Blockade: Berlin and the Cold War

25 cm, viii, [4], 278, [2] pages. Illustrations. Maps Occasional footnotes. Appendix A, B, and C. Bibliography. Index of Proper Names. Index of Subjects. Ex-library with a bookplate and few of the usual library markings. Eric Morris is a British military historian who taught at Sandhurst, England's Royal Military Academy. Derived from a Kirkus review: Morris has chosen the Berlin blockade of 1948-49 as the centerpiece for this history of the Cold War from 1945 to 1961. Morris transcends mere military lore with a broad, rather urbane cold-warrior approach, conceding Western blunders and affronts. In discussing the Berlin question, he traces Stalin's need for guarantees against future German rearmament and revanchism, as well as for reparations. The book addresses the significance of Western currency reform, a move to penetrate the Eastern European economies, which, like the outflow of skilled workers from East Germany ten years later, was intolerable to the Russians. The blockade itself is well-narrated; more interesting is the counterpoint between Berlin's internal life and global Cold War events -- the Marshall Plan, the formation of NATO, the birth of the Adenauer government, etc. Despite Cold-War intensification, Morris argues that, with the Korean War settled, the 1954 Big Four meeting could have reached a significant accord on Berlin. The Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 - 12 May 1949) was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway, road, and canal access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control. The Soviets offered to drop the blockade if the Western Allies withdrew the newly introduced Deutsche Mark from West Berlin. The Western Allies organized the Berlin Airlift (26 June 1948 - 30 September 1949) to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin, a difficult feat given the size of the city's population. The Americans and British then began a joint operation in support of the entire city. Aircrews from the United States Air Force, the Royal Air Force, the French Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and the South African Air Force flew over 200,000 sorties in one year, providing to the West Berliners necessities such as fuel and food, with the original plan being to lift 3,475 tons of supplies daily. By the spring of 1949, that number was often met twofold, with the peak daily delivery totaling 12,941 tons. By this time the airlift was clearly succeeding, delivering more cargo than had previously been transported into the city by rail. The Soviets did not disrupt the airlift for fear this might lead to open conflict, even though they far outnumbered the allies in Germany and especially Berlin. On 12 May 1949, the USSR lifted the blockade of West Berlin, although for a time the American and British continued to supply the city by air anyway because they were worried that the Soviets were simply going to resume the blockade and were only trying to disrupt western supply lines. The Berlin Airlift officially ended on 30 September 1949 after fifteen months. The US Air Force had delivered 1,783,573 tons (76.40% of total) and the RAF 541,937 tons (23.30% of total), totaling 2,334,374 tons, nearly two-thirds of which was coal, on 278,228 flights to Berlin. The C-47s and C-54s together flew over 92 million miles in the process, almost the distance from Earth to the Sun. At the height of the Airlift, one plane reached West Berlin every thirty seconds. Seventeen American and eight British aircraft crashed during the operation. A total of 101 fatalities were recorded as a result of the operation, including 40 Britons and 31 Americans, mostly due to non-flying accidents. The Berlin Blockade served to highlight the competing ideological and economic visions for postwar Europe and played a major role in drawing West Germany into the.…