SWEET VICTORY

A revisionist scrutiny of a humanitarian mission.

Journalist and historian Pearson, author of My Grandfather’s Knife: Hidden Stories From the Second World War (2022), reminds readers that three years after their defeat, Germans were still hungry and their cities in ruins. Germany remained divided into four zones of occupation, as was its capital, Berlin, isolated and surrounded by the Russian-ruled eastern zone. For years, Stalin had pressured France, Britain, and the U.S. to withdraw from East Berlin, whose millions would join fellow citizens under Soviet rule. According to popular accounts, angered at the Allied refusal, he launched a blockade to starve the city into surrender, but a brilliantly organized airlift forced him to back down. This has been portrayed as a victory of freedom over tyranny, and it was—sort of. Pearson’s Stalin remains the villain, but the Western allies do not get off scot-free. Aiming to rebuild the German economy (a low priority for Stalin), U.S., Britain, and France largely ignored denazification. In 1948 they planned to introduce a strong new Reichsmark that would devastate the feeble East German currency. Pearson maintains that the blockade was no such thing. Although Stalin blocked roads, rails, and canals from West Germany, this could be better described as harassment. The black market flourished. There was no rationing in the East, from which Berliners already obtained much of their food. Finally, the massive airlift required laborers, technicians, and construction workers; Western authorities paid them with money and food. “Even though they knew Berlin would not starve, the US and British authorities leveraged the illusion of a sealed city for propaganda.”

The dawn of the Cold War through a gimlet eye.