Beginning in June 1948, Soviet forces sealed off all land and water routes into West Berlin, hoping to force the Western Allies to abandon the city or grant Soviet control. The U.S. and Britain responded with the Berlin Airlift, flying in over two million tons of food, coal, and supplies, until Stalin conceded defeat and reopened access on May 12, 1949.
When Stalin cut off Berlin's road, rail, and canal links in June 1948, he calculated that the roughly two million residents of the Western sectors would either starve or force their governments to abandon the city, handing the Soviets a bloodless victory in the emerging Cold War. Instead, American and British air forces launched an extraordinary logistical operation, flying cargo planes into Tempelhof and Gatow airports around the clock, at times landing a plane every 90 seconds.
Pilots called it 'Operation Vittles,' and one American aviator, Gail Halvorsen, became beloved as the 'Candy Bomber' for dropping tiny parachutes of chocolate to Berlin's children. Over eleven months, Allied aircraft delivered more than 2.3 million tons of coal, food, and medicine across some 278,000 flights, an achievement that stunned Soviet planners who had assumed the blockade would succeed within weeks.
Facing international embarrassment and having failed to break Western resolve, the Soviet Union lifted the blockade at one minute past midnight on May 12, 1949. The crisis hardened the division of Germany, accelerating the formation of NATO and, months later, the creation of two separate German states, one aligned with the West and one with the Soviet bloc.
Key people: Joseph Stalin, Harry Truman, Gail Halvorsen