1947. Another World War?

Anxiety in the Atomic Age

"Hiroshima survivors look out over the city two years after the United States' August 1945 atomic attack." (Photo by Carl Mydans – source)

From the "Special Issue: A Report to America Two Years After V-Day," This Week magazine, August 10, 1947, p. 14-15:

ANOTHER WAR?

Amid the ashes of the last one, drained and rudderless people wonder whether the peace will last

You must know about the blond boy sitting by the dragon-teeth of the Siegfried Line in that picture above. He's still in most of his Wehrmacht uniform. He's employed by his conquerors now as a guard on the peaceful border between Germany and Belgium at Aachen. He is 20. That gave him time for only two years of war—16 to 18. Horst Hinz his name is, and the customs building near where he sits has had its swastika shot off.

His father was killed two days before the end of the war. His home now belongs to Poland. His youth belonged to the Hitler Jugend from 1937 to 1943 and from then on, to the Wehrmacht. And because he is a smart boy and, perhaps, because he wants to please his conquerors, he says:

"Yes, I think the Reich can be a democracy. But I must see it first."

Another war?

"Yes, I should fight against the Russians to get back my home. To get back my home, I should fight against the Americans. But only to find my home, not to occupy other lands. Because I live here. We have no food, we have no dress—and no money. It's not good."

The 17-year-old Dutch university student, not so many miles away, says: "I don't think there'll be so soon another war again and I don't hope so. But in the paper I read that there'll be in 1948 another war to knock out Russia, but I don't suppose that will be true. And if the Americans and French and Englishmen and Russians are good and don't give the Germans too much things to start a war, it won't be very easy for them to make war."

In France, the grown-ups have had too much war and they are realists in the worst sense of the word. War has become so much a part of their lives that another one would be accepted with little surprise, no enthusiasm and the faintest of hopes for any kind of victory. Peace is regarded as a kind of political purgatory in which the world lives while awaiting the next armed deluge. The average citizen—in St. Lô, for example—is confused:

"Well, we don't know exactly about these things. You see, when we read the press—well, some press says that another war is inevitable and the other says that war can't be any more. People here think that the best thing to avoid a war would be that America and Russia would come to a better understanding.

"If a new war came, with the atomic bomb, then I think St. Lô would disappear in a few seconds. And I don't know whether it's very useful to rebuild St. Lô, if we are going to have another war. I think it would be better to live underground."

But the rebuilding doesn't stop. All over Europe, the hammers are going. In the English pub after more bricks have been laid: "A certain amount of people think there'll be another World War, but I don't think there will be. The nations have to learn to get together." The mug is put down, the hammer is picked up.

The hammers are going on in Hiroshima, too. There, on the proving grounds of any new war, resignation and despair fight with hope. The Japanese stopped near one of the new jerry-built houses: "We are wondering what to do when the war comes between Russia and the United States. If they use atomic bombs, we shall move to the mountains." He knows, of course, that it would be useless to move. He knows that there are no moves left. So does Mrs. Chiyoko Saiki, who's had too strong a smell of the future. Mrs. Saiki is from Honolulu but she came to visit Japan in 1941. She was in her house at Hiroshima when the atomic bomb came. That placed her about a mile from the center of the blast—but she was partly protected by the curve of the mountainside.

Mrs. Saiki is figuring on returning to Honolulu—"as soon as I regain my health." She says:

"We were affected by the rays. Whenever the thermometer drops we have what we call the itch on the skin. It's commonly called the atomic itch, and we run a very high temperature. It stays with us for about two weeks. It's very much like a rash—a heat rash or hives—that comes just when the temperature changes.

"The doctor says I'm about a million red blood cells minus the ordinary person. A number of my friends complain of the same condition. But it's so common here that the doctors don't record it.

"Even those who escaped being hurt when the bomb fell seem to be affected by the atomic rays. I just can't understand the whole thing.

"I thought I was lucky. All those who died died about three or four months later when their hair started falling off. I didn't have a mark, but then the itch came when autumn came.

"Nobody in Hiroshima wants to talk about the atomic bomb. Yes, I think there's not a family in Hiroshima that hasn't lost a member, so I think they don't want to discuss it."

Then—polite, mildly apologetic: "If that ended the war, I'm sure they're all glad. They don't mind that the bomb was dropped on the city."

Father Kleinsorge, the priest who was an important part of John Hersey's report, gets that feeling of resignation, too: "The feeling is that if there is a war, we have to bear such things as even the atomic bomb."

If there is a war, there is a war. The rhythm of that repeated phrase matches the rhythm of the rebuilding hammers. In Essen, Germany, where they don't have the atomic itch but only malnutrition, broken walls and despair, you hear: "Oh, I think it is simply ridiculous. None of us would even think of another war. Our only fear is that the Allies would tolerate another war."

Essen, you remember, is the home of the Krupp Works, the home for years and years of the German war potential. Today, Krupp is being destroyed, the war potential is being ripped apart, smashed into pieces, and the pieces are being used for reparations. In charge of the destruction is Hilary Simonovsky, British representative:

"Our job is really to see that the GI's will never have to come over here a second time. First of all, we're chopping up all the war material that was left in the shop. Then we're breaking up the machines that produced the war material. Thirdly, we're going to break up the shops that produced the machines that produced the shells that blew us to pieces.

"My father was over here as part of the Polish Controls after the last war, doing the same job. And here I am, back again, with my inheritance. Well, I am going to put a stop to it.

"I feel that if I ever have a son, I hope to Heaven that he'll never have to come over here and do this job. It isn't really the job. It's the thing behind the job that we never want to happen again. We want to do a proper job, and from our angle we're jolly well going to see that it is done this time.

"It's that name for making guns that we're here to stop. We're going to make the Germans make more of the tin-pot type of article, the pans and cooking stoves. We are going to smash Krupp—and there's no if's or but's!"

So Krupp is being destroyed. Hiroshima is being rebuilt. And people everywhere are walking around with the atomic itch of worry. War is being discussed as if it's a sweepstakes which might possibly come off next month. The resignation is what is so frightening. Out of it come the war rumors and the pathological fear. It adds up to a severe case of combat fatigue. You talk to the people of Europe about the horrors of Hiroshima and they look vacantly at the ruins of their city and shrug their shoulders. They try to dismiss the fear and go back to their hammers and the search for food.

But the despair won't go until hope displaces it. So far, no nation, no leaders have created that hope. They know that another war—an atomic war—might wipe out civilization. Their reaction is a cynical, fatalistic "so what?"

1948. The Growing East-West Divide in Blockaded Berlin

The Berlin Crisis Enters a New Phase

Communist rally in East Berlin in September, 1949 (Photo by Gerald Waller – source)

Bill Downs

CBS Berlin - for Edward R. Murrow with the News

November 30, 1948

An operation was performed on the city of Berlin today. Call it politico-surgery; an operation that could spread an infection which could inflame the whole body of this world with the disease of war.

The patient right now is spending an unquiet night as we await the reaction. When that reaction comes, it will probably be serious—and dangerous.

So it is necessary now, some twelve hours after the Communist-led faction of Berlin made its incision, that we think calmly of what has happened. It is very important.

It has been evident that a move by the Communist-led organizations was imminent. Posters and stickers began appearing throughout the city three days ago attacking the Western sector elections next Sunday. This propaganda is all signed "The Democratic Bloc of Berlin."

Today we see for the first time what constitutes the so-called "Democratic Bloc" from the Eastern sector and how it works.

The "democratic bloc" assembled in the State Opera House this afternoon. Between 1,500 and 2,000 persons attended: leaders of the Communist-dominated Socialist Unity Party, the Communist-dominated Federation of Trade Unions, Soviet-endorsed East sector city officials, and various cultural groups.

This "democratic" assembly proceeded to summarily dismiss the Berlin magistrate election in the citywide voting two years ago. It appointed a new magistrate from a slate agreed upon beforehand, and the whole thing went through unanimously. No objections, no protesting votes. No opposition.

Then the assembly adjourned to a democratic bloc mass meeting organized in Unter den Linden. I was at this meeting this afternoon. The day has been cold and foggy, a fog that has kept the Anglo-American airlift on the ground for more than twenty-four hours.

All the trappings were there. The red banners and forty-nine slogans proclaimed for this event; East sector workers were ordered to stop their jobs and attend the "spontaneous" demonstration—a demonstration so spontaneous that one man said he had only ten minutes to go before he could quit demonstrating. About 100,000 people were on hand. There might have been more, but after an hour of waiting workers were walking away as quickly as others arrived in trucks from their factories.

The whole affair was grim, cheerless, and unenthusiastic. Only one woman took the trouble to recognize me as an American. She turned around to spit at my feet, but I felt that she would have done the same to any national from an occupation power, including the Russian.

As you have heard from Ed Murrow, the Western sector elections will be held on Sunday as planned.

Berlin is now two cities. The dissection tonight has not been completed; maybe it will not be a total cleavage. The inter-sector subways and elevated railroads are still running. But the new identification cards ordered by the Soviet military command will start distribution tomorrow.

Hope for East-West settlement over this intensifying Berlin crisis are at a new low tonight.

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to Ed Murrow in New York.

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

December 1, 1948

The Communist-led Opera House government of Eastern Berlin moved to take over the Russian sector of the city this morning while, in the blockaded Western sectors of the city, the legally elected assembly proclaimed a state of "political emergency" for this bisected city.

Police and personnel at the Berlin city hall in the Soviet sector were changed overnight. Acting Mayor Friederich Friedensburg, ignoring yesterday's rump assembly dismissal of the present magistrate, reported to his office as usual this morning, but Eastern German police refused him entrance to the building. Yesterday afternoon, after the so-called election of a "democratic bloc" magistrate in the State Opera House, members of the newly proclaimed government went to the Rathaus—some with their families—to select their new offices.

Tomorrow the rump magistrate of Berlin will hold its first meeting and officially take over the government of the Eastern sector.

Leaders of the three anticommunist parties in the Western magistrate meeting minced no words in calling yesterday's events in the Russian sector as an out-and-out putsch in the same pattern as that which put Hitler into power in 1933. Frau Louise Schroeder of the Socialist Party said that any person participating in the East sector magistrate would be tried in orderly courts.

There was some serious ridicule about the "light opera government" proclaimed in East Berlin at today's magistrate meeting, but an undercurrent of crisis was also evident, because those who participate in the elections next Sunday and in this current government most certainly are marked men and women.

The Western city assembly will meet daily during this period of what they call as "political state of emergency." Preparations are going ahead for Sunday's elections in the Western sector.

The charge that the Communist-dominated parties are afraid of free elections at this time would seem to be confirmed by yesterday's action. The rump assembly says it will hold its own elections soon—elections which it can control.

On the surface, Berlin appears unchanged today. The underground and elevated railroads that connect the Eastern and Western part of the city are still running. Public services shared by the divided sectors are operating as usual.

But the final irony of the so-called "democratic bloc" assembly which voted itself into power comes in a letter from Ottomar Geschke, a Communist Deputy Chairman of the original city assembly. This letter, addressed to the military commandants of all four occupation powers, notifies them of the formation of a new magistrate, with a final paragraph that says: "I take the liberty to assume that this new magistrate will get the necessary support to carry out its duties."

The answers from the four military governments should be interesting, particularly the answer of Marshal Sokolovsky.

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to CBS in New York.

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

December 2, 1948

Gangs of Communist-led rowdies roamed the streets of the blockaded Western sectors of Berlin last night, tearing down election posters and pasting up placards warning Berliners not to vote in Sunday's elections.

These putsch tactics were extended to at least two Socialist Party political rallies. In a working class district near Tempelhof Aerodrome, some four hundred members of the Russian sector Socialist Unity Party tried to break up a political meeting. A first class brawl ensued until German police using nightsticks threw the rioters out. Nine persons were arrested. A similar scene occurred in another meeting in the American sector.

German police are taking precautions against the possibility that gangs from the Eastern sector might storm polling places on election day and try to confiscate ballots. German police guards already have been posted at the homes of Western city officials, and other police patrols have been placed at elevated and subway stations which might carry the rioters into voting areas.

Both the Western city assembly and the so-called "light opera magistrate" of the Eastern sector met today. The blockaded city government has a housing problem on its hands—British and American military governments are turning over a number of requisitioned buildings to provide office space for the municipal authorities.

The Soviet sector magistrate in its initial meeting in the Berlin city hall considered measures to provide winter help for the blockaded parts of the city—winter help that Berliners can buy at the price of their political freedom.

The election of Fritz Ebert, son of the Weimar president, as Oberbürgermeister for the rump magistrate of the Eastern sector has precipitated a family argument. His older brother Karl Ebert, who lives in Heidelburg, disowned his brother's activities and told Berliners that "the name of Ebert has been misused to deceive you." The elder brother, who lives with his mother, urged the cities to go to the polls on Sunday.

The Berlin airlift is slowly pulling itself out of the chocking fog that virtually grounded it for the past week. In the most serious stoppage yet, air deliveries over the blockade for the past five days have been less than half of what normally arrives in this city in one day. But the planes are beginning to fly again this morning.

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to CBS in New York.

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

December 3, 1948

The Soviet Union has recognized the Communist-led "putsch" assembly of Eastern Berlin. In the most brazen political maneuver since the Communist coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia, the deputy Soviet military governor for Berlin dispatched a letter to the leadership of the rump city magistrate which proclaimed itself into power last Tuesday.

The letter, signed by Colonel Jelisarov, says that "the Soviet Command declares that the provisional democratic magistrate will be granted any support and assistance necessary to take care of its functions serving the interests of the population." The letter further states, with rare cynicism, that "the Soviet Command supports measures aiming at keeping unity of the city and the safeguarding of normal actions of democratic self-governmental institutions. It acknowledges the provisional democratic magistrate elected by the special city assembly until uniform democratic elections in all of Berlin are carried through, which the Soviet Command considers of imminent importance."

Soviet recognition of the "opera house government" came a few hours after the American, British, and French military commanders for Berlin denounced the rump assembly as illegal and withdrew their liaison officers from the city hall in the Soviet sector.

Marshall Sokolovsky put the clincher on the Soviet Union's latest diplomatic move by receiving Fritz Ebert, the Oberbürgermeister of the rump Berlin government, in his Russian headquarters.

Meanwhile, more gangs invaded the Western sectors last night and attempted to break up political rallies being held in the campaign for next Sunday's elections. There was a fistfight at one Christian Democratic meeting and another fight at a subway station where some sixty young men started a demonstration against the elections.

The Berlin blockade indirectly was responsible this morning for the death of ten to fifteen Germans in a train wreck on the western borders of Berlin just inside the Russian zone. At six o'clock this morning, an express train carrying passengers into the city was stopped so that police could check documents of the travelers and inspect their luggage so as to confiscate foodstuffs they might be bringing through the blockade. A commuter train which had not been warned of the blockade delay crashed into the rear of the express, demolishing two passenger cars. In addition to the ten to fifteen dead, twenty-five persons are believed to be injured.

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to CBS in New York.

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

December 4, 1948

The stage is all set for tomorrow's Western Berlin elections. Some 1,400 polling places have been set up in schools, public buildings, pubs, and restaurants. German police have been alerted to full strength in the event that any Communist-led raids on ballot boxes are attempted.

The American, British, and French governments are officially keeping hands off this election—it is a completely German affair. However, the occupation troops will be on a standby basis tomorrow in the event there is any serious outbreak.

For the past two days, Allied inspection teams have been making the rounds of the polling places. Their job is to see that the elections are conducted fairly and freely. They will be on hand tomorrow. Tonight there will be the final political meetings by the Liberal Democrats, the Christian Democrats, and the Social Democrats.

The Communist-controlled press from the Eastern sector of the city this morning came out with the "big lie" tactic in an effort to frustrate the elections. The Russian Army newspaper, Tägliche Rundschau, carries banner headlines that the Western Powers are preparing to leave Berlin in January. Another story says that General Clay is going to be replaced as the American military governor. The inference is that anyone who votes in tomorrow's elections will be deserted by the Western occupation forces, and thus be at the mercy of the Communist-dominated rump government of Berlin which already has threatened reprisals.

Yesterday there was a small riot at a political rally in the British sector. When Socialist candidate Ernst Reuter declared that Berlin would continue to fight, a heckler shouted, "Yes, until we end in a common grave."

Fists started flying, and a number of youths from the Soviet sector were beaten so badly that they needed first aid treatment afterward.

It has been expected that the elevated and subway trains which connect the Eastern and Western parts of Berlin might stop running on election day to make it more difficult for voters to get to the polls.

This happened yesterday to persons riding the trains to the Socialist meeting. The trains failed to stop at the station near the mass meeting and people changed trains, riding back and forth several times until someone got the bright idea of pulling the emergency brake. It led to another fight with the railroad police, but the crowds got to the meeting anyway.

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to CBS in New York.

1946. Report on the Battle of Athens, Tennessee

The Battle of Athens

"Workmen, under the direction of an interim government, replacing windows shot out at the McMinn County jail during a gun battle between GIs and the sheriff and his deputies" (source)

The text below is adapted from two scripts for a report Bill Downs made in August 1946 after visiting Athens, Tennessee in the aftermath of the Battle of Athens. He had been in the area to cover a story in Oak Ridge.

Bill Downs

CBS

August 2, 1946

More than a thousand GIs, ex-servicemen fresh from combat all over the world, today hold control of the town of Athens, Tennessee—a control that they gained only after an all-day election struggle that ended in blockhouse fighting which they learned overseas.

The little Tennessee hill town of about 10,000 persons was quiet when I left there a few hours ago, but lean-jawed farmers in overalls stood grimly before the wrecked jail just looking—and waiting in case trouble broke out anew.

Trouble started with the opening of the polls yesterday. Ballot observers for the GI fusion ticket running against the entrenched McMinn County machine said they were refused their right to watch the polls. The ex-servicemen were jailed. After that, incident piled on incident, climaxed by a bloody five-hour battle when the GIs stormed the county jail in the middle of town where sheriff's deputies had taken the ballot boxes.

Although Athens has quieted, there still is great confusion. I found it impossible to get an accurate check on casualties. Some unconfirmed reports that three men besieged in the jail had been killed have been denied by leaders of the ex-servicemen's group. But it probably is a safe estimate that between 20 and 30 men were injured in yesterday's fighting. Several of these wounded are said to be in a critical condition.

I spent an hour and a half in Athens this afternoon. The crowd that, at dawn this morning, had overturned, wrecked, or burned some 14 automobiles belonging to the sheriff and his deputies, had partially dispersed. The street in front of the jail was blocked by the wreckage of the cars.

And in control of the jailhouse—and incidentally the town—were the ex-soldiers who said "we just got plain tired of being pushed around by a bunch of thugs."

One GI leader said that the entire ex-servicemen's ticket had been voted into office over the machine. The final vote count, according to the GIs, will give them a four-to-one margin.

Incidentally, the ex-servicemen would talk with me only after I had assured them I would use none of their names. No one knows what will be the legal outcome of the Athens, Tennessee incident—and if there are repercussions, they want no one man singled out. "We are in this thing together," they said, "and we are right."

However, technically, right now Athens is a town without law. Mayor Paul Walker was available—whether he left town or not has not been determined. The sheriff has disappeared. Only a couple of city commissioners are around, but they claim they have no authority to act in an executive manner. The chief of police is still behind his desk, but he has only four policemen. The chief, however, assured the GIs that if they behaved themselves, he could manage all right.

The new group of officials do not take office until September first. During that time, presumably the newly elected GI executive body for McMinn County will act in an ex officio capacity.

The ex-servicemen I talked with in Athens today were neither "toughies" nor irresponsible kids. For the most part they are veterans between 20 and 35 years of age—with the stamp of combat in their eyes. Many of them had been up for two days and nights, and had the familiar fatigue marks on their faces that were so familiar during the Normandy breakthrough days and the Battle of the Bulge. They realize they have taken a serious step. But they are willing to stand by their action as a right of any American to guarantee his vote.

"You don't know," they told me. "It was a dictatorship down here. While we were overseas the local machine politicians got such a hold on the people that elections were a farce. They even warned us not to vote—that no matter what happened, they would win. Until we came back from overseas, people were afraid to run against the machine. But we showed them that we weren't. The results of the election show that the people are on our side."

That is the way these ex-GIs are talking, Bob. And they mean business.

1948. Berlin's Newspaper Propaganda Wars

Cynicism in Occupied Germany

East German VoPo patrols Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall, October 1, 1962 (source)

Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

July 20, 1948

A report has come into my hands this morning of a confidential meeting of East Berlin editors and newsmen working on Russian-licensed newspapers.

The meeting was called yesterday to give guidance to the people who publish the pro-Communist newspapers as to the current Kremlin policy on Germany. It provides an interesting insight to the workings of the Communists in the current East-West struggle for the country.

The main speaker at the meeting was Rudolf Herrnstadt, editor-in-chief of the Communist paper Neueus Deutschland. Herrnstadt told the East zone newsmen that the Soviet military government is not interested at the present time in increasing political tension in Berlin—to take it easy for the time being. Herrnstadt also said that Russian policy is to avoid any situation that might precipitate a war—that the first objective of the USSR today is to rebuild her own territories destroyed in the last war.

At the present time, he said Soviet scientists are intensifying their work to overtake discoveries of the Capitalist countries—presumably a reference to the atomic bomb.

According to the Communist editor, the Russian technicians already have developed an air force that can match anything in the world.

At this point, Herrnstadt had to insert some propaganda. The reason the Russian air force is so good, he said, is not only its technical superiority, but also the fact that Soviet fliers are all heroes. Russian airmen, he concluded, will win through because they fight with patriotism in their hearts, whereas American airmen, like those flying the airlift, think only of the high salaries they make.

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

August 27, 1948

The struggle between East and West in the four-power city of Berlin has resolved itself into a "weekend war of words." Western sector newspapers this morning warn Berliners in the non-Communist part of the city not to take West Marks or Western publications into the Russian section of town today. They claim to have been tipped off that the Communist People's Police are planning a series of arrests, searches, and raids in an attempt to stamp out the distribution of pamphlets and the painting of signs on buildings which have been embarrassing to the Soviet-sponsored regime of East Berlin.

In the Russian headquarters town of Potsdam just west of Berlin, police discovered a suitcase left in a railway station which contained 380 pamphlets headlined "Is Tito a Traitor?"

The undercover anti-Communist propaganda campaign in East Berlin is not considered by authorities here to be of any great moment. There is most activity during the weekends because this is the time that Berliners cross sector boundaries to get to lakes and resorts and visit friends and relatives. So far none of the big painted "F's"—standing for freedom—have been found in the American, British, or French sectors—only in the Russian.

Reports continue to come in that Russian authorities are organizing German units to send to the Yugoslav-Hungarian border for possible action against the recalcitrant Tito. At the Helmstedt zonal crossing point in the British zone, twenty young Germans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one are said to have deserted the Communist-led police for fear of being shipped to Yugoslavia.

A major test of German intentions and responsibility is in the making in Bavaria today. The military government licensing system for newspapers has been replaced by the German press law, and now an American official reveals that a wealthy group of former Nazis backed by huge capital are setting out to gain control of the German press by driving the Western-licensed newspapers out of business. 106 new newspapers are expected to start within the next few weeks in Bavaria alone, which according to the official will revive "chauvinism, rabble-rousing, antisemitism, and anti-Americanism."

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

September 21, 1948

Two Communist-controlled Berlin newspapers, Tägliche Rundschau and the Berliner Zeitung, demand in front page editorials that all foreign occupation troops withdraw from Germany.

This appears to be a new and important propaganda line from Moscow, and it may be the first indication of a significant change in Russian foreign policy.

Tägliche Rundschau, the most virulent of the Russian-licensed publications attacking America, headlined the story of the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Korea, and in an accompanying editorial teed off on American occupation policy, saying that the Red Army came as a liberator for the German people while the United States troops came merely as instruments of colonial oppression. Other East zone newspapers followed suit.

The Communist propaganda line has long been attacking American foreign policy as being a twentieth century version of British imperialism, but this is the first time that their argument has been used to demand total withdrawal of troops from occupied Germany.

Diplomats here in Berlin this morning are waiting to see whether the new Communist propaganda line is more than a trial balloon or just another bid for the good will of the Germans. Some see the surprise withdrawal from Korea and the demand for withdrawal from Germany as further evidence of Russian isolationism—of further evidence of Soviet fear of war. Thus, by proposing withdrawal of troops at the only two spots where the East and the West have common military borders, the likelihood of incidents will be reduced, and the struggle between Communism and Democracy can be pursued politically without the presence of arms.

This demand, coming as it does on the opening of the United Nations, is most certainly the most interesting diplomatic development in many months.

You remember that, at the Warsaw meeting of the Cominform—the new organization of world Communism—a resolution was adopted demanding complete withdrawal of troops from occupied territories. Now, perhaps, that resolution is being implemented.

In any event, and whatever meaning this new propaganda line might have, it does appear that the Communists in Europe prefer to fight their battle at this moment with words rather than bullets.

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to CBS in New York.

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

September 22, 1948

The first snow of the critical winter now approaching fell in the Harz mountains last night—an event of great importance for Germans.

However, this first snowfall, for all of its chilly significance, isn't receiving much attention here in Berlin. The people, the press, and most of all, we who are here as conquerors, look to Paris and the United Nations for the next move in the international struggle in which the world finds itself.

I must admit that I have found very little here that gives much hope for the future. One of the things you absorb when coming to this country is a peculiar cynicism. The Germans have found it after years of dealing with the Nazis. The Russians foster it through their contradictory propaganda. And the Americans, British, and French contract this cynicism through just living in its atmosphere.

For what it's worth, the Communist-controlled newspapers are saying that if the Berlin and German problem is placed before the United Nations it will only make matters worse. The Russian-licensed newspapers here maintain that the German question is not one for the UN but for the foreign ministers. About the only ray of hope in this Communist-sponsored comment is that they point out that the Moscow talks have not ended but have only been recessed.

But the cynicism I spoke of is best expressed by the British-licensed newspaper the Social Democrat. It says that the fact the Deputy Foreign Minister Vyshinsky is representing the Soviet Union instead of Molotov is proof that the Russians will oppose bringing the Berlin blockade before the UN. The paper says that the UN is doomed to failure because of the single fact that there can never be negotiation and agreement between totalitarianism and Democracy. And finally the Social Democrat editorial observes: "What can happen in Paris, then? Well, if no miracle occurs...nothing."

But perhaps the best illustration of the 1948 brand of German cynicism is in the caption of a cartoon which appeared last week. One German asks another: "Who's going to win the third world war?" The other German replies: "Who knows? They haven't even decided on who won the second."

This is Bill Downs in Berlin. Now back to CBS in New York.