The Berlin Blockade, 1948
- Began with currency reforms in West Germany
- Russians block the transportation routes into Berlin
- Allies had to decide to give up Berlin or make other plans
- War was an option
The Berlin Airlift, 1948
- Instead the US decided on a massive airlift to supply the western half of the city
- One aircraft lands every two minutes for fifteen months
- It became a public relations victory and a show of US industrial might
- Example of the Truman Doctrine
- One cause for the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
Summary
Berlin blockade and airlift, international crisis that arose from an attempt by the Soviet Union, in 1948–49, to force the Western Allied powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) to abandon their post-World War II jurisdictions in West Berlin. In March 1948 the Allied powers decided to unite their different occupation zones of Germany into a single economic unit. In protest, the Soviet representative withdrew from the Allied Control Council. Coincident with the introduction of a new deutsche mark in West Berlin (as throughout West Germany), which the Soviets regarded as a violation of agreements with the Allies, the Soviet occupation forces in eastern Germany began a blockade of all rail, road, and water communications between Berlin and the West. On June 24 the Soviets announced that the four-power administration of Berlin had ceased and that the Allies no longer had any rights there. On June 26 the United States and Britain began to supply the city with food and other vital supplies by air. They also organized a similar “airlift” in the opposite direction of West Berlin’s greatly reduced industrial exports. By mid-July the Soviet army of occupation in East Germany had increased to 40 divisions, against 8 in the Allied sectors. By the end of July three groups of U.S. strategic bombers had been sent as reinforcements to Britain. Tension remained high, but war did not break out.