Word: western
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Lieut. General Curtis LeMay, Air Force chief in Europe, had called for a special 24-hour effort. The entire load was to be coal, to be distributed as an Air Force birthday present to families with two or more children in the Western sectors of Berlin...
...hours the big C-47 and bigger C-54 cargo planes had to be flown on instruments through the narrow 20-mile Soviet air corridors. But the operation went off like clockwork. Every 48 seconds, on the average, a plane was landing or taking off at one of Western Berlin's two airfields (Tempelhof and Gatow). On Air Force Day thousands of Germans gathered at the Berlin fields and at the loading bases at Frankfurt and Wiesbaden. Many kept tallies of the number of flights and tonnage of coal as husky Latvian and Esthonian D.P.s tossed 110-lb. bags...
After two weeks of vainly trying to settle the Berlin issue in Berlin, Germany's military governors passed the problem back to Moscow. For the eleventh time, the Western envoys went to call on Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. The Russians had agreed "in principle" to lift the Berlin blockade; in practice, they refused to budge. It was obvious by now that the Russians were merely carrying on what T. S. Eliot once called "a tedious argument of insidious intent...
After the last Kremlin meeting, U.S. Ambassador Bedell Smith said: "The three Western envoys had a delightful hour and 30 minutes' talk with Mr. Molotov. I have no comment...
After that, the Western envoys (Smith, Britain's Frank Roberts and France's Yves Chataigneau) took off for Paris where the U.N. General Assembly was about to meet. All the other principals converged on Paris-from Washington came Secretary of State Marshall, from London Ernie Bevin, from Berlin General Lucius Clay. The visitors were joined by France's Foreign Minister Robert Schuman. The chief decision they would have to make was whether to continue the delightful talks with Molotov in Paris (if he should decide to come), or whether to throw the Berlin issue into...