"Cold Peace" Part VII - "Dove's View" Plotline

 While the Berlin Airlift has been called the "first battle of the Cold War," it was first and foremost a humanitarian effort. It was an operation designed to feed, heat and keep healthy more than two million civilians cut off from their regular sources of food, fuel, medicine and other goods. This "battle" was not won by guns, tanks and bombs, but by cargo planes carrying milk and children's shoes, by candy bars and chocolate on miniature parachutes, and by the medical evacuation of vulnerable residents. Furthermore, many of those who saved Berlin were not in military uniform at all; they were civilian fliers. I thought they deserved a plot line of their own.

Although, I knew I wanted to feature civilian fliers in this novel, it wasn't until I sat down to write that inspiration struck and I saw an opportunity to step outside the box and do something innovative. Rather than a civilian cargo or tanker company, I decided to feature an air ambulance business. Although there is no specific evidence of such a company, the need to evacuate people from Berlin grew to crisis proportions by the end of 1948, and there is no reason to think that a young man with entrepreneurial spirit and the proper training would not have seen the opportunity right at the start. So "Air Ambulance International Ltd" was launched. 

The "Dove's View" or humanitarian plot line uses the device of "Air Ambulance International" (AAI) to expose the reader to the state of Berlin's hospitals, and as the series progresses, will also give the reader insight into the impact of undernourishment and mass rape on children. Furthermore, as a civilian company, AAI can be international not only in its operations but its staff. AAI brings British, Commonwealth, German and eventually American characters together, all working to fulfill the common task of helping the most vulnerable. 

At the same time, this plot line exposes the obstacles and difficulties encountered by private companies attempting to operate in such a complex and tense political environment. Below a Wellington painted white like the ambulance aircraft of AAI. Just picture a red cross where the roundels now appear.

Dissecting a Novel Part VI - "Worms' View" Characters

 The "Worm's View" plot line attempts to capture for the reader the feelings of people -- like you and me -- facing the catastrophic economic situation in post-war Germany and the growing manifestations of Soviet determination to make Berlin part of Stalin's empire.

 

In an age, when men dominated the corridors of power, women were the primary victims of bad politics and lost wars. No body of women suffered more than the women of Berlin, who were subjected to possibly the worst "reign of sexual terror" in modern times in the form of a Red Army occupation. These were not mere excesses carried out by drunken troops, it was a conscious Soviet policy that sanctioned sexual violence against women without inhibition as the "just reward" for Soviet victory. Modern historians estimate that more than one million German women were raped in Berlin. That is the number of victims, not the  number of rapes, which was much higher. Many women were gang raped by up to twenty men at a time or raped repeatedly over a period of time, again dozens or scores of time. Victims were as young as eight and as old as eighty. Rapes were often carried out at gunpoint, with extreme brutality and accompanied by insults and humiliation such as urinating on the woman and kicking her around after completing the sexual assault. 

 

No novel set in post-war Berlin can call itself complete or authentic without considering the consequences of this sexual terror on a population that was predominantly female. I chose, therefore, to make one of my leading characters a victim of Russian rape, a woman, now 30 years-old, who has lost her immediate family in the war and is struggling to find a reason for living at all. Charlotte Graefin Walmsdorf is a woman who hates herself because she is still alive after being used by six Russian soldiers. Raised on her father's estate in Pomerania, she was never rich or spoiled, but she is a countess with family pride that has now been completely shattered and suicidal thoughts lurk in the shadows of her psyche.

Compared to Charlotte, the other women characters in this plot line are well-off, yet also struggling with the consequences of the war. Kathleen is a single mother, raising her daughter on her own, after her husband was shot down over Berlin in January 1944. She returns to Berlin because Ken is buried there and she hopes that finally visiting the grave will free her to love again. Galyna, on the other hand, has never found love or a true home after her father was convicted of treason by the Soviet state. Although she has escaped to the West, where she had a grandmother, and has found contentment as a Russian translator for the RAF, she is at heart still Ukrainian -- something that soon brings her into danger.

The male characters of this plot line represent and depict on the one hand the fate of German civilians who are starting to pick up the pieces and put Germany back together again economically, and the fate of disabled veterans in the UK. Christian, Charlotte's cousin, is a former Luftwaffe officer, who has landed on his feet. He has returned from American POW internment healthy and untraumatized. His  estates in the American Zone produce desperately needed agricultural products and generate substantial income. But Christian is no farmer and not happy in a provincial, Catholic town. He is drawn to Berlin  -- and becomes fanatical about bringing to justice those whom he believes destroyed Germany and killed his brother: the Nazi leadership incorporated by a senior SS officer. The latter has  adopted a new identity and appears to have the protection of the occupation powers, which only makes Christian more determined to destroy him.

Kit Moran, on the other hand, lost half his lower leg when his Lancaster was shot down over Germany in the last days of the war. As he struggles to obtain a university degree in aeronautical engineering, he finds himself financially burdened by the arrival of his first child. The real problem, however, is that he soon discovers that job opportunities are few and far between in bankrupt Britain. His future begins to look as bleak as that of Britain itself.

Dissecting "Cold Peace" Part V - "The Worm's View" Plot Line

 The second major plot line in "Cold Peace" is the "Worm's View." The point of this plotline is to take the reader out of the clouds where history is spread out for inspection and decisions are being made and try to show what it was like living through the events described. 

 

Most of us go through our lives as the objects of destiny. We are impacted by historical events without having any opportunity to alter them. We might have voted for the politicians that make war or peace -- but it is just as likely that we did not. We certainly have no influence on the actions of foreign powers, yet they have the power to transform our lives. 

The strands of this plot line are the stories of ordinary people struggling to survive in post-war Europe. They provide insight into what things looked like "on the ground" with the benefit of insight into the corridors of power. Their concerns are, for the most part, our concerns: finding a job, keeping food on the table, protecting and raising our children, finding love and a partner for life. 

In the aftermath of WWII, most of these simple things were challenging in Europe. The U.S. Undersecretary of State, Dean Acheson, summarized the situation as follows: “Life in Europe as an organised industrial community had come well-nigh to a standstill and, with it, so had production and distribution of goods of every sort.” Furthermore, agricultural production was “lower than at any time since the turn of the century.” 

On top of this, the winter of ’46-’47 proved to be the most severe winter in a century. Temperatures dropped far below freezing and stayed there for weeks on end. In Berlin the water supply froze and that meant the sewage system collapsed. So did the railway, preventing the importation of coal. Unable to provide coal for private consumption, public places from pubs and cinemas to air raid shelters were turned into public warming halls. Schools were put on short-weeks and factories were closed. Over 1,000 Berliners literally froze to death, 60 on one night alone. One Berliner who lived through the winter measured the temperature in her kitchen at -6 degrees centigrade and described how her bread was frozen solid. She went on to say:

Most of the families which sold their porcelain, carpets, and furniture to get money to buy fat and meat on the black market…have nothing more to sell and are no longer able to buy black market food. People have no coal to heat rooms…Old people are dying like flies…There is no water in the houses because all is frozen.[i]

In Britain the situation was only marginally better. The frigid winter, even more unusual in the UK than in Berlin, exhausted coal reserves, leading to power shortages. In December, England’s largest auto plant was forced to shut down. Then the Thames froze all the way from Windsor to the sea, closing London to coal barges and preventing the supply of coal to power stations. Electricity to households was reduced to six hours per day, three in the morning and three in the afternoon. By February, the crisis was so acute and widespread that the Government ordered all non-essential factories to close for three solid weeks. Unemployment shot up to 2.3 million. Welfare payments for these unemployed drained the already depleted treasury. Meanwhile the Government had also been forced to cut food rations to below wartime levels.

The cold receded, but the mood of despondency remained -- in both Britain and Berlin. In Germany, however, doctors also reported an increase in TB, pneumonia and other illnesses. By now most urban dwellers in Germany (and that was the majority) had not seen milk, sugar, fat or vegetables since the end of the war. Chronic under-nourishment had become a problem, causing a drop in industrial production per worker by 20%. People, particularly the elderly, were dying of hunger still. A social worker summed up the situation by saying: “The energies of the people are spent in pursuit of a loaf of bread and a pair of shoes. Hope is alien.”[ii] Rations were now set at 1,275 calories per day in the U.S. zone (still less than half what Americans then considered normal) and at 1,040 calories in the British zone, which was more industrial and had less agriculture than the U.S. zone. In the French Zone the rations were set at just 925 calories – causing the Germans to refer to it as the “FZ” in a play on the German term for Concentration Camps, “KZ.” It was now “a vicious circle in which the Germans starved because they could not produce enough, and could not produce enough because they were starving.”[iii]

The economics wasn't the only shadow darkening the horizon of Europeans at the start of 1948. Another kind of threat was also growing. It was the threat of Soviet tanks. The Soviet Union had already expanded into the Baltic States, parts of Finland, it had swallowed large parts of Poland and taken control of the remainder as well. It has staged Communist "coups" that gave the Soviet Union effective control of Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. The Soviet Union clearly had its eye on Germany -- starting with Berlin. Their tactics were various forms of intimidation to make the population docile and ready to accept Soviet rule.

For example, as far back as early 1946 there had been isolated incidents of Soviet police abducting persons from the Western Sectors; three municipal judges who had refused to render judgements desired by the Soviets had “disappeared” from their homes, never to be seen again. However, by early 1948,  various observers reported seeing an increased use of abduction. An American intelligence officer based in Berlin reported that Russians, disguised as German police, were arresting German officials living in the U.S. and British sectors of Berlin. Police officers who were not sufficiently loyal to the SED and Soviet Union were also targeted for such actions and disappeared. 

But it was not only city officials who feared abduction, German scientists were likewise kidnapped from their homes and sent to work in the Soviet Union, particularly on the atomic bomb project, simply because they had skills the Soviet Union needed. Indeed, even ordinary German workmen and skilled female labourers could find themselves deported on two hours notice. Although different in character, the Soviets did not shy away from temporarily kidnapping members of the Western Allied occupation forces. General Clay reported that 93 American servicemen were detained in the first half of 1948 and claimed few of the arrests had any justification. Nevertheless, in many instances “the Americans were held for hours under humiliating conditions….”[i]

In order to facilitate a take over, the Soviets needed the Western Allies out of their way and that meant convincing them that remaining in Berlin was too burdensome. The Soviet's chosen tactic to achieve this objective was the harassment of inter-zonal traffic. This took many forms. One simple tactic of the Soviets was to send Russian soldiers dressed in civilian clothes to systematically rob passengers arriving at the train stations. On other occasions, Soviet soldiers openly held up busses of the public transport network at gunpoint and took what they liked without bothering about disguising themselves. 

More subtle but equally effective was the Soviet tactic of changing without notice the bureaucratic requirements for possession of a license to operate a lorry. Everyone was required to possess a license from the SMAD, but the form, shape or colour of this license could change without warning from one day to the next. When this happened, all lorry traffic came to a virtual halt while drivers and firms scrambled to get the new documents. After paying the fees and standing in lines and collecting the signatures and stamps for the new document, the owners of such documents had no certainly that the rules would not change again the next day – and naturally such documents were completely unobtainable if one had incurred the displeasure of the SMAD in one way or another. 

The Soviets also introduced new licenses for moving from the Western Sector to the Western Zone, and the costs and difficulties of obtaining the licenses brought such movements to a virtual standstill. The harassment of German passengers traveling between Berlin and the Western Zones also escalated, so that Germans had to dread not only intrusive searches (which often ended in official and unofficial confiscations) but also feared arrest for alleged infractions of rules they had never heard of.

The "Worm's Eye" Plotline attempts to capture for the reader the feelings of people -- like you and me -- facing this catastrophic economic situation and the growing manifestations of Soviet determination to make Berlin part of Stalin's empire.

 -------

[i] Richard Cutler, Counter Spy, p. 142

[ii] Collier, Bridge Across the Sky, p.10.

[iii] Robert Jackson, The Berlin Airlift, P. 24. 

 

Dissecting "Cold Peace" Part IV - The Characters of "Eagle's View" Plot Line

While observers can see what is happening, only decision-makers, or those close to them, know why things happen. A novel which seeks to give readers an understanding of historical events requires some characters with access to the historical figures who made history. The characters in the "Eagle's View" plot line are men on the fringes of those in power.

  

The most powerful political leaders in the era of "Cold Peace" were the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, the American President Harry Truman, and the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee. That said, while they were the ultimate arbiters of what happened with respect to Berlin, they were not present on the ground nor did the Berlin crisis occupy the center of their focus. The politicians most engaged in Berlin were the respective military governors and commandants of Berlin. Finally, although Germany had no government and Berlin was treated as an object by the four occupying powers, the people of Berlin found their voice and surprised Moscow no less than Washington and London by speaking up. Ultimately, they forced the powerful occupation powers to take their wishes into account. Without doubt, the spokesman for Berlin in this era was the popularly elected mayor Ernst Reuter. 

In short, principle characters in the "Eagle's View" plot line had to be able to interact with the commandants and the mayor of Berlin in order to plausibly allow the reader to look inside the closed rooms where decisions were being made. While the actions of the fictional characters are invented and the dialogues they have with historical personages likewise fabricated, they nevertheless are designed to convey historical facts and events and to accurately depict the historical figures as accurately as possible. 

Throughout the Berlin Crisis of 1948-1949, the Berlin City Council played a critical role -- one all too often overlooked by military historians fascinated by the logistical accomplishments of the Airlift and by political historians of the Cold War mesmerized by the superpower duel that played out in Berlin. To highlight the Berlin City Council and provide insight into its position, I created a fictional member of that body. The Council was 130 members strong, roughly 20 of those members formed the executive body, and the Social Democratic Party formed the largest faction. I made my fictional city council member, Jakob Liebherr, a representative from the traditionally Social Democratic borough of Kreuzberg and his fictional biography corresponds to that of many Social Democratic politicians of this period. Namely, he is a man who had opposed Hitler before the war, voted against the Enabling Law, and spent time in concentration camps for his opposition to National Socialism. Because of his past, Reuter trusts him with a position in the executive body of the city council.

However, the most important fictional character in the "Eagle's View" plot line is Wing Commander Robert (Robin) Priestman, the Station Commander at RAF Gatow. This airfield, which was a sleepy grass airfield in 1947, would become the busiest airfield in the entire world by the end of the Airlift, with more landings and take-offs than New York's LaGuardia airfield. Since an RAF Station Commander is a mid-ranking officer, and under normal circumstances not a terribly important person on the political stage, putting a fictional character into this role hardly "violates" history in a significant way. On the other hand, because of the importance of Gatow to the success of the airlift, the Station Commander there inherently had the ear of anyone involved in the Airlift and the Berlin Crisis, making him an ideal character to convey to the reader the challenges and issues faced by the Allied air forces in attempting to supply 2.2 million people entirely by air. 

Via these two fictional characters, the reader is introduced to key historical figures such as Air Commodore Waite, Generals Clay and Robertson, Colonel Howley and Mayor Reuter -- all of whom have "cameo" roles in the Bridge to Tomorrow Series. 

The historical photo below, while not directly relevant to Cold Peace, in my opinion beautifully illustrates the role that anonymous (or fictional) characters who interact with historical figures can play in our understanding of a period or person.

Cold Peace is Book I of the Bridge to Tomorrow Series. 

Three years after WWII, Europe struggles with rationing, widespread unemployment and a growing Soviet threat. Hitler's former capital lies ruined under the joint control of wartime allies bitterly at odds. With the currency worthless, the population lives on hand-outs or turns to crime and prostitution. Deep inside the Soviet Zone of occupation, Berlin appears to be an ideal target for a communist take-over, putting the defenders of democracy on a collision course with Stalin's merciless aggression. 

A Battle of Britain ace, a female air traffic controller, a concentration camp survivor and an ex-ATA woman pilot are just some of those trying to find their place in the post-war world. An air ambulance service offers a shimmer of hope, but when a Soviet fighter brings down a British passenger liner, Berlin becomes a flashpoint. The world stands poised on the brink of World War Three.

 

Find out more at: https://www.helenapschrader.com/bridge-to-tomorrow.html

View a video teaser at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTuE7m5InZM&t=5s

Previous releases include:

"MORAL FIBRE," which WON THE HEMINGWAY AWARD 2022 FOR 20TH CENTURY WARTIME FICTION and a MAINCREST MEDIA AWARD FOR MILITARY FICTION as well as being A FINALIST FOR THE BOOK EXCELLENCE AWARD 2023 IN THE CATEGORY HISTORICAL FICTION.

 

 Riding the icy, moonlit sky,

they took the war to Hitler. 

Their chances of survival were less than fifty percent. 

Their average age was 21.

This is the story of just one bomber pilot, his crew and the woman he loved. 

It is intended as a tribute to them all.  

Buy now on amazon

or Barnes and Noble. 

 

 "This is the best book on the life of us fighter pilots in the Battle of Britain that I have ever seen.... I couldn't put it down."-- RAF Battle of Britain ace, Wing Commander Bob Doe.

Winner of a Hemingway Award for 20th Century Wartime Fiction, a Maincrest Media Award for Military Fiction and Silver in the Global Book Awards.

Find out more at: https://crossseaspress.com/where-eagles-never-flew

 

 For more information about all my books visit: https://www.helenapschrader.com

 

Disfiguring injuries, class prejudice and PTSD are the focus of three tales set in WWII by award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader. Find out more at: https://crossseaspress.com/grounded-eagles