Berlin

on the World Today

AMERICAN officials in Berlin like to compare the West’s position there to the head of a spear pressing into the Soviet flank; and the simile, these days, is not just a public relations flourish. On the face of things, the Russians appear to be holding the initiative; but they have been steadily losing ground in the Battle of Berlin.

Take the partial Soviet blockade of westbound export s from Berlin which went into effect last June. The Russians insisted that West Berlin firms exporting certain types of manufactured goods to the West must furnish certificates showing the origin of all the raw materials used — a virtual impossibility in the case of some of the items concerned; for example, radio equipment.

This maneuver was aimed at wringing concessions from the West when the interzonal trade agreement came up for renegotiation on June 30. The semiblockade, however, has never proved really effective; occasionally, when the pinch has become critical, commercial planes have been used to fly the disputed exports out of Berlin.

Meanwhile, this Soviet squeeze-play has stalled the negotiations for a new trade agreement. The West German representatives, following Allied instructions, have refused to resume business with the East unless West Berlin exports receive a guarantee of free movement through the Soviet zone. The Russians are well aware that a shutdown of trade from the West would have disturbing repercussions in East Germany. In fact, for the time being, trade seems to be more vital to the Russians than harassment.

ECA puts Berlin on its feet

Apart from Russian harassment, the chief obstacle to Berlin’s recovery has been lack of the capital required to rebuild its shattered industry, 50 per cent of which (some estimates say 80 per cent) was dismantled by the Soviet and 10 per cent destroyed by bombing. The only Germans with capital at their disposal — the big businessmen of the West German Republic — have shown a marked reluctance to make heavy investments in Berlin, because of the added risk and the fear of getting in the black books of the Russians. In January, 1950, ECA stepped into the picture.

To date Berlin has received 95 million dollars’ worth of Marshall Plan aid, plus a further 80 million for long-term investment. Three quarters of the funds spent have gone into re-equipping West Berlin’s great power plant and its main export industries — electronics, clothing, and machine tools. As a result, exports to foreign countries have almost quadrupled, and industrial output has more than doubled since the blockade. Eighteen months ago, Berlin’s economy was in a state of critical disintegration; today it is a going concern.

Unemployment remains a serious problem. Out of West Berlin’s population of just over 2 million, 290,000 are unemployed. Aside from the over-all cause — the Russian attempt to throttle Berlin’s economic life — the unemployment problem stems from a variety of factors: partial diversion of certain industries away from Berlin (before the war, for instance, three German movies out of four were made in Berlin, now one in five); loss of markets in Eastern Europe; loss of the jobs available in government when Berlin was the capital of Germany and the seat of a gigantic bureaucracy.

ECA has devoted roughly 5 million dollars a month to financing an emergency works project, which keeps 50,000 employed clearing debris and repairing the city. But full employment in Berlin can only be achieved through continued expansion of its industries, which in turn depends, inescapably, on how successfully the Allies can continue to checkmate Russia.

ECA funds for housing have been chiefly devoted to repairing buildings that were only slightly damaged, and 30,000 apartment units have been put back into commission at a cost of only $250 each. In the lowest rent bracket, there is still a shortage of housing, but not otherwise.

All in all, life in West Berlin has regained a semblance of normalcy. The shops are fairly well stocked, and the window displays on the Kurfürstendamm even achieve a kind of second-rate chic. In relation to Berlin salaries, the price of food is fairly high, but there are no acute shortages and the traditional Teutonic embonpoint is again becoming noticeable.

By comparison with the eastern sector, West. Berlin is a boom town. Since there is free movement between the different sectors, East Berliners know that West Berlin has a conspicuously higher standard of living — and the news has been filtering back to millions in East Germany. This is the galling thing to the Russians — West Berlin gives the lie, visibly and dramatically, to one of the main planks of Soviet propaganda: the economic decay of the West and the economic blessings of Sovietstyle ‟democracy.”

The young refugees

The flow of refugees from the East — gratifying proof of unrest in the Communist world — has become quite a problem for West Berlin. About 4000 refugees a month have been entering the western sector, among them a remarkably high number of deserters from the German Communist Police. The ‟Political Refugees” — those who had to leave Soviet territory because of anti-Communist activity — receive a living allowance of 80 marks a month from the West Berlin government. The rest depend on help from private organizations.

The Russians, who set a high premium on capturing the allegiance of the young, have made some of their most determined enemies among the youth of Germany. In the summer of 1948 a group of students from the University of Berlin, situated in the Russian sector, moved over to West Berlin and asked the city government to provide them with educational facilities, It was a struggle to find buildings; a still greater struggle to get hold of acceptable textbooks; above all, a struggle to find the necessary funds — most students could only afford nominal fees, many needed scholarships.

The West Berlin government dug into its pocket, and universities in the United States helped out with books and donations. Today the Free University, its future buttressed by a grant from the Ford Foundation, is vigorously nurturing the ideal of cultural freedom on highly strategic ground.

Of its 5500 students, some 40 per cent come from East Berlin and the Russian zone, and these have to be helped out by grants of West German marks. Several East German students have been imprisoned when they have gone home on vacation, and now parents in Communist territory are liable to prosecution if their children attend the Free University. But applications for admission keep pouring in from the East.

War by radio and leaflet

By the time the Western Allies reached Berlin in 1945, the Russians were operating the city’s powerful broadcasting station; and though it fell within the British sector, they managed to hang on to it. In due course the Americans set up their own station, RIAS, but for a long time they were badly handicapped by inadequate transmitters and other technical snags. After the blockade, RIAS got a new, 100-kilowatt transmitter, which can be clearly heard through most of Eastern Germany. Staffed by 700 Germans and a high command of four Americans, RIAS is on the air twenty and one-half hours a day.

In addition to fourteen daily newscasts, RIAS has a ‟telephone news service” which provides a three-minute bulletin to anyone who dials No. 28 (24,000 for East Berliners). Since the Korean war, there have been 1800 calls daily for the RIAS telephone newscast — more than hall of them from I the Soviet sector of Berlin.

Five broadcasts a day are specially prepared for listeners in East Germany. The pièce de résistance is a fifteen-minute spot in the evening, ‟Berlin Speaks to the Zone.” In response to suggestions from East German listeners, who risk punishment for tuning in to RIAS, the broadcast is quietly pitched and free of any telltale sound effects.

Thanks to first-rate intelligence sources in the Russian zone, RIAS has been able to put some sensational material on the air. For a time, ‟Berlin Speaks to the Zone” closed each day by warning listeners that so-and-so in their community — the butcher, baker, or lawyer — was an agent of the Soviet secret police (a high-ranking Communist security officer who fled to the West supplied RIAS with the names). On several occasions RIAS has been able to forewarn Soviet zone listeners against some forthcoming police measure in which they might be caught disobeying the law.

A program will shortly be started which exposes the dirt in the private lives of SED (East zone Communist) officials and the corruption in the internal affairs of the party. One indication that RIAS is dishing out some damaging stuff is the frenzy with which the Communists are attacking it. Another proof of its effectiveness is its mail from the East zone — 180 letters a day.

West Berlin is also the forward base of a propaganda offensive aimed at the personnel of the Red Army. The most active group is NTS, an organization of Russian émigrés which was founded in Belgrade in 1981 and which now has fund-raising offices in various parts of the world. The Central Committee of NTS has its headquarters in Limburg near Frankfurt; its political program is roughly similar to that of the British LaborParty.

Operating under the guise of a welfare organization, NTS’s West Berlin office helps to rescue hunted antiCommunists from East Germany and smuggles a variety of printed material into the Russian zone — Possev, a sixteen-page weekly; The Soviet, Army, a four-page newspaper which is a flawless replica, in layout, typography, and headlines, of the official Red Army newspaper; and pamphlets instructing disaffected Red Army men how best they can help to undermine the Soviet regime. Some of NTS’s propaganda material has found its way into the Russian zone as wrapping on German reparations goods.

The NTS people cite a variety of incidents reported by their agents in the East, which go to show that their literature is finding its mark. It is, of course, impossible to gauge the effectiveness of this kind of small-scale political warfare. Allied officials say this much; that the NTS people mean business and are doing a worth-while job. This is recognized by the Russians, who have tried twice to kidnap the director of the NTS office in West Berlin and his aide.

The West Berliners certainly miss no opportunity to demonstrate their will to resist Communism, and they are champions at staging a demonstration. When General Clay returned to dedicate the Liberty Bell, and again on last May 1 (the German Labor Day), the turnout ran to half a million.

An American returning from Germany brings back with him this paradox: in West Berlin, under the shadow of the Red Army guns at Potsdam, the chances of convincing the Russians that war won’t pay — the chances of holding the Russians in check without a general war — seem more substantial than they do to people on this side of the Atlantic.