(See Cover)
The incessant roar of the planes—that typical and terrible 20th Century sound, a voice of cold mechanized anger—filled every ear in the city. It reverberated in the bizarre stone ears of the hollow, broken houses; it throbbed in the weary ears of Berlin's people who were bitter, afraid, but far from broken; it echoed in the intently listening ear of history. The sound meant one thing: the West was standing its ground and fighting back.
"The Risk of War." Besieged Berlin was tense and tired. A chilly rain fell. U.S. and British armored cars prowled sluggishly through streets that breathed the smells peculiar to ruins in the rain—smells of wet bricks, damp dust and scorched wood. On street corners, people gathered to haggle over the exchange rate between Soviet and Western marks or to buy black market herring. At the Anhalter station, where the city's food supplies from the Western zones used to roll in, before the Russians blocked the railway, only a few forlorn figures stirred—an old man in ill-fitting Wehrmacht breeches, a pasty blonde in a threadbare dress. Between the idle, rusting tracks, wisps of grass and thin white flowers sprouted.
The crucial battle for Berlin was being fought in the hearts and minds of Berliners—but first & foremost in their bellies. The Russians were attempting to starve into submission 2½ million people in the city's Western sectors. They had been driven to employ a weapon which disgraced them before the civilized world. The Americans and the British were trying to feed the two million Berliners—by air. The G.I.s called it "Operation Vittles."
At Tempelhof Airport the occasional shiny C-54s and many battered C-47s landed at the daylight rate of one every three minutes. Scores of ten-ton trucks rolled out to meet them. One hundred and fifty G.I.s and German workers labored 24 hours a day to get them unloaded. In the orange and white control tower, 13 G.I.s worked around the clock, surrounded by Coke bottles, cigarette smoke, and the brassy chattering of radios. The chaotic chorus of American voices was tense but happy; America was in its element. "Give me an ETA* on EC 84 . . . That's flour coming in on EC 72 . . . Roger . . . Ease her down . . . Where the hell has 85 gone? Oh yeah, overhead . . . Wind is now north northwest . . . The next stupid Charlie 47 has nothing on his manifest . . . Are you in charge of putting de-icer fluid in aircraft? Well, who the hell is?"
With these voices in the battle of Berlin mingled many others, in various accents, all saying essentially what the G.I.s were saying in their own way. Said Ernest Bevin in the House of Commons: "None of us can accept surrender." Replied Harold Macmillan, speaking for His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition: "We must . . . face the risk of war . . . The alternative policy—to shrink from the issue—involves not merely the risk but the almost certainty of war." In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall said: "We intend to stay."