Barely a week after the lifting of the Berlin blockade, the city echoed to the blast of gunfire and the shouts of angry mobs. Trouble started over the fact that Berlin's city railways and elevated lines, which are controlled by the Russians, paid their workers in East zone marks, although most live in the Western sectors. Those workers wanted their wages in West marks (the only legal tender where they live, and four times the value of the East marks). Last week, 16,000 workers of the non-Communist Independent Railway Workers Union walked out.
The Soviet-run German railway authorities thought they knew what...
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