Journey to the West
Berliners were happy, but they did not dance in the streets. A few hundred, with garlands of lilac and forsythia, waited quietly under a bright moon to welcome the first motor traffic from the free West. That honor went to U.S. correspondents, who staged a pressmen's circus, racing their cars along the Autobahn (and into the headlines back home). Next day was a school holiday, and the black, red & gold flag of the old Weimar Republic, now the banner of the new West German state, flew everywhere--20,000 flags had been shipped in by Allied airlift. The airlift planes still droned on, piling up supplies for any other rainy days that might lie ahead. Berlin's feeling about the end of the 327-day Russian blockade was shown most clearly as the first train chugged out of the city, bound for the Western zones. TIME Correspondent David Richardson, who was aboard, cabled:
A Few Words from the Sponsor. The huge red banner in the street below proclaimed "In the Soviet sector there is freedom." But on the platform of Friedrichstrasse station, which is in the Soviet sector, burly, hard-faced German cops of East Berlin's Communist-run police force hovered ominously on the edges of the crowd, eyeing the people as coldly as though they were a new consignment of concentration-camp inmates. An old Hausfrau with a shawl over her head stared defiantly back. Most passengers just waited in uneasy silence alongside their battered suitcases. These people were not running away. On their way to see relatives in the West, or to transact long-delayed business, they all expected to return.
When the rickety train finally pulled in, the passengers eagerly clambered aboard. Soviet-controlled Radio Berlin began an on-the-spot broadcast, with Werner Klein, its star reporter, poking the mike under passengers' noses and shooting questions. "And where are you going, young man?" he asked a scared, blond youth. "Essen, eh? Just came here to visit your parents. Where do they live? American sector, eh? How did you get here?" The youth hesitated. "Illegally, eh?" chuckled Klein. "But you are very glad that you can now go back in comfort on such a good train, aren't you? That's fine. And now a few words from Herr Kreikmeyer, president of the railways."
Plump, red-faced Wilhelm Kreikmeyer said expansively that he was proud that the railways could again link East & West and thus fulfill the people's demand for a united Germany. The implication was clear: Germans owed it all to Russian generosity and good will.
As he spoke, a couple of baby-faced plainclothesmen boarded the train and went down the aisle of car after car, peering into each compartment. The train started with a lurch. "At last," breathed the blonde girl sitting opposite me.
"Ja & Nein." As the train picked up speed, the city of Berlin rolled by, glittering under the bright afternoon sun. All along the route, Berliners waved and grinned up from the rubble and their potato patches. From the hard wooden seat in her compartment, Marie Goebel waved and smiled back. A white-haired old lady, Fraeulein Goebel was proud as punch of being a Berliner. "In Berlin," she said, "the people are livelier. There's something about Berlin that makes you feel ten or 20 years younger."
The train chugged through Potsdam, past the tall pine trees that shade the Soviet Headquarters. When I sat down in Heinz Depper's compartment, he was looking at a big Red banner strung across a main street. The sign said: "Vote 'Ja' for democracy." It was part of a propaganda campaign for the Communist People's Congress "elections" this week.
"Vote 'Ja,' indeed," scoffed Depper, a ruddy, sandy-haired carpenter. "They pick a slate of their stooges and then ask you to vote yes so they can claim the stooges are democratically elected. The last time we had the choice between 'Ja' and 'Nein,' it was forced upon us by another great democrat named Adolf Hitler. Do they think we are crazy?"
In the aisle outside Depper's compartment I nearly bumped into one of the baby-faced plainclothesmen.
Beyond the Policemen. Shortly after crossing the muddy Elbe near Magdeburg, we began to see evidences of the blockade's end. On sidings were long strings of freight cars with glistening loads of Ruhr coal and machinery. There was a stir of excitement--we were pulling into the Soviet border town of Marienborn. The station swarmed with dark-uniformed, Soviet-zone police and Tommy-gun-bearing Russian soldiers. First, two German Soviet-zone policemen came into each compartment, scrutinized interzonal travel orders, noted down names & addresses. Next, two more entered and asked how many westmarks and eastmarks each passenger had. After that, two more cops came in to look through the baggage.
"I hear the Russians are coming through next," said the frightened blonde. "No, they are checking our names in the Soviet office up there on the hill," a mouselike little man replied, "then they will send for any passengers they want."
A fat, jolly German businessman, who did not seem to notice the other passengers' tension, kept telling endless stories about how he had outwitted the Reds. The scared blonde across the aisle tried to shush him, but he kept rambling on. "Why, you can bribe the Russians with cigarettes and schnapps any time. Why, let me tell you about one Russian officer --" His prattle was cut short by a jerk of the train. After more than an hour, we were moving again.
As we pulled into Helmstedt, in the British zone, the city's brass band played a booming march of welcome. The townspeople waved and cheered. Over a loudspeaker came the voice of the stationmaster: "We heartily welcome the passengers on this first train out of Berlin. We want you to know how good we feel to be able to reunite our ties with all of you. May your journey be a pleasant one."
There wasn't a policeman in sight, and the baby-faced young men had disappeared from the train. The passengers hung out the windows, applauding the wheezy brass band and waving back at the beaming townspeople. The blonde was crying.
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