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THE NATIONS: Story of a Crisis

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TIME

This week the West stopped talking to Moscow about the Berlin crisis. Instead, it started talking to the world. In Paris, George Marshall, Ernest Bevin and Robert Schuman gravely announced that the Soviet Government had made further negotiations impossible; consequently they were taking the issue of the Berlin blockade to the United Nations.

The next day, the U.S. State Department published a massive 77-page “white paper.” Compiled day by day as the secret negotiations with Moscow wore on, it revealed the remarkable story of an earnest, untiring and utterly futile attempt to reach understanding with Soviet Russia. The only possible inference: Russia did not want to reach an understanding, and was simply stalling for time.

MARCH 1948. The Russians take their first measures to curb rail traffic between Berlin and the Western zones.

APRIL. The Russians suspend international train service from Berlin.

MAY. The Russians restrict barge traffic into the Soviet zone.

JUNE 12. The Russians close the auto bridge across the Elbe “for repairs.”

JUNE 18. The Western Allies announce their currency reform. Next day, the Russians suspend all passenger train traffic between the Eastern and Western zones, supposedly to keep Western marks out of the Russian sector. (Actually the first Russian traffic restrictions came almost three months before.)

JUNE 23. The Russians suspend all rail traffic into Berlin—because of “technical difficulties.”

JULY. A Soviet note, replying to a U.S. protest, drops the excuse of “technical difficulties,” and claims (for the first time) that Berlin is really part of-the Soviet occupation zone.

AUG. 2. The Western envoys in Moscow meet Joseph Stalin. He repeats the Russian view that the Western Allies have no juridical right to be in Berlin, but declares that Russia has no intention of forcing them out. Stalin admits frankly that Russia’s blockade was a retaliation against the Western powers’ London plan for a Western German regime. Eventually, Stalin agrees to lift the blockade on condition that the Russian mark be Berlin’s sole currency. He agrees not to insist on postponement of the West’s plans for Western Germany, but wants it recorded as Russia’s “insistent wish.” The Russians certainly mean to do everything they can to delay Western German recovery. Stalin may have decided to concede the point and then fuzz up the deal on technicalities—an old Kremlin custom.

AUG. 6-17. The Western envoys vainly try to pin Molotov down to a draft agreement incorporating the talks with Stalin.

AUG. 23. The Western envoys again meet Stalin and receive his personal draft of a directive to the Allied military governors in Berlin. This provides for lifting the blockade, and for circulation in Berlin of the Russian mark under four-power control. All this is subject to agreement, by the military governors, upon the “practical implementation” of the vaguely worded Moscow “agreement in principle.”

AUG. 30. The directive is sent. (The attitude of Russian officials, hitherto “correct,” suddenly grows cooler & cooler.)

AUG. 31-SEPT. 7. In Berlin, Marshal Sokolovsky plainly ignores the directive, demands further restrictions (on air traffic) before even talking about relaxing any restrictions whatever. He also demands Soviet control over all trade between Berlin and the Western zones.

SEPT. 22. The Western powers inform Moscow that they see no point in continuing the talks unless Moscow intends to stick to the Aug. 30 directive.

SEPT. 25. Moscow replies that it is the U.S. which is repudiating the Aug. 30 directive.

SEPT. 26. The Western powers call this reply “unsatisfactory.” Says their note to Moscow: “The Soviet Government has … resorted to acts of force … It has failed to work … in good faith … It is attempting by illegal and coercive measures … to secure political objectives to which it is not entitled … It has resorted to blockade measures; it has threatened the Berlin population with starvation, disease and economic ruin . . .”

What next? The Western powers would present this record to the world, presumably under Article 39 of the U.N. Charter, which authorizes the Security Council to act on “any threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression.” And Russia, as usual, would stymie any action in the Council.

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