The candy bombers : the untold story of the Berlin Airlift and America's finest hour

The Resource The candy bombers : the untold story of the Berlin Airlift and America's finest hour

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The candy bombers : the untold story of the Berlin Airlift and America's finest hour

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the untold story of the Berlin Airlift and America's finest hour

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Andrei Cherny

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candy bombers

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the untold story of the Berlin Airlift and Americas finest hour

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eng

Summary

The masterfully told story of the unlikely men who came together to make the Berlin Airlift one of the great military and humanitarian successes of American history. Author Cherny brings together newly unclassified documents, unpublished letters and diaries, and fresh primary interviews to tell the story of the ill-assorted group of castoffs and second-stringers who not only saved millions of desperate people from a dire threat but changed how the world viewed the United States. On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union cut off all access to West Berlin, prepared to starve the city into submission. Most of America's top officials considered the situation hopeless. But not all of them. President Harry Truman, frustrated general Lucius Clay, logistics expert Bill Tunner, and secretary of defense James Forrestal improvised and stumbled their way into an unprecedented, uniquely American combination of military and moral force.--From publisher description

Review

In 1948, West Berliners were suffering and hungry, existing on food rations transported by trucks, trains and barges primarily by the occupying American forces. The Russians, trying to control the divided city, blockaded the transports on June 24, 1948, and American and British pilots risked their lives to airlift in 4.6 billion pounds of food and supplies until the blockade was lifted in May 1949. Pilot Hal Halvorsen won Berliners' hearts by secretly dropping his and his buddies' candy rations by parachute into the waiting hands of the city's children. In the process, says Cherny (The Next Deal ), Berliners became devoted to democracy, and Washington foreign policy and military brass learned that the Cold War needed to be won not primarily with bullets but by appealing to hearts and minds. This book could have been cut by a third for better effect; Cherny's prose and his references to 9/11 are manipulative, and his subject, particularly the nuts and bolts of the airlift, will appeal primarily to WWII buffs, who should still find much to savor in this exhaustive, often absorbing and lucid account of America's successful standoff against the Soviets. 16 pages of b&w photos. (Apr. 17) --Staff (Reviewed February 18, 2008) (Publishers Weekly, vol 255, issue 7, p148)
After World War II, as the Cold War began poisoning international relationships, the United States had to figure out what its postwar role would be. Its greatest army had largely disbanded, an unpopular President was still struggling to articulate a world policy, and a newly nuclear-armed foe, recently an ally, was occupying half of Europe. Cherny (The Next Deal ), a former speechwriter for Al Gore, spends much of this book explaining how postwar Berlin became a crisis point and the reaction of the Western Allies to the Soviet threat and blockade of West Berlin. In immense, mind-deadening detail, he recounts the successes of the Berlin Airlift (June 1948–May 1949) in response to the Soviet blockade. He covers its management by Gen. William Tunner, who had run the great Chinese airlift in the final year of World War II, as well as the experiences and concerns of some of the pilots and the technical problems that arose. The political story is interwoven with the story of Secretary of Defense James Forrestal's mental and physical collapse, the disagreements between George Marshall and Truman, and the ambivalence of the American public. Recommended for subject collections, particularly where related resources are available.—Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, KS --Edwin B. Burgess (Reviewed March 1, 2008) (Library Journal, vol 133, issue 4, p90)
Writing with the flair of a novelist, Cherny (The Next Deal: The Future of Public Life in the Information Age, 2000) tells the story of the Berlin Airlift.The author sets the scene with the dramatic meeting of Russian and American troops at the banks of the Elbe on April 25, 1945. "The forces of liberation have joined hands," announced the BBC; only Berlin remained to be subdued to end the war in Europe. The Red Army was first into the bombed-out city, which it vengefully pillaged and raped. Within three years, the Soviet Union had methodically expanded its hegemony in Eastern Europe, and relations with America were dangerously strained. In Berlin, the Russians manipulated elections in their sector and rejected the Western currency. Closing entrances into the American, British and French sectors of the city on June 25, 1948, the Soviets hoped to push out the West for good, in the process consigning 2.5 million Berliners to starvation. The U.S. airlift of coal and food into Tempelhof was initially intended to buy time during the standoff, but over the course of 11 months Operation Vittles would employ an armada of Skymaster C-54s and deliver millions of tons of cargo. Cherny dramatically weaves together the conjoined fates of numerous characters: Gen. Lucius Clay, newly appointed head of military government of Germany; Secretary of Defense James Forrestal and his nemesis, Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace, who ran against Truman in 1948; Col. Frank Howley, instrumental in managing the airlift; and pilots Curtis LeMay, Bill Tunner and Gail Halvorsen, the last-named celebrated for dropping little parachutes of candy for Berlin children. The author skillfully delineates the airlift's role in dramatically improving Germans' and Americans' attitudes toward each other, with significant consequences for the Cold War. His account amplifies and vivifies material presented in a more bare-bones fashion by Jon Sutherland and Diane Canwell in Berlin Airlift: The Salvation of a City (2008).Lively, densely detailed and unabashedly enthusiastic. (Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2008)

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non fiction

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