Berlin Airlift
After World War II, the Allies
partitioned the defeated Germany into a Soviet-occupied zone, an
American-occupied zone, a British-occupied zone and a French-occupied zone.
Berlin, the German capital city, was located deep in the Soviet zone, but it
was also divided into four sections. In June 1948, the Russians–who wanted
Berlin all for themselves–closed all highways, railroads and canals from
western-occupied Germany into western-occupied Berlin. This, they believed,
would make it impossible for the people who lived there to get food or any
other supplies and would eventually drive Britain, France and the U.S. out of
the city for good. Instead of retreating from West Berlin, however, the U.S.
and its allies decided to supply their sectors of the city from the air. This
effort, known as the “Berlin Airlift,” lasted for more than a year and carried
more than 2.3 million tons of cargo into West Berlin.
The Berlin Airlift: The
Partitioning of Berlin
As World War II came to an end in
1945, the Allied powers held peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam to
determine how they would divide up Germany’s territories. The agreements split
the defeated nation into four “allied occupation zones”: They gave the eastern
part of the country to the Soviet Union and the Western part to the U.S. and
Great Britain. In turn, those nations agreed to cede a small part of their
territories to France. Even though Berlin was located entirely within the
Soviet part of the country (it sat about 100 miles from the border between the
eastern and western occupation zones), the Yalta and Potsdam agreements
likewise split the German capital into Allied sectors: The Soviets took the
eastern half, while the other Allies took the western. This occupation of
Berlin, governed by a multipower agency called the Kommandatura, began in June
1945. The Soviets were dissatisfied with this arrangement. Twice in recent
memory, they had been invaded by Germany, and they had no interest in promoting
that country’s reunification–yet it seemed that was exactly what the United
States, Great Britain and France had in mind. For example, in 1946 the
Americans and the British combined their two sectors into a single “Bizonia,”
and the French were preparing to join as well. In 1948, the three western
Allies created a single new currency (the Deutsche Mark) for all of their
occupation zones—a move that the Soviets feared would fatally devalue the
already hyperinflated Reichsmarks that they used in the east. For the Soviets,
it was the last straw.
The Berlin Airlift: The Berlin
Blockade
The Russians were also concerned
about a unified West Berlin: a capitalist city located right in the middle of
their occupation zone that would likely be powerfully and aggressively
anti-Soviet. They decided that something needed to be done to stop this
creeping unificationism. They withdrew from the Kommandatura and began a
blockade of West Berlin, a maneuver that they hoped would effectively starve
the western powers out of Berlin. If West Germany was to become its own
country, they argued, then Berlin, located more than 100 miles from its border,
could no longer be its capital. On June 15, 1948, the Soviet authorities
announced that the Autobahn, the highway connecting western Germany to Berlin,
would be closed indefinitely “for repairs.” Then, they halted all road traffic
from west to east, and barred all barge and rail traffic from entering West
Berlin. Thus began the blockade of Berlin. As far as the western Allies were
concerned, withdrawal from the city was not an option. “If we withdraw,” said
the American military commander, “our position in Europe is threatened, and
Communism will run rampant.” President Harry Truman echoed this sentiment: “We
shall stay,” he declared, “period.” Using military force to strike back against
the Soviet blockade seemed equally unwise: The risk of turning the Cold War
into an actual war—even worse, a nuclear war—was just too great. Finding
another way to re-provision the city seemed to the Allies to be the only
reasonable response.
The Berlin Airlift: “Operation
VITTLES” Begins
It was quickly settled: The
Allies would supply their sectors of Berlin from the air. Allied cargo planes
would use open air corridors over the Soviet occupation zone to deliver food,
fuel and other goods to the people who lived in the western part of the city. This
project, code-named “Operation VITTLES” by the American military, was known as
the “Berlin airlift.” (West Berliners called it the “Air Bridge.”) The Berlin
airlift was supposed to be a short-term measure, but it settled in for the long
haul as the Soviets refused to lift the blockade. For more than a year,
hundreds of American, British and French cargo planes ferried provisions from
Western Europe to the Tempelhof (in the American sector), Gatow (in the British
sector) and Tegel (in the French sector) airfields in West Berlin. At the
beginning of the operation, the planes delivered about 5,000 tons of supplies
to West Berlin every day; by the end, those loads had increased to about 8,000
tons of supplies per day. The Allies carried about 2.3 million tons of cargo in
all over the course of the airlift. Life in West Berlin during the blockade was
not easy. Fuel and electricity were rationed, and the black market was the only
place to obtain many goods. Still, most West Berliners supported the airlift
and their western allies. “It’s cold in Berlin,” one airlift-era saying went,
“but colder in Siberia.”
The Berlin Airlift: The End of
the Blockade
By spring 1949, it was clear that
the Soviet blockade of West Berlin had failed. It had not persuaded West
Berliners to reject their allies in the West, nor had it prevented the creation
of a unified West German state. (The Federal Republic of Germany was
established in May 1949.) On May 12, 1949, the Soviets lifted the blockade and
reopened the roads, canals and railway routes into the western half of the
city. The Allies continued the airlift until September, however, because they
wanted to stockpile supplies in Berlin just in case the blockade was
reinstated. Most historians agree that the blockade was a failure in other
ways, too. It amped up Cold War tensions and made the USSR look to the rest of
the world like a cruel and capricious enemy. It hastened the creation of West
Germany, and, by demonstrating that the U.S. and Western European nations had
common interests (and a common foe), it motivated the creation of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), an alliance that still exists today.
Conclusion:
The Berlin Airlift won the first real test between the Soviets and the West
during the Cold War. On June 24, 1948 the Soviet Union closed all rail, sea and
land passage from the Allied Trizone (American, French and British occupied
zone) – later West Germany - through 100
miles of the Soviet-occupied eastern Germany
- later East Germany – to West Berlin. The Soviets had hoped to force
the Americans, the French and the British to abandon West Berlin and to force
the West Berliners to “vote with their feet” and come to Communist East Berlin
- where the Soviets promised them food and jobs (the majority of West Berliners
stayed in West Berlin.)
Instead the militaries of: the
United States, the United Kingdom, France, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand
and Canada worked 24 hours a day for almost 1 year to supply West Berlin with
the basics (food, medicine, coal, etc.) By the time the Berlin Airlift ended
(the Soviets admitted defeat and opened the rail, sea and land passages to West
Berlin on May 12, 1949, but the Airlift itself continued until September 30,
1949 to make sure West Berlin would have enough supplies to last in case the
Soviets tried to cut them off again) the Western Allies had flown 300,000 trips
from West Germany to West Berlin and supplied the West Berliners with 2.5
million tons of food and supplies (including special Christmas presents for
10,000 West Berlin children.) At the height of the Airlift, one plane reached
West Berlin every thirty seconds even during heavy fog, rain or snow. The cost
of the Airlift is estimated to have cost from the equivalent of $2.36 billion
to $5.27 billion in today’s money.
There were 101 Allied deaths
during the Berlin Airlift including 40 Brits and 31 Americans.
The Berlin Airlift saw former
enemies into allies: the British, the French and the Americans with the West
Germans and former allies into enemies: the British, the French and the
Americans with the Soviets. It also showed the East Germans they could flee to
West Berlin and West Germany and be protected by the West from the Soviets and
the Communists – thousands fled until the Communists built the Berlin Wall in
1961.
https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/berlin-airlift
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.