Keeping the Cold War Cold
By Albert B. Kelly
It’s good and right that we should pause and take some time
in serious reflection this Memorial Day to remember those who’ve died while
serving their country. For obvious reasons, we tend to think of the hot wars
this country’s fought; hot battles from Bunker Hill and Gettysburg to Iwo Jima,
Inchon, Baghdad, and many others.
What we don’t often think of, is the cold war and those who
died doing what we asked of them to keep to keep the cold war from getting hot-
but we should. The Berlin Airlift was just such a thing and if the men who died
carrying out this airlift from June 1948 to September 1949 somehow failed, we
might now be mourning the fallen from WW
III.
If you’re a little fuzzy on the Berlin Airlift or if you
just flat out never heard of it, a little background might help. It was only 3
years removed from World War II and once the war ended, everyone was jockeying
for power and control in post-war Europe. Ground zero was a bombed out Berlin,
the capital of a bombed out Germany and the former seat of Nazi power.
The Soviet Union and the United States, along with Briton
and France, divided Germany into east and west with Soviets controlling East
Germany and the U.S., Briton and France occupying West Germany. In addition to
dividing the country, the City of Berlin was divided into 4 sectors with the
Soviets controlling East Berlin and the Allies controlling the other sectors
that made up West Berlin.
Keep in mind that most of Europe, and especially Germany,
was a complete mess having been destroyed by 5 years of war. Just getting basic
food and supplies to people so they could survive was a task in itself. As for
Berlin, the whole city sat in the middle of Soviet-controlled East Germany- the
only way to get into West Berlin was to go down the Autobahn in territory
controlled by the Russians.
The plan at the end of the war, at least on paper, was for
these four world powers to rebuild Germany. But really it was about power and
dominance and who would be the big dog in the neighborhood in post war Europe.
The Allies and their Soviet counterparts disagreed on just about everything and
by 1948, the whole thing came apart.
Once the Soviet Union decided they wanted the Allies out of
West Berlin, they figured the easiest way was to cut off all highway access so
that food and supplies couldn’t get through. At the time, conventional wisdom
said the U.S had two choices; either give up and walk away or go to war. A war
with the Soviet Union would have meant World War III and atomic bombs.
But President Harry Truman and his military guys came up
with a third option- an airlift. This was no easy task with very few planes and
the need to supply enough food, fuel, coal, and other basic staples for 2
million people; they were up against a nearly impossible task. But they did it.
For over a year, U.S and British soldiers airlifted upwards
of 1,500 tons of food and supplies daily, everything from powered milk and
potatoes, to coffee, dehydrated vegetables, fresh meat, flour, wheat, sugar,
and whole milk for babies. When it officially ended in September of 1949, the Americans and Brits moved 2.3 million
tons of stuff for West Berliners.
101 people died carrying out the airlift and 31 of these
deaths were American servicemen including Richard Wurgel- a 1st Lt. from Union
City, NJ. These were from accidents and crashes so these are generally not the
guys that come to mind when we think of our war heroes on Memorial Day.
Yet, as I said before, if these guys failed, given the
thinking at the time, we likely would have ended up in WW III with the
Russians. And if that happened, given their superior numbers, we might well
have gone to atomic weapons to stave off defeat and who knows what the world
looks like after that.
There were others later on; men like Rudolf Anderson Jr, the
pilot who discovered missiles in Cuba in October 1962- the closest we ever came
to all-out nuclear war. But Berlin came first. So this Memorial Day, remember
the guys who died in a cold war to keep us out of a hot one.