Berlin In The Balance – The Blockade, The Airlift, The First Major Battle Of The Cold War – Reference Book – Addison-Wesley from Addison-Wesley

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In June 1948, Soviet authorities in Germany announced a land blockade of the American, British, and French sectors of Berlin. Isolated more than one hundred miles within Soviet-occupied territory, western Berlin was in danger of running out of coal, food, and the courage to stand up to Joseph Stalin. As Berlin in the Balance recounts, this crisis was a turning-point for U.S. policy. Just three years earlier, the Soviet Union had been an ally and Berlin the target of American bombers.

In 1946 Winston Churchill had ignited protests by calling for an Anglo-American alliance against the USSR. The Berlin blockade made Churchill’s ”iron curtain” through Europe an inescapable reality. Led by Harry S. Truman, the Western Allies refused to back away from Berlin. Instead, they took to the air, packing passenger planes with coal, potatoes, flour, and other necessities. Not even the commanders of the year-old U.S. Air Force believed this fleet could supply western Berlin for long. Its main airport was squeezed among apartment buildings. Autumn would bring blinding fogs. And nobody had ever tried to supply a city of millions by air.