Victory at Berlin

Sound trucks rolled through the streets, blaring out the news; the city's great ordeal was drawing to an end. Berlin's early skepticism thawed. The people finally realized that a victory had been won.

Last week General V. I. Chuikov, Soviet commander in Germany, ordered restoration of "transport, trade and communications services" at 12:01 on Thursday morning of this week. Chuikov's order was repeated on the Moscow radio. At the same moment, the Western counter-blockade would end.

At Helmstedt, main crossing point on the Soviet-British frontier, workmen and soldiers had hurriedly installed radio and telephone equipment, repainted border signs, clipped weeds at the sides of the long unused highway. The British announced that the first train would be for military passengers and correspondents. Later in the day, ten trainloads of coal and six of fresh potatoes and other goods would reach the city.

Berlin's people had been living mainly on the airlift's dehydrated potatoes, powdered eggs, powdered milk, dried vegetables and occasional cans of meat; this week they would get better food, and more of it. The blockade had shut down much of Berlin's industry, thrown 125,000 out of work. There had been only four hours of electricity a day; Berliners had lighted their homes with candles or gone to bed at sunset. The siege's end meant not only more food, more jobs and more light, but a relatively comfortable winter ahead.

Ernst Reuter, West Berlin's stalwart Socialist mayor, said: "Of course it's a good thing. I'm very happy. At last the Russians have climbed down. Now I hope they'll disappear from our midst." But everyone realized that the battle for the city would continue. East Berlin's Communist Party called for conferences to end the split in the city government. To this, Ernst Reuter retorted: "Work with those people--never!"

The Last Trees. "Even the ruins of Berlin," TIME Correspondent Dave Richardson cabled this week, "are marked by the East-West conflict of the past eleven months. In past springs, stately chestnut and linden trees had spread a canopy of pink and white over the ruins. This year, street after street in Berlin is bare of trees. In the long hard winter of the blockade, Berlin's people had to decide whether to accept Soviet Russia's offer of coal or cut down their trees. They chose to give up the trees. At first it was only one tree to a block; before the Russians backed down last week hundreds had gone. But now tiny new seedlings are pushing their way up through the patches of earth where the old trees once stood. More than anything I have seen here, this is a symbol of Berlin's victory. Despite kidnapings, despite the Communist propaganda barrage, despite intimidation, Berlin's people have remained calm and unruffled. An old man carefully tending his tiny potato patch in the Tiergarten pointed to one of the huge, blasted air raid shelters. He said: 'During the war every bunker in Berlin had the words painted near its entrance: Ruhe bewahren, nicht draengen!--keep quiet, don't push. Those words we shall never forget. They have served us well during this blockade.' "If ever there are monuments raised to commemorate democracy's victory in the battle of Berlin, there are plenty of heroes to adorn them. In their weary, often grumbling and fumbling way, it was Berlin's plain people who won the battle--the people who met in huge rallies to hurl their defiance from the shadow of the Red-flag-topped Brandenburger Tor, the people who turned out in bitter cold last December to vote a solid no to the Communists, the people who cut down their trees rather than accept Russia's favors. Without them, the West, for all its bold determination and its roaring C-54s, would have lost Berlin."

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