Berlin, Tuesday, June 29 In a cryptic comment ending the meeting on the Berlin situation yesterday, President Truman said only that we stay in Berlin. Who’s “we,” Kimo Sabe? The U.S. Garrison will stay until we no longer do. No word – what-so-ever – on how we’re expected to stay if the Berliners are demoralized by the strains of the local blockade, and the Soviet stated intention to make life hard for them – and us. Suddenly, the Berlin population isn’t getting the 15,500 tons that used to be transported daily by barge, rail and road from the Western Zones of Germany. Waite thinks the Berliners can get by on 2000 tons a day of dehydrated, condensed foodstuffs – potato flakes and not the solid potatoes that are so much a part of the diet here. Air Force General LeMay thinks we can fly in 200-250 tons into Tempelhof, at least fifty of which need to go to keep the Western Allied Occupation personnel in Berlin, so as all of us know, there’s a ninety percent shortfall on food, not to mention coal, fuel, construction materials, components and spare parts to keep the businesses going (i.e., people earning money and not subsisting on food handouts). British F.M. Bevin is cagy – even he sees the hopelessness of supplying two million people by air even with just basic foodstuffs. But he and Mayor Reuter seem to be stiffening everyone else’s spine to try ramping up the number of flights. And because Bevin and the British Military Governor here, Sir Robertson, don’t support Gen. Clay’s obsession with pushing an armed convoy through Soviet closures. (When a train tried to get through, the railroad workers simply shunted it onto a spur, where it had to halt, and then a Soviet engine pushed back out into the West.) So we really are stuck – we can’t provoke the Soviets; the Soviets will continue to provoke us. In some ways, logistically mine is an easy task – get the people to the airfields and on board the returning aircraft. No one thinks the Soviets will shoot down aircraft carrying only civilians out (although they’ll denounce such flights for carrying children to slave conditions in the West), so once the airplanes get through to Tempelhof (through what we have to assume will be barrage balloons in the way, jamming radio communication between aircraft and with the airport control tower, and harassing the incoming flights with fighter aircraft, all no doubt going up to the line of provocation demanding a military response from the West). We can load the people in and fly due west in the Hanover air corridor. But I’m still not looking forward to my job in all this – deciding behind the scenes who gets to be evacuated. If 250 tons are getting into Tempelhof every day, it should be possible to evacuate up to 2000 people and one small suitcase each. That’s about one tenth of one percent of the total population, so most will have to be left behind at the end. (And I’ll be competing with the industries in Berlin that want to get their product to the Western Zone to get B-Marks instead of selling to the Soviet Sector and getting the new Soviet currency, so my expected numbers are a best case.) Obviously the first priority is American military and other occupation personnel, because the President’s decision – to stay in Berlin – clearly implies we can come and go as we choose, and we can cite to the Potsdam Agreement guaranteeing air access (and that Agreement didn’t say anything about land and water access). Then who else to fly out I think there’s agreement for now on people who will be more a burden to supply – the hospitalized who can’t work, so send them first, because disease and the already ten-fold increase over the last three years in industrial accidents, AND the loss of so many doctors and medical personnel, the hospitals and clinics will have more than their work cut out for them. Then, infants and young children, because they need fresh milk, and currently they’re almost the only ones the milk is rationed to, but most people need that nutrition, too. Dried and condensed milk, I’m told, isn’t nutritionally sufficient. (One crib = two seats.) Then the elderly who are also disabled. (One stretcher = three seats.) I don’t expect anybody will fight to get on board in the early stages, but later . . . . (No one should know my jog, first, because some may try to bribe me but, more importantly, if rumor got around that Berliners in working age were being evacuated, the demoralization caused by our trying to get out people and eventually abandoning the city would mean an even greater collapse of public distribution systems and an increasing fear the Occupying Forces will exit suddenly en masse, leaving most Berliners and their families to deal with what their friends in the Soviet Zone are already facing. I had a nightmare last night at seeing a Sikorsky land on the roof of the Command Headquarters and our remaining personnel scrambling on board with just handbags, with hundreds of panicked Berliners trying to break down the fence around HQ, mothers trying to throw their infants on board, men trying to rip someone else off the Sikorsky. Woke up in a cold sweat, first thought I would have already been evacuated and wouldn’t need to see this, and then, more a rational thought, that the Soviets would probably allow the Western garrisons not to lose face in a panicked retreat . But I really don’t think that our credibility in Europe would be worth a bucketful of warm spit, because no other country would have confidence we could ever resist the Soviets.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 06:09:05 +0000
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