Free The Berlin Wall by Frederick Taylor Page B

possibilities, survived. They could not have realised how much of the city lay in ruins. Hundreds of thousands of dwellings had been reduced to rubble. In the British sector, forty-threeout of forty-four hospitals had been destroyed or seriously damaged. Newcomers were pushed straight on to westbound trains, any westbound train.
    At this point, the Soviets forbade the importation of food from the surrounding countryside. They also began, under administrative pretexts, to limit the number of trains that could travel to and from the Western zones. Since original Russian regulations remained in force, for a long time the Soviets retained control, by default, of most aspects of everyday life. They could increase the pain any time they chose.
    Constant hunger became the Berliners’ lot. Allied soldiers or officials had access to drink, food, nylons, and especially cigarettes (which became Berlin’s unofficial currency). If they were not averse to bending the rules, they could live like kings. The going price for sex with a German woman was five cigarettes. The activity of Kippensammler (cigarette-butt collector) became a recognised calling. A waiter in places frequented by Allied troops made a tidy side-income in this way; those at the Café Wien could earn five dollars per hundred. 25 A black-market bazaar spread across the huge expanse of the Tiergarten park in the centre of Berlin, where East met West.
    In August 1945, it was reported that each day between fifty and a hundred children who had lost both parents, or had been abandoned, were collected from Berlin’s stations and taken to orphanages or foster-parents. 26 These were the lucky ones. Gangs of children roamed the streets, thieving where they could, looting abandoned buildings and hoarding scrap to sell.
    By October 1945, the German civilian ration was 800 calories per day. In the British sector at New Year 1946, it had fallen to about 400. Fuel shortages were inevitable. Previously, most of Berlin’s coal had come from Silesia, just a few hundred kilometres to the east. Now the Silesian mines were in Polish hands. All coal had to be imported, mostly from the Ruhr, far away in western Germany. It was required at the rate of 600 tons per day as winter came on. There was never enough.
    Around 12,000 Berliners died during that first post-war year, of starvation or of illnesses associated with malnutrition. However, for the survivors there ensued a feverish cultural flowering—newspapers opened in the Western sectors, theatres and night-clubs and cabarets, and evenfilm studios were open again for business. Berliners might have little to eat, and they might freeze in unheated cellars, but for the first time since 1933 they could do, say and write what they wanted. With grim humour, these were known as the ‘golden hunger years’. 27
    In the Soviet Zone, SPD and KPD had merged to form the SED. This was not, however, the end of the old SPD. When allowed, most SPD members had voted against union with the Communists. Despite persecution in the Soviet sector, the oldest and largest working-class party continued to operate on a citywide basis.
    Elections for provincial and municipal assemblies throughout the Soviet Zone (and in parts of the Western zones) took place in September/October 1946. The Soviets and the Communists did their best to persuade—or intimidate—the electorate into voting for the SED. All the same, the results were, for Ulbricht and his Soviet masters, a disappointment. This was crushingly true in Berlin.
    In the Berlin city elections, the SPD won almost 49 per cent of the votes. Second came the right-of-centre CDU with 22 per cent. Despite massive support from the Communist political machine and the Soviet Military Administration, the SED trailed at 19.8 per cent. The SPD beat the SED in every district—even ‘Red’ Wedding, where before Hitler came to power the Communists had regularly won 60 per cent of the vote.
    Colonel Sergei Tiul’panov,