The Mood in Berlin
GELB, NORMAN
'PURELY AN AMERICAN OPERATION' The Mood in Berlin By Norman Gelb West Berlin It is a 15-minute drive from Cafe Köln on Friedrichstrasse to Cafe Kranzler on the Kurfuerstendamm. Sitting in...
...The Soviet Commandant, Colonel Andrei Solovyev, has said that since Soviet officers cannot be stationed on the border of the "sovereign German Democratic Republic," perhaps they should be stationed at Checkpoint Charlie...
...One of the news agencies has paid a huge sum for exclusive use of the telephone in the apothecary sitting right on the border line...
...But it's not a volatile crowd and the vehicle gets through without trouble...
...Excitement is at a minimum...
...Firmly denied by the Colonel...
...West Berliners tend to think of it as a purely American operation...
...What operation...
...But on the Kudamm, a traffic cop tickets a car for illegal parking, tourists seek out positions from which to photograph the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, window shoppers drift from store display to store display, three women emerge from an exclusive dress shop angrily complaining because the latest Paris fashions haven't yet arrived...
...They smile when a West Berlin cop helps a woman photographer carry her tripod...
...The journalists wait on Friedrichstrasse for something to report, retreating out of boredom into the cafes...
...Their major hangouts are Cafe Köln and two cafes on the other side of the street...
...Back at Cafe Kranzler a few minutes later, two men, smearing whipped cream on their walnut tortes, dispute the qualities of the German version of My Fair Lady which has just opened here...
...The onlookers crowd back into view...
...A few minutes later the operation is complete...
...They laugh when a drunk who has managed to evade the barriers mingles with reporters close to the border line and yells, "But it's free on this side," when police try to dislodge him...
...The rumors are fast and furious on Friedrichstrasse: Es geht los um drei uhr—It's going to happen at three o'clock...
...It concerns the right of American personnel in civilian clothes to enter East Berlin without stopping for clearance from East Berlin police...
...Even at the corner of Koch Strasse-Friedrichstrasse, a block from the border, where a few hundred onlookers peek down the street from behind police barriers, the mood is half curiosity, half amusement...
...tanks are at the border...
...The relatively few who are not convinced continue quietly making plans to move to West Germany...
...The news agency men, spotting any minor development that their home offices might deem significant, keep bolting for telephones to report that an American jeep has arrived with soldiers, that an East German lorry has pulled up on the far side of the border, that it is rumored the American tanks with their bulldozer shovels are planning to ram aside the zigzag barrier the Communists have erected on the crossing point...
...The Provost Marshal, Colonel Robert Sabolyk, a tough, competent man, has slugged an East German policeman...
...AMERICAN-SOVIET TANKS FACE EACH OTHER...
...Fifteen minutes away, a tense hush rules the Friedrichstrasse border with each side unofficially announcing its readiness to fire the second shot...
...The onlookers at the corner are shoved behind the line of the buildings...
...On the Kudamm, the blaring headlines of the boulevard press are the only indications that something is happening nearby that intimately involves the future of West Berlin: American tanks roll UP...
...Those convinced the Americans will not let them down are quietly gratified that U.S...
...What's going to happen...
...A few tanks cannot rock the blasé Berliners...
...The diplomatic sedans of various Communist embassies in East Berlin scuttle back and forth, their occupants staring glumly ahead as if oblivious of the tanks...
...Norman Gelb is covering the German scene as Berlin correspondent for the Mutual Broadcasting System...
...West Berliners at the Kranzler scan the headlines, dip briefly into the stories below and turn to the inside pages for a peek at details of the coalition crisis in Bonn, for scandal and murder stories, pictures of lush starlets, sports reports and lottery winner announcements...
...General Lucius Clay is on his way to the border to direct the operation personally...
...Clusters of reporters and news photographers mingle with soldiers and police around Checkpoint Charlie, the whitewashed wooden shack that houses the American control post on the border...
...The whole episode," a West Berliner complains, "was put on for the press," ignoring the fact that for the first time since the Berlin airlift, American determination to defend Western rights in the divided city has gone beyond mere written or verbal protests to the Soviet Union...
...AMERICANS GIVE VOPOS ULTIMATUM...
...When the action is about to begin, when American soldiers armed with new M14 rifles board the jeeps that are to escort an American civilian vehicle past East Berlin police, the reporters are pushed back into the cafes...
...A few try to mob a Russian sedan...
...The reporters pour out on the street looking for their stories...
...one of them, called Hallo Bar, boasts of "Hungarian Specialties" which, one learns upon inquiring, amount to the same old Berlin wursts...
...Sitting in the Köln over a beer and a bockwurst, you look out at American tanks when they roll up to the Berlin sector border and zero in their cannon on the Communist checkpoint a few yards away...
...Soviet military jeeps and sedans make occasional sorties through the border, some bound on official business, some to scout the terrain, stern expressions always on the faces of the uniformed men inside...
...The onlookers chuckle when an American soldier leans out of his tank turret to buy pretzels from a vendor...
...The only sound is the roar of the tank motors...
...Those closest to the barrier make room for a woman carrying a small child so the infant can get a look at the "Ami" tanks...
...Communist journalists keep drifting over the line for a quick look at the tanks and a chat with their Western colleagues...
...These 16 years have been crammed with crises and ultimatums...
...The others play catch-as-catch-can with the phones in the cafes...
...They apparently feel that the arrival of a few tanks on either side of the border is not suddenly going to determine their fate after 16 years of uncertainty...
...That story from a visiting Communist reporter...
...Sitting in the Kranzler over a cup of coffee and a chunk of fancy pastry, you scan the Kudamm's bustle of automobile and pedestrian traffic, typical of the scene on the main drag of any major city...
...The apparent indifference of the Berliners can perhaps be attributed to the fact that the immediate question on Friedrichstrasse does not directly concern West Berlin...
Vol. 44 • November 1961 • No. 37
