The Monday interview Boris Johnson speaks to the director of Berlin's
Allied Museum
IT IS sad, says Helmut Trotnow, how little the British are prepared to blow their own trumpet. Hardly anyone now remembers in Britain how Ernest Bevin helped to rescue this city from Stalin in the first confrontation of the Cold War .
Hands up, you at the back of the class, if you have ever heard of Air Commodore Rex Waite, the man who devised the airlift and saved the two million Berliners from starvation.
"He is almost forgotten. But somebody somewhere had a fantastic idea and it worked," says Dr Trotnow. We are standing in the midday heat in a leafy suburb of this booming city. By 2000 the transition will be complete and Berlin will again be the capital of a unified Germany.
The funky new dome of the Reichstag beetles on the skyline. In Potsdamer Platz the cranes swing over architectural audacities. The cafes and bars of the hippest town in Europe are full of tall, lean, blond Prussians with rimless spectacles. The Ferraris are parked outside the coffeehauses in what was the American sector, and the cycle lanes are full of nuclear families on their way to brunch.
How very different from the Berlin of 50 years ago. Helmut Trotnow is the director of the Allied Museum, which is to open in two weeks' time, launching 11 months of celebrations of the Berlin Airlift. The museum will commemorate the entire Cold War. Here is a chunk of the Wall, complete with watchtower, graffiti and "death strip".
Here is the cabin known as Checkpoint Charlie, the bridge of sighs between east and west. But the centrepiece is a big white RAF Type 5 Hastings, which takes us right back to 1948.
Berlin was smashed. Bombed by the British and Americans, savagely captured by the Russians, the city was now the centre of tension between the occupying powers. When the Allies decided to revive the German economy, they proposed a new currency, to be called the Deutschemark. Stalin objected. He had no desire to see Germany grow strong again.
Berlin was part of the eastern economic system, he declared. He cut the city off. The roads and rail links were severed, creating an island hundreds of miles from the rest of western Germany. "They wanted the western powers out of Berlin," says Dr Trotnow, "but Ernie Bevin was of the strong opinion that we're not going to be chucked out of Berlin by the Russians."
The Berliners had only a month's supply of necessities. Clement Attlee warned that war with Russia could not be ruled out. Bevin, the foreign secretary, advocated a compromise: standing up to the Russians without direct military confrontation.
"The idea of an airlift was thought to be ludicrous. It was necessary to talk the planes down by telephone. Everyone was sceptical, so it was important that someone like Bevin said it could work." Slowly at first, and then with gathering confidence, the Dakotas, the Gooney Birds, the Yorks and the Hastings flew into Tempelhof, Gatow and Tegel aerodromes.
They brought coal, in spite of the risk that the gases would ignite. They brought dried fruit and vegetables. They threw sweets out of the sides for the children of Berlin. They brought parts for new power stations and a new airfield.
By the time Stalin capitulated, 11 months later, the Allied planes were arriving at the rate of one every 62 seconds and the constant engine noise had become a symbol of hope for Berliners. Nothing like it was achieved before or since. The entire Yugoslav airlift, from July 1992 to January 1996, flew in 160,634 tonnes - a total exceeded by the Berlin task force during March 1949 alone.
It is interesting how the British forget their role, says Dr Trotnow, who has taught at the universities of London and Lancaster, and who graduated in history from Selwyn College, Cambridge. Britain was then still one of the three great powers. British planes and pilots made up 30-40 per cent of the effort, he says.
But Britain was also exhausted by the struggle with Hitler and generosity to the Berliners was accompanied by sacrifice at home. "When the airlift began Britain introduced food rationing, which you didn't do during the war itself. Three years earlier the same pilots had been carrying bombs."
Thirty-nine British fliers lost their lives during the lift, helping those whom they had tried to destroy. "The British spent more or less everything they had, and they paid a heavy price for it. You lost the empire because of the Second World War, but Britain was the only power reading Hitler well. That is something I hope Britain should be much more proud of." And without the airlift, he says, the course of European history would have been quite different. "If Stalin had won, it would have been a huge success of communist ideology. People would have lost hope in the democracies. But Berlin survived to be the block in the throat of the communist system. The Berliners saw the difference between their society and what happened on the other side." By constantly reminding people of the division, he argues, Berlin acted as a unifying influence.
If the airlift had failed, there would have been no unification in 1989. "Berlin would certainly not now be the capital of a united Germany. It's doubtful whether there would be any Germany at all."
Perhaps that is worth bearing in mind, as we read that VW has bought Rolls-Royce. We gave them a lift, and it's nice that they are so grateful.
