Helena P. Schrader’s COLD WAR: A Novel of the Berlin Airlift, the second in a series about the 1948-1949 Soviet siege of Berlin, is a tour-de-force that describes with great import a time and place unfamiliar to many. Its complex story describes a large cast of people trying to live under the impossible conditions of a divided post-War Berlin—a literal war in all but name.
The novel’s plot centers on heroic pilots fighting attacks from Russians and England’s bad weather in roughly equal parts, but the narrative cuts a wide swath of riveting scenes: warcraft failures in flight, the plights of starving children trapped within geopolitical gamesmanship, mob violence, and micro- and macro-aggressions among military, ethnic, and political entities. Most egregious are the arbitrary cruelties of the Soviets (called the Ivans by the Allied players). As one character notes, “Berlin has become a battleground. This is a war in which the weapons are food and heat, and the targets—or at least those most likely to die—are not soldiers but children.” Defense tactics range from heart-stopping flights on rickety planes to day-to-day subversive minutiae: “They walked along the canal, stopping to buy the morning paper. ‘That’s so the Ivans will have something to confiscate,’ Sperl explained.”
The primary storyline involves safeguarding Berlin, a complicated goal: “Now the same air forces that had done the killing were attempting to supply the city with all vital necessities,” says a character. But multiple subplots illustrate the complexity of the various kinds of people and motivations sucked together into this city of conflicts. Just a handful include members of the Soviet Secret police, whose harassments touch not only enemies but their own people; British officers resentful of the (American) “Amis”; Berlin officials and civilians grateful to the Allies; commercial as well as military air service personnel; veterans whose disabilities have rendered them “useless” in the bureaucratic eyes of the military; and (always) women suffering indignities small and massive—from pushback against a rare female reporter to brutal gang rapes to the condescension a businesswoman swats away on a daily basis.
Prescient passages that ring true to today’s headlines, charming romances, and an irksome officer aptly named Bagshot also inhabit this corpulent story. Yes, the book is 500 pages, but that number seems slim considering that author Helena P. Schrader packs all this and more into her exhaustively researched, fully annotated novel.
One passage nicely summarizes a central theme: “In Sperl’s slow transformation from Nazi officer to cynical black marketeer and now democratic policeman, he saw hope for the future of Germany. Maybe Sperl was a microcosm of what was happening throughout Berlin and across the country?”
The novel’s lone drawback involves exposition. When it is relayed via narrative, it is tight and effective; but the expositional dialogue is often clunky and unrealistic. This is a trifling quibble, however. Overall, even for readers who think they don’t care about war stories, Germany, or airplanes, COLD WAR is a must-read—and its sequel is eagerly anticipated.
Helena P. Schrader’s compelling, meticulously researched novel, COLD WAR: A Novel of the Berlin Airlift, tells a compelling story of both mega-sized action-adventures and intimate, heartbreaking moments.
~Anne Welsbacher for IndieReader