Found The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour by Andrei Cherny ($20 @ Amazon)  at the library and it caught my eye. It turned out to be an interesting story with some very interesting characters. It covers the end of WW II and how Berlin was governed by a multi nation council and how the people of Berlin were barely surviving for several years after the war even with the US providing some food – averaging about 1000 calories were day. Some of the behavior attributed to the Soviets in Berlin is pretty horrid, almost routine rape of women, killing children, and more. Eventually relations break down and the Soviets stop all resupply coming in to Berlin.

This was a huge problem, because the American military had been drawn down sharply after the war and just did not have the power to fight toe to toe with the Soviets, the only equalizer was the atomic bomb. That’s right, the beginning of the cold war. You get to meet the key Americans trying to convert Germany to democracy (trying to avoid the mistakes that lead to WW II from WW I), see Truman, Marshall, and Forrestal in DC, and more. Nothing smooth or elegant about the course of changes, but it feels real – life rarely feels elegant.

Flying in supplies isn’t very efficient compared to truck and train. They struggled in the beginning and once they got the right guy, they were landing planes every 3 minutes 24 hours a day.

All of that makes for good reading and a good story, but the author poses that one other guy changed everything about how Americans felt about Germans and vice versa. You can imagine post war there was a lot of residual ill will, you’re trying to convert them to democracy, and you’ve got communism in the mix too. Airlift pilot Gail Halvorson decides to give some German children his two sticks of gum (against orders to give away food) and then starts dropping candy bars tied to handkerchief parachutes. He keeps going, then word leaks out and other pilots start bring him candy. Then the boss finds out, he does some interviews (instead of getting canned), and pretty soon he has TONS of candy to drop, school kinds making parachutes, and more pilots dropping candy.

It doesn’t sound like much, but imagine the impact on kids with nothing, barely surviving for food, and then this guy shows up and promises that he’ll return the next day and drop candy from the sky. And then does it. Over and over again. The book has quite a few letters from the children in the book saying thank you – the best part of the book.

I don’t know if I’d call it our finest hour, though we did come through when even many of our people wanted to abandon Berlin and we did in a way that was – to me – uniquely American, 1 plane every 3 minutes…for months! Col Halvorson though, with a simple idea and the courage to do something good even if not ‘by the book’ made a unique difference in the world. Well done Colonel!