Berlin 1961 Part 21

Adenauer visited the king of West German media, Axel Springer, who had built his headquarters beside the Berlin border, and whose BildZeitung, West Germanyas largest-circulation newspaper, had been most critical of Adenauer and American impotence during the border closing. aHerr Springer, I donat understand you,a said the chancellor. aNothing has changed here in Berlina except that the media was stirring the pot more.

He warned Springer that his newspaperas antics might revive National Socialism.

Springer stormed from the room in anger.

BERNAUER STRa.s.sE, EAST BERLIN.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1961.

Berliners grew accustomed to their post-Wall reality with surprising speed. The refugee outflow came to an almost complete halt as escape attempts became riskier and border controls tightened. In increasing numbers, West Berliners were relocating to West Germany rather than taking a chance that the Soviets might not be done quite yet.

At Bernauer Stra.s.se, tour buses visited and dozens of Berliners continually loitered on the Western side of the border, observing their streetas posta"August 13 phases: the initial border closure, the removal of Bernauer Stra.s.seas East Berlin residents, the bricking up of windows and doors, and the construction of the Berlin Wall.

West Berlin police officer Hans-Joachim Lazai and his colleagues had strung a rope between trees near Bernauer Stra.s.se beyond which they would not allow spectators to pa.s.s. But on some days the crowd grew so angry that it was difficult to restrain them. Guilt overcame Lazai on the occasions when the hard stream of the police water cannons was required to keep back West Berlin crowds. Far worse were the times when Lazai had to stand by and watch East German border police arrest and cart away those who tried to escape. Following his orders to remain in place and provoke no one, he felt aa sense of helplessness as I stood across from complete injustice.a Worst of all were the tragic deaths of those desperate days. The first one that Lazai witnessed was that of Ida Siekmann, who on August 21, just one day before her fifty-ninth birthday, became the first fatality at Bernauer Stra.s.se. Lazai had been turning left onto the street on his way to work when he saw a dark ball descend from one of the buildings. Siekmann had thrown her mattress from the third-floor window ahead of herself in a vain hope that it would absorb her fall.

She had died instantly.

After that, West Berlin police used reinforced, sheetlike fireman nets in which they could catch jumpers. Nevertheless, would-be refugees had to jump with great accuracy, as the sixteen men who typically gripped the netsa edges could not move quickly enough in any direction to compensate for an errant leap.

It was nearly eight on the evening of October 4 when Lazai first shouted through the dark at Bernd Lnser, a twenty-two-year-old East Berlin engineering student, to jump into just such a net from the roof of a four-story apartment building at Bernauer Stra.s.se 44.

For some time, Lnser and two friends had been trying to summon the nerve to rappel down to West Berlin from the rooftop, using a clothesline they had brought with them. By shouting their encouragement, a growing crowd of West Berliners below alerted nearby East German police to their flight attempt.

Gerhard Peters, a nineteen-year-old member of the East German border police contingent, led the pursuit after gaining access to the roof through a trapdoor. Lnser pulled off roof tiles and threw them at Peters, who, after a short time, was joined by three other officers. After a dramatic chase, Lnseras two friends were taken into custody by police after falling and sliding down the roof into a protective rail.

When one of the East German police shot at the would-be refugees, West German officers below pulled their pistols and exchanged twenty-eight shots with the East Germans. Under orders only to use their guns defensively, the West German police later argued that they had only acted once they had been fired upon.

Given a last chance to escape after a West Berlin policemanas bullet struck the pursuing East German officer in the leg, Lnser broke free and ran. Some in the crowd shouted for him to throw the policeman off the roof. Others, including Lazai, shouted for him to jump into the outstretched net. When the student finally leapt, he caught a foot on a rain gutter and fell headfirst to the ground some twelve feet from where the men held out their net.

He landed with a deathly splat.

Lazai would later condemn his own role in the incident: aMan, you drew him out into his own death.a On the following day, East German authorities sent roses to the border policeman Peters. East German Interior Minister Karl Maron decorated him for his sacrifice in fulfilling his duty. A headline in the West Berlin newspaper BZ sneered, DECORATION FOR MURDER.

Regine Hildebrandt, who lived nearby at Bernauer Stra.s.se 44, had seen many failed and successful escape attempts by the time Lnser died that day.

As she wrote in her diary, she smoked a cigarette from a pack that had been pulled up by rope to her window in a basket given to her from West Berlin friends, a basket that also contained oranges, bananas, and other goods: asome small condolence for a ruined life.a aTwo huge West German tourist buses just drove by,a she wrote. aYes, weave become Berlinas number-one tourist attraction. Oh how gladly wead just be ignored! How gladly wead turn back the wheels of time and leave things the way they were! Oh, not again! Another bus. This is a ghastly time in which we live. Our lives have lost their spirit. n.o.body enjoys work or life anymore. A petulant feeling of resignation hangs over all of us. There is no point. They will do with us as they like, and we can do nothing to stop them.

aBow your heads, friends, we are all become sheep. Two more buses. Countless faces looking our way, while we sit with balled fists in our pockets.a Berlin had some unlikely heroes in the days that followed, but their efforts failed as often as they succeeded.

Eberhard Bolle Lands in Prison.

Eberhard Bolle was so focused on the potential danger he faced that he glanced only briefly at the news kiosk front pages at West Berlinas Zoo train station. They reported on the arrival of Vice President Johnson, General Clay, and the U.S. troop reinforcements. But Bolle had other concerns: the philosophy student was about to take the biggest risk of his life.

Before b.u.t.toning closed his light blue jacket, Bolle felt to confirm that the two ident.i.ty cards were in its inside pocket. Though it was not a particularly warm day, he was sweating uncontrollably. His mother adored his disarming smile, but at the moment Bolle wore only a troubled frown.

The first of the two ident.i.ty cards in his pocket was his own, and he would show it if asked when he crossed into East Berlin. Under the rules after the border closing six days earlier, West Berliners could still cross freely into the Soviet zone with ID. What Bolle planned to do with the second West Berlin ident.i.ty card was to help the escape to the West of his friend and fellow Free University student Winfried Kastner,* with whom he shared a love of American jazz music. Like most other Berlin students that summer, they had also spent a great deal of their vacation time listening to Ricky Nelsonas latest hit, ah.e.l.lo Mary Lou,a which had taken West Berlin by storm.

Though the Free University was in West Berlin, about a third of all its 15,000 students before August 13 had been East Berlin residents. Overnight, the border closure had ended their studies. For Kastner it was a particular disappointment, as he was in his last year of history studies and would not be accepted into an East German school because his family was considered politically unreliable. So Bolle was bringing him the ID of a West Berlin friend who closely resembled Kastner, and their simple plan was that he would use it to show border police as he crossed into West Berlin.

Bolle was an apolitical, conservative student who lacked any natural taste for danger, and on the day after the border closure he had refused to help another cla.s.smate escape. What had changed his mind since then was w.i.l.l.y Brandtas speech before City Hall on August 16, which had so impressed him that he had written its call to action in his diary. aWe now have to stand tall,a Brandt had said, aso that the enemy does not celebrate while our countrymen sink into despair. We have to show ourselves worthy of the ideals that are symbolized in the Freedom Bell that hangs above our heads.a Two days later, Kastneras mother had been in tears as she appealed to Bolle to help her son during a visit he had made to their apartment in the East Berlin district of Kpenick. Rumors were flying that the border controls would grow gradually tougher, she said, and so anyone who wanted to leave East Berlin had to do so immediately. Though she and her husband did not want to be separated from their son, she said they had to think first about how to best satisfy his dream of becoming a history professor, which he would never fulfill in the East.

Bolle had suggested that his friend swim across one of the ca.n.a.ls, but Kastner protested that he was too poor a swimmer for that. Kastner insisted the safest way of escape was by getting access to a West Berlin ID, so he provided Bolle a photo of himself and the name and contact details of a Catholic priest who was said to be producing such doc.u.ments.

After the priest refused Bolle, the philosophy student turned to a friend who looked like Kastner. He was happy to part with his ID, which he would replace after reporting it lost. However, he refused to make the delivery to East Berlin himself, since it would be too risky to try to return west without it. Speaking with false confidence, Bolle declared he would transport the ID himself. aThey donat hang people they canat catch,a he boasted.

On the evening before his risky mission, Bolle had asked his mother if she would help someone escape if she were in his position. Only if it were a family member or a close friend, she had replied. His father admired his sonas good intentions, but he worried that his boy Eberhard had too panicky a nature to succeed.

aNow eat something,a said his father. aWho knows when your next meal will be?a Bolle forced down a few bites while his father tested him on how he would respond if East German police discovered the second ID. His responses were unconvincing, so they both hoped it would not come to that.

Bolle got out of the commuter train at Bahnhof Friedrichstra.s.se, where all travelers heading for East Berlin disembarked. Perspiring and trembling, he sighed with relief as border guards waved him through. He was on the last couple of stairs out of the station when a border guard appeared from his right and took him firmly by the arm.

Several years later, after interrogation, trial, conviction, and imprisonment, Bolle would still wonder why the guard had been able to pick him from the crowd for arrest. Sadly, he knew the answer.

Fear had given him away.

It would take the return of a retired U.S. general to help restore West Berlinersa courage.

16.

A HEROaS HOMECOMING.

We have lost Czechoslovakia. Norway is threateneda. When Berlin falls, western Germany will be next. If we meanato hold Europe against Communism, we must not budgea. If America does not understand this now, does not know that the issue is cast, then it never will and Communism will run rampant. I believe the future of democracy requires us to stay.

General Lucius Clay, making his case to superiors on why the U.S. must stay in Berlin, April 10, 1948 Why would anyone write a book about an administration that has nothing to show for itself but a string of disasters?

President Kennedy to journalist Elie Abel, in response to a request to write a book on his presidency, September 22, 1961 TEMPELHOF AIRPORT, WEST BERLIN.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1961.

General Lucius D. Clayas triumphal return to Berlin came on an unseasonably warm and sunny September afternoon.

Berlinas myriad outdoor cafs, often closed by late September, overflowed their sidewalks. The Berlin Zoo reported record business. A gentle breeze blew a flotilla of sailboats across the Wannsee, Berlinas broad city lake, and the several waterways to which it was connected. The war years, the cityas division, and now the Wall had only heightened Berlinersa penchant for savoring pleasurable moments.

That said, it was more General Clayas arrival than the weather that buoyed West Berlin spirits that day. Locals regarded President Kennedyas decision to appoint Clay as his apersonal representativea to their city as the most convincing proof yet that America remained determined to defend West Berlinas freedoms. Certainly, Berliners concluded, a man of Clayas pedigree would never have accepted the job unless he was convinced that Kennedy was finally ready to stand up to the Soviets.

In 1948, as Military Governor for the U.S. Zone in Germany, Clay became a German folk hero for ordering and executing, with the British, the airlift that ultimately rescued West Berlinas two million residents from the choice between starvation and communist domination. His 324-day operation was all the more remarkable because it came only three years after the U.S. and its allies had defeated n.a.z.i Germany. At the time, it was still uncertain if Americans would risk their lives and treasure for European security, let alone for the western half of Hitleras former capital, floating as it did as an indefensible island inside communist territory.

Berliners still spoke with astonishment about Clayas abonbon bombersaa"the American pilots who had parachuted sweets to the cityas children while breaking the Soviet blockade. Seldom had history seen such a risky and successful humanitarian action on behalf of a vanquished foe. City fathers named one of their broadest and longest boulevards, the Clayallee of the Dahlem district, for the man who had made it happen.

Clayas determination to keep West Berlin free grew out of a conviction that had only grown over time, relayed to superiors as early as April 1948, that no location on the planet was more important to Americaas standing in the world. aWe have lost Czechoslovakia. Norway is threatened,a he said. aIf we meanato hold Europe against Communism, we must not budge.a His view was that if America did not grasp the importance of West Berlin, then communism would run rampant. aI believe the future of democracy requires us to staya.a There was only one flaw in Clayas inspiring sense of mission: His motivations for accepting the new job were n.o.bler than Kennedyas reasons for offering it to him.

For Clay, it was a chance to return to the Cold Waras central battleground at another historic moment when his actions could again be decisive. For Kennedy, dispatching Clay had more to do with domestic politics and public relations.

Clayas appointment would help neutralize Kennedyas conservative critics, for the retired general was not just a Berlin hero but also an American and Republican one. He had been instrumental in persuading Eisenhower to run for president and then had helped manage his campaign. Getting Clay under the Kennedy administration tent would also minimize the damage he could do sniping at the president from the outside.

That said, Kennedyas indecision about just how much power he should give Clay in Berlin underscored his ambivalence about how best to counter Khrushchev. Although Kennedy had made Clay the only American in Berlin with a direct reporting line to the president, he had at the same time failed to give the general formal command over anyone or anything.

Kennedy had even rewritten his original letter of instruction for Clay to water down the broad authority he had initially offered him, to be afully and completely responsible for all decisions on Berlin.a The president apologized to Clay for the change: aIam sorry this letter is not the way I wanted it, the way I originally wrote it, but this is the way the State Department feels it will have to be without cutting across all kinds of channels.a Clay had little choice but to accept the downgraded terms, as he had already left his well-paying job as chief executive of the Continental Can Company. Ever the loyal soldier, he had told the president, aAs the situation exists in Berlin it is going to be very difficult no matter how it is donea. If it is easier for you for the letter to be written this way, it is all right with me.a The two men agreed Clay would phone the president on any matter of significance.

The manner of Clayas appointment spoke again to Kennedyas greater comfort at appearing tough than at actually being so. Kennedy increasingly feared Khrushchev might push him to the precipice of unleashing atomic weapons to defend Berlin, but he had not yet determined under what circ.u.mstances and in what manner he might be willing to do so. He had no idea what role, if any, Clay would play in the decision-making process.

Whatever his dilemmas, Kennedyas popularity remained impregnable. A Gallup poll showed most Americans considered the string of Kennedy setbacks in 1961 to have been bad breaks rather than poor leadership. Kennedyas approval rating would rise to 77 percent in October after hovering above 70 percent all year, having hit a high of 83 percent as the public circled its wagons around him following the Bay of Pigs. In the quarter century since Gallup had begun polling, only Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor and Harry Truman after Rooseveltas death had enjoyed comparable popularitya"and they had not sustained it nearly as long.

Kennedy was a keen reader of public opinion polls, which showed that a remarkable 64 percent of Americans would approve U.S. military intervention should the Soviets or the East Germans block access to West Berlin, while only 19 percent would be opposed. And more than 60 percent of Americans accepted that there would be war if the Soviets were determined to control Berlin.

With such a hawkish American electorate, Kennedyas choice of Clay was a popular one. It was even more so for Berliners, who celebrated Clayas arrival like that of a homecoming gladiator. From the tarmac of Tempelhof Airport, the site of his 1948 heroics, American tanks greeted him with a nineteen-gun salute. The West Berlin elite gathered to receive him in a hangar beneath a giant American flag flanked by two Berlin city banners. Unlike Kennedy, Clay spoke to all Berliners and not just to those of the West. He spoke of aour determination that Berlin and its people will always be freea. I came here with complete faith in our cause and with confidence in the courage and steadfastness of the people of Berlin.a Licking the wounds from his election defeat two days earlier, West Berlin Mayor w.i.l.l.y Brandt met Clay in Frankfurt and escorted him to Berlin on a Pan American Airlines flight. His defeat by Chancellor Adenauer was a bitter disappointment after an ugly campaign, during which his opponent had so sullied his character. However, Brandt had inflicted considerable damage on Adenauer as well, whom voters had punished due to worries about his age and his tepid response to the Berlin border closure. Adenaueras Christian Democrats had remained the countryas largest political party, but the chancellor had lost his absolute majority and was left to bargain for his political survival with new coalition partners, the Free Democrats.

The Christian Democrats and their Bavarian partners, the Christian Social Union, had lost 5 percent of the vote from the previous election, for a total of just 45.3 percent. Brandtas Social Democrats had gained 4.5 percent to achieve 36.2 percent of the vote. The liberal Free Democrats had become the third force in German politics, expanding their share of the vote by 4 percent to some 12.8 percent. The Berlin border closure had realigned German politics, and Adenauer would never fully recover.*

Brandt had appealed publicly to Berliners to provide Clay with a warm homecoming, but they had required little encouragement. Hundreds of thousands of Berliners stood two to three deep along Clayas ten-mile motor route. Children waved small U.S. flags while sitting atop the shoulders of parents who had lived through the airlift. So many well-wishers showered bouquets on Clay that he was soon bathing in flowers in the back of his black Mercedes sedan.

Clayas limited job description was to areport, recommend and advise.a Yet his intention from the beginning was to define his mandate more broadly and take full charge of American policy in the city in the manner of a military governor. That would put him on a collision course with men who had strongly opposed his appointment and whose authority was threatened by his arrival: General Lauris Norstad, NATO Supreme Commander, in Paris; General Bruce Clarke, commander of U.S. forces in Europe, in Heidelberg; and the U.S. amba.s.sador to Germany, Walter Dowling, in Bonn.

Clay trumpeted that his new role would be to ademonstrate United States strength and determinationa and to force the Soviets to acknowledge responsibility for their sector. He was determined to make clear that the four powers still ran Berlin and not East Germany, which he would expose as the puppet state that it was. Clay was distraught that the U.S. and its allies had allowed so many of their rights in Berlin to erode since his earlier days there, and he was determined to reverse that trend by the force of his will.

The State Departmentas Martin Hillenbrand worried that Clay didnat realize how much less freedom to maneuver he would have in Berlin now that the U.S. had lost its nuclear monopoly. Yet it was just that sort of defeatist thinking that Clay had rejected his entire career. Clay had launched the 1948 airlift on his own authority after President Truman had turned down his initial plan to send a full brigade storming up the Autobahn to reopen Berlin access. At the airliftas peak operations, one cargo plane was landing every three minutesa"shiny new C-54s and war-battered C-47sa"filled with food and supplies.

Clayas unexpected initial success had convinced President Truman to support the operationas continuation, against resistance from Pentagon and State Department officials who complained that Clay was risking a new war just three years after the last one had ended. The so-called military experts of that time had told Clay that two million Berliners could not be sustained by air, which would require 4,000 tons of supplies per day. That was more than ten times the size of the n.a.z.i airlift to the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad, an operation which had failed in the end.

Clay had defied the naysayers and won. It had been his lifeas defining moment, and it would inform every decision he would make from the minute he landed in Berlin in September 1961.

WEST BERLIN.

MID-SEPTEMBER, 1961.

A month after the August 13 border closure, construction crews along the entire border zone were replacing temporary barriers with a more formidable and permanent Todesstreifen, or death strips. East German authorities each day were dispatching brigades of so-called volunteers to help dig the trenches and clear the trees and shrubbery from a broad no-manas-land that would contain the quickly expanding Wall.

The East German newspaper Sonntag bragged that construction teams included scientists, philologists, historians, doctors, filmmakers, street builders, journalists, and retail sales staff. aAn entire people are working at the wall,a it declared proudly. The inmates were laying the foundation for their own prison. Each week, a handful of these avolunteersa used their proximity to the wall to jump over or slip through one of its vanishing weak spots. The more dramatic stories became legend.

At age twenty-one, agricultural engineering student Albrecht Peter Roos began to plot his escape while working on just such a construction crew near the Brandenburg Gate. His two sisters already lived in West Germany, and he wanted to join them rather than build a better barrier to make that impossible. When the workers took a break for lunch, Roos sought his police minderas permission to relieve himself.

The guard shrugged. aJust be quick,a he replied.

So Roos retreated to the adjacent woods, only to stumble over two other students hiding in the underbrush who had the same hope of escape. Leading their westward sprint, Roos scrambled through a ditch and under a fence and then rushed to a barbed-wire coil just beyond the fence that ensnared him. With the help of the two others, he negotiated his way out and then helped them through. Bleeding from dozens of cuts through their shredded clothes, the three then ran in a furious zigzag course to the West, fearing guards that had come up from behind would fire upon them.

A West Berlin policeman embraced them on free ground with the reward of a bottle of wine and the first banana Roos had ever seen or eaten.

Each day, West Berlin newspapers splashed across their pages similarly harrowing stories of escape. There was the tale of the twenty-four-year-old ambulance driver who drove his vehicle through the barbed wire at Prinzenstra.s.se in a hail of machine-gun fire. Photos showed him smiling and unscratched beside his bullet-pierced vehicle. There were the three East Berliners who crashed through the barrier at Bouchestra.s.se in their 6.5-ton truck, only to be stranded atop the curb that marked the borderline. They scampered the rest of the way to freedom, eluding police shots. A West Berlin policeman triumphantly threw their keys back over the barrier to the Vopos.

What the border closure altered most for Berliners was Sunday afternoon, the traditional German gathering time for family and friends. With phone connections cut off, East and West Berliners communicated with each other from opposite sides of the barrier from platforms and ladders, some holding up newborn babies for viewing by grandparents, some bearing placards with loving messages in big, bold letters that could be read from afar.

Quickly, the bizarre had become routine. West Berlin brides and grooms in wedding costume made their way to the Wall so that family members could wave congratulations from the East. At designated times, children came to the Wall to climb ladders and visit from afar with parents and grandparents. East German police who had wearied of West Berlin hecklers dispersed them across the divide with water cannons and tear gas at border points in the districts of Neuklln, Kreuzberg, and Zehlendorf.

Tour buses showed off the cityas newest attractions: a bricked-up church on the border, blocked cemetery gates, sad people behind barbed wirea"strange animals in a surreal zoo. One tour guide told a busload from the Netherlands that another handful of refugees would escape that nighta"another aspect of Berlinersa new way of life.

STEINSTCKEN ENCLAVE, WEST BERLIN

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1961.

General Clay acted immediately to ensure that the East Germans and Soviets didnat miss his arrival.

Within forty-eight hours of landing in Berlin, he directed his irresistible focus on the curious drama of some 190 stranded residents of Steinstcken, some 42 families in all. Through an accident of geography, the tiny exclave of West Berlinas Zehlendorf districta"located in the southwest corner of the U.S. sector of Berlina"was separated from West Berlin by a sliver of Soviet zone. The only access was a short winding road, which since 1945 had been controlled by East German police.

As a result of August 13, the secluded hamlet became the most vulnerable part of West Berlin and thus the West. East German police had surrounded Steinstcken with barbed wire and barriers, later reinforcing them with watch towers and a hundred-meter-wide no-manas-land. They denied access to all nonresidents, and with each day those inside the landlocked community lived in growing despair about their future.

East German authorities threatened to storm the village to recover an East German who had taken refuge there, only to discover that he had no way out. Widespread rumor had it that Ulbricht would claim the community as his own by yearas end if the West continued to show no intention of protecting it. East Germany had done the same with other, similarly precarious pieces of West Berlin territory, but those areas were less sensitive, since they were uninhabited garden plots or forestland.

Without divulging his plans to U.S. superiors or communist authorities, on September 21, at a few minutes before eleven a.m., Clay flew to Steinstcken aboard a military helicopter, with two other helicopters protecting his flanks. He delivered the community two things it lacked: a TV set and hope. A large crowd quickly surrounded his chopper as it landed in a gra.s.sy field. At Clayas request, the mayor met with him at Restaurant Steinstcken, the villageas only dining establishment, bar, and grocery store. They broke open a bottle of wine and drank generously from it while discussing the villageas fears and what could be done about them.

General Clay spent only fifty minutes in Steinstcken, but it was enough to prompt East Berlinas Neues Deutschland newspaper to brand his action as a awar-like move in an otherwise calm situation.a The British emba.s.sy protested in Washington that Clay was taking too much risk for too little gain.

To show he would not be bullied, the following day Clay helicoptered in a three-man detachment from the 278th Military Police Company to establish Steinstckenas first U.S. outpost, and it would remain for the next decade. Military Police Lieutenant Vern Pike flew in to help set up command in the mayoras bas.e.m.e.nt, running the communications antennas up his chimney. Clay then ordered General Watson, the local commander, to organize a ground offensive scheduled for three days later, on September 24, to aliberatea Steinstcken by using two companies to punch a corridor through Berlinas new barrier to the community.

By coincidence, European Commander General Bruce C. Clarke arrived by train that morning from Heidelberg to inspect his Berlin operation. Over breakfast, Watson and Brigadier General Frederick O. Hartel happily told their direct superior he had arrived on aan interesting morninga because three hours later they would begin the Steinstcken operation.