Ashattered, divided city, its war-weary population kept alive by airlift. A nation scarred by horrifying genocidal violence. American and allied troops warily keeping order.
Though this may sound like a description of modern Sarajevo, veteran correspondent Henrik Bering reminds us with his new book on postwar Berlin that these are images we have seen before. The parallels to today’s headlines are what makes Bering’s Outpost Berlin: A History of the American Military Forces in Berlin, 1945-1994 (edition q, inc., 266 pages, $ 16.95) so interesting — and important.
While a few in the academy might smirk at the somewhat ambitious titling of the work as a “history,” Outpost Berlin quite effectively chronicles the life of the city that epitomized the Cold War. Bering cleverly intersperses succinct, newspaper-style overviews and welbrendered oral histories of individuals from every stratum of post-war Berlin. A plethora of photographs, a map, and an effective layout add to the volume’s strength.
The personal vignettes, many of which are the stories of Germans who emerged from Berlin’s rubble, contain fascinating details. We learn, for example, how ordinary people survived during those early years. One widow eked out a living by making “sandals of the cord of Venetian blinds and slippers of old pieces of carpet.” Other Berliners dealt with the pervasive hunger by scrambling for scraps from American mess halls and making nettles and weeds into impromptu “salads.”
Outpost Berlin captures the enormous tension occasioned by the many large and small Cold War confrontations with the Russians. The Berlin Airlift (a fantastic technical achievement even by today’s standards) and the rise of the Wall are detailed in thoroughly readable fashion.
Popular histories like Henrik Bering’s are in short supply these days, and our intellectual discourse is the poorer for it. Sadly, readability alone — however pleasurable-seldom guarantees that a book will be read. Modern Americans demand that nearly every cognitive effort justify itself with tangible, pragmatic purpose. So to what practical use can Bering’s work be put?
plainly, it would be gross over-statement to conclude that the Cold War story of Berlin is an exact metaphor for Sarajevo or any other current event. With due respect to Santayana, the past does not repeat itself, remembered or not. The variables of the human condition are too numerous for that.
Nevertheless, one can readily find practical significance in the story Bering tells. The most obvious teaching is the sheer time and energy it takes to rebuild failed states. As this rendition of postwar Berlin demonstrates, Americans’ insatiable craving for swift solutions collides on occasion with problems that defy the quick fix. Rebuilding an imploded society is certainly one of them.
Accordingly, pronouncements about giving countries that are physically demolished and psychologically pulverized a 365-day “window of opportunity” to revive themselves appear hopelessly at odds with a commonsense understanding of human nature. As Out-post Berlin makes clear, it took decades of military occupation and billions in aid and investment to build Berlin (as well as the rest of Germany) into a functioning, economically sound, and democratic entity. And Germany at least had a heritage of modernity from which to start.
How is it, then, that devastated states without that background (Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda and, to an extent, the former Yugoslavia among them) could ever be expected to regenerate themselves in little more than a year? Even absent the superpower confrontation that overshadowed postwar Germany, one wonders what kind of society would have emerged if the allies had given the Berliners merely a 12-month “window of opportunity” and then left them to their own devices.
This is not a paean to the much-maligned notion of “nation building.” To the contrary, the calculus of U.S. national interest in the late twentieth century suggests that few overseas ventures warrant the required commitment of young Americans and national treasure. What Bering’s book portrays, however, is that success/s possible. The American people — notwithstanding our impetuous propensities — will shoulder enormous responsibilities over extended periods when the rationale is clear and the goal worthy.
Another, more subtle message in Bering’s book deserves thoughtful consideration. His many anecdotes of average Germans interacting with ordinary American soldiers during the long years of occupation suggest that such mingling played an important role in transforming Berlin from the heart of Nazi depravity to the progressive, cosmopolitan city it is now.
Contrast such fraternizing with the typical practice of American forces today: Beginning with Middle East deployments during the Gulf War, and continuing first in Somalia, later in Haiti, and most recently in the Balkans, American troops have been strictly sequestered from the people they are supposedly there to help. Such decisions are understandable from a military commander’s perspective. Allowing off-duty troops to venture into the icy, mine-ridden Bosnian countryside, still peppered with armed malcontents of every persuasion, incurs risk at a time when risk-taking by military officers is hardly rewarded.
These officers know that even a smattering of casualties for almost any reason not only would jeopardize their own futures, but could also derail the entire foreign policy effort. Standing logic on its head, too many Americans now believe that military operations should be virtually risk-free enterprises. How many caskets would it take before public opinion would demand that the troops come home, mission accomplished or not?
Commanders also must consider the frightening prospect that a few soldiers out of the thousands deployed might misbehave, or at least be accused of doing so — all in the glare of intense, global media coverage. The nightmare of the service-men-rapists in Okinawa surely haunts commanders when they ponder whether to allow their troops to socialize with the locals. But, as Outpost Berlin illustrates, person-to-person contacts contributed significantly to the success of the American military presence in Berlin.
In an era when American forces are ever more frequently finding themselves enmeshed in quasi-conflict situations reminiscent of Cold War Berlin, Henrik Bering’s book is the kind of history lesson that today’s responsible decisionmaker ought to review. *
Charles J. Dunlap, Jr. is a cononel on active duty in the United States Air Force. The opinions expressed are those of the authoor alone and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Defense or any of its components.
