Maryland Voluntary State Curriculum (vsc)
Part Four: The Berlin Airlift
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Part Four: The Berlin AirliftB  erliners did not have an easy time during the airlift, especially during the bitter winter months. There were drastic power cuts and the Berliners had to learn to live yet again by the light of candles and oil lamps. Food was strictly rationed and fresh vegetables were scarce. It seemed that little had changed since the end of the war-people were still cold and hungry, they still lived in ruins, still had to forage from the bomb sites and chop down trees in the parks for firewood. It was a dire circumstance, but still they knew that their suffering in this manner would be better than succumbing to Soviet control. They had seen the treatment Soviet soldiers had given them when they liberated Germany from the Nazis. In their minds, starvation was far better than that treatment. At the beginning of the airlift, Berlin's Lord Mayor Ernst Reuter held a public rally in support of the effort. Germans would suffer and sacrifice to make it work. The German resolve was strong, even in such a desperate situation.
Berliners showed their gratitude to the Western powers in many ways. Captain Earl Overholser was Public Information Officer at Templehof Airbase during the early months of the airlift. Overholser recounted, "One of my jobs. . . is to handle all the grateful Berlin citizens who show up. Seems to me I've met every German in Berlin. They come down here, clutching extremely valuable heirlooms against their breasts, and want to make a little ceremony of giving the stuff to the pilots. Or some child will show up with flowers or a valued picture book. It's no act either. An old man so thin you could see through him showed up a few days ago with a watch that would have fed him for months on the black market. He insisted on giving it to an American. He called it 'a little token from an old and grateful heart'." The gifts were not all valuable heirlooms. They knitted scarfs and sweaters. One lady presented two young boxer puppies to pilot Captain Robert C. Livesay. A particularly thoughtful gift was received by Overholser in a cardboard box addressed to "Lt Keller, Greenfield, Iowa" in early August 1948. The sender had read a story about Keller in a Sunday edition of a Berlin newspaper, which had mentioned Keller had two small children. The box contained two homemade rag dolls for Keller's children. Student Resource Sheet #7 Part Five: The Berlin Airlift O  ne of the most poignant stories of the Berlin Airlift was that of 1st Lt. Gail S. Halvorsen. Halvorsen decided that on one of his days off he would hitch a ride as a passenger on a C-54 and visit the Berlin to see what was happening in the city first hand. Once at Tempelhof, Halvorsen walked to the end of the runway to film some aircraft landings when he noticed a group of children near the fence watching the planes, too.
Halvorsen, a veteran of the North African and Italian campaigns of World War II, had experienced the children of these war-torn countries begging for candy, gum, and cigarettes. When he met the group of Berlin children, he was taken aback by their reserve and recalled at the time. . . . "I got in the middle of these kids, and what do you think happened? None of them jerked at my pants. . . . They wanted to hold a polite conversation and try out their English on me. Their English is about as bad as my German. After about one hour, in which I gained considerable stature as an airlift pilot, I noticed something was missing. I couldn't put my finger on it, but it nagged me. And finally I realized what it was. Those kids hadn't begged for a single thing. . . .it wasn't lack of candy-hunger that held them back; they just lacked the brass other kids have. So I told them to be down at the end of the runway next day and I'd drop them some gum and candy. That night I tied up some candy bars and gum in handkerchiefs and had my chief sling them out on a signal from me next day. Day by day the crowd of kids waiting for the drop got bigger, and day by day my supply of handkerchiefs, old shirts, GI sheets, and old shorts, all of which I use for parachutes, gets smaller." True to his word, the very next day, on approach to Berlin, he rocked the airplane, “wiggled” his wings, and dropped chocolate bars attached to a handkerchief parachute to the children waiting below. Every day the number of children increased. Soon there was a stack of mail in Base Ops addressed to "Uncle Wiggly Wings', "The Chocolate Uncle" and "The Chocolate Flier". 
Halvorsen didn't tell anyone about what he was doing for fear he'd get in trouble. Then, he was called into his commander and asked what he was doing. He replied 'Flying, Sir." His commander asked again, and received the same response. He then pulled out a newspaper with a picture of Halvorsen's plane and tiny parachutes trailing behind. Apparently, a newspaper reporter narrowly escaped being hit on the head with a chocolate bar. His commander wasn't happy about it, but General Tunner though it was just the kind of gesture that the operation needed. It was dubbed "Operation Little Vittles". It continued, and many pilots participated. In the end, over three tons of candy was dropped over Berlin, some even in the Soviet sector. Student Resource Sheet #8 Part Six: The Berlin Airlift O  n May 12, 1949, the Soviets gave in. The blockade was over. The blockade had not only failed, it had hurt them. They had been made to look silly and suffered a moral defeat. The West Berliners had spurned all Soviet blandishments, and only twenty thousand of them accepted the Soviet offer of East Berlin ration cards. The trade embargo between the Western zones and the Soviet zones had severely hampered the development of the East German economy, whereas the West German economy was beginning to take off in the wake of currency reform.
Vast crowds gathered to welcome the first Allied trucks that arrived overland from the West down the autobahn into Berlin. The locomotives of the first trains to roll in were garlanded with flowers. But the airlift continued in full spate for another four months so that stocks could be built up in case the blockade was reestablished. The year 1949 was the watershed, not just for Germany but for Europe as well. It was the year when Germany's future was decided and most of the world's political and military divisions were resolved. On May 23, eleven days after the lifting of the Berlin blockade, the Federal Republic of Germany was created out of the Western zones. On August 24 the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed, in which the USA, Canada and most noncommunist European countries pledged themselves to mutual assistance in case of foreign aggression. On October 5, 1949, the German Democratic Republic was formally created out of the Soviet zone of Germany. Equilibrium of a kind was reached, with the frontier between the two halves forming the front line of the Cold War in Europe. Maryland Council on Economic Education Directory: NTI%20Documents -> High%20School%20Social%20Studies -> 4%20-%20Wednesday%20AM%20-%20Know%20Your%20Content -> Blackboard Blackboard -> Unit 4: 1877 to World War I grade: 9-12 Subject: African American Studies The Black Experience 1877-World War I Download 351.81 Kb. Share with your friends:
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