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Andrei Cherny
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The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Aircraft and America's Finest Hour Kindle Edition

by Andrei Cherny (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 652 ratings
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In the tradition of the great narrative storytellers, Andrei Cherny recounts the exhilarating saga of the unlikely men who made the Berlin Airlift one of the great military and humanitarian successes of American history.

“What an exciting, inspiring, and wonderfully-written book this is....Each page has lessons for today, and it is also a thrilling narrative to read.”—Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Steve Jobs

The Candy Bombers is a remarkable story with profound implications for our own time. Cherny tells the tale of the ill-assorted group of castoffs and secondstringers who not only saved millions of desperate people from a dire threat, but also won the hearts of America’s defeated enemies, inspired people around the world to believe in America’s fundamental goodness, avoided World War III, and won the greatest battle of the Cold War without firing a shot.

With newly unclassified documents, unpublished letters and diaries, and fresh primary interviews, The Candy Bombers takes readers along as American pilots, with only a few small rickety planes, manage to feed and supply West Berlin completely by air for nearly a year; as Harry Truman exploits the very real threat of war to win an upset reelection campaign; as America’s first secretary of defense descends into madness in the midst of a dangerous military crisis; and as a lovesick American pilot shows that acts of basic human kindness can send powerful ripples through the course of history.
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  1. Print length
    668 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Dutton Caliber
  5. Publication date
    April 17, 2008
  6. Reading age
    18 years and up
  7. File size
    1283 KB
  8. Page Flip
    Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1948, West Berliners were suffering and hungry, existing on food rations transported by trucks, trains and barges primarily by the occupying American forces. The Russians, trying to control the divided city, blockaded the transports on June 24, 1948, and American and British pilots risked their lives to airlift in 4.6 billion pounds of food and supplies until the blockade was lifted in May 1949. Pilot Hal Halvorsen won Berliners' hearts by secretly dropping his and his buddies' candy rations by parachute into the waiting hands of the city's children. In the process, says Cherny (The Next Deal), Berliners became devoted to democracy, and Washington foreign policy and military brass learned that the Cold War needed to be won not primarily with bullets but by appealing to hearts and minds. This book could have been cut by a third for better effect; Cherny's prose and his references to 9/11 are manipulative, and his subject, particularly the nuts and bolts of the airlift, will appeal primarily to WWII buffs, who should still find much to savor in this exhaustive, often absorbing and lucid account of America's successful standoff against the Soviets. 16 pages of b&w photos. (Apr. 17)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Accounts abound about the Berlin crisis and airlift of 1948–49, when the West thwarted the attempted Soviet takeover of the entire city. To distinguish his book from the pack, Cherny places his emphasis on the episode’s political effects in Washington, D.C. Ultimately, argues Cherny, Harry Truman’s decisiveness, above all his rejection of high-level advice to retreat from Berlin, contributed to his victory in the 1948 presidential election, a case he makes in recounting junctions between the political campaigns and players in the Berlin crisis. Sufficient as this would be for book-level treatment, Cherny augments his text with the organization of the airlift operation. Perhaps justified because of the airlift’s tremendous material and propaganda success, which drew the West’s line against further Communist expansion in Europe, including the airlift narrative nonetheless competes with Cherny’s announced angle on the impact of the Soviet blockade on American politics and foreign policy. Emphasizing figures prominent in the crisis—military governor Lucius Clay, Truman critic Henry Wallace, and pilot Gail Halvorsen––Cherny readably synthesizes this milestone cold-war confrontation. --Gilbert Taylor

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B001EM168S
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dutton Caliber (April 17, 2008)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 17, 2008
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1283 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 668 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 652 ratings

About the author

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Andrei Cherny

Andrei Cherny

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Andrei Cherny has been a White House aide, Senior Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Navy reserve officer. He is the author of The Next Deal and the Candy Bombers and has written on history, politics, and culture for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
652 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Sego Lily Roots
5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting. I found this book difficult to put down.
Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2015
Verified Purchase
I have been aware of the story of the candy bomber for some time, but until recently I was unaware how close the U.S. was to World War III. The book is fascinating and helps the reader to understand the very real difficulties the situation in Germany and Berlin presented at the time. I am a political junkie, but even I got a little more politics than I desired. Still, the people were portrayed well, and the situation faced by the Americans and the Germans was explained very well. It's difficult to understand the behavior of the Soviets, but as one who grew up during the later years of the cold war, that's not anything surprising. The only way to understand the Soviets and the Russians under Putin today, is that they will do and say anything to grasp power and to keep it. I can't help wondering how past U.S. Presidents would have reacted to a modern day President whispering to the Russian leader over a hot Mic how the current US President could be more flexible [about missiles] after the election. And then to get re-elected! How far we have fallen from the brave Americans in the Berlin Airlift and the brave Berliners who fought so hard for their freedom after having given it to Hitler before.

It's uplifting to know that a humble young man with the desire to follow God's plan for his life could make such a great difference in the world. Through Lt. Halvorsen God taught us all a lesson about how to reach out to each other even after terrible wars. I lived in Japan, and I know that there are many who still hold good will toward America because of American efforts to improve their lives after the war. One of my favorite quotes from this book was where Halvorsen is meeting with the candy company representative who confesses that because he's Jewish he has a hard time helping the Germans, but the children are Germany's future and if a little candy would help them out he would see what he could do. To me this encapsulates the American spirit of compassion.
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Solipso
5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of emotion here. A great story, should be a good movie.
Reviewed in the United States on March 10, 2012
Verified Purchase
If you neglect this book, you neglect one of life's better offerings. It is history at its best. It is literature at its best.

The first quarter or so of the book is unremarkable. Good reading, mind you, but nothing unique. The necessary background is laid out. The ending of World War II, the division of Germany in to four zones of occupation, introductions to the politics of the time and the story's characters...these lead into the brilliant narration of the Berlin Airlift.

It was a moment in history that most of us know little of, or have forgotten. It was a moment of villainy as well as heroism, when the world teetered on the brink of nuclear holocaust. It is described gracefully by Andrei Cherny with just the right words. People, events, and memorable scenes become vivid with unassailable believability, and though it is not fantasy, the story is enriched with magic..

Don't be intimidated by the book's size. The last 70 pages are notes, bibliography, etc, and the main 550 pages of text are formatted with wide spacing, allowing for a quick read. And the high points are so absorbing you won't even know you are reading. The style is easy, and though his four grandparents "...were `guests' of the German government in places named Auschwitz, Terezin, Buchenwald, and Dachau," the author commends virtues of the German people while barely mentioning Jews. That says something for unbiased reporting.

The portfolio of outstanding photographic plates includes one that has become one of my favorite photos of all time. I'll let you guess which one it is.
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Philip H. Kozloff
4.0 out of 5 stars Twentieth Century Pivot Point
Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2008
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First, I must agree with Mr. Fishman's guibble about the aptness of the title "The Candy Bombers," which tends to capitalize on an aspect of the event for, perhaps, commercial impact. The sub-title more usefully describes the content of the book, if not particularly catchy.

Having said that, I found the book to be an immensely useful examination of this crucial development in post-WWII geopolitics. The time spent on the contemporary American political environment including the 1948 election was very useful and does more to explain why Harry Truman was elected President than anything else I can remember reading. The inter-personal dynamics between members of the US military command structure comes through clear and believable.

What eliminates this book, in my view, from the top ranks of history books are some of the blind spots that I would not expect from a more complete study of the subject. For instance, I would like to know what was going through the minds of the Russians. Why didn't Stalin just charge through all of this and takeover Berlin with the power he obviously had available to him? With all of Europe as the prize, why was he not willing to suffer a few American A-bombs? Most un-Stalin like. And further down the ranks there were some interesting characters on the Russian side, too, that probably deserve some spotlight time. Were they conflicted or not to be in the their tenuous positions?

Also, what effect did the Berlin Airlift have on the global strategic positioning of the Truman Administration? While it was going on, developments in China and other parts of Asia seem to have been ignored in relative terms. When the disasterous Korean War boiled up a year after the Airlift, the Truman Administration was caught with its pants down. To what extent was that made possible by the single-minded fucus on the Berlin Airlift and Europe?

Still, an excellent book as far as it goes.
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Kati
5.0 out of 5 stars Good
Reviewed in Canada on March 19, 2021
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Good arrived in time and as expected
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