The Berlin Airlift

"There are now two great nations in the world, which starting from very different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo- Americans...[E]ach seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world."

-Alexis de Tocqueville 1

"What happens to Berlin, happens to Germany; what happens to Germany, happens to Europe."

-Vyacheslav Molotov 2

From mid-1948 until mid-1949, the Soviet Union denied ground access to the city of Berlin through their zone of occupation in Eastern Germany.3 This prevented the Western Allies from supporting their half of Berlin, whose post-war occupation had been divided amongst the victorious powers in 1945. In response, an airlift campaign was initiated from bases in the Western German zone, which began transporting supplies to West Berlin in an effort to meet the needs of the Western garrisons in the city, and eventually the civilian population as well. Throughout the Soviets' yearlong blockade, American and British planes flew between Berlin and Western airfields, until eventually, diplomatic efforts resolved the situation, and the land routes to Berlin were reopened.

This confrontation in Berlin emerges as the first real standoff between the two superpowers, the United States and Soviet Union. If it was not the event that initiated the Cold War, it was at least the first explicit expression of it, and thus is a subject of intense historical interest. The failure to achieve lasting cooperation in the occupational administration of Germany would signal a larger failure in continuing the war-time cooperation between the United States and Soviet Union, and the resultant was the ushering in of a half-century of security competition between the two superpowers to achieve a position of global dominance over the other.

The question of Germany within this framework is rather significant. It was both the frontline territory where the two superpowers stood off against one another, as well as a potential ally for either side that could be enough to swing the balance of power in favor of one superpower over the other. As relations deteriorated between the United States and the Soviet Union, a shift occurred on the American side to move from the policies of cooperation with a war-time ally, to competition with a potential war-time enemy. It is the goal of this thesis to examine more closely the nature of this shift. While during the Cold War, there was a propagandistic tendency on the American side to demonize the every action of the Soviets, the events in Berlin in 1948 seem to suggest that the Americans were belligerent themselves. From the Soviet perspective, there were legitimate concerns over the status of post-war Germany, and when consideration is made for their being invaded twice by Germany within the previous thirty years, many of their positions become understandable, for the fear that a German invasion might again be soon repeated. Conversely, the Americans positioned themselves leading up to and during the crisis in Berlin in 1948 to take a hard line stance against a future adversary in the Soviet Union, and worked to secure the U.S. position in Germany: nationalistic sentiment for the United States foreign agenda was primed to avoid a post-war return to isolationism; American military strength was both demonstrated by the actual airlift, and enhanced by the capital improvements made during the airlift; and Germany, at least the portion controlled by the Western Allies, was positioned both psychologically and economically for the logical role she would assume in the future NATO.

During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union had worked as allies in a combined effort to defeat expansionist-minded Nazi Germany. In 1945, when the Third Reich collapsed, those two countries, along with Great Britain and France, divided Germany into four occupation zones. Likewise divided was the former Nazi capital Berlin, again with each one of the four major victorious powers getting their own zone. This later move, while felt necessary to beyond all doubt that Germany was a defeated nation, and that all of the Allies had contributed to the effort, was to prove a great source of consternation, and something of a logistical nightmare, due to its geographic location 110 miles inside the Soviet occupation zone.4

In 1945, the capital of the Third Reich had been reduced to rubble by the Allied aerial bombing campaigns and subsequent Russian invasion of Berlin. Half of the city's pre-war population had fled during the war, the medical situation was a catastrophe as nearly 75% of the city's hospital beds were gone, sewage systems were non-functional, and Berlin could only produce the barest fraction of food necessary for its own sustenance.5 When the Soviets captured the city at the end of the war, the Red Army raped and pillaged the local population on a massive scale.6

However, the advent of peace meant it was time to begin a rebuilding phase from the war's devastation. This was in part facilitated by the creation of the Allied Control Council which would coordinate relations between the occupation forces in Germany as well as the administration of Berlin.7 Due to black market operations and lack of confidence in the currency circulating in post-war Germany, the economic situation in the country quickly deteriorated. Bartering and the black market became the primary means of exchange in the war's aftermath from 1945-48, and "was the only thing that kept us alive" according to a German citizen.8 Eventually something needed to be done to fix this dire economic situation, especially with fears circulating in the West that the Soviets had a separate plan of reform for their own sector.9

In June 1948, the Western Allies, the United States, Great Britain, and France, announced the issuance of a new currency, the deutschmark, to replace the existing reichsmark in their zones. By reforming currency then, while Germany was still under occupational control, it would help to provide a solid economic foundation for a new West German government, in addition to distancing that new German government from the unpopular consequences of any reforms, because they were initiated by the Allies.10 The Soviets were greatly disturbed by the West's actions in this case; "A currency split would mean that one part of Germany irrevocably would become a foreign power for the other."11 This challenged the Soviet objectives in the post-war Europe. Stalin had envisioned that while Germany would be divided for some time, eventually the Western Allies would withdraw from the continental mainland, while the Red Army would merely retreat to Poland, and that proximity, coupled with the communist influences established during the occupation period, would swing the new united Germany into the Soviet camp.12 The formation of a West German government not only precluded that, it almost guaranteed that the new West German nation would be pro-west, and quite possibly hostile, even belligerent to the Soviet Union. Considering the devastation that had been wrought in both World War I and World War II upon the Soviet Union by German invasions, this was quite an undesireable scenario.

Even more ominious to Moscow was what the new economic reforms meant for the Soviet occupation sector, and in particular Berlin, where a Western enclave was located deep within the Soviet zone. While the Western Allies were cognizant of problems with maintaining unified city functions with split currencies, they were adamant about Berlin needing monetary reform. The Soviets rejected proposals which suggested a third currency just for the city, and for four-power regulation of a Soviet-issued bill, claiming that since Berlin was within the Soviet zone of occupation and indelibly integrated within its economy, the Soviets needed control over the currency there.13 In an attempt to solidify their hold on Berlin, and convince the Western powers to acquiesce to Soviet demands, a blockade was emplaced against the West, effectively shutting off the western enclave in Berlin from land transit routes.

(West German currency reforms and the Marshall Plan)

From a military perspective, the Airlift proved to be a tremendous boon to American strategic thinking. By actually engaging in air transport operations, it was possible to refine theoretical operational doctrine into practical usage. In particular, the Airlift operational plans benefited from the institution of the 'Little Lift' in April 1948, several months prior to the beginning of the full-scale blockade of Berlin by the Soviets. In April, the Soviets had emplaced travel restrictions that called for inspections of Western shipments into Berlin and required permission of Soviet authorities for rail transport to be sent into that city.14 Eventually, the main restrictions enacted at this time were lifted after only ten days, although some impediments continued at minor levels until the Soviets instituted a complete blockade of Berlin. In response, however, the West began shipments of airlifted supplies to the American military garrison in Berlin. These shipments, dubbed the 'Little Lift' in light of the major operations later undertaken to support the entire city, provided an important opportunity for the West to prepare for the larger airlift to come: it illustrated the need to organize a central bureau to coordinate requirements for shipping and assign their priorities. It also prompted Western forces to take the fore-sighted step of increasing reserve stockpiles within Berlin; this pre-positioning proved invaluable later in 1948 when land routes became completely cut-off, and winter weather limited what could be brought in by air. Furthermore, Western staff operations in Berlin were streamlined to reduce the amount of unnecessary personnel within that city which would need to be supported in the event of more overt hostile Soviet action, and key operations were relocated to more secure positions in West Germany to safeguard them should tensions escalate further.15

The Little Lift also provided the United States with an opportunity to demonstrate its resolve as far as protecting its German interests went. Soviet planes would harass Western planes in the air corridors flying into Berlin.16 During the Little Lift, however, one such incident of this type had happened where a Soviet fighter plane collided in mid-air with a British airliner. The response this accident sparked from the West was unmistakable: Brian Robertson and Lucius Clay, the British and American commanders in Germany respectively, ordered Western fighter escorts for planes traveling to Berlin to protect them against further Soviet harassment. This caused the Soviets to rein in the actions of their planes, and while Soviet aerial presence did continue to be a nuisance to Western aircraft, the level to which it was so was greatly reduced.17 In fact, the Soviets seemed to recognize that pressing any harder on the Western flights could have instigated outright war, and therefore permitted planes during the Little Lift and subsequent full Airlift to proceed without interference from Soviet planes or from electronic jamming.18

The Little Lift, which supplied the military garrisons in Berlin was still operating in June 1948 when the Soviets enacted their full blockade of the city. At this time, the West made the decision to expand the Little Lift operations to include the supplies needed for the entire civilian populace of Berlin, and hence Operation Vittles, the American Airlift operation to Berlin, was born. The situation which enabled the Soviets to enact a blockade of Berlin, and for the West to initiate the subsequent airlift that broke the blockade, arose as a quirk of postwar arrangements between the Allied powers. Although the West held occupation zones in Berlin, deep within Soviet territory, there had been no formal arrangement made that guaranteed land access to the West through the Soviet zone of occupation. "It was variously assumed that the presence of the Western garrisons [in Berlin] guaranteed Western access; that the West could always get along with the Soviets and thus there was no reason for written guarantee; or that the occupation would end within a reasonable time, making the subject irrelevant."19 Thus, there only existed verbal assurances from the Russians at the end of World War II that the Allies would have rail and road access to Berlin.20 But without physical paper documentation, the Soviets were free to repudiate these verbal assurances, asserting the proposition that the Western Allies were actually in Berlin at the invitation of the Soviets, rather than by right of being victorious in the war, and that since Berlin was wholly within the Soviet occupation zone, that the Soviets were within their right to withdraw such an invitation.

However, because of the potential for chaos to arise in the sky with the different nationalities trying to fly planes in Berlin airspace, a written agreement had been made rather early on that denoted specifically the rights of Western aircraft to be flying in and out of airspace in the Soviet zone. Because of the need to delineate aviation operations to avoid mid-air collisions and safeguard against problems such as air turbulence, the hesitation present in the West when it came to spelling out such arrangements via land transit was absent; the concern about making an analogous agreement with the Soviets regarding the Western right to surface access to Berlin was that by enumerating specific routes, the Soviets would be able to claim the written agreement contained an implicit denial of Western access to all other routes.

As a result of negotiations between the Soviets and Western powers in 1945, "Three 20 mile wide air corridors [were agreed to] connecting Berlin with Hamburg, Frankfurt-Main, and Hannover-Bueckeburg"; these written agreements formed the basis for justifying the airlift operations the West would fly into Berlin in 1948-49. In June 1948, when the American Operation Vittles, and its British counterpart, Operation Plainfare, began, they flew through these established air routes into the Berlin airfields of Tempelhof and Gatow, as well as to Lake Havel, where seaplanes operated until it froze over in winter.21

The begining of Operation Vittles was a marked change from previous events: a mere three years earlier, many of the same pilots who were flying relief missions in Vittles, had been flying bombing raids in the skies over Nazi Germany; in 1945, their mission had been one of "death and destruction", but in 1948, they were charged with "keeping the city [of Berlin] alive".22 This was a formidable task, to provide the needs of an entire city solely by air transit alone. The West was making a great gamble; if successful, the demonstration of the prowess of Western air power would be dramatic; failure would likely mean the cessation of the entirety of Berlin to Soviet control, with potentially grievous reprecussions as well for West Germany and the rest of Europe during the Cold War. There was tremendous doubt, even on the part of the West, over the ability to perform this task, because of the sheer scale it involved, especially in winter when needs would become greater and the weather hampering aerial operations would be more severe. However, the Berlin populace placed their faith in the Western powers, reasoning that "Why shouldn't it work? They dropped so many bombs on Berlin, they should be able to drop potatoes!".23

As the scale and permanence of Airlift operations became apparent, it was necessary to further improve the conduct of transport procedures. To this end, William Tunner was brought in as commander of Operation Vittles. Tunner was the pre-eminent authority on air transport, and had built up an impressive array of credentials during World War II, notably having been head of the 'Hump' operations that supported Allied efforts in China with aerial supply routes from India over the Himalayas.24 Under Tunner, Vittles would strive to become a "conveyor belt" of seamless operations where everything was subdivided into specific tasks that were coordinated and regulated to achieve maximum efficiency, an absolute necessity given the demands of supporting an entire city, especially during the expected harsh conditions of the coming winter.25

Tunner's tenure as Airlift commander led to several new and important developments, both in terms of technical and capital improvements. In terms of the techniques used in flight operations, perhaps Tunner's most innovative decision Tunner was reached on August 13,1948. A day of rainy weather and poor flying conditions, Tunner had boarded one of the airlift flights for a trip into Berlin. Because of the weather conditions were so ill-suited to flying, several earlier aircraft ahead of Tunner's either had accidents while landing, or missed their initial passes at the airfield, necessitating another flyover approach to the landing strip. Because the airlift flights called for planes to be flying in closely spaced intervals, these delays destroyed the delicate timing of operations and resulted in many airplanes stacking up in holding patterns over Berlin waiting to land while their predecessors took multiple attempts at the ground. Witnessing this holdup in the airlift from his own plane, which was itself stacked up in a holding pattern, Tunner ordered on the spot that that policy be changed to permit each plane only one opportunity to land. If it missed its opportunity, it would have to be sent home and rerouted through the air corridors into Berlin again. "In the same ninety minutes it took to bring in nine aircraft stacked over Berlin, the airlift could land thirty C-54s carrying 300 tons using the straight-in approach and landing at three minute intervals."26

Regarding capital improvements, construction was begun on a new airfield named Tegel in the French sector, as well as expansion and improvement of runways at the existing Berlin fields of Tempelhof and Gatow to permit those sites to handle increased volumes of air traffic.27 While adequate equipment was present in Berlin to take care of maintainence early on, what presently existed in Berlin was insufficient for to expand or support airfields over the long term, meaning that heavy construction equipment had to be included in the shipments brought to Berlin. "The Berlin Post Engineers increased the facilities of the Tempelhof [the airport in Berlin] airfield by the construction of a new 5,555 foot runway...The airlifting of heavy equipment from Wiesbaden air base [in the American sector] to Tempelhof was of considerable influence on this work."28 Most of the labour provided to construct the new facilities came from Germans, with 21,000 Berliners29 participating at one point in the construction of Tegel, a new airbase built during the airlift.30 Maintenance cycles were improved to minimize the amount of down time that airplanes experienced while undergoing repairs, in some cases relocating facilities and dedicating specific areas for the task of maintainence away from the main West German airfields, so as not to interfere with flight operations.31

Another change which helped improve the operations of the Airlift was the standardization of aircraft being used in Vittles. Initially, operations began with what was available, which was a disparate match of C-47s, C-54s, and some other types of aircraft. This caused a problem that was especially prevalent for the British in their counterpart operations to support Berlin, namely that the different aircraft would fly at different speeds and take different amounts of time to load and unload on the ground, which hampered the ability to create uniform intervals separating plane flights, sometimes resulting in unneccessary gaps of time when planes were not landing in Berlin.32 As the Airlift progressed however, it received more aircraft, enabling Vittles to standardize itself around C-54 cargo planes, leading to more uniform flight scheduling and less wasted time in loading and landing.

Of less direct consequence for the Berlin Airlift in particular, given the relatively short distances being traversed in Central Europe, but of importance within the broad scope of Western aviation power overall were experiments being conducted contemporaneously with the events in Berlin regarding in-flight refueling. This was something which was important for the ability of air transport in a generalized sense, because it would allow airlift operations of the type going on in Berlin to be conducted on a larger distance scale, over perhaps the Atlantic Ocean, which the United States would need to do to support European garrisons in the event of an outbreak of hostilities with the Soviet Union. Support for the case of in-flight refueling was made in a review of the Berlin Airlift operations made to the Army Corp of Engineering School in 1949; at this time, the United States had been experimenting with in-flight refueling exercises, which were cited in the Army Corp of Engineers paper: the principle case involved a flight from the continental U.S. to the Hawaiian Islands, which was refueled in mid-air three times. While this was useful for transport purposes, it should be especially noted that this experiment also involved the simulated dropping of a bomb load in the Pacific Ocean, demonstrating a strong offensive capability for the technology.33 If in-flight refueling could be used for planes carrying food and coal to support a civilian populace such as in Berlin, it could also be used for bombers carrying nuclear weapons to targets within the Soviet Union.34