Chapter 634: I am a Berliner

Alan Wilson wondered what the Berliners were thinking as the familiar meter flag flew over Berlin. Anyway, he knew there wasn’t much time left for Britain to pretend.

The original British Occupied Territories Board of Trade, now the Board of Representatives under the Commissioner to Germany, provided calculations of current British air force capacity, disregarding drafted civilian airliners, and air power from Commonwealth countries. At present the RAF has a capacity of one thousand tons a day.

Adding the capacity of civilian airliners in the next two days would bring it up to two thousand one hundred tons a day, but that would still be less than half of the theoretical demand of Berlin’s two and a half million citizens.

“This doesn’t really seem like much of a problem, Berlin can’t have no accumulation at all. It shouldn’t be a problem to start with the accumulated supplies at first, and in a few days the Americans will join in the airlift. Transports from the Far East and the US mainland will be able to make up the shortfall in supplies once they are in position.”

The Commissioner to Germany, Gerard Edward, Allen Wilson is considered to be very familiar with, after all, is his predecessor, although in the current British Malaya is not very good reputation, the Malays believe that Gerard deliberately diluted the status of the Malay aborigines.

But it is expected that Gerard Edward does not care, he has now been a commissioner in Germany, if not stumbled upon this Berlin crisis, he feels that it is still Europe is more suitable for him.

“The supplies in Berlin will only last a week, and it’s already September. Allen, don’t you think about the heating problem in Berlin?” A leading question from Gerald Edward left Allen Wilson speechless for a moment.

Historically, the Berlin Crisis started in May, and the air bridges of the British and American air forces were only thinking about the circulation of goods at that time. By the time the climate turned cooler it was already half a year later, after a summer of preparation, Britain and the United States had already doubled the capacity of the air corridor from several times.

“This can be a real problem.” Alan Wilson frowned, if the heating problem was taken into consideration, this could really not be a simple event that could be easily coped with in the past, “I hope that winter will come later this year.”

On the first day of the opening of airlift in the UK, the US Army Command in Germany was also having a discussion on the current air capacity of the US Army in Germany.

The Commander of U.S. Forces in Germany was Curtis LeMay, the main executive of the Tokyo barbecue party. Curtis LeMay was very supportive of the decision to concentrate the one hundred U.S. transport planes currently in Germany, after the necessary overhaul. They will join the airlift on the third day after the RAF opens the airlift.

While still stating that the existing airfields were still insufficient, Curtis LeMay said to the commanders of the U.S. Army Command in Germany, “Folks, we should make a quick decision, no one knows how long the British can hold out.”

At this very moment, Washington, which was in a state of uproar over the Soviet blockade of Berlin, also received feedback from the American forces in Germany after Britain first opened the airlift, and Truman resolved to join in the airlift. Truman decided to join the airlift and said that the American forces in Germany should act as soon as possible, and that the air forces in the mainland and the Far East would join in as far as the shortfall in capacity was concerned.

Gerald Edward, who received the telegram from London, told Allen Wilson the news, but there was one sentence that made Allen Wilson very unhappy, “Truman proposed that B29 bombers be deployed in Britain to contain the Soviet Union.”

“It’s that time of the year, and you still fucking screw up this kind of thing.” Allen Wilson was furious and cursed through clenched teeth, “If you really want to do this, I have to wonder who is the biggest threat between the United States and the Soviet Union.”

In the historical Berlin Crisis of 1948, the United States did send sixty bombers with nuclear bombs into Britain. But when was that? The Soviet Union didn’t have nukes at that time.

And now that the Berlin Crisis appeared in nineteen fifty-one, the Soviet Union already had nuclear weapons. And considering that the Korean War had already broken out and MacArthur’s cavalier attitude toward nuclear weapons, Britain was now damned if the United States was going to put nuclear weapons in Britain.

Besides, Britain’s nuclear weapons were built ahead of schedule, and couldn’t Britain use its own nuclear weapons to contain the Soviet Union at this point in time? Must it be redundant to make Britain more valuable in terms of being a nuclear strike target for the USSR?

“The Prime Minister has rejected Washington’s proposal.” Gerald Edward said with a you-guessed-it-right look, “I think the Americans might as well change their bombers and maybe increase the capacity of the air corridor.”

“Anyway, the Americans don’t want to muddle through this time.” Allen Wilson said this and gave Gerald Edward the news that McCarthy might have an important speech tomorrow.

Simply put McCarthy will be a Berliner tomorrow, Gerard Edward, upon hearing this, frowned questioningly, “Honestly? Even in Germany, McCarthy the man has a bad reputation.”

“Gerard, that’s a good thing.” Allen Wilson wanted this kind of bad, Europeans might think it was bad. But Americans and Europeans were different, and McCarthy’s move helped solidify a place in the hearts of at least some Americans.

As for European public opinion in the few short days leading up to the Berlin crisis, it can be divided into two parts, European public opinion and public opinion in Britain itself, which is of course predominantly positive, focusing on Prime Minister Eardley’s rise to the occasion. Britain is responsible for guarding the free world.

It could be argued that even in history, before the Suez Canal War broke out, British citizens were just so self-conscious. While a portion of the higher echelons of government had recognized that Britain was not in the same league of players as the U.S. and the Soviet Union. But the civic class had not yet recognized this.

In the eyes of British citizens, even after losing British India, currently Britain still has nearly ten million square kilometers of colonies. There are still hundreds of millions of people overseas under British rule.

To be precise, the British citizens practically realized that Britain was not the former British Empire when Macmillan did to be the British Prime Minister after Aidan had to resign because of the Suez Canal War. Britain and the United States signed the Nassau Agreement and Britain sort of surrendered to the United States and stopped struggling.

After a six-year respite, Prime Minister Adderley, who had been domestically focused, bravely stood up for justice this time. It was embraced by traditional Labor supporters, and there was much praise from Conservative supporters.

It even sent shockwaves through the Kremlin, especially after the RAF opened the air corridor. Much to the consternation of the bigwigs in the Kremlin, after all, it is always surprising when honest people start fighting back all of a sudden.

A large number of British airplanes airlifted supplies to Berlin through the air, naturally, could not escape the eyes of the Soviet troops on the ground.

This opening of the air corridor by Britain caused the same discussion in the Kremlin, which was nothing more than whether to stop it or to let it go.

“Let’s see, then, whether the British and the Americans can afford more than two million men in demand?”

The end result was to let it go; Moscow did not believe that the British and Americans could afford to feed more than two million people just by air corridors. Britain and the United States would surely back down, and that was the result of the Kremlin’s discussions.

In fact, a number of European countries, with the exception of Britain itself, which was already under press control, did not believe that the move to airlift supplies in the air corridor mode would be enough to meet the needs of more than two million Berlin citizens.

Pessimistic statements are present on the European continent, after all, the current standoff is in the possession of the Soviet Union, and the British, American and French forces in allied Germany can’t cross the border to open up land routes, can they? Not to mention the war in the Far East the United States has hundreds of thousands of soldiers trapped inside it.

However, for the British first to respond to the Berlin blockade, most European countries still gave praise. It was thought that Britain, led by Prime Minister Adderley, had given great confidence to the participating countries of the Brussels Treaty Organization by taking a stand at a critical moment.

It was very late on this day that Allen Wilson sneaked into the Heilmann family’s villa and felt his way in through the key left by the Dragon Rider sisters.

“So late!” Anna’s voice rang out in the dark, rumbling house, obviously having been up all this time.

“Got to get back before dawn, honey, you think this is easy?” Alan Wilson, full of the bitter tone of a burdened man, undressed as he spoke and was soon under Anna’s covers, a smooth, elastic body in his arms.

“It’s like you’re busier than even Adderley.” After a long kiss, Anna panted in concern, “What does the Berlin crisis have to do with you, having to come over to join in the fun.”

“I wasn’t going to have to come, but I came over so I could visit your sisters.” Alan Wilson justified, “Remember to go to the city center square tomorrow, a friend of mine is going to give a speech.”

“We’ll talk about tomorrow tomorrow! You don’t want to come for nothing.” Anna didn’t want to hear anything about the state of the union, and with one hand reaching out, she pressed the man’s head into the covers, it had been a long time coming.

In the square in the center of Bonn, U.S. Senator McCarthy, who happened to be in Europe on personal business, was making what was probably the most important speech of his life to the citizens of Bonn, the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The knife catcher, Allen Wilson, was there, but he was yawning, as if he had not slept well in the past few days because of his exhaustive efforts in the Berlin crisis. Not far away, Pogina, who joined the battle in the middle of the night with her short blonde hair, glanced at the coquettish man out of the corner of her eye, unconcerned about the American who was about to make an important speech.

Senator McCarthy, in front of all sectors of the Federal German capital, began this speech on a firm push back against the Soviet Union, starting with an expression of appreciation for Britain’s response to this crisis, focusing a bit on the special Anglo-American relationship.

Afterwards, he entered the formal part of the speech, fiercely criticized the Soviet Union’s move, in short, the United States, Britain and France set aside the Soviet-occupied zone to form the Federal Republic of Germany for the sake of freedom, and the Soviet-occupied zone blockade of Berlin was the division of Germany. The root cause of Germany’s division was the Soviet Union, not the U.S., Britain and France.

“Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was that I was a Roman citizen; today, the proudest boast of the free world is that I am a Berliner.” McCarthy held his hands high in the air, having entered into a state of total forgetfulness that belongs exclusively to politicians.