A plane lands every 45 seconds, and Berlin does not starve
What happened
After the Western Allies introduced a new currency, the Deutschmark, into their occupation zones and West Berlin without informing Moscow, the Soviet Union cut off all road, rail, and water access to the western sectors of Berlin, a city of 2.5 million people located deep inside Soviet-occupied East Germany. Rather than abandon the city or risk war by forcing the blockade, the United States and Britain launched Operation Vittles and Operation Plainfare, airlifting food and coal around the clock; at its peak a plane landed at Tempelhof Airport roughly every 45 seconds. In September 1948, 300,000 West Berliners rallied at the ruined Reichstag to demand the Allies not abandon the city. The US general administering occupied Germany, Lucius Clay, cabled Washington that Berlin had become a symbol of the American intent. The Soviets lifted the blockade in May 1949.
Why it matters
The first major Cold War crisis proved an airlift alone could sustain an entire modern city against a land blockade, a demonstration of resolve that led directly, within weeks, to the founding of NATO and to the formal division of Germany into two separate states.
How we know
Allied airlift logs recorded individual flight counts and tonnage delivered day by day, and General Clay's own cables to Washington survive in the US State Department's historical archive, giving a real-time record of Western decision-making during the crisis.
Sources
- Office of the Historian, US Department of State. The Berlin Airlift, 1948-1949 · Reputable sourcehistory.state.gov · The domain "history.state.gov" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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