Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [211]
Barney Root was able to locate a few Douglas Skymasters in Italy and the Middle East. These four-engine craft had a ten-ton capacity. Crews were called in from bases in England and two days after Hansen’s call the first of them touched down on the runway at Tempelhof to begin the “milk run” to Berlin.
Meanwhile, General Hartly Fitz-Roy worked out some sort of relief for the British garrison and both supplied the French.
At the Air Safety Center, still under four-power operation, and through spies around Tempelhof, Igor Karlovy was able to study the proceedings. In bad weather the planes stacked up overhead resulting in minor chaos. It all confirmed Igor’s findings. The West was having trouble getting in a few hundred tons of supplies a day for their garrisons. The greater task of supplying two million people needing thousands of tons daily was beyond comprehension.
To make matters more tense, Russian fighter planes ran through the corridors on the contention that the corridors were illegal, did not exist, and the skies were Russian-owned.
Into this city came Senator Adam Blanchard.
It had long been fashionable for members of the Congress to tour Berlin, get themselves photographed, make a statement or two for posterity, and generally lend themselves to the “glamorous” situation.
Hansen and Hazzard and other top staff officers were compelled to spend hundreds of hours at Tempelhof welcoming the junketing legislators. Some were hard-working and sincere men desiring to help the situation, others were utter bores and nuisances.... Hansen deliberately lived in a small house without guest facilities.
Adam Blanchard was not a common-garden-variety senator. From the minority party, he held seats on both the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Armed Forces Committee. Although no one could figure what good he could do in Berlin, everyone knew he could do a great deal of harm. The silk-glove treatment was ordered.
Blanchard, as suspected, had come to Berlin with a purpose in mind. He was to run for re-election with a swell of discontent in the party hierarchy of his state. Key industrialists, traditional conservatives, and crusty old isolationists controlled the party machinery. They were sick as hell of being taxed to death to feed undeserving and ungrateful Europeans and keeping a costly American occupation army “over there.”
Blanchard had gone along with the Truman Doctrine earlier, bringing further growls that he was getting a little “pinko” around the edges. The senator was now on tenterhooks on how he would vote for the Marshall Plan. He evaded that issue.
His advisors conjured up the idea of a “fact finding” trip to Germany, and Berlin in particular, after which he would make a declaration to soothe the troubled waters back home.
At the end of four days of briefing and tours in Berlin, Adam Blanchard’s people called a press conference which was arranged for the entire corps, Communists as well as Western journalists in attendance.
“We want to get out of Germany as soon as possible,” Blanchard said. “The first step will be to hand over the authority to the State Department and pare down this costly occupation force.”
“That son of a bitch!” Neal Hazzard said.
“Calm down, Neal,” Sean warned.
“Calm down, my ass.”
On General Hansen’s desk lay a copy of Tägliche Rundschau, the official Russian newspaper in the German language. The headline blared: KEY AMERICAN OFFICIAL CONFIRMS WITHDRAWAL OF AMERICAN FORCES FROM BERLIN.
A sampling of newspapers around the world played the same theme:
YANKS PULLING OUT OF GERMANY
U.S. WEARY OF OCCUPATION COSTS
AMERICAN ABANDONMENT OF EUROPE BEGINS
“This could not have come at a worse time,” Hansen said.
“That bastard just played the Russian trump card. It’s just something like this that will stampede the people.