The Bitter Taste of Victory (73 page)

‘nothing other than’: Harry Wilde, ‘Before a New November Putsch? Communist Agent Erika Mann, Stalin’s Fifth Column at Work’,
Echo der Woche,
22 Oct 1948, EM Archive.

17  
‘Hollywood’s most’, ‘approximated reality’: Review of
A Foreign Affair
,
New York Post
, 1 Jul 1948.

‘it may not cure’: Review of
A Foreign Affair
,
Herald Tribune
, 1 Jul 1948.

18  
‘We should . . . admit’: Information Policy edict, 20 Jul 1948, cited in Fay,
Theaters of Occupation
, p. 87.

‘crude, superficial’, ‘Berlin’s trials’: Stuart Schulberg, ‘A Letter about Billy Wilder’,
Quarterly of Film, Radio and Television
, 7:4, Summer 1953, p. 435, cited in Sikov,
On Sunset Boulevard
, p. 278. According to Werner Sollors, there is no credible source citation for this (
The Temptation of Despair
, p. 259). However Sollors quotes a revealing 1953 letter from Marshall Plan film producer Stuart Schulberg describing how after viewing
A Foreign Affair in Berlin
, Pommer and the Military Government’s Screening Committee ruled the film was unsuitable for German audiences. Schulberg remembered how while watching the film ‘our disappointment turned into resentment and our resentment into disgust. Perhaps we were all too close to the situation; we certainly lacked Wilder’s happy-go-lucky perspective. But straining our objectivity to the breaking point, we could not excuse a director who played the ruins for laughs, cast Military Government officers as comics, and rang in the Nazis for an extra boff’ (Sollors, p. 261).

19  
Artists did not want to leave: Gigi Richter, ‘Berlin Letter’,
Horizon
, Jul–Aug 1948.

20  
‘Working for you’: MD to BW, 14 Jul 1948, MD Archive.

‘delectable dish’:
The New Yorker
, cited in Bach,
Marlene Dietrich
, p. 334.

21  
‘Between us and’: HS, diary, 14 Jul 1948, HS Archive,

‘none of my’: ‘Americans Told to Stop Mixing With Russians’,
The New York Times
, 4 Jan 1949.

‘We held different’: HS to her mother, cited in HS,
The Dark and the Bright
, p. 243.

22  
Alexandrov Ensemble: This was the second performance at the Berlin Staatsoper (the first was on 9 Aug) and was part of a larger tour involving performances in Czechoslovakia, Dresden, Weimar, Magdeburg and Schwerin. The programme combined Russian music with music by German composers including Wagner and Schumann. See Carl Friedrich, ‘Ein Fest sowjetischer Volkskunst’,
Neues Deutschland
, 11 Aug 1948.

Outdoor concert: This concert was organised by the FDGB (Freier Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund), the East German trade union federation, which was controlled by the SED.

‘surrounded by ruins’: HS,
The Dark and the Bright
, p. 244.

23  
‘quietly wistful’: HS,
The Dark and the Bright
, p. 244.

24  
‘Life here, with’: Rex Warner to Pam Morris, 26 Jun 1948, cited in Stephen Ely Tabachnick,
Fiercer than Tigers: The Life and Work of Rex Warner
(Michigan State University Press, 2002), pp. 245–46.

25  
Figures: Canwell and Sutherland,
The Berlin Airlift
, p. 183; details here from: ‘Berlin Dichotomy’,
New Statesman and Nation
, 21 Aug 1948.

26  
On currency, see Ruth Friedrich,
Schauplatz Berlin
(Suhrkamp, 1985), pp. 246–48, cited in MacDonogh,
After the Reich
, p. 529.

27  
‘abject poverty’: Gigi Richter, ‘Berlin letter’.

28  
‘Suicide rate’: MacDonogh,
After the Reich
, p. 532.

29  
‘it depends on’: ‘Four Powers Conference In Berlin On Control of Currency; Lifting of Blockade Studied’,
The New York Times
, 1 Sep 1948.

‘in the four’: Clay, cited in MacDonogh,
After the Reich
, p. 532.

‘no longer represents’: ‘Four Powers Achieve Further Progress in Berlin Parleys’,
The New York Times
, 5 Sep 1948.

30  
‘We cannot be’: Ernst Reuter, cited in Collier,
Bridge Across the Sky
, p. 119.

31  
‘a good idea’: cited in Fay,
Theaters of Occupation
, p. 99. On opinion polls, see also: John Ramsden,
Don’t Mention the War: The British and the Germans since 1890
(Little Brown, 2006), pp. 234–6. On POWS specifically see Ramsden, p. 236, Meehan,
A Strange Enemy People
, p. 30.

Although the POWs were being released, it is worth noting that there were still more than 3 million German soldiers in Russian captivity, where they were working as slave labourers, and that most Jewish DPs were now on their way to Palestine (Hitchcock,
Liberation
, p. 338.)

32  
‘disgraced’, ‘The capital of a Germany that finally, finally, wants peace, peace and nothing but peace’: Becher to
PEN
Congress, cited in ‘Re-establishment of the German Centre’, in
PEN News
, 156, Aug 1948.

33  
Figures: Canwell and Sutherland,
Berlin Airlift
, p. 119.

34  
‘here very few’: Melvin Lasky to Dwight MacDonald, 10 Oct 1947, cited in Stonor Saunders,
Who paid the piper?
, p. 28.

35  
Melvin Lasky, ‘The Need for a New, Overt Publication’, 7 Dec 1947, OMGUS/RG260/NARA, cited in Stonor Saunders,
Who Paid the Piper?
, pp. 28–30.

On Lasky’s new magazine, see Stonor Saunders,
Who Paid the Piper?
, p. 30; Giles Scott-Smith,
The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA and Post-war American Hegemony
(Routledge, 2001), p. 91.

36  
‘a natural phenomenon’: Alfred Döblin, ‘Zeitschriftenschau’,
Das goldene Tor
, 1/2, Oct/Nov 1946.

37  
‘Russian victory’, ‘be no individuals’: Bertrand Russell, ‘Der Weg zum Weltstaat’,
Der Monat
, Oct 1948.

38  
‘Soviet Russia without’: Drew Middleton, ‘Sowjet-Russland ohne Propaganda’,
Der Monat
, Oct 1948.

39  
‘imprisoned’: James Agee, ‘Eisensteins letztes Werk’,
Der Monat
, 1948.

40  
‘a lot of’: KM to Melvin Lasky, 27 Oct 1948, KM Archive.

‘readable’, ‘educated’, ‘omitting’: TM, diary, 10 Nov 1948, in
Tagebücher
; even when Brecht did settle in Germany, it was with an Austrian passport as his wife Helene Weigel was Austrian.

41  
‘To me these ruins’: BB, diary, 23 Oct 1948, in BB,
Journals 1934
–
1955
(Routledge, 1996).

‘Berlin, an etching’: BB, diary, 27 Oct 1948, in
Journals
.‘a real fear’: BB, ‘Brief an Thomas Mann,’ in BB,
Gesammelte Werke
, 20 Bände, Band 8 (Taschenbuch, 1968), p. 478.

42  
Actors disappointing, ‘epic theatre’: BB, diary, 11 Nov 1948, in
Arbeitsjournal 1938
–
1955
(Aufbau-Verlag, 1977).

‘And so we’ll’: BB, ‘Aufbaulied der F.D.J.’, in
Werke
, ed. by Werner Hecht
et al
, vol 15, Gedichte 5, pp. 196–97, cited in Brockmann
German Literary Culture
, p. 250.

43  
Hope and Berlin: MacDonogh,
After the Reich,
p. 535.

44  
For
Volkstümlichkeit,
see Paul Rilla, ‘Gegen den deutschen Kriegsmythos’,
Berliner Zeitung
, 13 Jan 1949.

For Moses, see Wolfgang Harich, ‘Der gemeine Mann had kein’ Gewinn’,
Tägliche Rundschau
, 14 Jan 1949.

For degenerate formalism, see Fritz Erpenbeck, ‘Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder’,
Vorwärts
, 13 Jan 1949. I am grateful to Stephen Brockmann for letting me read an unpublished draft discussion of the 1949 production of
Mother Courage and her Children
in his forthcoming monograph on East German postwar literature.

45  
‘War’s a deal’: BB,
Mother Courage and Her Children,
trans. David Hare (Methuen: 1995), p. 15.

46  
‘romp in’: BB, diary, 9 Dec 1948, in
Arbeitsjournal
.

47  
‘sacrifice’, ‘cast its blessings’: Hjalmar Schacht,
Account Settled
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1949), p. 322.

‘Literature must commit’: BB, diary, 11 Dec 1948, in
Journals.

48  
‘The world’s dying’: BB,
Mother Courage
, p. 79; Figures: MacDonogh,
After the Reich
, p. 535 (second only in viciousness to the winter of 1946/47).

On air deliveries: ‘12,000-Ton Day On The Air-Lift’,
The Times
, 18 Apr 1949.

49  
‘Lord Mayor of Rubble’: Reuter, cited in Collier,
Bridge Across the Sky,
p. 144

For elections, see Collier,
Bridge Across the Sky
, p. 144; Canwell and Sutherland,
Berlin Airlift
, p.153.

‘a plebiscite for’: PdeM, ‘The Berlin Plebiscite,’
New Statesman
, 4 Dec 1948.

50  
PdeM, ‘Triple-headed Monstrosity’,
New Statesman
, 25 Dec 1948.

51  
‘neighbourly act’, ‘We are like’: Truman, quoted in ‘Atlantic Nations Sign Defense Pact’,
The New York Times
, 4 Apr 1949.

‘courage and vision’, ‘could still determine’, ‘They can choose’: ‘Addresses by Foreign Ministers at Signing of North Atlantic Pact’,
The New York Times
, 5 Apr 1949.

52  
‘The ground rushed’: RW,
Greenhouse with Cyclamens II
, in
A Train of Powder
, p. 151.

53  
‘Loosest, least confined’, ‘Everybody in Berlin’: RW,
Greenhouse with Cyclamens II.
p. 140.