with third- rate goods and substitutes. People wear dark, shabby clothes and carry odd-shaped bundles. Their faces lack animation and reflect the gloom and despair in their souls. They speak rarely and quietly to avoid notice by the ever-present security police and secret informers. The streets are festooned with Communist propaganda placards, their slogans seconded by public loudspeakers fulminating against “Anglo-American imperialists,” the “General War Treaties” (referring to the pending contractual agreements with West Germany), and glorifying the Soviet Union, their “great friend,” and the “most progressive, most peace-loving nation of the world.”
The downtown area around Unter den Linden is a macabre caricature of its former self. It is totally unrecognizable, whole structures like Hitler’s Reich Chancellery and the Kaiser’s palace having been dismantled to the last stone. Unlike West Berlin there is little building activity here, save for such official projects as the House of Soviet Culture and the pompous Soviet Embassy. One street leading to the east, appropriately re-baptized “Stalinallee” has been turned in Stakhanovite tempo into a Communist show window, a huge housing project chiefly for Communist workers and functionaries.
Out of the “workers’ paradise” pours a •never-ending stream of refugees. Since the Communists sealed off the Western zonal borders in May, 1952, Berlin remains the only accessible haven of refuge. The flow of refugees has been around four to five thousand a month since the end of the blockade, but it has swelled with each terror wave up to over one thousand a day (in the spring of 1953) and was around 500 a day at the end of 1953. It includes people of all ages and walks of life—business and professional people, and occasionally high-ranking East Zone officials and political leaders who have fallen out with the regime. This human river is carefully sieved by municipal screening committees to guard against spies and other undesirable elements. Those who qualify as bona fide political persecutees are temporarily put up at one of the city’s eighty-odd refugee camps. After a brief stay over ninety percent of them are flown out to West German refugee centers; the others—in addition to thousands of unrecognized refugees—stay to swell Berlin’s army of unemployed.
Cultural Life
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of present-day Berlin is its cultural life, which resembles that of no other metropolis, and least of all its own before the war. Conscious of Berlin’s tradition as a great cultural center, the city fathers try determinedly to restore the arts to their former level. But the split of the city, the isolation, and the strained finances militate against this. The result is an astounding potpourri of cultural endeavor of somewhat uneven character, but full of zest, individuality, and healthy realism.
In Berlin the proverbial universality of the arts breaks down at the sectors’ borders. On both sides of the line are half a dozen legitimate theaters, an opera, a symphony orchestra, radio stations, colleges, and universities. East of the line, the work of all cultural institutions is regimented by Communist functionaries. During the early postwar years, stage and opera in East Berlin far excelled those in West Berlin; performances such as Bert Brecht’s Mutter Courage, and Herr Puntila und sein Knecht were admired by Berliners regardless of political alignment. In recent years, however, actors, singers, and theater managers in the employ of Communist authorities have lost their professional autonomy. They have been forced to collaborate in outrageously political and inartistic works, glorifying “activism,” collective farming, and other virtues of the “people’s democracies,” at the same time avoiding the heresies of formalism, cosmopolitanism, and objectivism. For this reason most of the leading artists have left East Berlin despite the almost vulgar inducements held out to them by the Communists.
West Berlin’s cultural life, on the other hand, is the unmasked expression of its troubled political existence, of its militant faith in the free West. There is no neutralism in the arts. Artists employed by the West Berlin government (which includes most of them) are forbidden to perform in East Berlin. Guest artists from outside who still accept engagements on both sides of the Iron Curtain are definitely frowned upon.
The basic intellectual currents of the West —cosmopolitanism, liberalism, humanism, as well as existentialism and avantguardism— are reflected by the rich repertoire of West Berlin’s theaters. The postwar plays of Carl Zuckmayer—Devil’s General, and Singing in the Furnace, which deal with the resistance (to Nazism) theme—have deeply impressed Berlin audiences. The plays of French Catholic authors Claudel and Bernanos, with a strongly religious theme, had a special signif icance for Berliners, at a time when their coreligionists in the Soviet Zone were being persecuted. The international, as well as the modern character of the repertoire is attested by the numerous successful performances of works by Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and John van Druten; Sartre, Girodoux, and Anouilh; J. B. Priestly, T. S. Eliot, and Christopher Fry (the latter two not so popular); Garcia Lorca and Peter Ustinov. In addition to these, significant and original stagings of German and foreign classics are featured, notably Shakespeare Schiller, Hauptmann, and Kleist. The repertoire of the city opera is still dominated by Wagner and Verdi, but the works of contemporaries, Stravinsky, Britten, Menotti, Honegger, Hindemith, Blacher, Egk, and von Einem have also been given considerable prominence.
In order to offset the cultural propaganda in East Berlin, as well as to restore Berlin to its original position of cultural leadership, an annual “Berlin Cultural Festival” has been established since 1951, with the cooperation and assistance from the Western Allies. While this festival still lacks the lustre and tradition of the Edinburgh and Salzburg festivals, it has already brought to Berlin some of the world’s most outstanding ensembles. The events of the past three years included the New York City Ballet and Sadler’s Wells Ballet, the Old Vic company, Oklahoma, and Porgy and Bess (with the original cast), and the Theatre National Populate of Paris.
The Free University
The creation of a “Free University” in the summer of 1948 (while the blockade was on), was one of the boldest achievements of Berlin’s fighting spirit. When it became obvious that the Soviets were determined to turn the famous University of Berlin, located in their sector, into a Marxist institution, and several democratic student leaders were arrested and expelled, it was the students who took the initiative to found a new, truly free, university in West Berlin. They were encouraged and aided by the U. S. authorities who made available several buildings that had belonged to the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft. Unfortunately almost no professors were at first willing to risk their career in such an adventure, and the difficulties of organizing a faculty and providing physical facilities were enormous. Today it is a flourishing institution of 6,000 students (35 percent hail from the Soviet Zone) and some 400 teachers, housed in some forty odd-sized buildings spread all over the city. Since the university owes its existence largely to the initiative of students, the latter were given a considerable share in its government; student representatives attend, with full voting privileges, all university governing bodies, from the board of trustees down to student admission committees. In no other university in the world do students have such extensive powers and responsibilities, and experience has shown that they are fully worthy of the confidence placed in them. Politically, the students of the Free University are the most alert in Germany: they have not permitted the resuscitation of reactionary fraternities (Korporationen), who at every university in West Germany have reappeared and revived their antiquated practices, including duelling.
Because of its vital educational mission in Berlin, the Free University to this day receives an annual subsidy of one-half million dollars from the U. S. High Commission (the Germans contribute five times that amount). The Ford Foundation gave it a grant of $1,300,000 for vitally needed buildings, while the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carl Schurz Memorial Foundation, as well as several American colleges and voluntary organizations, are continually helping out with books, financial donations, and exchange professorships.
Future Outlook
At this time it is proper to inquire what are the prospects for a solution of the Berlin problem. Furthermore, what was the Berlin policy of the previous Administration (if it had any), and what should the present policy be? Before these questions can be answered, certain basic facts about Berlin have to be extracted from an extremely complex situation.
First of all, it is abundantly clear that neither the East nor the West can, or will, relinquish Berlin. While the present deadlock is unsatisfactory and painful to both sides, a one-sided solution would be distinctly worse.
The loss or abandonment of Berlin would entail an incalculable defeat for the free world. Not only would it involve a betrayal of over two million Berliners and their surrender to Communist vengeance, it would also strike a deathblow at the confidence of the oppressed millions behind the Iron Curtain, especially the twenty million Germans in the East Zone, as well as the people of Western Germany, Western Europe, and the whole free world. It can safely be said, however, that the abandonment of Berlin was never seriously contemplated by the Western Allies.
In the present Cold War the possession of Berlin represents certain tangible advantages for the West. Berlin, the “Show Window to the East,” gives us a pretty clear view of the state and the drift of things in the land behind the Iron Curtain. More important, it also enables the people of the East to refresh and strengthen themselves with an occasional view at the free world. What it means to a young teacher, for example, who is forced every day to live a double life—subservient to the dictates of the Party while at school, true to himself only in the privacy of his home, and at all times stricken with a ' fear that he may be the next victim of the terror—what it means to such a person to be able to take a train to Berlin, and in a few hours see, hear, and say everything his oppressed heart has yearned for, is something hard to comprehend by those of us in the Western world who can fortunately take these freedoms for granted. Americans in Berlin who have contacts with Germans from the East Zone and who have often been witnesses of such moving scenes can testify how great is the moral uplift of free West Berlin to East German visitors. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that continued contact with the free world through the Berlin window is a sine qua non for preserving the morale of the anti-Communist Germans in the East.
A further distinct advantage is the fact that free Berlin is slowing up the process of sovietizing the East Zone. The everpresent manifestation of the Western way of life forces the Communists to compete, at least outwardly, with the standards prevailing in the West. This necessarily involves a retardation of their own program of political, economic, and cultural regimentation. It is well known that conditions deeper in the Soviet Zone are considerably worse than in East Berlin.
As long as West Berlin is free, the Soviets will never have absolute control of their zone, nor will their puppet state, the “German Democratic Republic,” develop into a reliable satellite. Free Berlin is a thorn in the flesh of the Soviets, and it behooves us to keep it there until they are ready to agree to a united, democratic Germany.
To come back, then, to the first question, it is obvious that U. S. policy for the past years has been nothing more nor less than to hold Berlin at all cost. Beyond this there is no policy, as far as can be detected. To hold Berlin, to protect its communications, to maintain a viable economy through outside financial assistance, and to protect the city from Communist aggression—these are no inconsequential commitments; this is a policy. Again and again our statesmen have enunciated this policy in public statements for all men to hear. One of the most incisive statements of U. S. Berlin policy was given by Dean Acheson in June, 1952, in connection with the cornerstone-laying for a new U.S.-financed public library building in Berlin. Although he spoke in English, during a long ceremony in the blistering sun, some hundred thousand Berliners standing on the rubble nearby broke out with instantaneous applause when Acheson said, “We have also indicated in unmistakable terms that we shall regard any attack on Berlin from whatever quarter as an attack against our forces and ourselves.” These words, spoken at a time when the Communists were creating a three- mile “death strip” along the Western zonal border and were hurling new threats against West Berlin/ went far to reassure Berliners and to fill their hearts with new courage.
It is doubtful that a new Administration can effect much change in our Berlin policy. Rarely have policies been shaped so exclusively by the logic of hard events known to all. Few have been so objective, so free from partisan considerations. It may well be conceded that our methods from time to time could have been more forceful, replying to every Communist aggressive move with hard retaliatory measures. It is entirely conceivable that we could have scored many a point by confiscating the Soviet enclaves in West Berlin, by arresting or shooting Russians. But the decision not to do so was made in every instance by a high level, inter-departmental group in Washington and was based on the overall military and political situation obtained at the time.
To hold Berlin has also involved another political decision for which the Western Allies have sometimes been criticized, especially by Berliners. This was the decision to exclude Berlin from the West German Federal Republic at a time when the latter was about to receive sovereign status by virtue of the “contractual agreements.” The decision was the result of the necessity to preserve Berlin’s quadripartite status. A surrender of that status by making West Berlin an integral part of West Germany would deprive us of our legal right to stay in Berlin. It would give the Soviets the long-wished-for juridical arguments to demand our withdrawal.
In view of the intermittent waves of terror in the Soviet Zone, and the continued harassments against West Berlin, it is likely that the West will be called upon to make even greater sacrifices to hold Berlin. Communist tactics are designed to cut off West Berlin from East Berlin and the East Zone. A little over a year ago telephone connections between the two parts of the city were severed, most roads were blocked at the zonal border, and some suburban trains were halted “for repairs.” The Soviets no doubt calculate that these measures—which could be repeated and stepped up at will—will further weaken the economy of West Berlin and undermine the morale of its citizens. Evidently they hope that West Berlin will eventually wither away to the point that holding it is no longer profitable or possible for the Western Allies.
The Berlin problem can only be solved within the framework of German reunification. Thus far the Soviets have not seen fit to enter serious negotiations toward that end. The recent four-power conference merely re-emphasized, more forcefully perhaps than ever before, the well-known and well-worn Soviet position. Meanwhile the West must continue to strengthen itself politically, economically, and militarily, until such time when a reunified Germany would be distinctly preferable to both sides rather than the present precarious stalemate. Until that time comes, we can have but one policy: to stay in Berlin.
* The opinions or assertions contained in this article are the personal ones of the writer and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Navy Department or the Naval Service at large.