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Case Study: The West Berlin Airlift

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The U.S needed serious support if they wanted the airlift succeed. The massive population of West Berlin gave the most doubt among contemporaries. However, a key component many seem to forget is the fact that Stalin cut off all electricity and transportation through West Berlin, which resulted in jobless Berliners. Stalin’s move proved un-strategic, as jobless Berliners now had time to help support the airlift. Doing jobs such as loading and unloading planes, transporting goods, and other laborious tasks, the people of Berlin provided the much needed support the U.S was looking for. Although the Berliners support helped make the airlift successful, many contemporaries still believed the airlift would fail, and thus other action were being taken. …show more content…

While Berliners were relying on air transport everyday, missing a single day due to weather could lead to potential starvation. Technology at the time was unable to predict the weather as accurate as we can today, and even still, it is not perfect. Additional task forces were created too monitor the weather 24/7, because conditions were expected to be dangerous. Beginning in June, many believed the airlift would not make it past October due to hazard winter conditions in Berlin. While the weather was a major reason that Germany failed in its attempt at an airlift, the U.S seemed to be out of options. This was a major reason the airlift was viewed as a stop gate, until the U.S could figure out a viable and less costly solution by winter. Never the less, as one might have already assumed, the weather sided with the U.S. “In January the weather turned unseasonably mild with no frost (in January two years earlier, by contrast, Berlin had seen 281 hours of very severe frost and a further 97 hours of severe frost.” This was a major feet in the Berlin Airlift succeeding, and an act of nature many contemporaries were not expecting. Without the help of a mild winter, many believed the airlift would have failed. With the Soviets now in shock, the U.S would were now in

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This left a small island of democracy in an ocean of communism. That being said there was no way to supply the democratic side of Berlin because the Soviets tried to cut them off. Using planes they dropped supplies to the West Berlin. Slowly relations with the Soviets worsened creating a conflict called the Cold War, which did not end until 1991. The Cold War and a tactic called containment, stop the spread of Communism, led to the Korean War and the Vietnam War.

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for work rates, are very similar and very close to industrialized nations like Canada, Japan, and the United States, which is a very big positive effect for every east berliner. (Mauk) The Berlin Wall coming down 25 years back not simply joined Germany and expected the coming breakdown of the Soviet Union; (Tony Karon) it created a noteworthy change in overall issues. Even though the Cold War that happened after World War II made a very bipolar world, due to relations between the parallel conflict of a U.S.- drove West versus a Soviet-instructed East, in the end, there was more peace than the beginning. The detached of the West from the East Berlin symbolizes the end of the Cold War

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This became one of the first of many international crisis of the Cold War, in which America responded well, not destroying the blockade or attacking the Soviets, but by delivering supplies through an alternate route until the USSR had no choice but to acknowledge their actions were futile and remove the blockade. Just before the Berlin Blockade and right before Harry Truman became president he said, “I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisted subjugation by armed or outside pressures.” (A) This concept surely followed him into the incident involving West Berlin and he stayed true to his ideas in helping the citizens living there obtain resources, despite the Soviets

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