course, was that the tender testicles of the West had become the loose sphincter of the East—an opening through which thousands of East Germans were fleeing every year. The Berlin Wall that went up in 1961 to stanch the flow was in many ways as cruel as the Berlin Blockade, but it also turned out to be just as double-edged, since it purchased “security” at the price of continued economic stagnation and political oppression.
In 1951, Mayor Reuter of West Berlin, which was now a separate political entity and part of the West German state, dedicated a monument in front of Tempelhof Airport to commemorate the airlift of 1948–49. The structure consisted of a twenty-meter-high concrete slab with three prongs arching toward the West, symbolic of the air corridors into the city. Its base was inscribed with the names of the airmen who died in the lift. Looking at the monument now, in the wake of German reunification, one might propose that it stands not only for the enduring ties between Berlin and the West, but also for an act of faith in a perilous time that helped to make German unity possible fifty years later.
Incident at Lang Fang
EUGENE B. SLEDGE
When World War II came to its abrupt atomic end in the summer of 1945, few paid much attention to Mao Tse-tung and his Chinese Communists. They seemed, as John Lewis Gaddis has written, “little more than an obscure group of revolutionaries who engaged in long marches, lived in caves, and lectured one another on their own peculiar understanding of Marxist-Leninism.” Even Stalin was inclined to put them down then, calling the Chinese Communists “Margarine Marxists,” substitutes for the real thing. Though Mao's enclaves occupied considerable territory, mainly in North China, they were disconnected and concentrated mostly in rural areas, lacking significant urban bases. Mao's armed forces were small, numbering no more than three hundred thousand, many of whom belonged to scattered guerrilla bands. With the surrender of the Japanese, the Communists saw a chance to consolidate many of these enclaves. They also began to push into Manchuria, where, after their August 1945 blitzkrieg, the Soviets were busy stripping factories of heavy machinery and herding off thousands of Japanese prisoners to work in Siberia as slave laborers. At this point, curiously, the Soviets had friendlier dealings with Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist government than with Mao's Communists. No one yet contemplated a Far Eastern Iron Curtain.
But even as the Communists were racing to establish themselves in Manchuria, with its rich deposits of coal and iron, so were the Nationalists. They were at the same time bent on taking over as much of North China as possible, and established themselves in major cities such as Beijing and Tientsin. The Communists resisted their drive north, which (in the words of the French military historian Lionel Max Chassin) “producedclashes … and, as the situation became more confused, each side accused the other of provoking civil war.” Meanwhile, that fall Chiang asked for American help, ostensibly to aid in the disarming and repatriation of Japanese troops, who numbered upward of two million men. By the middle of October 1945, in an operation largely forgotten today, fifty-three thousand U.S. Marines had landed in China. Though the Americans were eager to accommodate their wartime ally, the poor fighting qualities of Nationalist troops and the entrenched corruption of the government dismayed them. The U.S. was determined to persuade Chiang to include the Communists in a ruling coalition. But strict neutrality was out of the question. The presence of American troops blocked the Communist advance and furthered Chiang's grand Manchurian design. With the help of the U.S. Tenth Air Force, he was able to airlift three entire armies north. The Communists responded angrily, attacking American troops, who were notably reluctant to become involved in combat. “Too many
In 1951, Mayor Reuter of West Berlin, which was now a separate political entity and part of the West German state, dedicated a monument in front of Tempelhof Airport to commemorate the airlift of 1948–49. The structure consisted of a twenty-meter-high concrete slab with three prongs arching toward the West, symbolic of the air corridors into the city. Its base was inscribed with the names of the airmen who died in the lift. Looking at the monument now, in the wake of German reunification, one might propose that it stands not only for the enduring ties between Berlin and the West, but also for an act of faith in a perilous time that helped to make German unity possible fifty years later.
Incident at Lang Fang
EUGENE B. SLEDGE
When World War II came to its abrupt atomic end in the summer of 1945, few paid much attention to Mao Tse-tung and his Chinese Communists. They seemed, as John Lewis Gaddis has written, “little more than an obscure group of revolutionaries who engaged in long marches, lived in caves, and lectured one another on their own peculiar understanding of Marxist-Leninism.” Even Stalin was inclined to put them down then, calling the Chinese Communists “Margarine Marxists,” substitutes for the real thing. Though Mao's enclaves occupied considerable territory, mainly in North China, they were disconnected and concentrated mostly in rural areas, lacking significant urban bases. Mao's armed forces were small, numbering no more than three hundred thousand, many of whom belonged to scattered guerrilla bands. With the surrender of the Japanese, the Communists saw a chance to consolidate many of these enclaves. They also began to push into Manchuria, where, after their August 1945 blitzkrieg, the Soviets were busy stripping factories of heavy machinery and herding off thousands of Japanese prisoners to work in Siberia as slave laborers. At this point, curiously, the Soviets had friendlier dealings with Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist government than with Mao's Communists. No one yet contemplated a Far Eastern Iron Curtain.
But even as the Communists were racing to establish themselves in Manchuria, with its rich deposits of coal and iron, so were the Nationalists. They were at the same time bent on taking over as much of North China as possible, and established themselves in major cities such as Beijing and Tientsin. The Communists resisted their drive north, which (in the words of the French military historian Lionel Max Chassin) “producedclashes … and, as the situation became more confused, each side accused the other of provoking civil war.” Meanwhile, that fall Chiang asked for American help, ostensibly to aid in the disarming and repatriation of Japanese troops, who numbered upward of two million men. By the middle of October 1945, in an operation largely forgotten today, fifty-three thousand U.S. Marines had landed in China. Though the Americans were eager to accommodate their wartime ally, the poor fighting qualities of Nationalist troops and the entrenched corruption of the government dismayed them. The U.S. was determined to persuade Chiang to include the Communists in a ruling coalition. But strict neutrality was out of the question. The presence of American troops blocked the Communist advance and furthered Chiang's grand Manchurian design. With the help of the U.S. Tenth Air Force, he was able to airlift three entire armies north. The Communists responded angrily, attacking American troops, who were notably reluctant to become involved in combat. “Too many
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