

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the Allies split the country into four temporary zones of occupation. Berlin, the capital, located within the Soviet Union controlled eastern part, was also divided into four sectors.

In June 1948, Britain, France and the US united their zones into a new country, West Germany, and introduced a new currency. In reply, the Soviet authorities announced that the four-power administration of Berlin had ceased and that the Allies no longer had any rights there. Power supplies and all road and rail links to the city were closed, thus beginning the blockade of Berlin. On 26 June, Britain, the US and other countries began to supply West Berlin by air.

Manchester Guardian, 24 June 1948.

Editorial: Berlin

28 June 1948

It is hard to see any honourable alternative course before the Western Allies except to stand firm in Berlin. We are there by virtue of the arrangement between the Allies after the German defeat; we have under our direct charge two million people; our presence there prevents this still great European capital, predominantly non-Communist, from being delivered over to Communist tyranny.

But that is not all. The Russians are trying to push us out of Berlin now because they think that this is the moment when a blow to Western prestige would most assist their political aims. Since the Russians refused to co-operate in any agreed measures for German reconstruction (except on their own terms and at the price of making all Germany a Russian mulch-cow), the Western Allies have had to act in their own zones alone and, by the currency reform, the plan for supervising the Ruhr, and the extension of German self-government to bring Western Germany at least back into the European democratic community. The Russians regard this, as they regard the rest of the Marshall Plan and the whole idea of Western Union, as a blow to their hopes for the Communist domination of Europe. Hence their tactics of the last few months and particularly of the last few weeks – the steady succession of restrictive measures which have now completely isolated Berlin except by the air from the West.

To force the small Allied forces out of Berlin and to absorb into the Russian zone the Western-occupied sectors of Berlin, still courageously anti-Communist, would be as ostentatious a success as the crushing of freedom in Czechoslovakia. The next step would be a strong political offensive against Western Germany, backed by an appeal to German nationalism in its crudest form. The economic recovery of any country depends primarily on confidence. It is German confidence in democratic recovery in association with the Western world that the Russians seek to destroy. And it is confidence that above all things Western Germany needs just now if the currency reform is to have its revivifying effect.

That is why it is so important that the Western Allies should not let themselves get into a panic, either of fear and weakness or of bluster and bellicosity. We have to recognise that however strong the moral factors on our side we are in a difficult position in Berlin. Our garrisons and administrations are isolated in their enclave in the middle of Russian-occupied Germany. They are small in numbers: they cannot easily be strengthened if armed strength were any possible assurance. If the Russians cut, as they have done, the road, rail and water communications through which the German population of our zones is fed we can do hardly anything about it. Within a few weeks, if the embargo continues, half Berlin must starve. All that is true enough but it is still no reason for capitulating.

During the Berlin blockade subways were closed due to power cuts. Photograph: ullstein bild via Getty Images

The logical end of our forcible ejection from Berlin is war, if not immediately, then within a very short space of time. The Russians, we may guess, do not want war; but, like Hitler, they are prepared to go a long way towards it by threats of force. The difference between now and 1935-9 is that we know from the German evidence how much was lost by Western timidity in face of a cynical aggressor when firmness might have stopped him. Appeasement for appeasement’s sake will reap no better dividends now than it did then. Ultimately, perhaps, our position in Berlin could become absolutely untenable; we might have to evacuate by air or fight our way out. But that will come only if the Russians decide that they are ready to precipitate war and to stand its consequences. So far there is little evidence that they are. Whatever their own state of preparedness or the will of their people to fight, they have not yet consolidated their satellites. The Communist victory in the territories they dominate is still incomplete and is least complete in their own zone of Germany. So far they have burned no boats; their hostile measures are administrative and technical for all their effectiveness; they could easily be reversed if it were decided to relax the tension.

The policy of the Western Allies should therefore base itself, at any rate at the beginning, of the assumption that a peaceful accommodation is not impossible. It should be unprovocative but firm and consistent. They should protest, in Moscow as well as in Berlin, but be ready to carry discussions to another meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers, if that is what the Russians want. But meanwhile they should stand on their rights. Mr. Churchill’s backing of Mr. Bevin is useful in showing that in this country there is a common front. In the United States, for all the distractions of President-making, there is likely to be the same unanimity. Indeed, the main danger is that the American men on the spot may act too hastily and too peremptorily, without enough consultation with their allies. Nor, we shall probably find, will France be in serious divergence. A Communist Eastern Germany, calling up the emotional national fervour of a revived Nazism, is the biggest conceivable blow to French hopes of a weak federal Germany. It should not escape French notice that the whole emphasis of Moscow’s propaganda in Germany in the last few days has been on the community of interest between Russia and Germany. The Moscow wireless is talking in the same strain as did Molotov and Ribbentrop when they signed their pact in August, 1939. There seems little scope for France to play the part of mediator, even if she wished.

The Western Allies must stick together. They must be ready to compromise on small things (the Berlin currency, for instance, should not be incapable of solution) but on the big things they cannot give way. To agree to a settlement on the Warsaw terms (which are precisely those of the Russians at the Moscow and London conferences) would make Germany a Communist-controlled country paying perpetual tribute to Russia; and Russia’s frontier would become the North Sea and the Rhine. But, militarily weak though they may be in Berlin, the Allies are not yet weak enough to have to capitulate, nor are the Russians strong enough to try to make them.

US C-47 transport aircraft at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport during the airlift. Photograph: STF/AFP/Getty Images

Winter blockade? - The first hundred days in Berlin

From our Special Correspondent

5 October, 1948

October 2 was the hundredth day of the absolute blockade, by land and water of Berlin. Three months ago the joint Anglo-American air-lift was regarded less as a serious operation than as a generous and spontaneous gesture, capable of heartening the German population but certainly not of supplying them with all the essentials of human existence. Three months ago nobody save the small band of planners in British and American headquarters, looked more than a few weeks ahead. The supply of over two million people by air was in summer improbable, in winter unthinkable.



The first three months have, thanks to planning initiative and perfect technical execution, been successfully bridged. The next three months must still be critical. Berlin is afraid of this coming winter but Berlin has been afraid of each post-war winter. In every home the chances of the air-lift to carry Berlin into next spring are eagerly debated. What are these chances? For on them depends whether two and a quarter million people can be bullied into submission or whether their late but nevertheless wholehearted espousal of the cause of Western democracy can win them elementary freedom.

Berlin’s needs

In the week before last the air-lift brought over 25.000 tons of food and fuel into Berlin. This gives an average of 3,600 a day. Allied experts have assessed Berlin’s present needs at roughly 4,000 tons a day. This figure includes only food, fuel for electricity and power and for an industry working at about 55 per cent of capacity, plus a limited amount – less than 5 per cent of the air-lift – of raw materials and consumer goods. The gap between supply and demand is a very small one which is certain to be bridged as airfields are improved and increased in number. General Clay, has confidently predicted a 4.500-tons-a-day average even during the worst winter weather.

What has been the Allied effort to meet these requirements? First they were wise enough to build up substantial stocks. The British are building an unloading dock at Kladow, on Berlin’s western girdle of lakes, which will solve the problem of transference from planes to barges. They have organised transit and permanent dumps in the city. They have brought light railways into use for transporting purposes, and at the western end of the air-lift supply services, after a shaky start, are working with an exact, unbroken rhythm. They have cut and stored enough timber to give each household 1cwt. of kindling wood.



The first key-point this winter will be the arrival of really cold weather. By then the air-lift will have to be stepped up 40 per cent and a domestic-heating programme organised. Coal may have to be withdrawn from industry, but in any case this could not supply more than 25 per cent of needs. Unemployment will then become a menacing problem. The air-lift has proved itself many times over but not yet guaranteed Western Berlin’s survival.

This is an edited version. Read the full article.

The blockade lasted 318 days before Stalin abandoned it on 12 May 1949. The airlift continued until the end of September.

Blockade of Berlin Over: British convoy crosses Soviet zone - lights go up in Western sectors

12 May 1949

The blockade of Berlin ended at one minute past midnight this morning when a British convoy started its journey through the Soviet zone. Less than two hours later the first cars had reached Berlin without incident.

A great cheer went up from hundreds of Berliners as an American jeep passed the Western and Russian check-points on the outskirts of the city and sped along the Autobahn to Helmstedt. At one minute past midnight also all street and domestic lighting in the Western sectors of Berlin was turned on at the Klingenberg power station in the Soviet sector. The first train from Western Germany left Helmstedt at 1 25 and was cleared at the Soviet control post.



Elaborate preparations had been made at all the frontier posts in celebration of the end of the blockade. The Russians had painted the road blocks, the Germans had assembled to cheer the first motorist and cyclist into Berlin, and the Americans had installed arc-lamps for their photographers and transmitters for their correspondents.

Mr. Acheson, the United States Secretary of State, discouraged over-optimism at his press conference yesterday. The lifting of the blockade, he said, was only the first step towards a solution of the German problem; the final solution depended on Russia’s willingness to make or consider proposals to bring Germany into a peaceful

community of free nations.

Berlin children thank Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen for the thousands of packages of gum and candy he and his friends dropped over Berlin, 1949. Photograph: PhotoQuest/Getty Images

Airlift profit and loss

British and American aircraft have made 195,000 flights to Berlin with 1,583,686 short tons of coal, food, and other supplies since the blockade began. The British contribution was 63,612 flights with 369,347 short tons of supplies. In the 24 hours ended at noon yesterday British planes made 323 flights with a record 2,181 short tons. Australian, New Zealand, and South African crews have made over 3,000 flights with about 11,000 tons of goods.

The airlift has cost 57 lives – 27 Americans, 23 British, and seven Germans – and 18 planes have been lost. The United States has spent £37,500,000; the British share is estimated at £6,500,000.