On This Day in History: June 24

The Berlin Airlift

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The two nukes dropped on Japan were at first intended to vaporize fucking Nazis, but their original hiding-in-a-bunker-because-people-don’t-like-you world leader blew his brains out in Berlin a couple of months before the first atomic bomb was tested; the Allies more or less met in the middle of Deutschland through the conventional methods of delivering death.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: June 24, 1948--

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is an ancient proverb that often holds true only as long as the common enemy remains, because after World War II the western Allies and the Soviets didn’t waste any time rattling their sabers across a conquered and divided Germany.

The term “Iron Curtain” was made famous during a speech by Sir Winston Churchill in 1946. It became a dividing line in Europe over 4,000 miles long between east and west, populated by walls, fences, minefields, and watchtowers.

The city of Berlin was unique in that it was a hundred miles into the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain, yet had its own mini iron curtain within it, dividing the city between American, British, and French allies on one side, and Soviets on the other. Western Allies wanted to unify and build West Germany back up as a powerful ally against the Soviets. The Soviets had been invaded by Germany twice in living memory and didn’t like this idea. Neither were they excited about a capitalist Berlin inside their zone of control.

In 1947, America and Britain unified their German territory into one. The Soviets were pissed. The French added their territory to that of the U.S. and UK in 1948. The Soviets were more pissed. Then the western Allies created a new currency—the Deutschmark—on June 18, and Soviets were all fuck you guys, we’re gonna starve Berlin.

For the previous three years the western Allies relied on Soviet “goodwill” to permit rail, road, and water access to West Berlin through Soviet-occupied East Germany. On June 24, 1948, that access came to an abrupt go fuck yourself. And the western Allies went “No, fuck you. We got planes.”

Using previously negotiated air corridors through Soviet territory, the “Berlin Airlift” began. You can turn around trucks and trains without violence, but the only way to stop a plane is to shoot it down, and the Soviets weren’t prepared to blow up unarmed cargo planes using agreed-upon routes.

The scale of the airlift of supplies of food and fuel to sustain two million West Berliners was an unimaginable 5,000 tons a day, but they kept it up. Life wasn’t easy in West Berlin during this time, but the population saw such deprivation as preferable to going commie. The blockade was a massive failure for the Soviets; it actually made them look like dicks (hint: they were) and hastened the creation of West Germany to thwart Soviet expansion. The blockade ended 11 months after it began, in May 1949.

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