The Berlin Airlift
“But there was always the risk that Russian reaction might lead to war. We had to face the possibility that Russia might deliberately choose to make Berlin the pretext for war. . .”- Harry S. Truman.
The Berlin airlift was one of the most brilliant American achievements during the post World War II era. President Truman’s decision to leave American soldiers in Berlin, could quite possibly be called the proudest decision of his political career (McCollough 630).
The original conflict that led to the Berlin blockade arose after World War II. As early as 1947, growing problems between western democracy (United States, Britain et al.) and communism (the Soviet Union), started to take definite shape as the beginnings of the Cold War. Germany had been split into four zones, each occupied by one ally: the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. Each also had a part of the capital city, Berlin.
On March 17, 1948, Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg signed the 50 year Treaty of Mutual Assistance. United States Senator Arthur Vandenberg worked with Truman to find a way to include the United States in the new treaty (Walton 55). The proposal passed 64 to 4 by the senate, and within three months, the United States had joined the newly founded North Atlantic Treaty Organization, otherwise known as NATO. The twelve state organization included the United States, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal when it became official on April 4, 1949 (Pimlott 13).
The road toward the blockade became shorter in February of 1948 when the London Conference occurred. France, Britain, and the United States attended the...
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...ion between the former wartime allies. The blockade was a chance to discover how the Soviets would react to American power, more specifically American nuclear power. This was tested when the Americans moved several B-29 atomic bombers to Britain. Although none of them actually carried any atomic bombs, this was not known until later (Marshal 38).
The decision to keep West Berlin was made with the hopes that certain benefits would come out of it. For the US these included maintaining a strong presence in Germany, winning a psychological battle against the Russians, and ensuring the formation of both the Federal Republic of Germany and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. All of these were achieved.
The West scored an enormous propaganda victory, but also much more than that. America was able to support two million people for almost a year, by the sky alone.
The feud between the United States of America (USA) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) lasted from the end of World War II until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The fuel that powered their feud was the desire to be the greater superpower. After World War II ended, the USSR gained control of Eastern Germany. On the night of August 13, 1961, a wall was constructed that divided the already separate East and West Berlin. This wall would become what was known around the world as the Berlin Wall. It stood as a barrier to freedom from the East Berliners. The Berlin Wall in Germany caused the USSR to lose the Space Race to the United States in 1969 because the USSR was communist, they alone had control of East Germany, and the United States was tough competition. With the Berlin Wall making tensions high in Germany during the 1960s, the USSR had a lot more business to take care of than they had thought.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an alliance of 26 countries from North America and Europe committed to fulfilling the goals of the North Atlantic Treaty signed on April 4 1949. The fundamental goal of NATO is to safeguard the freedom and security of its member countries by political and military means. NATO links North America and Europe by providing a forum in which the United States, Canada and European countries can consult together on security issues of common concern and take joint action in addressing them.
The naval blockade of Cuba was retaliation from John F Kennedy finding out about the Soviet Union creating secret nuclear missiles on Cuba. The time is October 22, 1962; the State of Union is not at peace. The United States and Soviet Union are in what is known as The Cold War, which lasted from 1945-91. The war leads to international crisis with alliances, naval battles and the Soviet Union, our biggest threat.
In the year 1961, the building of Berlin Wall called upon disasters in Germany. United States controlled the west of Berlin while German Democratic Republic held the East. Being stuck under the rule of day to day terror, people from East Berlin were making their way to the West Berlin. West Berlin was a safe spot and freedom checkpoint in the middle of terror. To stop the moving of East Berliners, the East German government decided to build a barrier that limited and halted the East Berliners from leaving. But the battle to control Berlin between, the United States and the Soviet Union, had been taking place since after the division of Germany. The German Democratic Republic wanted better control over its people to spread its communist ideas
Berlin and West Berlin but was located deep inside the Soviet controlled zone. Then, in 1961, the Soviet government built a wall which separated the two halves of the city. It was not until the 1980s that cold war tensions eased. through the glasnost (openness to public debate) policies of soviet leaders. Mikhail Gorbachev.
The Soviet Union began to view the United States as a threat to communism, and the United States began to view the Soviet Union as a threat to democracy. On March 12, 1947, Truman gave a speech in which he argued that the United States should support nations trying to resist Soviet imperialism. Truman and his advisors created a foreign policy that consisted of giving reconstruction aid to Europe, and preventing Russian expansionism. These foreign policy decisions, as well as his involvement in the usage of the atomic bomb, raise the question of whether or not the Cold War can be blamed on Truman. Supporting the view that Truman was responsible for the Cold War, Arnold Offner argues that Truman’s parochialism and nationalism caused him to make contrary foreign policy decisions without regard to other nations, which caused the intense standoff between the Soviet Union and America that became the Cold War (Offner 291)....
Outline of Essay About the Origins of the Cold War OUTLINE: Introduction- 1. Definition of ‘Cold War’ and the Powers involved 2. Perceived definition of ‘start of Cold War’ 3. Iron Curtain Speech, Truman Doctrine and Berlin Blockade as significant events that caused strife between both powers, but which triggering off the start of the Cold War Body- 1. Iron Curtain Speech (1946) - A warning of Soviet influence beyond the acknowledged Eastern Europe - Churchill’s belief that the idea of a balance in power does not appeal to the Soviets - Wants Western democracies to stand together in prevention of further
The end of World War II was the beginning of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Soviet Union had control over East Berlin, which was governed by a communist government and the United States had control over West Berlin, which was regulated by a democratic government. Both countries wanted full control over Berlin, so the Soviet Union set up a blockade on the West but was unsuccessful. The Berlin Wall was then built to stabilize the economy of East Berlin, which meant that fewer people could escape the east to live in the west. In the article “The fall of the Berlin Wall: what it meant to be there,” by Timothy Garton Ash, he highlights the feelings of no longer having a “iron curtain” segregating both sides of Berlin.
President Stalin saw the US strategy to rebuild Europe as a way to weaken Soviet influence in that region. This led to the aggressive struggle to take over control of Germany, which led to the divide of Germany. German Capital, Berlin took the hardest hit. The city was divided into the East and West. Soviets were in control of the East while the West was controlled by the Americans, British and French. West Berlin enjoyed more liberal civil and democratic freedom than their counterparts in East Berlin. Again the US and its allies were able to aggressively block any form of communist insurgencies into those areas by providing massive supply of food and other necessities for West Germany in what was known as the Berlin Airlift. This eventually led to the formation of East Germany in
Even though Berlin lay deep within the Soviet sector, the Allies thought it would be the best to divide this capital. Therefore Berlin was also divided into four parts. Since the Soviet Union was in control of the eastern half of Germany, they made East Berlin the capital of East Germany. The other three counties were each in control of a small part of what was to be West Germany. The Allies decided that they would come together to form one country out of their three divided parts. Those three divided parts formed West Germany. After all the land was divided the Soviet Union controlled East Germany. Just like the Soviet Union, the economy in East Germany was struggling to get back on its feet after the war. While West Berlin became a lively urban area like many American cities, East Berlin became what many thought of as a ‘Mini-Moscow’. In East Germany there was literary almost nothing. The shelves in the stores were practically bare, and what was there was not in very good quality.
Between 1961 and today, the Berlin Wall saw many changes, and so did the people that it entrapped. Prior to the construction of the Berlin Wall, borders between East and West Germany were closed in 1952 because of tension between Communists and Democratic superpowers and the only open crossing left in Berlin. West Germany was blockaded by the Soviets and only kept alive because of air drops made by the Western Allies (Time). The Soviets had to do something about the mass amount of people leaving Soviet East Berlin for West Berlin, and the non-communist world. The most visible aspect of the Cold War was the Berlin Wall. Before the wall was constructed, East and West Germans could travel freely between the two states.
After WWII After WWII, Germany was divided into four zones and occupied by Britain, France, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Berlin itself was occupied by the western powers; however, it was surrounded by the Soviet zone. Between 1947 and 1948 cooperation between these powers broke down. The west decided to create a separate government in their zones. To prevent this, the Soviet's increasingly harassed the western traffic to and from Berlin. Russia was trying to spread communism, abolish democracies, and spread poverty. Thus creating the Berlin Blockade, which forced America to create the Berlin Airlift. This created a greater controversy between the United States. This controversy's caused spies to enter into the opposition's country.
... Cuban attack with all-out nuclear retaliation. In response to the increased Soviet ships coming with weapons, JFK ordered a blockade, which he called quarantine because a blockade is an act of war, around Cuba. For 13 days, the world held its breath as the threat of a nuclear war hung over the world, but the Soviets eventually turned back and Khrushchev agreed to remove weapons from Cuba in exchange for no US invasion of Cuba. Meanwhile in Berlin, the city was in turmoil between the East (Soviet) and the West (US controlled). In order to stop the mass exodus of East Berliners, the construction of the 90-mile Berlin Wall began. Both Kennedy and Khrushchev sought ways to ease the tension between the two groups, establishing a hotline between the White House and the Kremlin, and later this led to the Limited Ban Treaty, which banned nuclear testing in the atmosphere.
The extent to which the fact that the Western Allies did not respond with violence but with the airlift and its success was a main factor to its end will be assessed. The significance of the agreement made between the Soviets and the US in lifting not only the Berlin Blockade but also the Western counter blockade will also be evaluated. The reasons for the implementation of the blockade, the actions of the superpowers that do not contribute to the failure of the blockade, and the consequences of this crisis will not be investigated. The analysis will be done by researching different views on the blockade’s failure and the events leading up to it.... ...
In 1947, the Western portion of Germany instituted a government under the watchful eyes of the Western Allies. The Soviet sector followed suit in 1949. During this period, the elaborate governance structure of greater Berlin broke under the strain of Cold War tensions. What emerged was West Berlin, which took up ties with West Germany, known as the Federal Republic of Germany. East Berlin, which comprised the ruins of the old and historic center of Berlin and outlying districts to the East, became the capital of the German Democratic Republic. After World War II, the Americans pumped capital into West Germany through the Marshall Plan, which resulted in one of the world's strongest economies, enormous prosperity and a stable democracy. Germany has been divided ever since and though at every opportunity, lip service was paid by all western nations to its eventual reunification, no one took the matter seriously.