The Berlin blockade and airlift

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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.

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