ongoing mismanagement by
Sowjetische Aktiengesellschaften—
Soviet-controlled companies known by their apt acronym, SAGS.
Obviously, this was not what the Soviets had intended when they launched their blockade, so they decided to bargain. In March 1949 their delegate to the United Nations Security Council, Yakov Malik, began meeting secretly with his American counterpart, Philip Jessup. After lengthy negotiations, the Soviets agreed to lift their blockade if the West consented to hold a Council of Foreign Ministers meeting on Germany in May. When this deal was announced in early May, many Berliners remained skeptical, fearing a Russian trick. But at one minute after midnight on May 12, 1949, all the lights finally came on in Berlin for the first time in eleven months, and the trains started rolling again between Berlin and western Germany.
There were no lavish celebrations in Berlin when the blockade was lifted. After all, the Cold War that had occasioned it was still very much alive, and everyone knew that the Soviets could cut off the city again if they chose to. In fact, they continued to interfere periodically with surface traffic, causing the Allies to keep flying in supplies through September 1949. Also, Berlin was now split sharply into two sections, with each part increasingly taking on its own character. Berliners had to wonder whether their city would ever become one again.
The Western Allies remained concerned about their own status in the divided city, but for the moment they could take quiet pride in the tremendous accomplishment that the Berlin Airlift represented. Some 238,616 flights had transported over two million tons of supplies into the blockaded city. Seventyseven British and American airmen had lost their lives in the operation. These were painful losses, but remarkably few given the scope and duration of the undertaking.
Like many successful military operations—and the Berlin Airlift was essentially military, despite the participation of some civilian crews from commercial airlines—this enterprise had further payoffs down the line in terms of technical innovations and logistical lessons. “A lot of the procedures that were developed [for the airlift] were used to upgrade the air traffic control system in the United States,” wrote a veteran of the campaign. One of these innovations is taken for granted today by all air travelers: those wandlike torches used to guide airplaneson the ground. In the military realm, with operations on distant battlefields demanding massive transport of men and material, the lessons of the lift were especially useful.
As for the Berlin Airlift's place in postwar politics, we can see that this initiative, along with the crisis that provoked it, helped to establish the parameters within which the victors and vanquished of World War II would operate for the next half century. By remaining steadfast in Berlin, the Western Allies placed an outer limit on Soviet expansionism in Europe. The Russian threat to Berlin, and the cooperative response it occasioned, helped spur the creation of NATO. The experience was also instrumental in forging the most important new bilateral partnership in the second half of the twentieth century—the bond between the United States and West Germany, founded in May 1949. As Robert Murphy correctly noted, it was through this cooperative effort that “the American people, for the first time in their history, formed a virtual alliance with the German people.”
Alas, Murphy should have said “part of the German people.” East Germany was left out of this embrace, and out of the “economic miracle” that emerged from it. As many feared in 1949, there would be more Berlin crises down the line to test the ties between West Berlin and its Allied protectors. In 1958, Moscow threatened once again to drive the Western Powers out of Berlin and to integrate the entire city into the Soviet-dominated East German state. The fact of the matter, of
Sowjetische Aktiengesellschaften—
Soviet-controlled companies known by their apt acronym, SAGS.
Obviously, this was not what the Soviets had intended when they launched their blockade, so they decided to bargain. In March 1949 their delegate to the United Nations Security Council, Yakov Malik, began meeting secretly with his American counterpart, Philip Jessup. After lengthy negotiations, the Soviets agreed to lift their blockade if the West consented to hold a Council of Foreign Ministers meeting on Germany in May. When this deal was announced in early May, many Berliners remained skeptical, fearing a Russian trick. But at one minute after midnight on May 12, 1949, all the lights finally came on in Berlin for the first time in eleven months, and the trains started rolling again between Berlin and western Germany.
There were no lavish celebrations in Berlin when the blockade was lifted. After all, the Cold War that had occasioned it was still very much alive, and everyone knew that the Soviets could cut off the city again if they chose to. In fact, they continued to interfere periodically with surface traffic, causing the Allies to keep flying in supplies through September 1949. Also, Berlin was now split sharply into two sections, with each part increasingly taking on its own character. Berliners had to wonder whether their city would ever become one again.
The Western Allies remained concerned about their own status in the divided city, but for the moment they could take quiet pride in the tremendous accomplishment that the Berlin Airlift represented. Some 238,616 flights had transported over two million tons of supplies into the blockaded city. Seventyseven British and American airmen had lost their lives in the operation. These were painful losses, but remarkably few given the scope and duration of the undertaking.
Like many successful military operations—and the Berlin Airlift was essentially military, despite the participation of some civilian crews from commercial airlines—this enterprise had further payoffs down the line in terms of technical innovations and logistical lessons. “A lot of the procedures that were developed [for the airlift] were used to upgrade the air traffic control system in the United States,” wrote a veteran of the campaign. One of these innovations is taken for granted today by all air travelers: those wandlike torches used to guide airplaneson the ground. In the military realm, with operations on distant battlefields demanding massive transport of men and material, the lessons of the lift were especially useful.
As for the Berlin Airlift's place in postwar politics, we can see that this initiative, along with the crisis that provoked it, helped to establish the parameters within which the victors and vanquished of World War II would operate for the next half century. By remaining steadfast in Berlin, the Western Allies placed an outer limit on Soviet expansionism in Europe. The Russian threat to Berlin, and the cooperative response it occasioned, helped spur the creation of NATO. The experience was also instrumental in forging the most important new bilateral partnership in the second half of the twentieth century—the bond between the United States and West Germany, founded in May 1949. As Robert Murphy correctly noted, it was through this cooperative effort that “the American people, for the first time in their history, formed a virtual alliance with the German people.”
Alas, Murphy should have said “part of the German people.” East Germany was left out of this embrace, and out of the “economic miracle” that emerged from it. As many feared in 1949, there would be more Berlin crises down the line to test the ties between West Berlin and its Allied protectors. In 1958, Moscow threatened once again to drive the Western Powers out of Berlin and to integrate the entire city into the Soviet-dominated East German state. The fact of the matter, of
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