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International Herald Tribune
June 27, 2008 By Associated Press
BERLIN--Germany on Thursday commemorated the 60th anniversary of the start of the Berlin airlift, celebrating an unprecedented undertaking that probably saved the city from falling to the Soviet Union and helped mend German-American relations after World War II.
Often called the first battle of the Cold War, the airlift pitted the United States and the Soviet Union against each other for the first time and set the tone for the decades to come.
"I find the courage with which this operation was carried out truly admirable," Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said at a ceremony at the U.S. Army airfield in Wiesbaden, from which many of the flights originated.
The significance of the airlift was not immediately apparent, however, when it began on June 26, 1948. The future looked "bleak" to Berliners at the time, said Helmut Trotnow, director of Berlin's Allied Museum.
"There was no light at the end of the tunnel, but the airlift brought this light," he said. "If it hadn't been for the success of the airlift, history would have looked very different. It really is a turning point."
After the war, zones of western Germany were divided among Britain, France and the United States to administer, while the Soviet Union was given the east. Berlin was inside the Soviet sector, but also divided among the four powers.
In an effort to squeeze the other powers out of Berlin, Stalin blockaded all rail, road and ship traffic into the city in June 1948.
On June 26, the United States and Britain launched Operation Vittles - an airlift that supplied about two million West Berliners with food and fuel for 11 months until the Soviets lifted the blockade.
Neither side resorted to force, although 39 Britons, 31 Americans and at least 5 Germans were killed in accidents.
During the airlift, American, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and South African pilots flew 278,000 flights to Berlin, carrying 2.3 million tons of food, coal, medicine and other supplies. In one amazing day - April 16, 1949 - about 1,400 planes carried in nearly 13,000 tons over a 24-hour period. That was an average of one plane landing every 62 seconds.
On the ground in Berlin, former Luftwaffe mechanics were enlisted to help maintain aircraft and 19,000 Berliners - almost half of them women - worked round the clock for three months to build Tegel Airport, providing relief for the British Gatow and American Tempelhof airfields.
One American airlift pilot, Bill Voigt, said that seeing the suffering and determination of the Berliners erased, for him, any resentment lingering from the war.
On the other side, Germans, especially Berliners, were shown the human face of their former enemies and worked with the occupying Western forces on a large scale for the first time against the Russians.
June 27, 2008 By Associated Press
BERLIN--Germany on Thursday commemorated the 60th anniversary of the start of the Berlin airlift, celebrating an unprecedented undertaking that probably saved the city from falling to the Soviet Union and helped mend German-American relations after World War II.
Often called the first battle of the Cold War, the airlift pitted the United States and the Soviet Union against each other for the first time and set the tone for the decades to come.
"I find the courage with which this operation was carried out truly admirable," Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said at a ceremony at the U.S. Army airfield in Wiesbaden, from which many of the flights originated.
The significance of the airlift was not immediately apparent, however, when it began on June 26, 1948. The future looked "bleak" to Berliners at the time, said Helmut Trotnow, director of Berlin's Allied Museum.
"There was no light at the end of the tunnel, but the airlift brought this light," he said. "If it hadn't been for the success of the airlift, history would have looked very different. It really is a turning point."
After the war, zones of western Germany were divided among Britain, France and the United States to administer, while the Soviet Union was given the east. Berlin was inside the Soviet sector, but also divided among the four powers.
In an effort to squeeze the other powers out of Berlin, Stalin blockaded all rail, road and ship traffic into the city in June 1948.
On June 26, the United States and Britain launched Operation Vittles - an airlift that supplied about two million West Berliners with food and fuel for 11 months until the Soviets lifted the blockade.
Neither side resorted to force, although 39 Britons, 31 Americans and at least 5 Germans were killed in accidents.
During the airlift, American, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and South African pilots flew 278,000 flights to Berlin, carrying 2.3 million tons of food, coal, medicine and other supplies. In one amazing day - April 16, 1949 - about 1,400 planes carried in nearly 13,000 tons over a 24-hour period. That was an average of one plane landing every 62 seconds.
On the ground in Berlin, former Luftwaffe mechanics were enlisted to help maintain aircraft and 19,000 Berliners - almost half of them women - worked round the clock for three months to build Tegel Airport, providing relief for the British Gatow and American Tempelhof airfields.
One American airlift pilot, Bill Voigt, said that seeing the suffering and determination of the Berliners erased, for him, any resentment lingering from the war.
On the other side, Germans, especially Berliners, were shown the human face of their former enemies and worked with the occupying Western forces on a large scale for the first time against the Russians.