Freedom's Outpost
THE value of this post-war history of Berlin, whose unhappily chosen title should not put readers off, is its objectivity, which is sometimes startling and always lucid. To those not familiar with the subject a number of matters, when seen in perspective, will come as surprises; the nega- tive influence of the French on German prob- lems, later the comparative sterility of Chancellor Adenauer's influence, whose part has been much over-estimated by newspaper reports. 'Potsdam' had little to do with Berlin, and in fact it may well be that the reason the Agreement has so often been conjured up in Russian state- ments was that its results were so inconclusive and vague that they could be made to mean any- thing—or nothing.
During the war,, the extraordinary naiveté of the Western warlords over Russian realities and
the condition of Germany, which is clearly stated without polemics as to who was to blame, seems strange. The chaotic devastation of the conquered country and the complete disappear- ance of her administration were not recognised as factors in the situation until well after the fighting had ceased. Something was bound to fill the vacuum and it was, very nearly, the Red Army all over Germany. Not for the first time the reader is astounded that most of the major Western figures seem not to have known what the Russian Government was like—did nobody consider what the mass-purges meant as a political phenomenon? Blinded by their own propaganda, they really believed that history would take a breathing space when Nazi Ger- many was no more. And perhaps in the enormous pressure of events and of unremitting work they simply had no time to think ahead. The Thirties and Forties must, one supposes, have been notably lacking in professional political thinking and serious Intelligence—what had all the per- manent foreign service staffs been doing? Personal experience since then suggests a ribald answer, but ought our governments not to make some small investment—such as Mr. Windsor— in coherent forward thinking . . . ?
The recounting of Berlin's actual history is very well done. The way the Berliners forced their Western masters to support their efforts towards a freedom they had not known for many years and that we had been fighting for comes out clearly. As late as 1949 I recall hear- ing British and American officials in Berlin complaining that the Germans were constantly forcing them to 'disagree' with the Russian ally. At that level it was still not understood what was happening, and the unwelcome lesson was not learned much faster at the peaks of states- manship --which were getting their information, of course, from those on the spot.
The complex analysis of the 1958-62 crises is masterly. Perhaps Mr. Windsor attributes a too great consciousness and deliberation to Russian actions—they seem often to be playing it by ear. And he fails to make clear the economic-industrial reasons for the impossibility of reunification from the Russian point of view, though he is clear enough about the East German Party's reasons.
We are still in the Berlin crisis and this book offers no patent medicine for it, thank goodness. What it does, is place the problem before us in all its intractability, so that the debate in the West can go on more fruitfully for this book. 'There can be no doubt that in the summer of 1961 the weakness of the West was its only strength; it could not fight a ground battle and it .Was certain that any war over Berlin would be total.' To keep that certainty credible to the Russians is the crux of the Berlin situation; it is the odlY thing that ensures peace. The problem has three facets. The first is to keep the peace, which can only be done, as it has been for the last eighteen years, by the certainty of reprisal. The secOnd is to find a civilian mbaus vivendi for West Berlin; and here a carefully delimited participa- tion by the East Germans in traffic and access administration might not be a bad thing. AnY outside contacts to East and West in the DDR must weaken the hold of the Ulbricht grouP, which can only exist in its isolation, and loosen up the internal condition of the East Germans. The disappearance of this group, certainlY feared and perhaps desired by Khrushchev, IS a precondition to any relief of tension over Berlin. The third facet of Berlin's problem is to turn the city into a centre of vitality and cid- ture for the whole world, especially the n9,,- committed world, so that it cannot be osier- thrown without a great loss of moral prestige to the Russians; the universities, theatres, music. architecture and civic community of Berlin must be both valuable and available to all the world.
As Willy Brandt recently insisted in another place, the West cannot get out of the confronta- tion of two worlds in Berlin—let us then join in the world-debate there and prove the superior value of our world.
SARAH GAINHAM
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