Seventy years ago this month, on June 24, 1948, Stalin’s minions in occupied Germany blockaded all railroad and automobile traffic into the western sector of Berlin, and cut off deliveries of electricity from their eastern sector to that beleaguered city. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops in the general area stood ready to annihilate any military response the U.S. and its allies might attempt. It was the first great act of open Soviet aggression in the Cold War.
At midday on the following Monday, June 28, President Harry Truman met at the White House with his top advisors, who unanimously assured him that an airlift to overcome the blockade was a physical impossibility, and that therefore the U.S. must prepare to abandon the city.
When they were finished, President Truman spoke (and in my opinion strode directly onto the path that would lead to his stunning upset re-election victory that November). He said, “We stay in Berlin. Period.” That same day the first flight of what would become the Berlin Airlift took off. Eleven months later, the Soviets were forced to capitulate, in a humiliating propaganda defeat.
The saga of the Berlin Airlift is brilliantly told in Richard Reeves’ 2010 book, Daring Young Men. To be sure, it is the account of a staggering logistical achievement, one that at the outset had been widely viewed as impossible (not least by Generals Marshall and Bradley).
But it is Reeves’ capture of the human dramas involved that lifts his book to the level of a classic. Legions of young American and British flyers who thought they were done with war and had gone home to start families and careers were suddenly called back into service. Amazingly, they bonded with the very Berliners who had been their mortal enemies so shortly before – and vice versa.
In the United States, there was a spectacular outpouring of donations and good will toward the Berliners – especially the children. A flyer named Gail Halvorsen started dropping candy bars in little parachutes to crowds of hungry kids outside Tempelhof Airport – and became a national hero, the human face of the Airlift. Fittingly, he was still in the air at the moment the blockade ended, and by the time he rotated back home to Alabama, he estimated he’d dropped ten tons of donated candy to the children below.
Seventy-three allied airmen lost their lives in the 11-month airlift; lack of sleep and insufficient maintenance were the main causes of the crashes in which they died. Reeves is very careful to tell us their names, ranks, and home towns as they fall; the cumulative effect of this is intensely moving.
It is far too easy for us – armed with the hindsight of history – to say that the west was inevitably going to win the Cold War. But it certainly wasn’t obvious in Berlin that foggy winter, with planes taking off and landing every three minutes. Daring Young Men brings us back vividly to those heroic days.
© 2018 Nick Murray. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Nick reviews current books, articles and research findings for advisors in his monthly newsletter, Nick Murray Interactive. His most recent book is Around the Year with Nick Murray: Daily Readings for Financial Advisors.