If there was one location you might point
to as THE physical representation of the Cold
War, you could do worse than Berlin. For decades,
this city was divided west from the east in
a geopolitical stalemate between two Germanys.
In the west, was the Federal Republic of Germany,
a capitalist state with its western allies.
In the east, there was the German Democratic
Republic a communist state aligned to the
Soviet Union. For the majority of this channel,
you'll likely hear me call them West and East
Germany. I’m your host David and today we
will be talking about one of the major catalysts
in the creation of a formally divided Germany,
The Berlin Airlift. This is...The Cold War.
Deep inside East Germany, you had Berlin.
A city itself divided between west and east,
with a thin pathway to get people and goods
in and out of the western half. Moreover,
between those two halves of Berlin was a big,
concrete wall. The collapse of the Berlin
wall was one of the symbols of the collapse
of the communist world order. Spoiler alert.
But how did a tiny pocket of West Germany
inside east Germany survive for so many decades?
What strange confluence of geopolitical forces
resulted in this unusual situation? It all
traces back to a tense moment in the winter
of 1948, and a feat of airborne logistics
which saved a city.
This is Germany in the 1940s, so you can guess
the start of this story. Like many stories
on this channel, the roots stem from the Second
World War. When the allies finally defeated
the Nazi Germany, they split Germany up into
four occupation zones. The Americans, French,
and British each had a section in the western
half of Germany, while the Soviet Union occupied
the sizeable eastern part. It gets a bit more
complicated though when you realize Berlin,
the capital, was deep in the Soviet occupation
zone, more than a hundred miles in. Berlin
itself was split four ways in much the same
way as Germany. So if relations were to break
down between the Soviets and other allies,
these west Berliners were vulnerable.
Now, the Soviets and western allies had different
ideas of how to deal with Germany after the
war, as we hinted at our episodes on the Potsdam
Conference and the Marshall Plan. The Soviets,
who suffered heavily in the fight against
the Germans, wanted to strip Germany of its
industrial capacity. They wanted not only
to nerf Germany's OP industrial base, but
haul a bunch of it back to the Soviet Union
to help rebuild their own shattered economy.
Gotta give it to the Soviets, their plans
are always at least direct. The west favoured
a much more gentle approach. At the Potsdam
conference, they did agree with Stalin that
Germany would need to pay for starting two
world wars in 3 decades, but they wanted to
remake a successful, but denazified German
state. This was both to stabilize Europe,
but as we also learned in the Marshall Plan
video, there was an ulterior motive to stop
the spread of communism on Europe. Something
Stalin was clearly aware of.
The Soviets thought the west had violated
the Potsdam agreement when they decided to
economically join the British and American
occupied areas of Germany by reintroducing
a common currency. They called it the Deutsche
Mark and it replaced the unstable Reichsmark.
This attempt to secure West Germany's economy
was a direct response to the Soviets staging
a coup in Czechoslovakia. These exchanges
were among the first political rifts at the
dawn of the Cold War.
The British and Americans offered some of
this currency to the Soviets in East Germany.
But the Soviets preferred to print their own.
By this point of the occupation, the Soviets
had a reputation of printing whatever money
they needed to do what they needed. So, the
western allies did not like the idea. Nonetheless,
the Soviets banned the Deutsche Mark in Berlin.
Despite that, Deutsche Marks were already
there and accepted as the de facto currency.
The Soviets saw this as a plot to sneak in
capitalist Marshall Plan influence. Stalin
decided to make a bold action to force the
issue in their favour.
So, the Soviets shut down all the trains going
into West Berlin. With the winter of 1948
coming, it would result in a winter of mass
starvation. No food, no coal for home fires.
It could get bad. For humanitarian reasons,
the western allies might have had to give
in to Soviet demands.
So, the western allies tried something that
was thought to be impossible. They would try
something never done before, at a scale never
tried. Without any other route to get supplies
to Berlin, the allies decided to supply a
city entirely through air convoys known as
an airlift. The Soviets couldn't break an
agreement by shooting down planes full of
humanitarian aid. There was no way for them
to make the excuse these planes were sneaking
munitions into Berlin. In preparation for
the lift, they calculated the amount of food
needed to supply all 2,000,000 Berliners with
the roughly 2,000 calories they needed each
day. They also needed fuel to power and heat
their homes. This totalled to a little more
than 5,000 tons of cargo flown into Berlin.
Daily. For some perspective, keep in mind
that the cargo capacity of the C-47 Skytrain,
one of the most widely used aircraft in the
Airlift had an approximate cargo capacity
of 6,000 pounds, or about 3 tons. The operation
is widely accepted as the first large-scale
humanitarian project to ensure the survival
of a city's population in history.
Now, the US military was not the full World
War Two Machine, but post-war, and had demobilized
many troops. Furthermore, many of the pilots
stationed in Germany had flying experience.
But they had little training in flying supplies
into a beleaguered city. They flew in planes
from across the US, UK, and France to commit
this effort. At its greatest extent, a plane
landed in Berlin with supplies about every
30 seconds.
The fields reeked of fuel as every plane the
US, UK, and France could muster was either
flying, fueling, or getting repairs. Mechanics
worked around the clock to keep the aircraft
airworthy. The various makes, and builds of
planes as well as coordinating with airports
and airspace required a timetable which was
a feat in and of itself.
No one was sure it could even work. On the
east side of Berlin, communist papers mocked
the attempt. Nonetheless, the amount of tonnage
delivered began to increase and stabilize.
A remarkable machine of aeroplane logistics
fed and fuelled a whole city. Wendover productions
would be impressed.
It was far from perfect. Getting this operation
off the ground, pun fully intended, took quite
a bit of time to work efficiently. Food was
still hard to come by in Berlin that winter.
Many of the meals delivered were lacking in
nutritional value. This necessitated the delivery
of artificial sources of nutrients like vitamin
C to prevent scurvy.
This was also the 1940s and the state of aeroplane
technology meant during periods of bad weather
these flights could be treacherous. There
were several crashes as a result, including
two on one day nicknamed black Friday. But,
they adapted, they developed methods of safety,
and things got better. They pulled off the
impossible. Even Soviet commanders in East
Berlin wrote complaining about the noise of
this many planes coming and going.
The Soviets decided to lift the blockade,
but this wasn't some ultimate breakthrough.
The political standoff in Europe was not over,
and the fate of Germany was still very much
in the balance. The Soviet zone of Berlin
was told to stock up on supplies. This move
made the west concerned the lifting of the
blockade might be a ploy to stall for time
until the east German economy was ready to
resume it. The trains carrying supplies that
were allowed into Berlin were still harassed
and over-inspected. The trains themselves
had to use Soviet-supplied engines and crews.
The Soviets would change time tables without
any forewarning. The Soviets banned 90% of
manufactured goods coming out of Berlin. The
railway crews even went on strike over being
paid in East German currency. With all those
factors combined, only about 31% of trains
went through in the months following the end
of the blockade. Military trains, as you might
expect, were the most held up. The lack of
supplies meant the airlift had to continue
in a diminished form for quite a while. The
city was vulnerable. With hindsight, historians
are a little confused the western allies trusted
the Soviets so much. Keep in mind, this trust
is what put them in such a vulnerable situation
in the first place.
Through the tension, however, the western
allies began to put the parts of Germany they
had control over back together. They reintegrated
their economies and gave the country more
and more political autonomy.
The Soviets did much the same, installing
a communist government as a Soviet client
state. The western Germans would not accept
a unified Germany on Soviet terms, and vice
versa. The two sides would increase the militarization
of the border between the zones of occupation.
From there, the story becomes more familiar.
Germany would be split into two different
countries for another forty years.
The division would receive an ominous icon
in 1961 when East Germany built a concrete
wall through the Berlin Partition. A wall
which would stand as the spot where these
two incompatible worlds clashed. The wall
was a physical symbol of Churchill's iron
curtain over Europe. In some ways, the crisis
which sparked the Berlin airlift wouldn't
end until 1989. I'm sure you have many questions
about how the wall got built, and how it went
down and we here at the Cold War will discuss
that and more in our future videos, so make
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