The Candy Bombers by Andrei Cherny (2009)

I read The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour by Andrei Cherny initially because my mother said she'd read it or listened to it on tape and really enjoyed it, and I wanted to read something she'd read so we'd have something to talk about. I'm 58 years old and she's about 20 years older, so the events took place some time in her teens. It narrates the story of the Berlin Air Lift, a key episode in the very early part of the Cold War. It is 1948. WWII had ended 3 years later with the the Western Allies, dominated by the U.S., and the Soviet Union rolling the Nazi empire up from both sides and meeting in the middle of Germany. Germany was divided into 4 sectors to be governed by the U.S., England, France, and the USSR, until such time as it seemed right to give sovereignty back to the Germans. The USSR having fought its way across eastern Europe occupied that whole area and it gradually became apparent they were going to hold onto it indefinitely. The line where the Western allies and the USSR met, crushing Germany was soon christened the "Iron Curtain" by Winston Churchill.

Although the line was to the West of Berlin, due to Berlin's special nature as the capital, it was itself "shared" 4 ways, like a microcosm of Germany itself. By 1948, the Western occupied parts of Germany were well on their way to becoming one new democratic nation. From the Western allies point of view, all four sectors should have been put back together, but that was not going to happen, so the 3 western sectors were on their way to becoming West Berlin, an island in the middle of East Germany, separated from the rest of West Germany by about 100 miles of East German territory.

Given the hostility that was developing between the U.S. and western Europe on the one side, and what would come to be known as the Warsaw Pact, on the other, to be antagonists in a "Cold War" for several decades, it would be a very peculiar situation to maintain this island, 100 miles inside of the Soviet Bloc, with more or less normal communications by train and/or automobile across that 100 miles of hostile territory, but until the summer of 1948 it continued that way, until the USSR decided to stop the trains running across Soviet occupied Germany, and surrounded Berlin with a Blockade of troops.

While roads and railroads could be made impassible by physical blockage, there were three agreed upon air corridors (the Potsdam agreement I believe), and planes cannot be stopped except by lethal force, which the Soviets feared could bring on a war with the U.S. with nuclear weaponry.  The USSR did not have any nuclear weapons until its first demonstration around the end of the Berlin crisis (and it would take several years to amass any significant quantity of weapons, and until the 1960s for them to have adequate delivery systems to pose a real threat).

It was not at all obvious that a city of 2 million people could receive enough food, etc. to live on via the three air routes and existing airports (during the airlift a whole new air port and a major new landing strip would be built).  The Soviets did obstruct the flying as much as they could with "accidental" close calls, one of which became a real crash, and various other ploys, but within a few months the air lift was working well, and it became a major embarrassment (while the USSR had a massive military, it also relied heavily on seduction and propaganda, whose effectiveness was damaged by an unending attempt to starve a city into submission).  For this reason, the blockaid was after about a year, lifted, which is to say that the Soviets and newly constituted East Germans would for the remaining decades of the Cold War give overland access to West Germany across 100 miles of East Germany.  It was a strange situation, and West Berlin was later completely walled in except for the explicitly allowed overland and air access, but it became part of a series of signals between the USSR and the US especially, of what they would and wouldn't do, what sort of provocations or embarrassments they would or wouldn't take, which became the currency of the Cold War.

The title The Candy Bombers is due to one airman who, all on his own, began to drop candy and gum in packets attached to miniature parachutes as his plain approached the runway.  When it was discovered, he feared a Court Martial but became a hero instead (a not so very uncommon experience in the military).