Skip to content
RichseenAtlas← AtlasSign in

The Berlin blockade and airlift

node

On 24 June 1948 Soviet authorities closed the rail, road and canal routes between the western occupation zones of Germany and the western sectors of Berlin, following the introduction of a new currency in the western zones and its extension to West Berlin. The city, in the middle of the Soviet zone, had about two million people in its western sectors and no overland supply. The western response was to fly everything in — food, coal, medicine, machinery — through the three air corridors agreed in 1945, at a tempo that grew until aircraft were landing at intervals of a few minutes around the clock. The blockade was lifted on 12 May 1949 and flights continued for some months afterwards to build stocks. Its importance is what did not happen: neither side used force to test the other's position, and the corridors were not closed, so a confrontation that could have started a war was fought instead as a logistics problem.

A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.

Read in · 1

Evidence · 1
Timeline

No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.

Connections · 3
Assembled narrative · 1

Assembled from 29 blocks · 1 evidence · 19 related

  1. Story
  2. On 24 June 1948 Soviet authorities closed the rail, road and canal routes between the western occupation zones of Germany and the western sectors of Berlin, following the introduction of a new currency in the western zones and its extension to West Berlin. The city, in the middle of the Soviet zone, had about two million people in its western sectors and no overland supply. The western response was to fly everything in — food, coal, medicine, machinery — through the three air corridors agreed in 1945, at a tempo that grew until aircraft were landing at intervals of a few minutes around the clock. The blockade was lifted on 12 May 1949 and flights continued for some months afterwards to build stocks. Its importance is what did not happen: neither side used force to test the other's position, and the corridors were not closed, so a confrontation that could have started a war was fought instead as a logistics problem.
  3. Knowledge
  4. Containment
  5. Tempelhof Airport
  6. The Berlin blockade and airlift
  7. Berlin
  8. Connections
  9. Berlin
  10. Tempelhof Airport
  11. Containment
  12. The Berlin Wall
  13. Tempelhof Airport
  14. The Berlin blockade and airlift
  15. The Berlin sector border is sealed
  16. American and Soviet tanks face each other on Friedrichstrasse
  17. The Berlin Wall opens
  18. Berlin Marathon
  19. The first Berlin Marathon, in the Grunewald
  20. Berlin moves its marathon into the city
  21. The Berlin Marathon runs through the Brandenburg Gate
  22. Berlin
  23. The Berlin blockade and airlift
  24. NSC-68
  25. Truman asks Congress to support Greece and Turkey
  26. Marshall proposes European economic recovery
  27. The Berlin blockade and airlift
  28. Evidence
  29. Named as the source class for the conduct of the airlift — the three agreed air corridors, the fixed-interval approach discipline and the airfields used. V55 verification basis: NOT consulted. No tonnage, sortie count or casualty figure from the airlift is quoted anywhere in this pack, precisely because none could be checked.
Close the narrative
Observed changes · 0

No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.

Actions

Read the assembled narrativeContinue in StudioOpen TwinTwin does not start a decision from this kind of object.ShareSaveSaved objects are part of the authenticated projection, which is declared and not yet built.

/atlas?object=EVENT_BERLIN_BLOCKADE&experience=EVENT_BERLIN_BLOCKADE