#berlin blockade

In the closing days of the Second World War, the final wartime meeting of Allied leaders took place in the Berlin suburb of Potsdam. The agreement forged there by U.S. President Harry S. Truman, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, created the framework for how Germany would be divided up and governed in the immediate postwar period. Among the provisions were an agreement that the Soviet Union would maintain its occupation of that east German territory it had occupied, while the three main Allied powers--Britain, France, and the United States--would create occupation zones in western Germany. The German capital of Berlin*--which lay 100 miles inside the Soviet occupation zone--was similarly subdivided, with the Soviets occupying East Berlin, while West Berlin was similarly subdivided with France occupying the northern sector, Britain the central sector, and the United States the southern sector of the city. The Allies were permitted to maintain military garrisons in their respective sectors, and all four parties agree to govern Germany, and Berlin, jointly through the Allied Control Council.

In March 1948, Soviet border guards stationed around the perimeter of West Berlin, began halting trains carrying military supplies to the Allied garrisons in the city. The interference was limited at first, but within days became a blanket ban on all trains, trucks, and barges carrying military supplies into the city. at Potsdam, Allied negotiators had failed to establish in writing their rights to transport supplies by land and river to Berlin, something which the Soviets now took advantage of. What had been scrupulously negotiated, however, was the right to three air corridors between West Germany and West Berlin. The American garrison commander, General Lucius Clay, ordered that the U.S. military respond by airlifting supplies into the city. Thereafter, American cargo planes operating from West Germany flew in the 20 tons of supplies necessary to maintain the garrison. The British garrison simultaneously, but independently, carried out its own airlift from airbases in northern Germany. Anticipating escalation by the Soviets, the British air commander took it upon himself to calculate how many tons of daily supplies the entire population of West Berlin would need should all ground and rail shipments from the west be halted.

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On March 20, the Soviet delegation withdrew from the Allied Control Commission and within days, Soviet military exercises took place only miles from the city. The U.S., Britain, and France had severely reduced the size of their armed forces after the war, and between them had less than 20,000 troops in Berlin. But, unlike the Soviets, the west had the atomic bomb. Moreover, as Clay pointed out in a cable to the Truman administration, West Berlin had become a symbol, and for the western powers to evacuate the city in such circumstances, would severely undermine their integrity in the eyes of Germans. While Clay acknowledged that the U.S. and its allies would not be able resist for long in an overt attack by the Soviets, there were other ways to respond. Clay reasoned that, using the daily food and coal requirements of West Berlin as calculated by his British counterpart, the airlift used to supply the military garrisons could be expanded to supply all of West Berlin with its needs. When Clay asked his senior Air Force commander, Curtis LeMay, “Can you haul coal?” LeMay, at first bewildered, then responded “We can haul anything.”

The Air Force staffs of both Britain and the United States scoured their inventories and overseas deployments to find the number of aircraft needed to undertake the gargantuan task. Based on an individual diet of 1,990 calories, it was calculated that 1,534 tons of food and 3,475 tons of coal and gasoline would have to be airlifted in each day in order to feed 2 million West Berliners. The most prevalent cargo plane in Europe at the time, the C-47, had a capacity of only 2.5 tons. Moreover, its main carriage was up front, meaning that while on the ground the fuselage sloped downward, making unloading exceptionally difficult and time consuming. Eventually, C-54 Skymasters, which could carry 10 tons at a time, replaced the C-47s. Britain supplemented its cargo planes with Sunderland flying boats which, due to their corrosion resistant hulls--they were designed to take off and land in the ocean--were used to fly salt into Berlin, landing in the Havel River.

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In its first few weeks, the airlift failed to meet its daily goals. The complex system of landing at Berlin’s airports in groups as directed by air traffic control, was clogging the airspace and leading to accidents. Soviet sponsored propaganda in East Berlin ridiculed the British-American effort to supply the city from the air. In July 1948, Major General William Tunner of the Military Air Transport Service was given command of the combined British and American efforts. Tunner had taken over command of and reorganized the military airlift of supplies from India to southern China in 1944; nicknamed The Hump because of the mountainous terrain it crossed. Tunner’s reorganization increased efficiency and lowered the rate of accidents in 1944-45, allowing American and Chinese forces in China to undertake an offensive against Japan there in the waning months of the war. Tunner applied his same methods in Berlin and, using the newly arrived C-54s, his pilots met and then exceeded the daily requirements of food and coal.

By April 1949, Stalin’s government realized that the Airlift had succeeded. Soviet commanders in Berlin quietly approached the Allies about the possibility of lifting the blockade in exchange for a handful of small concessions. The Allies agreed and at midnight on May 12, 1949, the blockade was lifted and ground and rail traffic to West Berlin resumed. The airlift continued, albeit with fewer night flights and no weekend flights, through the summer into September. This was done to build up a sufficient surplus of food in West Berlin should the Soviets about-face and reinstate the blockade against without warning.

The success of the Berlin Airlift demonstrated Allied resolve to maintain the territorial, political, and economic integrity of West Berlin, and in turn West Germany as a whole. This foundation would prove crucial a dozen years later when the Soviets threatened West Berlin again.

*After the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, the capital of West Germany was Bonn. Bonn still functions as a secondary capital of the united Germany today; the German government and parliament did not relocate to Berlin from Bonn until 1999, nine years after reunification.