In the stifling, relentless heat of summer in Washington,
the Turnip Congress got reluctantly under way. Tension over Berlin increased
almost by the hour. And to Truman’s extreme annoyance, James Forrestal launched
a campaign behind closed doors to turn custody of the atomic bomb over to the
military chiefs.
From testimony being given before the House Un-American
Activities Committee by a woman named Elizabeth Bentley and a Time magazine
editor named Whittaker Chambers, both former Communists, it also appeared a
major spy scandal was unfolding.
Visitors to the President’s office found him looking tired
and preoccupied. Bess and Margaret having made their annual summer departure
for Missouri, he was feeling particularly alone again. “It is hot and humid and
lonely,” he wrote the night after putting them on the train. “Why in hell does
anybody want to be a head of state? Damned if I know.”
He had had no change of heart about Berlin. American forces
would remain. That was his decision, he said again, meeting with Marshall and
Forrestal on July 19, and he would stand by it until all diplomatic means had
been tried to reach some kind of accommodation to avoid war. “We’ll stay in
Berlin—come what may…. I don’t pass the buck, nor do I alibi out of any
decision I make,” he noted privately. He was convinced, as was Marshall, that
the future of Western Europe was at stake in Berlin, not to say the well-being
of the 2.5 million people in the city’s Allied sectors. Stalin was obviously
determined to force the Allies out of Berlin. “If we wished to remain there, we
would have to make a show of strength,” Truman later wrote. “But there was
always the risk that Russian reaction might lead to war. We had to face the
possibility that Russia might deliberately choose to make Berlin the pretext
for war….” The Allies had all of 6,500 troops in Berlin—3,000 American, 2,000
British, 1,500 French—while the Russians had 18,000 backed by an estimated
300,000 in the east zone of Germany.
With the airlift now in its fourth week, heavily laden
American and British transports were roaring into Berlin hundreds of times a
day, and in all weather. They came in low, one after another, lumbering just
over the tops of the ruined buildings, as crowds gathered in clusters to watch.
German children with toy planes played “airlift” in the rubble as the real
drama went on overhead.
It had been General Clay’s initial estimate that possibly
700 tons of food could be delivered to the beleaguered city by air in what
would be a “very big operation.” Already some days the tonnage was twice that
and now, too, almost unimaginably, coal was arriving out of the sky by the
planeload. Pilots and crew were making heroic efforts. At times planes were
landing as often as every four minutes—British Yorks and Dakotas, American
C-47s and the newer, much larger, four-engine C-54s, which had been dispatched
to Germany from Panama, Hawaii, and Alaska. Most planes averaged three flights
a day from Frankfurt to Berlin’s Gatow or Templehof fields, a distance of 275
miles. Ground crews worked round the clock. “We were proud of our Air Force
during the war. We’re prouder of it today,” said The New York Times. Already,
three American crewmen had been killed when their C-47 crashed.
Still, the effort was not enough. On July 15, a record day,
1,450 tons were flown into Berlin. Yet to sustain the city 2,000 tons of food
alone were needed every day, plus 12,000 tons of fuel and supplies. In winter,
the demands for fuel would be far greater. The mayor of Berlin had said it
would be impossible to provide the necessary food and coal supplies by air.
“But every expert knows,” reported a London paper, “that aircraft, despite
their immense psychological effect, cannot be relied upon to provision Berlin
in the winter months.” Allied officials in Berlin worried about the increased
activity of Russian Yak fighter planes in the air corridors.
Secretary of the Army Royall ordered General Clay to fly
home to Washington to report to the President, which Truman thought a mistake.
(“My muttonhead Secretary [of the] Army ordered Clay home from Germany and
stirred up a terrific how-dy-do for no good reason,” he wrote to Bess.) At a
National Security Council meeting on July 22, Clay said the people of Berlin
would stand firm, even if it meant further hardships. Probably the Russians
would try to stop any attempt by an armed convoy to break through at this
stage, but they were not likely to interfere with air traffic, unless, of
course, they were determined to provoke a war. Did the Russians want war,
Truman asked. Clay did not think so. No one could be sure. Truman rejected the
convoy idea.
When Truman inquired what problems might result from
increasing the airlift, General Hoyt Vandenberg, Air Force Chief of Staff,
voiced concern that American air strength elsewhere in the world would
dangerously be reduced. But that was a risk Truman would take. The airlift
would be vastly increased, he decided, expressing again his “absolute
determination” to stay in Berlin. More of the big C-54 transports would be
sent. Clay ordered another Berlin airfield built and in response to his call,
30,000 Berliners went to work to clear the rubble and grade the runways.
“There is considerable political advantage to the
Administration in its battle with the Kremlin,” James Rowe had written in his
effort to outline a political strategy for 1948. “In time of crisis the American
citizen tends to back up his President.” So by such reasoning, the Berlin
crisis, if kept in bounds, was made to order for Truman. Yet in nothing he said
or wrote is there a sign of his playing the situation for “political
advantage.” Rather, the grave responsibilities he bore as President at this
juncture seem to have weighed more heavily on him than at any time since
assuming office. He felt the campaign and its distractions, the drain it put on
his time and strength, could not be coming at a worse time, as he told
Churchill in a letter on July 10:
I am going through a terrible political “trial by fire.” Too
bad it must happen at this time.
Your country and mine are founded on the fact that the
people have the right to express themselves on their leaders, no matter what
the crisis….
We are in the midst of grave and trying times. You can look
with satisfaction upon your great contribution to the overthrow of Nazism and
Fascism in the world. “Communism”—so-called—is our next great problem. I hope
we can solve it without the “blood and tears” the other two cost.
Only the day before the National Security Council meeting
about Berlin On July 21, at the meeting arranged by Forrestal to discuss the
custody of the atomic bomb, Truman had looked dreadful and in a moment of
annoyance revealed as vividly as he ever would how much more he dwelt on the
horror of the atomic bomb than most people, even those close to him, imagined,
or than he wished anyone to know.
“The President greeted us rather solemnly. He looked worn
and grim; none of the joviality that he sometimes exhibits, and we got right
down to business,” wrote David Lilienthal in his diary that night, when the
whole scene and everything said were still fresh in his mind.
It was an important session, and a kind of seriousness hung
over it that wasn’t relieved a bit, needless to say, by the nature of the
subject and the fact that even at that moment some terrible thing might happen
in Berlin…. I rather think it was one of the most important meetings I have ever
attended.
Present besides Truman, Forrestal, and Lilienthal were the
four other members of the Atomic Energy Commission, plus Secretary of the Army
Royall, Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington, and Donald F. Carpenter,
an executive of the Remington Arms Company who was chairman of the Military
Liaison Committee of the National Military Establishment.
It was Carpenter who opened the discussion by reading aloud
a formal letter requesting an order from the President that would turn custody
of the atomic bomb over to the Joint Chiefs, on the grounds that those who
would be ultimately responsible for use of the weapon should have it in their
possession, to increase “familiarity” with it and to “unify” command. Truman,
who did not appreciate being read to in such fashion, cut him off, saying
curtly, “I can read.” He turned to Lilienthal, who said the real issue was one
of broad policy and that the bomb must not be the responsibility of anyone
other than the President, because of his constitutional roles as both Commander
in Chief and Chief Magistrate. Civilian control was essential, Lilienthal said.
But then Symington spoke, delivering an incongruously
lighthearted account of a visit to Los Alamos where “our fellas” told him they
should have the bomb just to be sure it worked, though one scientist had said
he did not think it should ever be used.
“I don’t either,” Truman interjected, his face
expressionless. He went on. “I don’t think we ought to use this thing unless we
absolutely have to. It is a terrible thing to order the use of something
that…[and here, as Lilienthal recorded, Truman paused and looked down at his
desk “rather reflectively”]—that is so terribly destructive, destructive beyond
anything we have ever had. You have got to understand that this isn’t a
military weapon. [“I shall never forget this particular expression,” wrote
Lilienthal.] It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and
not for military uses. So we have got to treat this differently from rifles and
cannon and ordinary things like that.”
In times past Truman had spoken of the bomb as a military
weapon like any other. In times past he had spoken of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as
military targets. Not any more. It was an extraordinary declaration, refuting
absolutely—as Lilienthal understood—any thought that Truman was insensitive to
the horror of the bomb or took lightly his responsibilities as Commander in
Chief.
Yet Symington seemed not to understand Truman’s point or the
mood of the moment. “Our fellas need to get used to handling it,” Symington
repeated, referring now to the military.
They had to understand, Truman said sternly and solemnly,
that he had other considerations to weigh. “This is no time to be juggling an
atom bomb around.”
He rose from his desk. He had had more than enough. The
discussion was ended. The others stood and departed.
“If what worried the President, in part, was whether he
could trust these terrible forces in the hands of the military establishment,”
wrote Lilienthal that night, “the performance these men gave certainly could
not have been reassuring….”
Two days later, at the close of a Cabinet meeting dealing
with domestic issues, Truman held Forrestal a moment longer than the others to
tell him the bomb would continue in civilian custody.
Privately, Truman had been expressing concern about Forrestal, who, as Truman said, seemed lately unable to “take hold.”
