Berlin Airlift (1948–1949): Supplying a Blockaded City by Air

The Berlin Airlift was the operation in which American, British and other Western aircrews kept the people of West Berlin supplied entirely by air after the Soviet Union cut all land and water routes to the city in June 1948. Over more than a year, Western transport aircraft flew in roughly 2.3 million tons of food, coal and other goods, until the Soviet Union lifted the blockade on 12 May 1949.

The Berlin Blockade was the first major crisis of the Cold War. The airlift’s success kept West Berlin free and tied to the West, and it accelerated the division of Germany and the founding of NATO.

Background

After Germany’s surrender in 1945, the Allies divided it into four occupation zones, as agreed at the Potsdam Conference and before. Berlin, which lay about 160 km inside the Soviet zone, was likewise split into four sectors. The Western powers reached their sectors along agreed road, rail and canal routes and three air corridors, but only the air corridors had been confirmed in a written agreement, in November 1945.

Relations between the Soviet Union and the Western allies deteriorated steadily. The Western powers merged their zones economically and, from early 1948, prepared to create a West German state. Germany’s old currency, the Reichsmark, had collapsed, and on 20 June 1948 the Western zones introduced the Deutsche Mark. When the West announced that the new currency would also be used in its sectors of Berlin, the Soviet authorities responded with their own currency and closed the routes into the city.

There had been warnings. In April 1948 the Soviets had begun inspecting Western military trains, and the Americans responded with a short supply effort by air sometimes called the “Little Lift”. In the early hours of 24 June 1948 the Soviets halted all rail, road and water traffic between the Western zones and Berlin, citing “technical difficulties”, and cut electricity from power stations in the Soviet sector.

The decision to fly

About 2 million people lived in the Western sectors, with food stocks for perhaps a month and coal for somewhat longer. The American military governor in Germany, General Lucius D. Clay, considered sending an armed convoy along the autobahn, but Washington judged that too likely to start a war. Supplying a city of this size by air had never been attempted, and many doubted it could be done.

Clay ordered US Air Force transports to begin carrying supplies on 26 June 1948, in what became Operation Vittles. The British, under Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, who strongly opposed abandoning Berlin, launched their own operation, soon named Operation Plainfare. President Harry Truman decided that the United States would stay in Berlin.

How the airlift worked

Planners estimated that West Berlin needed a minimum of roughly 4,000–5,000 tons of supplies a day to survive, much of it coal for power and heating. At first the airlift relied on small twin-engine C-47 Dakotas, which could carry about 3 tons each. They were soon replaced by four-engine C-54 Skymasters able to carry around 10 tons, drawn from US bases around the world.

In late July 1948 Major General William H. Tunner, who had organised the wartime airlift over the Himalayas from India to China, took command of the American effort; from October he led a combined Anglo-American task force. Tunner turned the airlift into a strict, conveyor-belt system. Aircraft flew into Berlin along the northern and southern corridors and returned along the central one, at set heights and fixed intervals of a few minutes. A pilot who missed his landing approach could not try again but had to fly back to his base with his load.

Aircraft landed at Tempelhof in the American sector and Gatow in the British sector, and British flying boats used the Havel lakes until ice stopped them in December 1948. To add capacity, a new airport was built at Tegel in the French sector in about three months, largely by thousands of Berlin workers, many of them women. It received its first aircraft in November 1948.

Unloading crews, mostly Germans, worked around the clock, and ground handling times fell sharply. Despite fog and a difficult winter, deliveries rose steadily. On 15–16 April 1949, in a display known as the “Easter Parade”, aircrews delivered almost 13,000 tons in 24 hours on nearly 1,400 flights.

Life in the blockaded city

West Berliners faced hard months. Electricity was available only for a few hours a day, many factories closed, and food was rationed and monotonous, relying heavily on dried potatoes, powdered milk and dehydrated foods to save weight. The Soviet authorities offered rations to West Berliners who registered in the eastern sector, but only a small minority accepted.

Political life in the city split. In September 1948 communist demonstrators disrupted the city assembly in the Soviet sector, and the non-communist majority moved to the West. On 9 September 1948 the Social Democrat politician Ernst Reuter addressed a crowd of hundreds of thousands in front of the ruined Reichstag, appealing to the “peoples of the world” to look upon Berlin and not abandon it. In December the city was effectively divided into two administrations, with Reuter elected mayor in the west.

The most famous figure of the airlift was a young American pilot, Gail Halvorsen. In July 1948 he began dropping sweets attached to small handkerchief parachutes to children watching the aircraft near Tempelhof, wiggling his wings so they would recognise his plane. When his superiors learned of it they turned it into an official programme, Operation Little Vittles. Donations poured in from the United States, and the “raisin bombers” (Rosinenbomber), as Berliners called the transports, became a symbol of the changed relationship between the Western powers and their former enemy.

Key people

Lucius D. Clay (1898–1978), US military governor in Germany, insisted that the West must not leave Berlin and launched the airlift.

William H. Tunner (1906–1983) built the efficient system that made the airlift sustainable.

Ernest Bevin (1881–1951), British foreign secretary, was one of the strongest advocates of standing firm.

Ernst Reuter (1889–1953), mayor of West Berlin, became the political voice of the blockaded population.

Gail Halvorsen (1920–2022), the “Candy Bomber”, came to embody the airlift’s humanitarian side.

End of the blockade

By the spring of 1949 it was clear that the blockade had failed. The airlift was delivering more than the city had received by rail before the blockade, while a Western counter-blockade hurt the economy of the Soviet zone. Secret talks at the United Nations between the American diplomat Philip Jessup and the Soviet representative Yakov Malik produced an agreement on 4 May 1949.

At one minute past midnight on 12 May 1949 the Soviet Union reopened the land routes, and the first vehicles drove into West Berlin to cheering crowds. The airlift continued until 30 September 1949 to build up reserves in case the blockade returned.

By the numbers

Consequences

The blockade achieved the opposite of what Stalin intended. Instead of stopping a West German state, it hastened one. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington on 4 April 1949, during the airlift. The Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany was adopted on 23 May 1949, and the German Democratic Republic was founded in the Soviet zone on 7 October 1949.

The airlift also transformed attitudes. In Germany, the Western allies came to be seen less as occupiers and more as protectors, and in Britain and America, Berlin became a symbol of freedom under threat. Berlin remained a flashpoint, leading to further crises and eventually the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

The Airlift Memorial outside Tempelhof Airport, unveiled in 1951, shows three arches pointing west, representing the three air corridors, and lists the names of those who died. Berliners nicknamed it the “hunger rake”. Similar memorials stand at Frankfurt and Celle. The square in front of Tempelhof is called Platz der Luftbrücke, “Airlift Square”, and preserved transport aircraft are displayed in museums in Germany and the United States.

Timeline

• 1948, 20 June: The Deutsche Mark is introduced in the Western zones of Germany.
• 1948, 24 June: The Soviet Union blocks all land and water routes to West Berlin.
• 1948, 26 June: The first American transport aircraft land in Berlin with supplies.
• 1948, 28 July: General William H. Tunner arrives to command the American airlift.
• 1948, 9 September: Ernst Reuter addresses a mass rally before the Reichstag.
• 1948, November: The new airport at Tegel receives its first aircraft.
• 1949, 4 April: The North Atlantic Treaty is signed in Washington.
• 1949, 15–16 April: The “Easter Parade” delivers almost 13,000 tons in 24 hours.
• 1949, 12 May: The Soviet Union lifts the blockade.
• 1949, 30 September: The last airlift flight lands in Berlin.

Why it matters

The Berlin Airlift was the first great test of strength of the Cold War, and it was won without a shot being fired. It saved West Berlin, turned former enemies into partners and helped shape the alliances that divided Europe for the next four decades.