Like locusts descending on a desert oasis, the hungry people of Communist Germany poured into West Berlin. The West, with one million 10-lb. food packets, was ready for a flow of several thousand a day. But hundreds of thousands came. They traveled on foot, by train and subway, by car and bicycle from all corners of East Germany. They brought empty cartons, shopping bags, even empty baby carriages in which to carry home their precious “Eisenhower Parcels”—free food contributed by the U.S.
Poison & Dog Food. Officials had expected to dole the food out slowly over a two-week period. But on the first day, nearly 100,000 East Germans swamped the eight distribution points, lining up in queues 15 and 20 wide, stretching for blocks. The West Germans hurriedly set up another 18 stations, increased the staff from 500 to 3,400, and summoned more food from big West Berlin stockpiles which had been built up against another Red blockade of Berlin. As fast as these supplies were drained, ships and planes brought in new food from the U.S.
The free food was the most successful U.S. diplomatic stroke in Europe since the Berlin airlift. Disturbed and angered, the East German Communists tried every way they could think of to blunt it. Their newspapers warned of retaliation against all who accepted the free food. “No one,” thundered the Communist Neues Deutschland, “who falls into the trap of the warmongers in West Berlin can later say, when they get him into trouble, that he did not know it.” They said that the food was poisoned, that a lot of it was horse meat intended for dogs. They forged copies of a West Berlin newspaper to spread misinformation about it.
Though the Communists had refused with sneers Eisenhower’s original offer of $15 million worth of free food, Communist Premier Otto Grotewohl now offered to buy it “and much more” from the U.S. —if the U.S. would only release $1,000,000 of East German assets frozen in the U.S. The Soviet government proclaimed a grandiose offer of $57 million emergency foodstuffs for their zone—burying as deeply as possible the fact that East Germany would be expected to pay for it with manufactured goods. Thus the East German Communists contradicted their own self-righteous insistence that there was neither hunger nor hardship in their half of Germany.
Beggar Programs. But neither threat nor ruse stopped the invasion. The East Germans poured into West Berlin and out again, carrying their two pounds of lard, bags of dried beans, peas and flour, and four cans of condensed milk. All together, each parcel was worth about $1,15—not much by Western standards, but plainly a treasure to East Germans. Most came with identity cards of all their family, and some few friends besides, and got a parcel for each one. “I paid 28 marks for my train ticket,” said one bedraggled housewife from deep in the Soviet zone, “but I have cards of my husband and children. All the money and the waiting are worth it. The lard, above all.”
In a crush of people at the city hall of Schoneberg borough stood peasant women and workers from as far as Thuringia, 125 miles away. In a rumble of gossip they waited for their packages. “Where is the food from?” a woman asked. “Vom West en,” someone replied. “Von Eisenhower,” another corrected.
At first, U.S. officials soft-pedaled the fact that it was an American program, letting it appear to be what U.S. High Commissioner James B. Conant called Germans feeding Germans. This device got the U.S. more credit (despite organized cries of outrage back in the U.S. in the Scripps-Howard press). And the Communists themselves spoke loudly of “Ami Pakete,” so there was no doubt.
When the Reds saw that warnings were not enough, they increased Volkspolizei guards at the East-West Berlin borders, sporadically confiscated some of the free food, sporadically took down the names of East Germans who had dared to cross the border to share in the “American Beggar Program,” began closing down transport facilities.
After five days of hesitation, in evident fear of a people who so recently had proved desperate and courageous enough to stand against Soviet tanks, the Reds at week’s end abruptly shut off all highway and rail traffic to Berlin from five East German provinces. That effectively halted the hungry invasion of West Berlin: lines dropped to a trickle. But East German railroad men reported angry mobs at stations all along their route, storming the ticket offices, and clashing helplessly with armed troops and club-wielding cops.
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