1968. North Korea and the Threat of World War III

Crisis in North Korea

From ABC Evening News with Bob Young, January 25, 1968:

Bill Downs

ABC Washington

January 25, 1968

BOB YOUNG: The Pentagon says that today's call-up is a precautionary measure to strengthen our forces. The 14,000-odd reservists is only a drop in the bucket compared to the pool of reservists that could be activated. But with the military beef-up, the agonizing search for a diplomatic solution to the crisis continues, as Frank Reynolds has noted. But if that diplomacy fails, what would our options be? What military action is being considered? ABC's Bill Downs reports.

BILL DOWNS: If it's left up to the military to force release of the USS Pueblo and her crew, the options are few and highly dangerous. The Pueblo probably is in this dock area of Wonsan, a port said to be defended with 16-inch guns set in concrete; the bay protected by a system of MiG fighter bases said to have the heaviest concentration of Russian SAM antiaircraft missiles outside of Hanoi.

The balance of military power between North and South Korea is pretty even. The communist Korean armed forces total some 370,000 men. The North Korean air force has about 500 Russian-built planes, including some of the latest MiG-21 jet fighters. The South Korean armed forces total 530,000 men. Its air force of American-built planes totals 200. But alongside the Republic's troops on the 17th parallel are two US infantry divisions—all told, some 55,000 Americans there.

Well, since the Pueblo's capture, the Air Force reportedly has sent at least two squadrons of American fighter bombers to South Korea. And somewhere off North Korea in the Sea of Japan, the nuclear-powered carrier USS Enterprise is patrolling with a task force of escorts. Communist Korea already is within range of the Enterprise's planes.

So what are the options? One is a blockade of the port of Wonsan, seeding the bay with sonar, pressure, acoustic, and other new mines. But a blockade would also trap the USS Pueblo.

An amphibious landing or raid to free the Pueblo's crew would take months to prepare and might not come off.

There also has been talk of a reprisal air raid on a North Korean target, but the Vietnam experience argues against this.

It would be a fairly simple operation to seize North Korean shipping that use the supply routes to Haiphong, but the communists are unimpressed by hostages.

And finally, there is the so-called unthinkable option: America's nuclear weapons. Washington's Democratic Senator Henry Jackson said today that if ground fighting breaks out again on the Korean peninsula, then the United States would be forced to use tactical nuclear weapons, because American GIs cannot be mobilized quickly enough to save the situation.

So, all the military options carry built in perils including the ultimate danger of World War III.

This is Bill Downs in Washington.

1949. Gerhart Eisler Criticizes the United States

Gerhart Eisler Gives a Press Conference After Fleeing the United States

Communist politician Gerhart Eisler in 1949 (Getty)

Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

June 3, 1949

Gerhart Eisler, the communist who refused to answer a $25,000 question in an American court, talked a couple of hours ago with reporters, including us minions of the capitalistic world. But he still refuses to reveal exactly how or why he fled from the United States and deserted his sympathizers who had put up his bail.

Eisler traveled from Prague through Dresden and Leipzig to Berlin. In all these places he is the number one exhibit in a kind of ideological sideshow as the man who outwitted the FBI.

Today's news conference was held in the central headquarters of the communist-dominated Socialist Unity Party, and the bald, moon-faced Marxist answered questions glibly. He was dressed in a gray suit, khaki shirt, and red necktie.

The communist press was out in full force. The first question they asked was a setup: "Do you hate America?"

Eisler replied that he had no hate for the American people, but, just as he hated Hitler, he hated American reactionaries. The German communist went on to say that there are 200,000 Americans under forced labor in prisons, and that millions of Americans, including Negroes, are prisoners in the United States.

Eisler said that the majority of the American people did not want a war, only the capitalists and imperialists. In this respect, Eisler said that the economic crisis in America had already begun, and that the recent decline in the stock market was a sign of an approaching depression. The only way the capitalists can prevent this crisis, he declared, is by the production of armaments and the preparation for war as the only means to save capitalism. The Catholic Church is supporting this war policy, Eisler charged.

Eisler said that, in fleeing from the United States, he had simply walked onto a ship—an act that had infuriated the FBI. "Members of the FBI are not super-men," he said.

In a half hour from now, all four of the Berlin military commanders will hold a meeting to discuss the city's elevated rail strike. Yesterday a referendum on continuing the strike was held by the anti-Communist union. More than 96 percent of the 14,000 strikers voted to continue the walkout. Only four hundred were against it.

Today's meeting will be the first time the Russian commander has participated in such a gathering since last June 16th.

"London Fights the Robots" by Ernest Hemingway

London Fights the Robots

Ernest Hemingway at the Dorchester Hotel in London in 1944 (source)

From Collier's magazine, August 19, 1944, pp. 17, 80-81. (See Hemingway's other World War II essays here.)

LONDON FIGHTS THE ROBOTS

BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY

RADIOED FROM LONDON

Collier's correspondent flies against the French rocket coast and, after a struggle with the censor, still manages to give us a vivid picture of the new R.A.F. plane fighting Hitler's pilotless bombs.

The Tempest is a great, gaunt airplane. It is the fastest pursuit job in the world and is as tough as a mule. It has been reported with a speed of 400 and should dive way ahead of its own noise. Where we were living, its job was to intercept the pilotless planes and shoot them down over the sea or in the open country as they came in on their sputtering roar toward London.

The squadron flew from four o'clock in the morning until midnight. There were always pilots sitting ready in the cockpits to take off when the Very pistol signaled, and there were always a number of planes on permanent patrol in the air. The fastest time I clocked a plane as airborne, from the sound of the pop of the flare pistol that would arc a twin flare over the dispersal area from the door of the Intelligence hut, was fifty-seven seconds.

As the flare popped, you would hear the dry bark of the starting cartridge and the rising scream of the motor, and these hungry, big, long-legged birds would lurch, bounce, and scream off with the noise of two hundred circular saws hitting a mahogany log dead on the nose. They took off downwind, crosswind, any way the weather lay, and grabbed a piece of the sky lurched up into it with the long, high legs folding up under them.

You love a lot of things if you live around them, but there isn't any woman and there isn't any horse, nor any before nor any after, that is as lovely as a great airplane, and men who love them are faithful to them even though they leave them for others. A man has only one virginity to lose in fighters, and if it is a lovely plane he loses it to, there his heart will always be.

Mustang is a tough, good name for a bad, tough, husky, angry plane that could have been friends with Harry Greb if Greb had an engine instead of a heart. Tempest is a sissy name out of Shakespeare, who is a great man anywhere, but they have put it onto an airplane that is sort of like a cross between Man o' War and Tallulah Bankhead in the best year either of them ever had. They were good years, too, and many a man has been taken by the bookies because he looked at a colt that had the swelling Big Red's neck had and not any of the rest of it. And there have been many husky voices since, but none that carried good across the Western ocean.

So now we have this squadron of Tempests. They were running out of terms for meteorological disturbances when they named that one. And all day long they shoot down this nameless weapon, day in and day out. The squadron leader is a fine man, tall, small-spoken the way a leopard is, with the light brown circles under his eyes and the odd purple complexion of a man whose face has been burned away, and he told the story of his exploit to me very quietly and truthfully, standing by the wooden table in the pilots' mess.

He knew it was true and I knew it was true and he was very precise in remembering exactly how it had been, because it was one of the first pilotless aircraft he had shot down, and he was very exact in details. He did not like to say anything personal but it was evidently all right to speak well of the plane. Then he told me about the other sort of shooting down. If you do not explode them in the air, you crash them.

"It is a sort of giant bubble of blast that rises from them," he said. "Bubble" has been quite a venturesome word to use, and he took confidence from it and tried a further word. "It is rather like a huge blossoming of air rising."

We were both embarrassed by this articulateness, and as my mind watched the giant bubble blossoming, all tension was taken away by an American flying in the same squadron, who said, "I dropped one on a greenhouse, and the glass rose straight up a million feet. What am I going to say to the guy who owns that greenhouse when we go into the pub tonight?"

"You can't just say exactly where you'll shoot them down," the squadron leader said, standing there, speaking shyly, patiently, and with strange eagerness, from behind the purple mask he would always wear now for a face. "They go very fast you know."

The Mark of Authority

The wing commander came in, angry, happy. He was short, with a lot of style and a tough, bad tongue. He was twenty-six, I found out later. I had seen him get out of an airplane before I knew he was the wing commander. It did not show then, nor did it show now when he talked. The only way you knew he was the wing commander was the way the other pilots said "Sir." They said "Sir" to the two squadron leaders, one of whom was a tough Belgian like a six-day bicycle racer, and the other was the shy, fine man who lived behind the destroyed face. But they gave a slightly different "Sir" to the wing commander, and the wing commander returned no change from it at all. Nor did he notice it when he pocketed it.

Censorship, in war, is a very necessary thing. It is especially necessary about aircraft because, until a new aircraft has fallen into enemy hands, no information as to the exact speeds, dimensions, characteristics or armament should be written, since all of that furnishes information the enemy wants and needs.

It is appearance, characteristics and performance that make a man love an airplane, and they, told truly, are what put the emotion into an article about one. They are all out of this article now. I hope the enemy never shoots down a Tempest, that the Tempest will never be released from the secret list, and that all I know and care about them can never be published until after the war.

All information about tactics employed in the shooting down of pilotless aircraft is out, too, along with all the conversation that would let you know how the types feel that do the shooting down. Because you cannot have the conversation without conveying the tactics. So there isn't much of this airplane now, except a guy loving an airplane.

It is written in a tough language because this was, in the main, a tough-speaking outfit. The only exception was the squadron leader, fragments of whose conversation are given. Some outfits in the R.A.F. are very rough spoken, and some speak as gently and correctly as in the film, Target for Tonight. I like ("like" is a very mild term to employ for the emotion felt) both kinds, and sometime, if it is ever possible to write anything interesting that the censor can conscientiously pass, I would like to try to show both kinds. In the meantime you get this.

Writing under censorship is necessary and proper in time of war, and we all censor out ourselves everything we think might be of any possible interest to the enemy. But in writing anything about the air on the basis of trying to include color, detail and emotion, there is a certain analogy to sports writing.

It is sort of as though in the old days you had found Harry Greb having a breakfast of double orders of ham and eggs and hashed brown potatoes in bed at nine o'clock in the morning on the day he was to fight Mickey Walker. Greb, placed on the scales, weighed exactly 12 pounds over the 162 he was to make at two o'clock that afternoon. Now suppose you had seen the weight rubbed and pounded off of him and got rid of by several other means, and him carried on the scales too weak to walk and almost too weak to curse you.

Then suppose you had seen the meal he ate and seen him enter the ring weighing exactly the same weight he had left bed with that morning. Then suppose you had seen the great, crowding, smashing, take it, come in again, thumbing, butting, mean, nasty, bloody, lovely fight he made, and you had to sum up the whole business on these terms: One of our fighters named Greb whose characteristics have not been revealed was reported to have encountered an M. Walker last night. Further details will be released in due course.

If this ever seems a screwy story, remember that through the sky at all times are passing pilotless aircraft which look, in flight, rather like an ugly metal dart with a white-hot bunghole, travel at speed up to 400 miles an hour, carry, as of this writing, 2,200 pounds of explosive in their noses, make a noise like a glorified motorcycle and, at this moment, are passing overhead the place where this is written.

One of my most esteemed colleagues told me in New York that he was not returning to the European theater because anything he might write would merely be a repetition of what he had already written. At this point I am authorized to state to my most esteemed colleague that the danger of repetition in a story is one of the more negligible hazards that his old co-workers are at present confronted with.

Now if you are following this piece closely—which I am not, due to a certain amount of windowpane trouble—we should be somewhere in southern England where a group of Tempest pilots have in seven days shot down their share of pilotless aircraft. Lots of people call this weapon the doodlebug, the robot bomb, the buzz bomb and other names hatched in the brains of the keener Fleet Street types, but so far nobody I have ever known who has fought him has referred to Joe Louis as Toots. So we will continue to refer to this weapon as the pilotless aircraft in this release from your pilotless-aircraft editor, and you can call it any of those quaint or coy names you wish, but only when you are alone.

The day before your pilotless-aircraft editor started studying the interception angle, he or I (I guess it is I, although sometimes it doesn't seem the right man in the right place and I have thought some of leaving the whole thing and going back to writing books in stiff covers), went out in one of forty-eight Mitchell bombers—that is, eight boxes of six bombers each—to bomb one of the sites from which the pilotless aircraft are launched.

These sites can be readily identified by the merest tyro by the quantity of old Mitchell bombers which are strewed around them and by the fact that, when you get close to them, large, black circular rings of smoke appear alongside of the vehicle you are riding in. These circular black rings of smoke are called flak, and this flak is the author of that old piece of understatement about two of our aircraft failed to return.

Sky View of the Target

Well, we (that is Wing Commander Lynn, who is nice company in an airplane and who has exactly the same voice on the intercom when Kees, the bombardier, has her held in on the run and is saying, "Bombing—Bombing—Bombing—Bombing—" as though you were not on the last mile) bombed this site with proverbial pin-point accuracy. I had a nice look at the site which appeared to be a gigantic concrete construction lying on its side or its belly (depending on whether you saw it just before the run or just after it) in a woods completely surrounded by bomb craters. There were two small clouds that didn't look lonely the way clouds were in "I wandered lonely as a cloud."

There were many rings of black smoke in a line coming right straight alongside of us inside the box between us where the other Mitchell on our right was going along in the air, looking just like a picture of a Mitchell in an advertisement by the manufacturers. Then, with the smoke rings forming along her side, the belly of this kite—looking just like in moving pictures—opened, pushing out against the air, and the bombs all dropped out sideways as if she were having eight long metal kittens in a hurry.

We all were doing this, although you could not see what anybody did except this one. Then we all went home just as fast as we could go home, and that is bombing. Unlike a lot of other things, the best part is afterward. It isn't so much how much you learn. It is the wonderful people you meet.

Your pilotless-aircraft editor never went to college (here we call it a university), so now he is going to the R.A.F. instead, and the main subject he is studying is trying to understand English on the radio telephone. Face to face with an Englishman, I can understand almost everything he says. I can speak, read and write Canadian clearly and have a smattering of Scottish and a few words of New Zealand. I can understand enough Australian to draw cards and order drinks and to shove my way into a bar if it is crowded. South African I dominate as a spoken tongue almost as well as I do Basque, but English over the RT is just a glorious mystery.

Close up, over the intercom of a bomber, I get most of it. When you press the button on the stick, that isolates conversation to what is said in the cockpit, so you have those long, intimate chats that go, "Wonder who that b— is that's talking," and you answer, "Don't know. Must be the same Jerry that on the night of D-Day kept saying 'Turn back. Turn back. The operation has been canceled!'"

"Wonder how he gets on our wave length?"

You shrug your shoulders and take your thumb off the button. That close conversation I get all right, but when real Englishmen speaking English start talking to one another between one kite and another kite and back and forth from control, I just study it hard like homework, as if you had brought home somebody's calculus book and were still on plane geometry.

Actually, I cannot understand English very well yet on the ordinary telephone, so, having been indoctrinated in the Good Neighbor policy, I always say, "Yes." and just make them repeat the time the car will be around in the morning to take us to whatever field we will be starting from.

How Not to Avoid Danger

This accounts for many of the curious sorties your pilotless-aircraft correspondent goes on. He is not a man who has a perpetual urge to seek peril in the sky or to defy the laws of gravity; he is simply a man who, not understanding very well the nature of the propositions offered over the telephone due to faulty earwork, constantly finds himself involved in the destruction of these monsters in their hellish lairs or in attempts at interception in that fine, 400-mile-an-hour airplane, the Mosquito.

At present, your pilotless-aircraft editor has stopped all telephone calls of any description in order to attempt to bring the story up to date before someone proposes something so startling and so generous that your editor in the nature of an operation that he would fail in his duties to this great book to have recorded what has happened up to this time. However, before all calls were stopped, two or three rather lovely propositions were received, and I understand that there is a feeling freely expressed in some quarters that, "Ernie is yellow. With a chance to go on absolutely wizard ops, he is up in his room at that pub, doing what do you think?"

"What?" in a horrified tone.

"Writing."

"My God! The old boy's had it!"

THE END

1949. The Occupation Powers in Berlin Clash Over Strike

The Berlin Rail Workers' Strike Ends

"Berlin 1949: Preparing a banner over the road blocks which are to be removed from the Russian-American sector boundary. The banner, to mark the imminent end of the Berlin blockade, reads, 'The Sector of Freedom welcomes the Fighters for Freedom and Right'" (source)

Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

June 18, 1949

I was awakened early this morning by an argument between a group of Germans in front of my house. Berliners, being what they are, seem to always conduct their disputes at the top of their voices.

Outside was stalled a big truck in which about twenty-five people were standing. It was one of the auxiliary freight trucks which the city government has put into service to carry passengers while the elevated rail system is shut down by the strike. There are scores of these trucks bumping through the western sectors of Berlin, usually with a step ladder hanging on the back so the people can clamber in and out.

When this particular truck stalled in front of the house this morning, it was too much for one man who started complaining about the rail strike. It so happened that one of the strikers was also in the crowd, and as the truck drew away, the different factions were still shouting at one another.

This dispute over the Berlin railroad strike now has repercussions reaching from Moscow to Washington. The walkout of 14,000 anti-Communist union members must be settled before rail traffic into the city can be resumed; before Berlin is completely un-blockaded. The whole situation has been tossed into the laps of the Big Four foreign ministers.

In this sense, here in Berlin the Cold War between East and West has become basically a labor dispute, the kind of dispute we in America settle through negotiation and concession month after month.

It was exactly a month ago today that the independent UGO (Unabhängige Gewerkschaftsopposition [independent trade union opposition]) workers walked out. Violence in the first two weeks of the strike cost two lives, and approximately a thousand persons were injured.

The official attitude of all four of the occupation powers is that it is purely a German affair, although we claim the Russians, who control the elevated railroad, could settle it if they so wanted. The Soviet military government accuses us of backing the strikers and prolonging the walkout.

However, from the point of view of the German rail workers who have shut down the elevated, this is a dispute between them and the pro-Communist management. In other words, 14,000 Berlin railroad men are stacking their cause up against the policies of the Soviet Union. It is not the most comfortable position in the world considering that they are staging this strike one hundred miles inside the Soviet zone.

The issues here were originally the union's demands that rail workers who live and work in West Berlin get their pay in West marks, but today the issue is much more basic. As a matter of fact, it is the issue over which the entire Cold War is being fought: the concept of individual freedom as it is practiced by democracy and communism.

In the early days of the Berlin strike when the rioting was going on, Paul Markgraf, chief of the East Berlin police, announced that any striker caught hampering the work of the elevated railroad or damaging its property would be liable to arrest and sentence—which could include the death sentence. However, the Berlin trade unionist doesn't scare easily, and the strikers used their own methods to shut down the elevated. They removed sections of track and, where they could, took away elements that prevented operation of the electric control towers. However, no permanent damage has been done.

But the anti-Communist strikers have not forgotten the threat from the Communist side of the town.

The Russian-directed management made an important concession last week when it offered to pay sixty percent of the strikers' wages in West marks. However, the directorate made the offer through the Communist-controlled labor union of East Berlin. There was no recognition of the independent union, a fact that aroused much suspicion. Incidentally, the independent UGO union contains two thirds of the elevated rail workers.

Then General Frank Howley, American military commandant, stepped in in an attempt to bring about a compromise settlement. He went to the West Berlin city government. It agreed to provide another fifteen percent of West mark wages, making a total of seventy-five percent in all. Next, Howley went to the Soviet transport chief, General Kvashnin, and got his verbal assurance that there would be no reprisals against the strikers.

Following this, a union meeting was called. In a letter to the strikers, Howley said he thought the compromise offer was reasonable. Oberbürgermeister Ernst Reuter urged the men to accept and go back to work. Even the union leaders agreed. But there was strenuous opposition from the rank and file.

"How do we know that we won't be thrown into a Communist jail the minute we climb back on the trains and get into the Russian sector of the city?" Howley's letter reassured them of Kvashnin's promise.

The UGO leadership then arranged to hold a referendum. They even specified that seventy-five percent of the membership would have to oppose going back to work in order to continue the strike.

But on Tuesday, the morning the strikers were to make their decision, the Communist press and radio did a surprising and puzzling thing. They said that the Soviet military government had given no assurances to Howley or anyone else that reprisals would not be taken.

After that, the result was obvious. The skeptical strikers voted, not seventy-five percent, but eighty-five percent to continue their walkout.

This was the last of a good many "last straws." General Howley, who failed to get the Russian guarantee in writing, naturally shouted "double-cross."

As a labor dispute, this is the strangest one that I have ever covered. The union, representing the majority of the workers involved, cannot get recognition. The management, which is the Soviet transportation authorities, have acted in exceedingly bad faith by first giving and then withdrawing assurances that would have settled the strike.

But let's face it. This is more than a labor dispute. The independent trade union, UGO, is one of the main bastions of opposition to the Communists in Berlin. Break the union, and the boys from the east side of the town would have achieved a major step in gaining complete control of this city.

The next two days will see whether the foreign ministers can reach any kind of agreement on the Berlin crisis and on restoring East-West trade in this divided country.

But the people of Berlin do not expect the Americans, the British, or the French to get any better treatment than that given to anti-Communist strikers here.

The fact is that, despite Russian assurances that the blockade of Berlin would be lifted last May 12, the main artery of transport—the railroad traffic—is halted. The Anglo-American airlift continues to be the main source of supply to this city.

The Soviet military government of Berlin cannot technically be blamed for the blockade of rail traffic. But the Russians here most certainly can be charged with a great lack of interest in settling the strike that is causing the partial blockade—an official disinterest that adds up to bad faith on their former promise to lift the economic siege of Berlin.

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

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

June 22, 1949

The Soviet military government has reaffirmed its desire to see an end to the Berlin elevated railway strike, but this morning the striking anti-Communist union again declined to go back to work until the Russians order recognition of their independent union and give definite assurance in writing that there will be no reprisals against their membership.

The Russian statement came last night in a letter from General Kvashnin, Soviet transportation chief, to the three Western commandants. Kvashnin confirmed a conversation he had earlier with America's General Howley, saying that the Russian-controlled rail management will not take any sanctions against the strikers regardless of the union to which they belong. He added that the Soviet desire to end the strike is proved by the compromise offer to pay sixty percent of the strikers' wages in West marks.

In light of this latest Russian statement, the executive board of the striking union held an extraordinary meeting this morning. After two hours of discussion, the union leaders decided that the letter from Kvashnin was not enough for them to call off the strike. They demanded again that the railroad management deal with the strikers themselves—which would mean recognition of the union. The Russian-controlled directorate refuses to do this because the independent union is anti-Communist.

The Kvashnin letter is important for one reason. It was dated June 20—Monday, the day the Paris foreign ministers' conference ended. The letter is extremely conciliatory—a great departure from the other communications the Western commandants have exchanged with the Russians concerning the Berlin strike. These communications were brusque and sometimes downright rude.

In other words, General Kvashnin's letter may be the beginning of a new Soviet policy of four-power cooperation in Berlin. If it is, then we will see now the first fruits of the foreign ministers' conference. But fingers are still crossed here.

Lawrence Wilkinson, economic adviser for the American military government, says he expects to begin four-power conferences on trade and transportation this week, but that no definite date has been set.

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

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

June 24, 1949

Everybody wants to end the Berlin elevated strike this morning, but no one knows how to do it.

The 14,00 anti-Communist rail workers, who are tying up railroad traffic into this city, find themselves in the position of a man who has a tiger by the tail. They can't let go.

The independent rail union, which called the walkout five weeks ago today, agreed to send three thousand of its members back to work in order to break the log jam of freight trains tied up on the outskirts of Berlin. This emergency service would only allow rail traffic to move between the Western zones and Berlin. The actual strike of the elevated line would remain in force.

However, the Russians say they will not accept any trains moved by the union's emergency services; that this is an infringement of management rights which they control. The British also condemn the emergency service as unworkable, although the British commander this morning rescinded yesterday's order barring all strikers from railroad property. The independent union is now allowed in the yards and roundhouses to repair any strike damage in preparation for traffic.

So the situation this morning is that part of the strikers are back at work getting Berlin elevated ready for traffic under the emergency service program. However, it is unlikely that any trains will move because the Russians have to give clearance to any trains going through their zone, and they disapprove of the plan.

The main strike issue now is recognition of the anti-Communist union, which the Russians refuse to do, and the question of security of the strikers if they return to work.

General Pavel Kvashnin, head of the Soviet transportation section here, put in writing in a letter to the Western commandants an assurance that no reprisals would be taken.

But the strikers' attitude is best summed up this morning by Franz Neumann, head of Berlin's Social Democratic Party. "The strike would be ended," Neumann declared, "if the strikers were convinced that the words of all generals are words of honor. However, there are too many honest democrats who have disappeared into concentration camps...and all the words of the Western Allies could not free them."

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

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

June 26, 1949

The Berlin rail strike will end within forty-eight hours.

This is the prediction this morning of Western military government officials and leaders of the striking railroad union.

For the past five hours, delegates of the 14,000 strikers have been in executive session to accept or reject a decision by the American, British, and French commandants that the welfare of Berlin and the compromise work agreement no longer justifies the walkout.

Reports from the union meeting are that there seems to be every likelihood that the men will decide to end this six-week-old strike.

The break in the rail crisis came late yesterday when the three Western commandants emerged with a formula which they deemed fair and meeting the demands of the independent anti-Communist union.

The Western authorities said the men would get their full pay in West marks. The strikers have the assurance of the Russian transport authority that no reprisals would be taken against them.

Thus the Western military governments are ordering that no more unemployment benefits be paid out to the strikers from Tuesday on. The formula, however, did provide for rail workers who feared personal reprisals by the Communist rail management. If these men signed statements that they were quitting the railroad business, and also signed statements that they will not interfere with the operation of the elevated line, then they would continue to be eligible for unemployment benefits and would be assisted in finding new employment in other industries.

The only major demand which the strikers did not achieve in their walkout was recognition of their union by the Russian-controlled management.

Ending of the strike does not mean that the struggle between Eastern and Western Berlin is ended. Rather, it will become intensified.

But if the strikers vote to return to work under the conditions set down by the Western occupation powers, it will be the first fruit of the modus vivendi agreement reached last week in Paris.

The little blockade of Berlin will be ended, and we will be able to slacken operations of our expensive airlift.

However, the success of the new four-power "live and let live" policy in Germany now depends upon the spirit in which this policy is prosecuted by the Russians.

If they order or allow terrorism against the strikers who return to work on the Berlin elevated, then the strike will go on again, and we will be right back where we started.

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

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

June 27, 1949

The trains are scheduled to roll in Berlin at eight o'clock tomorrow morning, thus bringing an end to the 37 day strike and a considerable relieving of East-West tension in this bisected city.

Repair gangs are working this morning to restore the elevated trackage to operational condition. However, the Russian-controlled rail management says that full schedules may be somewhat delayed tomorrow until their own inspectors can go over the elevated route to make sure everything is in shape.

The 14,000 anti-Communist strikers voted to return to work yesterday under the Western Power ultimatum that grants them one hundred percent pay in West marks and guarantees security against reprisals.

The end of the elevated strike means that the so-called "little blockade" of Berlin will be lifted and that rail traffic will once again become the main supply route into this city, replacing airlift deliveries. However, Air Force officials say the aerial supply of the city will continue on a restricted basis until ordered discontinued by the highest officials.

Some forty trains are waiting to be unloaded or stacked up on the outskirts of the city, waiting to be unloaded or stacked up on the outskirts of the city and waiting to be shunted into Berlin rail yards for unloading. Because of this backlog, it is not expected that regular freight schedules will be operated for several days.

More than seventy percent of the striking rail workers are expected to return to their jobs. Those who are most likely to refuse to return to work for fear of Communist reprisals are some 350 engineers of the "brigade trains" which carry reparations from the West deep into the Soviet zone.

However, it must be emphasized that the settlement of the Berlin strike does not mean the end of the Communist struggle to control this city. It is not the end of the Cold War here, but rather the beginning of a new phase of the battle.

The first major Four Power meeting in Berlin in more than a year of blockade crisis is scheduled for the next few days. The deputy military governors of all four occupation powers will sit down to work out economic and trade agreements between the East and West.

So far, the modus vivendi agreement of Paris appears to be working, but the political climate in this city is too uncertain to predict how long the diplomatic calm will last.

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

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Bill Downs

CBS Berlin

June 28, 1949

The international pressure has been taken off Berlin today. In a half hour, the deputy military governors of America, Russia, Britain, and France will hold their first meeting in nine months to again make the governing of the two occupied Germanies a four-power responsibility.

This evening the freight trains will begin arriving with supplies from the West, thus ending the little blockade of Berlin.

Most of the 14,000 striking rail workers are back at work this morning. They reported to their jobs without incident. The Berlin elevated railroad, however, will probably not get its city traffic moving until tomorrow. Inspectors of the Russian-controlled management are now going over all trackage to make sure it is in shape.

Thus the news from Berlin is mostly good this morning.

What has happened under the modus vivendi agreement between the Big Four powers is that the East-West struggle in Germany has been turned back to the Germans, with the interested nations calling the signals from the bench.

The illusion is thus created that the Germans will settle their own fate in the future. In the final analysis, this will be true, but in the coming months it will be Russia which will run the training table in East Germany; and in the West, the democracies will supply the equipment for the continuing struggle for power in Germany.

The grand illusion created by this situation is that, in case there is trouble in Germany, the world will not be plunged into war—that only the Germans will get hurt. But believe me, this is an illusion.

However, the fact remains that in Germany as a whole, and in Berlin in particular, the possibility of an international incident which might lead to open conflict has been greatly narrowed by the "live and let live" agreement between the Big Powers.

Perhaps we are due for a breathing spell in the East-West Cold War. We certainly have one coming.

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