Sunshine

After weeks of heavy fog, the winter sun broke through last week and shone brightly on Berlin. The sound of the airlift planes, which had dwindled to a whisper, swelled to a cheering roar. Not since the blockade began had the morale of West Berlin been so high.

At the polls the people had recorded a smashing defiance of Communism (TIME, Dec. 13). Colonel Frank Howley, the hard-bitten commander of the city's U.S. sector, welcomed West Berliners to "a place in the free world of men and women"--but warned them that further sacrifices were in store. In a formal statement from Washington, the State Department said: "The Berlin population has . . . demonstrated a type of civic courage which has won for it the admiration of the democratic peoples of the world."

Almost visibly and audibly gnashing their teeth, the Communists denounced the West-sector elections as "illegal" because of "fraud and terror." They blocked mail deliveries across the East-West line.* They put East Berlin's fire department under their tough police chief, Paul Mark-graf, to make sure that it would not go to any non-Communist fires. They set up new restrictions against automotive traffic, and even withdrew railway cars which had served West Berlin for garbage removal.

Berlin was not intimidated. As if carried forward by the momentum of resistance, power plant workers staged the first labor revolt against the Russians in Berlin since the occupation began. Trouble had started, before the elections, in the main administration offices of huge Bewag (Berliner Elektrizitaetswerke A.G.). The Russians and their stooges, trying to destroy Bewag's predominantly non-Communist works council, had arrested six men and stationed police and plainclothesmen in the building. At a noisy, protest meeting, 3,000 Germans decided on a walkout unless their men were freed and the cops removed. Jumping on a chair, one of the works councilors shouted: "Freedom is not won by words but by actions. Let's show these so-called revolutionaries just how revolutionary we can be." The Reds, however, refused to back down.

Last week, at the appointed hour, 650 Bewag clerks, most of whom had homes in West Berlin, put on their coats, stalked out of the building, past scowling Red cops, and went home. "This is no strike," they said. "This is for good." They hoped to set up a separate administration for Bewag's three plants in West Berlin.

The new City Assembly, chosen in the West Berlin elections, will take office in January. As interim mayor, the present assembly picked popular, forthright Socialist Ernst Reuter (whose party had won 64.5% of the total vote), ex-Communist, ex-concentration-camp inmate. Reuter was elected mayor of Berlin in 1946 but was prevented by the Russians from taking office. Last week he asked the Western powers to increase the airlift to 8,000 tons a day.

General Clay answered that, with 40 more C-545 expected soon, an increase in the daily average would surely be forthcoming, though perhaps not as high as the Germans hoped for. One day last week the planes brought in 6,312 tons--the best day since Air Force Day in September and the second best since the airlift began.

*This spiteful move hurt East Berlin as well' as the West sectors, and the Communists blandly restored mail service after two days.

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