Arriving in Berlin, Part 2

West Berliners at Tempelhof Airport

On December 27, Carol, Monica, Helga and I left Lindau. I took a train to Munich, then got on a plane to visit Reinhard and to meet his mother in Berlin. I flew into Tempelhof Airport the scene of so many iconic spy movies and also where the Berlin Airlift happened.  Shortly after World War II in 1948, the Soviets and East Germans tried to strangle Berlin by cutting off all access with food and supplies. The Berliners who were trying to recover from the war and bombings of World War II now faced starvation and death from the lack of food and medical supplies being allowed to be transported: The Berlin Blockade.

Templehof Airport was the largest pipeline for supplies in 1948. The Allies devised a plan called The Berlin Airlift which saved the Berliners.  Planes would fly in and out on a precise schedule  dropping off supplies at Templehof.  If the plane was delayed, the pilot had to fly back to West Germany and get in line again. It was such an efficient operation that  eventually the blockade was ended with  some supplies allowd to come in using the highway and trains also.  It was an amazing page in history: whenthe winners of a war worked so hard to aid their previous enemy.

My favorite chapter in Berlin Airlift history is one I used to teach my students: “the Candy Bomber”. (YouTube has several videos on this)  Gail Halvorsen attached candy to handkerchiefs to drop to the the children of Berlin 1948-1949 as a sign of peace and to give them hope in their war-torn city now blockaded.

By the time I arrived in 1966, West Berlin was recovering and even flourishing.  I was a little surprised that the airport didn’t seem any bigger than Lambert Field, but Berlin wasn’t exactly a hub for travellers and West Berlin wasn’t that big at that time having been divided.  Reinhard picked me up at the airport and gave me a quick tour of Berlin showing me all of the beautiful new buildings with experimental, innovative designs. Reinhard, who was an architect, said there had been architectural competitions after the war that re-built West Berlin, so the designs of some were very “futuristic”.    

Reinhard seemed a little subdued—-maybe he was weighed down by his city’s history and maybe he was concerned about me meeting his mother and staying with them for two weeks. I know I was a little nervous about meeting his mother, a widow who had been through a lot in her life:  the Depression, World War II, the bombings and blockades of Berlin and the need to relocate from East Berlin. Would she be uncomfortable with an American? or with any woman her only child brought home?  I recently found out, she was adamantly opposed to our relationship even at Christmas. To quote Reinhard “The liaison was viewed somewhat critically by my mother!!”  So, I innnocently was walking into a “mine field” of emotions.

fortgesetzt werden.. . . .

Photos:  By Henry Ries / USAF - Library of Congress, "Berlin "Airlift" of 1948-1949 broke through Soviet blockade of the city by non-stop supply shipments to beleaguered garrisons and 2 1/4 million civilian population of West Berlin", CPH: 3c36389 [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4559179

By U.S. Air Force - U.S. Navy National Museum of Naval Aviation photo No. 2000.043.012; National Museum of the U.S. Air Force photo 050426-F-1234P-008, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3552352

By http://www.af.mil/media/photodb/photos/020903-o-9999b-094.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=280622