How did the Allies respond to the Berlin Blockade?
The Berlin Blockade was an attempt by Soviet and East German leaders to starve Allied personnel out of West Berlin in 1948-49. They did this by closing the borders with both East Berlin and East Germany, thus cutting off Allied supply routes. The Allies responded by launching the largest airlift in history to that point, undertaking more than a quarter-million flights to supply West Berlin with millions of tonnes of cargo. Show
Contents 1 Why Berlin? 2 The devastated city 3 The Allied enclave 4 The Soviets plan action 5 The blockade begins 6 The Allied airlift 7 Public responses Why Berlin?As the Nazi regime began to capitulate in 1945, American, British and Soviet troops pushed into Germany and occupied captured territory. Along with France, they formed the Allied Control Council to replace the Nazi government and administer post-war Germany. The Allied occupation was to be coordinated from one location, Berlin, with the city itself segmented into occupied zones. The Soviet Red Army was the first to arrive in Berlin in April 1945, prompting Adolf Hitler‘s suicide and the surrender of the German high command. For two months, Russian generals refused to allow Allied troops into the capital. Meanwhile, the Soviet occupation forced engaged in an orgy of murder, looting and sexual violence (as many as 400,000 Berlin girls and women were raped by Red Army soldiers). American and British military personnel entered the German capital in July. Under the terms of a previous agreement, the London Protocol, they began setting up discrete occupation zones in the city’s west (Britain) and south-west (American). Weeks later they were joined by the French, who occupied a small sector in the north-west. The Soviets controlled almost all of Berlin’s eastern half. The devastated cityThe Allied occupation forces were shocked by the devastation in Berlin. After more than five years of war, shortages, Allied bombing then Soviet bombardment, the former German capital had almost no means of sustaining itself. Greater Berlin produced only two per cent of its food requirements; the rest had to be shipped in from rural areas. Food supplies were exhausted and thousands of Berliners were starving. Months of heavy bombing had destroyed buildings, factories, homes and critical infrastructure. All of Berlin’s 87 sewage networks had been destroyed, spoiling drinking water supplies and spreading diseases like typhus and dysentery. Hospitals, railways and roads had been decimated by aerial bombing and artillery fire. Many Berliners had long since fled the city, fearing the advancing Soviet troops. This exodus saw Berlin’s population drop from 4.6 million in 1944 to 2.8 million in mid-1945. The Allied enclaveA map showing the occupied sectors of post-war Berlin in the late 1940sThe Allied occupation zones in Berlin were enclaves in the heart of Soviet-occupied eastern Germany. The Americans, British or French could not move men and supplies in or out of Berlin without crossing Soviet-held territory or airspace. This was not a concern while there was considerable goodwill in Soviet-Allied relations. In 1945 Red Army commander Marshal Zhukov granted the Allies permission to use one road, one rail and one aerial route across the Soviet zone. In later negotiations, the Allies were granted three twenty-mile corridors into Berlin – but these agreements were intended to be temporary. As relations deteriorated, however, the Allied presence in Berlin became irksome for Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who had wrongly believed the Americans would withdraw from Berlin after a year or two. The Soviets plan actionIn 1948, Stalin met with Wilhelm Pieck, his German henchman in the Soviet zone and the future president of East Germany. Pieck complained that the presence of the Americans, British and French in Berlin threatened to disrupt elections scheduled for 1949. “Let’s make a joint effort then,” Stalin told him, “and perhaps we can kick them out”. On Stalin’s orders, the Soviet regime in Germany launched a campaign to frustrate the Allies out of Berlin. Soviet troops began stopping Allied trains to check passengers and cargo, while Russian planes began entering Allied airspace over Berlin to menace planes flying in or out of the city. Relations worsened significantly in April 1948, after a Soviet fighter ‘buzzed’ a British commercial passenger plane and caused it to crash, killing all 14 people onboard. On June 20th, the Allies issued a new currency called the Deutschmark; the Soviets ordered that this new currency would not be accepted in its zone. The blockade beginsFour days later, on June 24th, Soviet forces implemented a full-scale blockade of Allied zones in West Berlin. The Russians closed the land corridors, halting Allied road and rail shipments and sending them back to their points of origin. They shut down thoroughfares and services into West Berlin, closed roads, cut telephone lines and blocked water supplies. Power lines into West Berlin from electrical stations in the Soviet zone were also disconnected. By late June, the Allied sectors of Berlin were almost completely shut off. Only the air routes remained open. The Berlin Blockade was now fully implemented. Many Americans now believed that remaining in Berlin was untenable. There was no military option available: the United States had just 9,000 troops stationed in Berlin and another 110,000 in Bizonia, compared to more than one million Russians in the Soviet zone. Allied planes queue for loading and take-off during the Berlin airliftThe Allied airliftAt the end of June, Berlin’s allied zones had only five weeks’ of food stores and six weeks’ of coal remaining. The Soviets had just signed an agreement guaranteeing three flight paths into Berlin from Bizonia, so an airlift of food, coal, gasoline and machinery appeared the only means of re-supply. An airlift to keep West Berlin fed and fuelled, however, would be a monumental task. Planes would need to move 5,000 tons of supplies per day – and the largest American cargo plane carried barely four tons. An airlift would require thousands of flights each week, an adventure costing millions of dollars. There was also the possibility that the Soviets might breach their 1945 agreement and attack cargo planes. Despite these difficulties, the Berlin airlift was authorised…. and began in the final week of June. Some significant facts about the airlift include: Some significant facts about the airlift:
Public responsesThe pro-Soviet press in East Berlin mocked the Allied airlift as a futile exercise, claiming it would fail within days or weeks. Instead, the Berlin airlift, like the Marshall Plan, became an important propaganda victory for the United States and its allies. One poster, produced by a participating aircraft company, hailed milk as the “new weapon of democracy”, declaring that 2.5 million Germans were enjoying a better life due to air transport. The success of the airlift proved embarrassing for the Soviet Union. In April 1949, Moscow proposed negotiations to end the blockade of Berlin. The Soviets agreed to reopen land access to the city and, at 12.01am on May 13th, the first Allied train for 11 months rolled into Soviet-occupied East Germany, reaching Berlin shortly before dawn. The airlifts continued for another nine weeks, in order to build up a surplus of supplies, before they finally ceased in late July.
1. After 1945, the German capital Berlin was divided into zones, occupied by the US, Britain, France and the USSR. 2. In 1948, Stalin and the East German government resolved to force the Allies out of Berlin by denying access. 3. As Stalin tried to starve them out of Berlin, the West held firm and decided to supply its sectors by air. 4. The Berlin airlift was the largest air supply campaign ever attempted, with more than 550,000 different flights. 5. The airlift proved embarrassing for the USSR, which in April 1949 agreed to negotiations for the re-opening of Berlin. Rail access was eventually granted in May 1949 and supply flights continued until late July 1949. How did the allies respond to the Berlin Blockade quizlet?How did the Allies- US, France, and Britain- respond to the Berlin Blockade? The Allies- US, France, and Britain- responded with the Berlin Airlift, where they delivered supplies and food to the people of West Berlin via the air.
How did the US respond to the Berlin Blockade?The United States and United Kingdom responded by airlifting food and fuel to Berlin from Allied airbases in western Germany. The crisis ended on May 12, 1949, when Soviet forces lifted the blockade on land access to western Berlin.
What alliance was a response to the Berlin Blockade?For the West, the Berlin Blockade came as the last straw. Soviet behaviour had demonstrated that no-one was safe. After much negotiation, 12 nations came together to form an alliance for collective defence. Its name: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
How did the Allies beat the blockade?On May 12, 1949, an early crisis of the Cold War comes to an end when the Soviet Union lifts its 11-month blockade against West Berlin. The blockade had been broken by a massive U.S.-British airlift of vital supplies to West Berlin's two million citizens.
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