![]() The Air Force’s first Chief of Staff, Gen. Indeed, many of Truman’s aides considered an airlift a stopgap measure to buy time for diplomacy. “It hardly seemed realistic to expect a major city to be supplied entirely by air for any but a very limited time,” McCullough wrote. This provided the opportunity to mount an aerial supply effort. By agreement with the Soviets, the Allies maintained three 20-mile-wide air corridors into Berlin. “We stay in Berlin, period,” Truman told his key advisors. Yet the thought of capitulation - giving up Berlin and allowing the Soviets to dominated western Europe - was a non-starter. ![]() With Allied forces vastly outnumbered by Soviet combat forces near Berlin, confronting the blockade with an armed convey didn’t look promising. President Harry Truman had limited options. Coal supplies would be gone in six weeks.” As it was, stocks of food would last no more than a month. Two and a half million people faced starvation. Except by air, the Allied sectors were entirely cut off. “Clearly Stalin was attempting to force the Western Allies to withdraw from the city. “The situation was extremely dangerous,” wrote historian David McCullough. Seventy-five years ago, midway through a century marred by bloody conflict, the world faced a grave new crisis.Īlarmed by the efforts of their former allies - the United States, Great Britain and France - to support the development of a free economy in a democratic West Germany, on June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union blockaded all road, rail and canal traffic of essential food, medicine and coal supplies to the free people of West Berlin and cut off electricity. ![]()
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