“You can’t think about in any respect how pleased I used to be” (…) “I thanks very a lot for the attractive reward. I want you all the things goes properly and I ship you my finest regards”.
Thus ended the letter written by Helga Brendel, eleven years outdated, on October 18, 1948. It was addressed to the pilot of the airplane that dropped, simply earlier than touchdown on the Berlin Tempelhof airport, sweets for the youngsters who have been within the space. near the touchdown strips.
Helga and three different youngsters have been enjoying in a sq. situated very near the airport. They have been so shut that the youngsters noticed the airplane approaching and the way the little parachutes with sweets got here out of it. “You gave us nice pleasure. We have been 4 youngsters who performed within the Dominikusplatz. Suddenly, we hear your airplane coming. We noticed the way you launched the parachutes. They fell within the backyard”, the lady informed the pilot.
Airlift planes that provided West Berlin.© Salvador Martínez Mas
This is without doubt one of the many souvenirs on show in Berlin today to have fun the seventy fifth anniversary of the airlift that served the western a part of the town to outlive the blockade utilized by the Soviet Union – the occupying energy in jap Germany – between June 1948 and May 12, 1949. Helga’s letter is a part of the road exhibition that occupies what’s now a carpark and was as soon as the principle entrance to Tempelhof airport.
‘Blockierte Sieger- geteiltes Berlin’ or “Blocked Winners – A Divided Berlin”, is the title of the present. It is organized by three museums: the Military History Museum of the German Army on the Berlin-Gatow Airfield, the Allied Museum in Berlin and the Berlin Karlhorst Museum. It serves to recall the extraordinary logistical problem with which the Allied powers nonetheless current in Berlin responded after the Second World War within the face of the Soviet resolution to dam entry by highway, practice or waterway to the western a part of the German capital right this moment.
The metropolis was provided with meals and every kind of assets to maintain the town liveable via planes just like the one which little Helga celebrated in her thanks letter. Those planes are recognized right here as Rosinenbomber, one thing like “sweet bombers”.
“The Russians minimize off the ability. Also the visitors of products”
The statistics which can be remembered today on account of the 75 years of the airlift present that many extra issues than sweets arrived. Those planes maintained the very important indicators of the western a part of the town.
Image of blocked West Berlin on a map within the Berlin exhibition ‘Blockierte Sieger – geteiltes Berlin’. ©Salvador Martinez More
What the Soviets did was summed up like this by a headline within the Berlin each day Der Tagesspiegel of June 24, 1948: “Russians minimize off electrical energy. Also the visitors of products”. Previously, Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union had already proven indicators of wanting to show Berlin right into a hostile place in direction of the Western allies. The Cold War was then taking its first steps and, indisputably, the blockade of Berlin constitutes one of many excessive factors of the battle that pitted the free world in opposition to communism.
Faced with the blockade resolution of June 24, 1948, in a matter of days, the allies launched the airlift underneath the baton of American General Lucius D. Clay, army governor of Germany instantly after World War II.
Dozens of planes departed loaded with merchandise and meals from cities unfold from north to south of the German geography in three air corridors 32 kilometers large and situated at an altitude of about 3,000 meters. In every hall there may very well be as much as 5 completely different ranges, during which as much as ten or twelve planes have been distributed and moved on the identical pace.
In the 1,466 days that the “airlift” lasted – it continued lengthy after the tip of the Soviet blockade – a whole lot of planes arrived day by day on Berlin soil to provide the town.
277,000 flights, hundreds of thousands of tons of important items
They not solely landed at Tempelhof, additionally they landed on the Gatow aerodrome and, later, on the now additionally ‘retired’ and recycled Tegel International Airport. This final airport was inbuilt simply three months underneath strain to facilitate extra landings within the metropolis. In 94 days the primary model of the Tegel airport was put into operation, as recalled by Der Tagesspiegel.
In complete, some 277,000 flights have been used to unload greater than two million tons of merchandise. Even automobiles for the West Berlin police arrived by airplane, as proven within the Tempelhof automobile park show. They have been “planes in opposition to the blockade”, as they’ve been recalled today on the general public radio-television ARD.
Two guests take a look at one of many photos from the Berlin exhibition. It exhibits the middle of Berlin after the Second World War.© Salvador Martínez Mas.
The mannequin that was used probably the most on this macro-mission to provide “Free Berlin” was the US army transport airplane Douglas C-54 Skymaster, a four-engine monoplane with propellers manufactured by the now-defunct Douglas Aircraft Company. The pilots labored at such pace throughout this touchdown, unloading and takeoff that, in keeping with what they are saying in ‘Blockierte Siegergeteiltes Berlin’, they even had a cell cafeteria on the asphalt of the airport, in entrance of the hangars. Thus, the pilots stayed close to their machines having one thing close to their planes. These, as soon as unloaded, may return as quickly as attainable for extra merchandise.
The metropolis, even at the moment, wanted virtually all the things. After the disastrous III Reich fell, the inhabitants in Berlin was chilly and hungry. Hence, for instance, within the winter of 1946 to 1947, 390 individuals died of chilly in Berlin, as they keep in mind within the exhibition. The lockdown solely made issues worse. In the winter of 1948, the general public benches quickly had no wooden to take a seat on. You needed to burn it to battle in opposition to the chilly.
“End the blockade, win the airlift”
“The blockade aggravated the meals insecurity within the western sectors of the town, particularly among the many poorest: the unemployed, refugees, the disabled, orphans and the aged,” they clarify within the exhibition.
But, if the thought of Stalin and firm was to drive the inhabitants of West Berlin to need the socialist mannequin that the sector ruled by the USSR proposed to the town, they weren’t profitable.
The Soviet concept of the blockade ran up in opposition to the willpower of the Americans, British and French to take care of with assets a inhabitants of extraordinary resistance and can. An exemplary West Berliner was the Social Democratic politician Luise Schroeder, mayor of the Schöneberg district.
She is remembered today for the speech for freedom from the blockade that she gave earlier than 5,000 individuals on August 1. Some individuals do not forget that second as the primary during which a Berlin girl grew to become so large in German politics.
Visitors to the Berlin exhibition: within the foreground, planes unloading groceries for blockaded Berlin photographed.© Salvador Martínez Mas
Schroeder’s determine is one in all many remembered within the Berlin exhibition devoted to understanding an airlift that far exceeded Soviet expectations. The blockade was lifted on May 12, 1949. Then, in Tempelhof, the “blockade ends, the airlift wins” was celebrated, as a picture of pilots uncovered in ‘Blockierte Sieger-geteiltes Berlin’ exhibits.
Allied plane continued to reach in Berlin as a part of the airlift till October 6, 1949.
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