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V-E Day 40 Years Later
AFinal
Warning to theWest!
by
K. Neil Earle
The 40th anniversary of the end of World War II
marks an ominous milestone for the British and American people.
J
usT
40 years ago this
summer, the guns fell
silent in Europe on a
blood-spattered world.
One of history's greatest trag–
edies was over.
In a wind-swept tent on Lüne–
burg Heath on the North German
plain, May 4, 1945, Britain's Field
Marshal Bernard Montgomery dic–
tated terms to the beaten Nazis.
Supreme Allied Commander
Dwight Eisenhower was purposely
abscnt from a similar ceremony in
Rhcims, France, three days later.
He sti ll seethed with rage at the
Hitlerite officer caste, following bis
s tomach-churning tour through the
death camp at Ohrdruf.
A pall of death and destruction
enveloped civilization. Bu t the
rejoicing and euphoria at the defeat
of the Axis powers ushered in a
springtime of glorious hope. Perhaps
now the world would find peace at
last. Perhaps now the lights really
could go on-as Vera Lynn had
sung- "all over the world."
Surely the United Nations would
succeed where the old League of
Nations had failed?
After all, didn't the U nited
States, Great Britain and the Soviet
Union possess the military clout to
smother aggression anywhere on
the planet? Wouldn't this guaran-
June
1985
tee world peace? Ah, yes,
how dif–
ferently
it was to all turn out.
The
Cold
War
Growing Soviet intransigence fed
on Anglo-American shortsighted–
ness and naivete. Result? The "twi-
1 ight struggle," to use Presiden t
John F. Kennedy's later phrase to
describe the Cold War.
By 1948 the Marshall Pl an
began pumping vast sums of money
into a stricken Western Europe.
The winter of 1948-49 saw the dra–
matic propaganda victory of the
Berlín Airlift, a brilliant riposte to
the Soviet blockage of West Berlín .
For 15 months British and Ameri–
can airmen logged 277,264 flights
hauling more than 21h million tons
of food, fue!, clothing and medi–
cine-nearly one ton for every citi–
zen of Berlín.
"Operation Vittles," as the res–
cue of West Berlín was called,
touched just tbe right chord in
Western Europeans.
"America has saved the world!"
Winston Churchill exulted! In
April 1949 the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) was
formed.
It
was to be an association
of sovereign states presenting a
united military front against Soviet
pressure, from the Bering Strait to
the Black Sea.
By the outbreak of the Korean
conflict in June 1950, the shape of
the postwar world solidified. To–
day, 40 years after World War
JI,
American G ls and their NATO
allies still face Soviet troops of the
Warsaw Pact military bloc across
the "tripwire" in Central Europe.
But beneath this geopolitical fault
line events are slowly altering the
postwar picture.
Subtle Shifts
In 1984 communist Romanía did
not follow Moscow's boycott of the
Olympic Games. In 1984 the East
Germans smarted at the Kremlin's
squelching of Party Chairman
Erich Honecker's visit to Wes t
Germany. Meanwhile young West
Europeans, with fading memories
of the Berlín Airlift but vivid mem–
ories of the U.S. folly in Vietnam,
anxiously recall the saber-rattling
from Washington in the early
1980s.
What was happening?
Détente and West Germany's
eagerness to deal with Eastern
Europe (the Germans call it
Osr–
politik)
stimulated trade on both
sides of the Iron Curtain.
Ostpo/i–
tik
whetted East Europe's appet ite
for Western consumer goods, espe–
ciaJly as the Soviet economy sput–
tered badly. For the West Ger–
mans, trade deals with the East
bloc are sweetened with opportuni -
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