Berlin Blockade

The Berlin Blockade was the Soviet Union's closure of all road, rail and canal routes to the western sectors of Berlin, from 24 June 1948 to 12 May 1949. The United States, Britain and their allies responded with the Berlin Airlift, supplying more than two million people in West Berlin by air for almost a year. One of the first major crises of the Cold War, it ended in a Soviet climbdown and hastened the division of Germany into two states.

After World War II, defeated Germany was divided into four occupation zones run by the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Berlin, deep inside the Soviet zone, was likewise split into four sectors. The western Allies had access to their sectors only along agreed corridors through Soviet-held territory. By 1948 cooperation between the wartime allies had broken down. The western powers were moving towards a separate West German state and bringing their zones into the Marshall Plan, which Moscow saw as a threat.

The immediate trigger was money. In June 1948 the western powers introduced a new currency, the Deutsche Mark, in their zones, to replace the inflated Reichsmark, and soon extended it to the western sectors of Berlin. The Soviet authorities, who introduced their own currency in response, began cutting off land and water traffic into West Berlin, and from 24 June the blockade was complete. Electricity from the Soviet sector was also cut. The aim, as generally understood, was to force the western powers either to abandon the city or to drop their plans for West Germany.

Rather than withdraw or try to force a land convoy through, the western Allies decided to supply the city by air, which the agreements on air corridors allowed. General Lucius Clay, the American military governor, ordered the operation to begin on 26 June. The Americans called it Operation Vittles and the British Operation Plainfare, and aircrews from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa also took part. Under General William Tunner the airlift became a tightly organised system, with aircraft landing every few minutes at Tempelhof and Gatow and, from late 1948, at a new airfield at Tegel, built in a few months largely by Berliners. Coal made up about two-thirds of the cargo, along with food, medicine and other goods. On the Easter weekend of 1949 almost 13,000 tons were delivered in a single day in nearly 1,400 flights. The pilot Gail Halvorsen became famous for dropping sweets to children on small parachutes.

Over the whole operation, more than 2.3 million tons were carried in about 278,000 flights. The winter of 1948–1949 was hard for West Berliners, with rationed food, fuel and power, but most of the population supported the airlift. Accidents killed around a hundred people, among them some 70 American and British airmen as well as German civilians, with sources giving slightly different totals.

By the spring of 1949 it was clear that the airlift could supply the city indefinitely, and a western counter-blockade was hurting the Soviet zone. After negotiations, the Soviet Union lifted the blockade at midnight on 12 May 1949. The airlift continued until the end of September to build up stocks.

The crisis deepened the division of Europe. In April 1949 the United States, Canada and ten western European states founded NATO. The Federal Republic of Germany, West Germany, was founded in May 1949, and the German Democratic Republic, East Germany, in the Soviet zone in October. Berlin remained divided, and West Berlin remained a western enclave until German reunification in 1990.

Our 1945 map shows Germany at the end of the war, and our 1960 map shows Germany divided into two states, with Berlin inside the East.