Berlin Part I

Free University of Berlin. On September 8, 1960, I entered the United States Air Force. My initial assignment was with the Air Force Institute of Technology with my duty station at the Free University of Berlin in West Berlin, Germany as a Fulbright Fellow. I processed in at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio and one day later was sworn in as a regular Air Force officer.

I left Faith and the baby in Utah and proceeded to Germany. As soon as it was feasible, I sent for them. Prior to their arrival, I lived with Dr. and Mrs. Gerhardt Lütgert as part of the Fulbright exchange program and gained a number of insights into German domestic life. I grew fond of the Lütgerts and appreciated the opportunity they afforded me to live with a German family. When Faith and the baby arrived we lived for a short time in a rather dreadful apartment on Hüttenweg; later we moved to a more acceptable place on Thielallee.

At the university, I was left to study and pursue my interests pretty much as I pleased. The major portion of my time was spent studying German and German literature, but I also took classes in the Yugoslavian language (Serbo-Croatian), Danish literature, Swedish, and old Nordic. I even took a few classes in French at the Maison de France on Kurfürstendam. I was supposed to study Russian, but found that translating from Russian into German, in a very large class, exceeded both my linguistic ability and my self-confidence.

At the end of the academic year, it had been my intention to return to the United States to attend flight training. I had wanted to be a pilot, although my enthusiasm had been dramatically dampened by my experience with spins in the Aeronica Champ. In Berlin, I had made contacts with the Air Force community, especially those from intelligence. Thus, I was offered the opportunity to remain in Berlin as an intelligence officer with the 7000th Support Wing, whose headquarters were at Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt. I elected to remain in Berlin, since they would then refund my expenses for bringing Faith and Kurt from Utah, and we were quite comfortable in Berlin. Before assuming my new job, I took leave and traveled to Austria, Yugoslavia, and Northern Italy.

Berlin was an extremely interesting place in the early 1960s. Among other things, it was a nest of spies. The city was full of intelligence operatives from almost every country, and thus one could be confident that at least half of one's acquaintances were involved in some facet of intelligence work, if not pure espionage. On May Day 1961, while still a student, I went to East Berlin, stood in the crowd, and took pictures of the East German Army parade with all its military equipment. I later learned that the U.S. intelligence community had not dared to send its own people to do the same on an official basis. East Berlin still bore many of the scars of the bombing it had received during World War II and was generally dismal and depressing. Tens of thousands of people were voting with their feet each month to resettle in West Berlin and West Germany. We even had a cleaning lady who came once a week from East Berlin to earn a few West German marks.

At that time, one could pass freely through the Brandenburg Gate to and from West Berlin. Many East Germans crossed over to West Berlin to seek employment. There was an atmosphere of pseudo-tranquility among the people while Western politicians stewed and fretted over Soviet intentions. But people were also leaving East Germany in droves. Many who left were highly educated professionals, thus one could speak of a brain drain.

The Berlin Wall. On August 13, 1961, those of us living in the divided city of Berlin arose from our beds to the news that East Berlin was being sealed off from West Berlin. Few people really understood what had happened, and some even scoffed at the idea that barbed wire or even a wall could keep people apart. Curiosity drove me to visit the border near the Brandenburg Gate that very evening. A large group of West Berliners had gathered on the western side and were shouting obscenities at those involved in enforcing the separation. Elements of the East German Kampfgruppen,  a paramilitary organization designed to manifest the absolute rule of the proletariat in East Germany joined police and border security guards to create a ubiquitous security presence where workers erected the wall. They had a huge water cannon that was aimed at those on the Western side who got close enough to make threats against this new division of their city. It was not long before the East Germans began replacing concertina wire with a wall constructed of large cement blocks and mortar. Soon, a feat, which would have seemed impossible, had it simply been proposed, became a reality as the infamous Berlin Wall was built. As the wall supplanted the barbed wire, it quickly became the symbol of a failed system, of a regime unable to fulfill the needs of its citizens. It was clear from that moment that a society, which had to keep its people hostage, was doomed to fail. The Wall became, I think, the visible incarnation of the Cold War. The amount of resources it took to build the wall was staggering, but it soon turned out to be the best investment East Berlin could make as it kept its people inside, and forced them to make their peace, at least temporarily, with communism.

During this time, the Western Allies in Berlin were on various stages of alert. For a time, U.S. tanks faced Soviet tanks across Friedrichstraße with only a 100-yard separation. Our neighbor upstairs in the same stairwell was commander of a company of 40th armor in Berlin, and we thus gained special insights into his situation during the faceoff.  We also visited the site of the faceoff. Somehow, no shots were ever fired, and each army finally withdrew its tanks – first to a bivouac area, and then back to their garrisons.

I was a brand new Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, assigned first to study German at the Free University of Berlin and subsequently as an intelligence officer. My family was told to pack bags containing only emergency supplies in the event that they should have to be evacuated. Supplies of military K-rations were made available.

These were tense times. No one knew whether, by an act of will or by accident, the tanks might fire on each other. We were not privy to discussions in the Washington bureaucracy or to the deliberations of the Politburo. For us, we only had to do our duty and participate in the defense of West Berlin should the other side make an offensive move. But each side held its ground, until little by little the opposing tanks withdrew to positions where they were no longer staring down each other's gun barrels.

In my eight years in the divided city, East Berlin never stopped working on the wall, undertaking the impossible task of making it aesthetically more pleasing, as well as re-enforcing its principle purpose. Life, albeit somewhat strained, went on pretty much as normal. Espionage organizations from many, many countries now faced the difficult task of re-establishing contact with their agents on the other side of the Wall. Every scrap of information was scrutinized, analyzed, and fused with that from other sources. Information on intentions and capabilities were of paramount importance.

The Berlin airlift some years earlier had demonstrated the political will of the West to protect the citizens of West Berlin from a communist takeover. U.S. re-enforcements were sent to Berlin, crossing from Helmstedt via the autobahn to the crossing point at Berlin-Babelsberg. There was concern that conflict could arise from that act, but the crossing was made without incident. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was there when they arrived. President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin and on the balcony of the Schöneberger Rathaus said with a clear and steady voice, Ich bin ein Berliner. In that moment West Berliners and their occupying forces (for they were actual occupiers) became as one. Every American became ein Berliner. There was no war, no major hostilities involving armed units, only the slow business of getting on with life in the divided city, now defined by its hideous shrine to a failed system. For 28 years, the Wall stood until the hope of a better life emboldened young people to speak out en masse.