LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
BERLIN UNDER THE BLOCKADE SIR,—While I am in the fullest agreement with the conclusions of your editorial aricle Rumours from Russia in the Spectator of April 22nd, which has just reached me, it contains two remarks on the Soviet blockade of Berlin which cannot, I feel, remain uncontradicted. The first asserts that " the blockade . . . has, thanks to the almost incredible success of the air-lift, left Western Berlin perfectly normal." The second states that Russia " imposed the blockade as a completely irrelevant rejoinder to the introduction of the new Western mark into the Western sectors of Berlin." Your first statement, no doubt unintentionally, detracts quite unjustly from the fine feat of endurance which the inhabitants of Berlin have achieved under conditions of life which are, in fact, very far from " perfectly normal." The second lends colour to a Soviet propaganda line which is quite untrue.
The success of the air-lift has indeed been magnificent. But do not forget that most Western Berlin households have had to struggle through the winter on the equivalent of a large wastepaper-basketful of fuel ; that diet has been, and still is, monotonous, containing large quantities of dehydrated potato ; that many firms and shops are either bankrupt or almost so ; that industrial unemployment is almost 25 per cent.; that the inhabitants have been victimised constantly by raids on the sector- frontiers by the so-called " People's Police," who steal money, food and other purchases from travellers in trams and trains ; that there have been two hours of electricity by day and two in the middle of the night. These are a few only of the trials which you suggest are features of " perfectly normal" life. The efforts of the Allied air-lift crews would have been vain had the people of Berlin not been ready to accept an apparently endless catalogue of hardships rather than surrender to Communist pressure. This fact has been emphasised repeatedly by General Robertson and other Allied leaders.
As to the thesis that the blockade was a reply to the introduction of the West mark into the Western sectors, this is derived direct from Soviet propaganda. The Allied announcement on currency reform in the Western zones was on June 18th, 1948; the extension to the Western sectors of Berlin came later in the month. Yet Soviet interference with passenger traffic between Berlin and the West began on January 24th, 1948. On March 31st new Soviet regulations were introduced which practically strangled rail freight-traffic from Berlin to the West. There- after Allied military trains were detained, parcel mails were stopped, coal supplies for Berlin were interrupted, freight-trains from the West to Berlin were held up "owing to improper labels," and the bridge on the
Berlin-Helmstedt Autobahn was closed "for repairs." All this was before the introduction of reformed currency in the Western zones.
It is true that the final steps in sealing off Berlin by land and water were taken a day or two after currency reform. But these were merely the finishing touches to a series of moves which had been in progress for six months previously. To adopt the Russian story that the Soviet was " forced into counter-measures by the threat to the financial stability of Eastern zone currency " is therefore to fall into a trap carefully prepared in Moscow and Karlshorst.—Yours faithfully, ANTHONY MANN. Berlin.
Previous page
