Helmstedt

At Helmstedt trains carrying coal and food are already waiting to roll eastward the moment the border is opened.

Daring Young Men RICHARD REEVES 2010

He told his counterparts, the British and French commanders, that he was sure the Russians were bluffing, and he proposed sending an armored convoy of 6,000 men to race down the Autobahn from Helmstedt to Berlin, using American engineers to repair the bridges—if there was anything actually wrong with them.

Daring Young Men RICHARD REEVES 2010

Entry is refused to vehicle traffic of every sort coming from the Western zones, including all traffic on the highway between Helmstedt and Berlin.

Daring Young Men RICHARD REEVES 2010

The stated technical reason was to make repairs on the dozens of bridges between Helmstedt and Berlin.

Daring Young Men RICHARD REEVES 2010

At the same moment, floodlights went on 105 miles to the east in Helmstedt, the border between the British and Soviet sectors.

Daring Young Men RICHARD REEVES 2010

In Berlin, American First Lieutenant William Frost, holding a bouquet of lilacs handed to him by a young woman named Johanna Kraapz, and his driver, Private Horace Scites, took off for Helmstedt as the lights went on.

Daring Young Men RICHARD REEVES 2010

The bedraggled and demoralized caravan proceeded along the 117 miles of Autobahn to Helmstedt in the British zone . . .

Daring Young Men RICHARD REEVES 2010

The Soviets announced that the Autobahn from Helmstedt in the British Zone, running through East Germany to Berlin, was being closed for “technical reasons.”

Daring Young Men RICHARD REEVES 2010

They had done that in March, three months earlier, when the Soviets briefly stopped trains from Helmstedt, using three twenty-mile-wide air corridors that had been agreed upon in a written air safety plan between the Soviets, Americans and British at Potsdam in November of 1945.

Daring Young Men RICHARD REEVES 2010

The first train, carrying correspondents from newspapers and radio stations from around the world, left Helmstedt at 1:23 A.M., with nineteen others carrying coal, food and mail lined up behind it and draped in American, British and French flags.

Daring Young Men RICHARD REEVES 2010