The 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift

At the end of the Second World War the victorious allied powers, Great Britain, the United States, France and the Soviet Union divided Germany amongst themselves into four zones each controlled by an allied power. However, the capital, Berlin, which lay within the Soviet controlled zone, was similarly divided up though cut off from the West.

Text by Nicholas Wonfor

The four powers created the Allied Control Council to act as administrator over Berlin and begin the task of rebuilding the city. In the years leading up to1948 the allied powers had begun to differ on the direction the rebuilding efforts were to take. Talks on the reunification of Germany, common currency, war reparations to the Soviet Union and political ideologies became areas of contention with none of the sides prepared to compromise. On 9 April 1948 Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered all US military personnel out of the Eastern Zone, later to be known as East Berlin. In June all land and water borne traffic was prevented from entering Soviet controlled Germany from the Western controlled half of Berlin, the electricity to West Berlin was cut and all supplies from the Soviet controlled areas stopped. The Soviets sought to force France, the United States and Great Britain to cede their areas of the city to the Soviet Union by completely isolating their military forces and the two million citizens of the city from any form of re-supply.

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