The Soviet military command helped Ulbricht’s men establish a pseudodemocracy in Berlin by keeping the Western powers away from the city for as long as possible. The Soviets claimed that uncleared minefields made it unsafe for Western troops to enter; they said that access routes were clogged with refugees and their own troops; and, most importantly, they insisted that the British and Americans withdraw from areas designated for Soviet occupation elsewhere in Germany before joining their Red allies in Berlin.
On June 5 General Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery flew to Berlin to sign the Declaration on the Assumption of Supreme Authority in Germany by the Allies, which eliminated the last vestiges of the Reich’s sovereignty and confirmed earlier joint-occupation arrangements for Germany and Berlin. On their way from Tempelhof airport to Marshal Zhukov’s headquarters for the signing ceremony, the Americans noted to their horror that the canals were still choked with bloated bodies and that “the odor of death was everywhere.” The declaration they signed at the conclusion of their meeting with the Russians stated that questions affecting Germany as a whole would require the unanimous agreement of the occupation powers, but if consensus could not be achieved each zonal commander could act as he saw fit. This was a recipe for the division of Germany, but Ike accepted it in the expectation that the wartime victors would find ways to work together harmoniously. Writing in 1950, General Lucius Clay, American military governor of Germany from 1945 to 1949, declared: “This was a fateful decision which can be fairly judged in its effect only by time and history.” Three weeks later, on June 29, Clay returned to the capital and in his capacity as Eisenhower’s deputy signed off on an agreement that limited the Western Allies’ access to Berlin to one highway, a rail line and two air corridors. He assumed that this restriction was only temporary, but he neglected to gain any written agreement to that effect. Later he admitted that he was perhaps “mistaken in not at this time making free access to Berlin a condition to our withdrawal into our occupation zone.”
Having neglected to use the presence of their troops in the projected Soviet zone as a bargaining chip, the Western Allies were unable to gain a foothold in Berlin until early July, and it was a precarious foothold at that. The first British contingent moved into dilapidated barracks in Spandau that had recently been vacated by the Russians, who had removed all the furniture they could carry, as well as lightbulbs, power plugs, door handles, and even water taps. To one British officer the Spandau scene seemed “part of a bad dream” in which “at any moment Dr. Caligari, with his black cloak and his cane, might stump across the Square, a saturnine smile on his lips, to proclaim that he was in charge of all the arrangements.” The Americans were no less shocked by what the war had done to this once vibrant city and its famously scrappy citizenry, now shuffling among the ruins like zombies. Wrote Hans Speier, a political officer: “The first impression in Berlin, which overpowers you and makes your heart beat faster, is that anything human among these indescribable ruins must exist in an unknown form. . . . Seeing [the survivors] you almost
Most Berliners welcomed the Westerners’ arrival, seeing it as a liberation from exclusive control by the Russians. When the Americans made their first appearance in the city, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, who had earlier welcomed the Soviets, gushed in her diary: “The Americans are here! . . . The victors from the West for whom we have waited since the beginning of April. More and more eagerly with each day, and more and more urgently each night.” Such eagerness derived not only from fear of the Russians, but from the knowledge that
