Berlin, Thursday, July 15 One of the advantages of being in Operation BOB is the ability to meet intelligence operatives across the Soviet West divide. Accordingly, you get to learn a lot about what your counterparts really want to discuss, and you can supplement that by what double agents can give. I’m particularly struck by how surprised the Soviet operatives seem to be about the many flights now bringing in supplies for the civilian population of the Western Sectors of the city. They’re putting a good spin on it all. They smile when they note that no amount of aircraft supply is sustainable for such a big population. They nod and smile to each other when they bring up Father Winter as having defeated both Napoleon and Hitler and remind me that winter in Berlin begins as early as late September. They also think the return flights are a godsend (or maybe “god” isn’t in their thoughts) because Soviet German products can be shipped out for hard currency. (It’s as if they don’t think the West’s counter blockade against Soviet Zone trade or trade between the Western Sectors of the city and the Soviet sector; I suspect, in light of the smuggling of food and coal that is going on from the Soviet Sector into the West, also for hard currency, they know it will be relatively easy to document products made in the Soviet Zone as ostensibly made in the Western Allied Sectors of the city. They also like to reiterate that, except for Templehof, it was the Soviet decisions to ensure the French and British had adequate airports in their sectors of Berlin. Gatow, now fully in the British Sector was originally going to be partly in the Soviet Zone, and the smaller Staaken airfield was thought by the British to be in their Sector. Essentially, the Soviets agreed in late ’45 or ’46 that they would give land to ensure that the British had a good airfield. They also say that they gave extra land from the Soviet zone to similarly allow an airfield in the former Tegel forest to be built out to supply the French Garrison in the city. The Soviet agents are quick to point out, now, that their government has offered apologies for the crash of a British Viking passenger plane at Gatow in the April crisis and blockade. They don’t like to admit that originally the Soviets had the chutzpah (I’m not sure they would have used the Yiddish term, though) to blame the crash on the pilot of the British plan and to demand further restrictions on Western air traffic to increase safety. What happened is that a Soviet Yak 3 fighter plane was buzzing the airliner and then hit the plane head on during a second pass, killing everyone on both aircraft. Probably because of British Military Governor Lord Robertson’s very genuine anger, the Soviet Military Governor Marshall Sokolovsky reversed course and in a way he probably has come to regret now in June and July, assured formally that the Soviet Government did not intend to interfere with the air corridors used by the Western Allied Powers. Despite that promise, Soviet aircraft are starting to harass our aircraft in route to Berlin, both with risky flight maneuvers and their continuing refusal to permit navigation beacons along the three entire air corridors the four countries have agreed on – South East from the Hamburg area into Gatow, due East from the Hanover area, also into Gatow, and North East between the Frankfurt and Wiesbaden air fields into Tempelhof. Without ground-based navigation beacons, the pilots have to fly with dead reckoning throughout the entire corridors. Especially from the American bases in the Southwest of the American Zone in western Germany, that’s a long way, and we pray that even thick fog won’t cause aircraft to stray outside their permitted corridors. When we discuss the Western initiative to permit German civilian government in the Western Zones of the country, I generally just listen, as I do with the British and the French. There’s no dispute, actually, that German remilitarization and renewed aggression against all other countries in Western, Central and Eastern Europe must be prevented at all cost. Germany can longer be permitted to pose a danger to Europe. That’s the reason for the occupation of the full country with the four military forces, and a good part of the reason the Soviets demand high “reparations” from the Soviet Zone as well as much of the coal from the Ruhr area – no matter that the Soviets can’t use all the industrial equipment they have taken from the Soviet Zone, even when they’ve essentially kidnapped thousands of German mechanics and experts to go with the dismantled manufacturing plants. They reasonably point out that much of Eastern Germany has now been incorporated into Russia (like the former Koenigsburg on the Baltic coast) and into Polan (like the former Danzig and the vast areas around the former Breslau) and a division of the remaining core of Germany into two different civilian governments would be a poor second best to keeping Germany “pastoral.” And, yet, as Prof. Harrington tells us, whereas the Americans are worrying about spurring German economic recovery as a way to hasten European reconstruction, bolstering political and economic stability and discouraging communist revolutions especially in Italy and France, the Soviets are fearful not only of renewed German aggression but also are suspicious of a German revival being a step towards another invasion of the USSR. As I keep hearing from my Soviet counterparts, capitalists are inherently predatory, preying on each other and on the workers’ state in unison. Prof. Harrington thinks that the German Communist leaders really do want Berlin, and although Stalin doesn’t want the Western Powers in Berlin because it will always be a poison in the heart of their defensive zone, it may be the only bargaining chip Stalin will be left with in the Western countries, if you discount the chances of a communist fifth column. But then we have the fear that the status quo is not sustainable, and the issue is really how do we exit this place? Both the Soviets and we don’t talk about it expressly, but we are all haunted by PM Neville Chamberlain’s remarks in September 1938: “How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing!” I wonder if the Americans really care that we’re trying to keep Berlin at least partly non-Soviet or whether they see our spending so much money on supplying Berlin that could go to jobs for veterans and tying up our strategic aircraft (and thus atomic weapon) capacity, as the military leaders at home are criticizing. And many veteran pilots and aircraft mechanics have had to be called back to so-called Temporary Duty assignments, although no one really knows for how long. How is our feeding the former enemy going to play out in our upcoming presidential election? It’s getting clear that the Truman/Barkley ticket is hemorrhaging support to the new Thurmond/Wright States’ Rights Party because Truman desegregated the military this year and support to the new Wallace/Taylor Progressive Party. The Truman Administration is probably going to see Berlin as a campaign problem, and who knows what he might have to do before November to win?
Posted on: Thu, 18 Jul 2013 05:45:11 +0000
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