Berlin in the Rain

"By Whitsuntide all Berlin will be ours," Communist Youth Leader Manfred Weigand had boasted. German Communist Boss Walter Ulbricht had chimed in: "Whitsuntide will be the signal for a national uprising."

Whitsuntide came & went, and the U.S. and its Allies this week were still in Berlin. The huge Communist youth demonstration went off in a driving rain, a sodden flop. After the captains and the kids departed, Berlin's otherwise neat and well-kept ruins were littered with a mass of Communist leaflets; otherwise nothing much had changed. There could be no doubt that the Reds had trapped themselves into a severe propaganda defeat.

The Communists may or may not have intended to carry out their wild Whitsun threats. The commanders of the Western occupation armies took no chances. By effectively organizing the forces at their disposal, they served notice on the Reds that the Communist youth was not going to take over Berlin. By the time the Communist demonstration started, West Berlin's 13,000 policemen were fully prepared for trouble, 8,000 U.S., British and French troops were alerted in their barracks.

Merry-Go-Rounds & Hot Dogs. Days before the big rally, by truck, train and on foot, nearly half a million youngsters began pouring into the city. Growled one Berliner: "Here comes the enemy."

The Communist youths' blue shirts dotted every city block in the Russian sector. The kids slept in factories, offices, schools. On the Wulheide, a flat, green plain by the River Spree, 20,000 camped in tents, guarded day & night by People's

Policemen and vigilant police dogs. Meager rations of warm food were ladled out from 3,500 field kitchens. Many of the demonstrators looked undernourished and tired. Many were sick; several typhoid cases were reported. Yet most of them thoroughly enjoyed the outing.

The kids bought ice cream and hot dogs from shining blue trailers (the Communists had specially lowered the price of hot dogs for the occasion). They rode merry-go-rounds and Ferris wheels. Giggling girls had their pictures taken with genial Soviet G.I.s. The rally's propa- ganda motif was "Friendship." Wherever two groups of blue-shirted youngsters met, they shouted "Freundschaft!" at each other. Truckloads of grinning Communist cops--looking as incongruous as gunmen at a Sunday picnic--careened through the streets, yelling "Freundschaft!" at the moppets, who enthusiastically returned the salute.

Communist bosses harangued the youngsters in relays; East Germany's President Wilhelm Pieck cried: "Boys and girls, there are people in the U.S., England and France, and also in West Germany, who made much money with each bomb that destroyed your homes and schools. Every child's tear during the war years was a clear profit to them . . ."

Not all the German kids swallowed that kind of talk. Inside the F.D.J. there is an anti-Communist "Resistance" whose members pasted up anti-Communist posters in East Berlin with the message: "Ivan --Go Home!" Others distributed fake newspapers, their front pages strictly Communist, but the inside pages crammed with anti-Communist arguments.

Candy & Oranges. What interested most of the youngsters more than the merry-go-rounds and Communist oratory were the city's Western sectors. But their leaders, obviously anxious to avoid incidents (and the blandishments of the West), had issued strict orders to stay out. A Red directive warned: "Familiarize yourself with the sector limits so that you will not accidentally get into a Western sector." The People's Police watched carefully to see that the kids obeyed the order. Most of the kids were afraid of being seen talking to Americans. Said one to a U.S. reporter: "Please, sir, I am glad to see you, but could you act as if you were not talking to us? The People's Police are guarding us closely this day."

Nevertheless, hundreds of East German youngsters managed to sneak into West Berlin. Many changed from their uniforms into plain clothes for the expedition; while they were gone, others waited impatiently for their return so that they could borrow the clothes. Most of the youngsters, who had been told that West Berlin was starving, were amazed by the food and the other goods they saw in stores. ^They bought as much as they could, in spite of weird warnings from their leaders. These included statements that oranges and candy in the Western sectors had been poisoned, and that West Berliners had prepared explosive cigarettes for the Red youths.

Red propaganda squads, assigned to duty along the Soviet sector boundary, heroically resisted the chocolate and oranges offered them by the kids from across the line. But they were sensitive to their jeers. "Oh, leave me alone," snapped one embarrassed young Communist speaker. "I can't help it--I have to do this."

The New Storm Troopers. By Whitsunday eve, Berlin looked tense. Armored cars, troops and police patrolled the border between the Eastern and Western sectors. On the big day, the Communist youngsters were awakened by buglers before dawn. By 7 they had begun to march down Unter den Linden toward the Lustgarten. The route of march was plastered with flags and big propaganda posters, depicting the standard Russian heroes (Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung) and evil-looking "dollar imperialists." One poster showed a trio of capitalist exploiters in Edwardian garb, complete with grey toppers. With the kids marched 10,000 grim-faced "Special Squads" of the People's Police, deeply tanned, obviously well trained--the 1950 version of Adolf Hitler's Storm Troopers. The marchers chanted versified slogans. Sample:

The Marshall Plan and the Schuman

Plan,

Throw them into the ocean . . . Don't let your life be sour--Kick him out, that Adenauer!

Most of the youngsters shivered in the cold rain, but they marched with enthusiasm. New York Times Correspondent Anne O'Hare McCormick expressed the horror of the scene: ". . . The Hitler Youth rising out of the ruins . . . Here they are as one remembers them in 1933 --the same stance and gestures when the band plays, the same air of importance, the same plastic faces, empty and somehow piteous, waiting to be molded into anything the master sculptor decides."

"Nothing to Report." All day, the marching and the oratory continued. The Red leaders repeated the pledge that the Western powers would be thrown out of Berlin. But, except for an occasional scuffle, quickly squelched by police on both sides of the city, the day brought no incidents. In West Berlin, people paid little attention to the noisy show across the -border. The patrolling cars periodically radioed back the message: "Nothing to report."

General Maxwell Taylor, U.S. commander in Berlin, and his British and French opposite numbers watched the proceedings from a special observation stand; they took turns flying over the city in a helicopter, which hovered noisily above the circus below.

That evening there was an hour-long display of "peace fireworks" and 100,000 youngsters cheered wildly as the night sky was filled with the fiery slogan, "Friendship Forever with the Soviet Union," accompanied by the hammer & sickle. Then the great day formally closed. It was, on balance, one of the most futile propaganda efforts the Reds had ever made.

The kids, drenched, tired, their ears buzzing with martial music, hate-laden lies and head colds, began the long trek home. The holiday was over, and it was still raining.

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