1.6 Berlin Blockade
The hardening of positions on both sides produced the first major crisis of the Cold War. Yalta had divided Germany into four zones (U.S., USSR, British, and French) and Berlin into four sectors. The Soviets were determined to prevent Germany from reemerging as an industrial power. But America, wanting to rebuild the world economy for the benefit of U.S. markets, initiated financial reforms that produced a remarkable economic revival in its sector.
The Russians retaliated on June 24 by clamping a tight blockade around West Berlin, which lay 110 miles within the Soviet occupation zone. West Berlin was in essence a small Western enclave deep inside the Soviet zone. Using his geographical advantage, Stalin blocked all surface transportation into West Berlin, depriving some 2.5 million people of food and fuel.
Clay Speaks on Berlin Airlift, October 21, 1948
The situation was full of danger and Truman searched for a response that would demonstrate American resolve without forcing a direct confrontation. Treading a careful middle path, Truman decided to counter the Russian move by ordering a massive airlift operation. For the next 324 days, American and British planes dropped 2.5 million tons of provisions to sustain the ten thousand troops and the 2 million civilians in Berlin. Truman threatened to use “the bomb” if the Soviets shot down the relief planes. “We are very close to war,” he wrote in his diary. On May 12, 1949, the Russians accepted defeat and ended the blockade.
The Berlin crisis catalyzed western leaders to present a unified front to the Soviets. In January 1949, Truman proposed committing the United States to the defense of Europe. In April, he pledged American involvement in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense pact that bound twelve signatories (Britain, France, Canada, Italy, the Benelux countries, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, and Portugal) to fight against aggression. Article 5 provided “that an armed attack against one or more . . . shall be considered an attack against them all.”
Figure 1.4 Occupation Zones of Postwar Germany
At the Yalta Conference in early 1945, the Allied powers decided that after Germany surrendered unconditionally the Allies would dismember the enemy, dividing Germany and its capital, Berlin, into zones of occupation. After Germany’s official surrender May 8, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, the United States, and France established control over their zones, with the hope of keeping their policies relatively uniform so that Germany could remain a single nation once disarmament and demilitarization took place. However, as the Cold War intensified, conflicting political and economic systems made compatible zone standards impossible. In December 1946, the American and British zones merged and in 1948 France agreed to join them, resulting in the Soviet Union’s blockade of West Berlin.
Source: Melvyn P. Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War [Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press], p. 66. Copyright © 1992.
While challenging the Soviets’ claim to a “sphere of influence” in Europe, the United States consolidated its own sphere in the Western Hemisphere. In 1947, Secretary of State Marshall led a delegation of American officials to Brazil where, on September 2, he signed the Rio Treaty. The signatories agreed that “any armed attack by any state against an American state shall be considered an attack against all the American states.” The following year, North and Latin American countries created the Organization of American States (OAS).
The Soviets matched the Western initiatives by intensifying their domination of Eastern Europe. In October 1949, Stalin created a separate government in East Germany, the German Democratic Republic. Moscow sponsored an economic association, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance or COMECON (1949), and a military alliance for Eastern Europe, the Warsaw Pact (1955). The Soviets poured massive amounts of aid into Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria to accelerate industrialization and increase Russian control. The only exception to Soviet control was Yugoslavia, which managed to develop as an independent socialist state.