the most pressing issues facing the city’s traumatised population, including law and order (there was none), Nazis in hiding (there were many) and the challenges of governing a city in which the entire infrastructure had collapsed. [loc. 1706]
I'm coming to rely on Milton for straightforward accounts of historical events, peppered with fascinating anecdotes: Checkmate in Berlin, which deals with the beginning of the Cold War, was no exception. Due to the lacunae in my historical knowledge (not helped by lacklustre syllabi at secondary school, which was mostly local history and The Causes Of The First World War) I was only vaguely aware of the Berlin Airlift, the partition of post-war Berlin, et cetera. Milton illustrates the personalities involved (Roosevelt not far from death, Churchill bellicose and drunken, 'Uncle Joe' avuncular and scheming, et cetera) and describes the aftermath of the 'liberation' of Berlin from the Nazis -- a free-for-all of rape and looting, officially sanctioned by the Soviets and perpetrated by military personnel at all levels. 'Ulbricht refused to countenance abortion for women who had been raped, since it would be tantamount to admitting that the Red Army had done the raping.' [loc. 994] Britain and America were both slow to recognise that their wartime allies, the Russians, were now the enemy.
Tensions remained high, with Soviet interference in politics, Nazis recruited into key positions, combative radio stations and all manner of skulduggery. Then, in June 1948, the Soviets cut off all land routes to Berlin: the British and Americans refused to retreat, and instead designed and carried out the immense humanitarian effort of delivering thousands of tons of food and other supplies every day. Which meant over 500 daily flights; which meant an upgrade to the Tempelhof airport. 'The bulldozers required to transform the place were brought in by plane. Too heavy to be transported in a C-47, they were sliced into segments using oxyacetylene cutters and then welded back together once they were in Berlin.' [loc. 4944] The British civilian flights alone carried over 150,000 tons of supplies -- from a country where most of the population were living on rations similar to those of Berliners. The blockade lasted for 323 days, until the Soviets admitted defeat (of a sort). A monumental effort (and one that feels in sharp contrast to contemporary affairs) it had moments of lightness. I was charmed by Operation Little Vittles, in which American pilots dropped sweets for the children of Berlin. 'As a ‘good news’ story, it was hard to beat: smiling children devouring huge quantities of sweets supplied by caring pilots of the American Air Force...radio stations across the United States took up the cause, launching appeals for handkerchiefs so they could be turned into parachutes [for candy bars]: ‘Send in a handkerchief and we’ll play your request tune.’' [loc. 5361]
Lots of appalling, yet fascinating, detail here: the fate of Hitler's teeth, and of the German dental nurse who identified them; the looting of the Pergamon altar; the symptoms of Asiatic syphilis; the eye-opening nightclubs, such as the Tabasco, where it was apparently '‘genuinely impossible to tell who was a man or a boy and who was a girl’'. Recent reading has given me some affection for the Russians: Checkmate in Berlin has done a great deal to counter that.
Fulfils the ‘obstacle’ rubric of the Annual Non-Fiction Reading Challenge, with particular reference to the 323-day Soviet blockade. Many more obstacles were provided by the Russians, though the Americans, French and British could be immovable if necessary.
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