Since June 24, 1948, the former capital of Germany experienced a blockade. It went on for almost a year. The city lacked food, fuel and all those household items, without which people's life is very difficult.
The war ended three years ago, poverty became a familiar state in its second half, but what the Berliners had to endure was not much easier than experienced during the collapse of the Third Reich. The country is divided into zones controlled by the military occupation administrations of the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and France, while each of the sectors has its own problems and laws.
Former allies are on the brink of war. The reason for what later received the name "Berlin Crisis" was the mutual desire of the countries of the Western Coalition and the USSR to expand their sphere of influence. These intentions were not concealed; Truman, Churchill, and Stalin spoke openly about them. The West was afraid of the spread of communism throughout Europe, and the USSR did not want to put up with the fact that in the center of the sector assigned to it under the terms of the Y alta and Potsdam conferences, there is an island of capitalism.
The Berlin crisis of 1948 was the first serious post-war clash between the Stalinist regime and the countries of the market economy, and primarily with the United States, which almost escalated into a military phase. Each side sought to show its strength and did not want to compromise.
The Berlin crisis began with fairly routine recriminations. The plan for economic assistance to countries affected by World War II, known by the name of its initiator George Marshall, then Secretary of State, involved a number of economic measures, in particular the introduction of a new mark on the territory occupied by the Western Allies. Such "mastery" behavior irritated Stalin, and the appointment of General W. Clayton, known for his anti-communist views, to the post of head of the American occupation administration only added fuel to the fire. A series of clumsy and uncompromising actions by both sides led to the fact that the communications of West Berlin with the sectors controlled by the Western Allies were blocked by Soviet troops.
The Berlin crisis reflected the irreconcilable differences between the former allies. However, it was caused by Stalin's strategic mistake in assessing the potential of his potential opponents. They managed to establish an air bridge in a short time, supplying the besieged city with everything necessary, up to coal. At first, even the command of the US Air Force was very skeptical about this idea, especially since no one knew how far Stalin would go if the confrontation escalated, hecould well have given the order to shoot down transport Douglases.
But that didn't happen. The deployment of B-29 bombers on West German airfields had a sobering effect, although there were no atomic bombs on them, but, again, this was a big secret.
The Berlin crisis is unprecedented, in less than a year, pilots, mainly British and British, made two hundred thousand sorties, delivering 4.7 million kilograms of aid. In the eyes of the inhabitants of the besieged city, they became heroes and saviors. The sympathies of the whole world were not on the side of Stalin, who, convinced of the failure of the blockade, gave the order to lift it in mid-May 1949.
The Berlin crisis led to the unification of all the occupation zones of the Western allies and the creation of the FRG on their territory.
West Berlin remained the outpost of capitalism and its "showcase" throughout the Cold War. It was separated from the eastern part of the city by a wall erected thirteen years later. Located in the very center of the GDR, it caused many complications, in particular the Berlin crisis of 1961, which also ended in the strategic defeat of the USSR.
