A glance at postwar German history
by George Lewinski
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April 1945
...the final days of World War Two. Berlin was caught between American and Soviet forces, pounded day and night by bombers, pulverised as the Red Army ground its way into the city center.
Ten days later:
(ANNOUNCERS' VOICES FROM OLD BROADCAST): "Go ahead, London..." "This is
London calling. Here is a news flash. The German radio has just announced
that Hitler is dead."
So were eighty thousand Berliners. An eleven square mile area in the heart of the city looked, said one witness, like a wasteland of broken, empty matchboxes.
The capital of the Thousand Year Reich had died. The new masters were the United States, and its wartile allies including the Soviet Union.
(VOICE OF PRESIDENT TRUMAN): "We're here today to raise the flag of
victory over the capital of our greatest adversary..."
Germany was divided by the victors into zones of occupation. Right in the middle of the Soviet Zone was Berlin -- held by all four powers. It would become a flashpoint for the next forty years -- a standoff between armies and economic systems.
June 1947
The Berlin airlift. The successful beginning of the Marshall Plan, enraged the Soviets. They mounted a food and fuel blockade of the city. British and American aircraft saved Berlin from starving.
The airlift changed the image of the Berlin. It was no longer Hitler's capital. By the time Moscow gave up its blockade, in May 1949, the city became a beacon for the West. General Lucius Clay, the American commander said,
"It means the people of Berlin have earned their right to freedom, and that in the breaking of this physical blockade, there is also accompanying it a breaking in any moral or spritual blockade which may have closed berlin in before."
The Berlin airlift turned turned Germans from former enemies into new allies.
Winter 1947
It was the coldest in half a century. Millions of Europeans faced starvation. The continent was bankrupt. The Iron Curtain was going up.Behind the Red Army, the KGB was busy communising eastern Europe and his half of Germany. Powerful communist parties in France and Italy were close to power. 50 years ago, today, the US Secretary of State George Marshall told the graduating class at Harvard,
"The truth of the matter is that Europe's requirements for for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products - principally from America- are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help, or face economic, social and political deterioration of a very grave character."
Here in Berlin, a thousand businesses had closed, unable to get raw materials and parts. Fully one-third of the city's population depended on soup kitchens. There were reports of cannibalism. The black-market flourished. Berlin was the crime capital of the world. Marhsall proposed an aid program that would help Berlin, Germany and the whole of Europe to help itself.
"Our policy is directed....against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist."
Winston Churchill called it "the most unsordid act in human history". In 1997 terms, the Marshall Plan cost 88-billion dollars. Far from a hand-out, it allowed Europe to buy the food and machinery that laid the groundwork for its re-construction. Germany got a mere ten percent of the money and turned itself around - prostrate enemy to Europe's economic powerhouse. The verdict, then and now, is that it was a grand success.
The late 1950s
East Germany, particularly East Berlin, saw itself falling behind West Germany. The Economic Miracle was in full swing. The East German authorities tried everything, including propaganda. Jaunty East German pop songs called the broadcasts on the American-operated station, RIAS, lies.But East Germans could see the bright lights, the skyscrapers, the cars just across the border. They voted with their feet...as many as 3 million people fled.East Germany and East Berlin were losing their most able and enterpising citizens. At midnight, August 1961, the East German authorities acted.
They walled in their half of the country, cutting through farmfields,
streets, even houses. Berlin itself was divided by a 13-foot-high wall
that snaked through the city.
The Wall became a defining symbol of the Cold War from Kennedy, who said
A generation later Reagan called out:
"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, come to
this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."
More than 5 thousand people braved the watch towers, barbed wire and trigger -happy guards and escaped. At least 80 people were killed trying to cross the Berlin Wall.
The mid-80s
East Germany like the rest of the communist world was near collapse. Perestroika was in bloom in the summer of 1989, and East Germans were eacaping through Hungary and Czechoslovakia, as authorities there said they no longer required a visa to leave for Austria or West Germany. Finally, the East German authorities gave up, saying, "We have reached an agreement today which will allow every citizen of the DDR to leave the country at border crossing points."A quarter Century after it was put up, in the dark of midnight in 1961, the grim barrier came down on November 9, 1989.
Graham Leech of BBC reported:
"The police commander at Checkpoint Charlie has suddenly announced that they can go over to the western side of the Berlin Wall. The first East German has come across now. He's been raised aloft. He's holding his East German identity pass to show the crowds of West Berliner who've gathered here tonight."
The party lasted for days.
Hammers, crowbars and pickaxes appeared by magic...wall peckers broke off chunks of the Wall. Within days the bits of concrete were on sale all over the world.
In short order Germany become one country again. It was the end of communism and the beginning of a capitalist generation.
George Lewinski is MARKETPLACE foreign editor. He is in Berlin covering European integration for MARKETPLACE as it broadcasts during the first week of June from the new German capital in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Marshall Plan.
