Politics and Press

When America Stood Tall: The Berlin Airlift of 1948

Sixty years ago, on June 24, 1948 Josef Stalin blocked all routes through East Germany into the divided city of Berlin in an attempt to force the Western powers (Britain, France and the U.S.) to give up their sectors of the city and turn all of Berlin over to East Germany. The alternative seemed to be the slow starvation of the more than two million people of Berlin.

But two days later American and British pilots began flying in the food and other essentials needed to keep the city alive. Over the next 11 months nearly 300,000 flights provided one of the greatest humanitarian lifelines in history. The effort was not without its dangers with flights landing every two minutes regardless of weather conditions and potential Soviet attacks. That the airlift could be operational within days of Stalin’s actions was a tribute to American and British political will (the French initially declined to participate, joining the effort months later). At its peak the airlift consisted of 1500 flights daily, each one carrying tons of food and supplies. Berlin citizens, working around the clock, organized the unloading of planes. 39 British and 31 American pilots died in accidents during the airlift; a memorial to them stands at Berlin’s Templehof airport.

In some ways this was the opening shot of a 40-year Cold War. The fact that it stayed a ”cold” war was due in part to President Truman’s reluctance to confront the Soviets with a direct military action, which would have risked a new “hot” war in a war-tired Europe. The airlift became a powerful symbol of American and British resolve and commitment in the face of a new and dangerous threat and and represented the first serious resistance offered by the West to the expanding hegemony of the Soviet Union.