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In the spring of 1948, the US Mint was working on overdrive. In addition to producing the millions of ‘greenbacks’ needed for circulation within the United States, a huge new operation was being undertaken. The US Mint and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, under the direction of the US Army’s Military Government for Germany, were printing millions of brand-new banknotes in total secrecy. These were Deutsche Marks for the new currency to be launched in west Germany. Produced in denominations of up to 100 Marks, a total of 500 million banknotes were printed. These were then secretly transported in sealed containers by air and sea to Germany.
On 18 June 1948, the new Deutsche Mark was officially introduced in the US, British, and French zones of western Germany. The old Reichsmark, a legacy of the Nazi era, had lost nearly all its value, suffering from massive inflation and black market trading. Economic reform in the shape of a new currency was essential. Sixty old Reichsmarks, which would barely buy a packet of black market cigarettes, could be exchanged for 40 new Deutsche Marks. Very quickly, stability returned. The black market went into decline and confidence in the economy surged. Items began to appear in shop windows again.
The immediate background was that by early 1948, relations between the western Allies and the Soviets had almost completely broken down in occupied Germany (see MHM 150, February/March 2026). At the epicentre was Berlin, well inside the Soviet occupation zone and increasingly the focus of tension. The Soviets now announced that they would launch a new currency, the Ostmark, which would be the only currency valid in their zone and in all of Berlin. The city faced a midsummer nightmare. But a meeting of the City Assembly, despite threats and intimidation from Communist thugs, voted to accept both new currencies in Berlin.
Marshal Sokolovsky, the military commander of the Soviet zone, rang Moscow to ask if he should surround Berlin with tanks – but the Kremlin decided this was a step too far and might provoke the Western Allies into direct military confrontation. They decided instead to impose a complete blockade on Berlin. From 6am on 24 June, the barriers came down on all land routes into Berlin by road, rail, and canal. Electricity from power stations in the Soviet sector to West Berlin was cut to just two hours a day. Factories, offices, shops, and homes went dark. The Soviets wanted the Western powers to change their policies or simply to get out of Berlin altogether.
The fightback begins
Washington and London were quick to cry foul. President Truman announced: ‘We are going to stay, period.’ British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin declared that ‘the abandonment of Berlin would mean the loss of western Europe’. While it was easy to say that Berlin was an outpost that must be defended, it was more difficult to know how. West Berlin, with a population of over two million, had barely a month’s supply of foodstuffs and coal. Stocks would rapidly run alarmingly low. It needed thousands of tons of supplies a day just to get by – but how was all this food and coal going to be taken to the city?
First, the Allies announced a counter-blockade, stopping all rail traffic from the British and American zones in west Germany into the Soviet sector of east Germany. Over the months, this would cause serious problems, as the supply of coal and steel into east Germany dried up. But the next step was even more dramatic.
The Military Governor of the US Zone of Germany at the time of the Berlin blockade was General Lucius D Clay. He was determined to do whatever was necessary to hold on to West Berlin and to ensure basic supplies got through. Various strategies were considered. General Curtis LeMay, commander of the US Air Force in Germany, favoured an aggressive plan in which armed US engineers would travel in convoy and force their way across the land barriers that had been closed. LeMay and Clay suggested that if the Soviets tried to stop them, they should open fire. However, Washington vetoed this plan. It was an election year in the United States. Truman could not risk going to war with the Soviet Union, recent ally of the US, to defend Berlin, its recent enemy. Besides, the Red Army could still call on about 2.5 million men in Europe, vastly outnumbering US and British forces after rapid post-war demobilisation. A Third World War was unthinkable in Washington and London.
Instead, Clay consulted the experienced General Albert Wedemeyer, who happened to be in Europe. Wedemeyer had organised the massive airlift of supplies from India to China (over the ‘Hump’ of the eastern Himalayas) during the war, and he thought it would be possible to supply Berlin with basic necessities by air. Clay was initially uncertain that this would succeed. Each US C-47 Dakota, the transport workhorse of the US Army Air Force, could carry only about 3 tons of supplies. However, without consulting Washington, Clay ordered an airlift to begin.
GENERAL LUCIUS D CLAY
General Clay was the architect of the Berlin Airlift. He had graduated from West Point in 1918, but missed service in the First World War. However, he soon acquired a reputation in the US Army as a brilliant engineer and a fine administrator, working on both civilian engineering projects and the building of dams, and on military projects like the construction of airfields and military installations. During World War II, he rose rapidly through the ranks of the US Army Corps of Engineers, helping to coordinate industrial and military supply systems. At the end of the war, General Eisenhower selected Clay to help with the complex problems of the military occupation of Germany. He served for two years as Deputy Military Governor of the US Zone, becoming Governor in 1947.
Clay was a tough, no-nonsense individual, determined to help Germany get back on its feet. He decided to launch an airlift to get around the Soviet land blockade of Berlin as the only peaceful way of supplying the city, without political approval from Washington. The airlift, to everyone’s surprise, proved a great success, and in total about 270,000 separate flights carried in more than 2¼ million tons of supplies, nearly two-thirds of which were coal to keep the electric power stations in West Berlin operating. The success of the airlift made Clay a global hero in the early part of the Cold War.
Operation Vittles
On 26 June, 32 C-47s began flying supplies into Tempelhof, the main airport in West Berlin. Each aircraft flew two round trips a day from its base at Wiesbaden in western Germany. Soon, about 80 C-47s were bringing in supplies every day. The US called it Operation Vittles. On 28 June, the RAF started to fly in supplies using their own transport Dakotas and Avro Yorks. The British called it Operation Plane Fare. In a couple of weeks, an armada of aircraft was taking in 1,000 tons of supplies a day. Neither air force had any clear plan as to how long they could continue to bring in supplies. And neither had ever attempted anything on this scale before.
At the end of June, 50 C-54 Skymasters arrived in Wiesbaden from the US to join the airlift. These aircraft could each carry nine tons of supplies, three times the load of the C-47. And the RAF expanded its transport force to include Short Sunderland flying boats, which took off from rivers near Hamburg and landed on Lake Havel, to the west of Berlin. Freddie Laker, a British businessman (later to become famous as the founder of Laker Airways) who had begun buying aircraft parts after the war, owned 12 Halifax bombers that had been converted to carry cargo. He was asked to join the airlift, and before long his Halifaxes were also making daily flights to bring in supplies.
By mid-July, the US fleet had increased to 100 C-47s along with the 50 C-54s. The RAF were using 40 Yorks and another 50 Dakotas, and started to fly into RAF Gatow in the British sector. The amount of supplies being carried in had increased to about 2,250 tons daily. As it seemed the operation was likely to go on for some time, it now needed a clear and sophisticated system for running an airlift. The US Army was charged with getting supplies to Wiesbaden. And a system for air traffic control to run the flights was set up under Major-General William Tunner, who had also worked on the wartime airlift to China. Aircraft were despatched every 4 minutes and were told to fly at a height 1,000 feet higher than the aircraft in front to avoid the possibility of mid-air collisions. At the end of July, another eight squadrons of C-54s, 72 aircraft, arrived to join the airlift.
A herculean task
On the receiving end, the citizens of Berlin soon rallied to the call. Gangs of men were recruited to unload the supplies as quickly as possible. Given extra rations as payment, they rapidly became super-efficient in their task. Before long, they were able to unload 9 tons of cargo from an aircraft, and have it ready for take off to return for more supplies, in 30 minutes. As the gangs became more experienced, the timings got shorter and the average unloading time came down to ten minutes. The record was set when a 12-man crew unloaded 9 tons of coal in 5 minutes 45 seconds.
The whole operation, which had begun with a jokey, sporting attitude among pilots and flight crews, soon turned into a highly efficient relief operation, with the crews becoming determined to keep Berlin alive. Many began to feel they were part of a crusade for freedom. And the irony did not escape anyone that three years before they had been flying over Berlin to drop bombs and destroy the city. Now they were bringing coal, food, and medicines to keep Berliners alive.
By the end of August, more than 1,500 flights a day were bringing in an average of 4,500 tons of cargo. This was enough to keep Berlin going through the summer. But everyone feared that a cold winter might yet make it impossible to supply the city with all that was needed. The military chiefs reckoned they could maintain the airlift until October – if there was no resolution before then, war was likely.
In August, diplomatic efforts were made to end the confrontation. A group of Western ambassadors met with Stalin. He made it clear that he would lift the blockade only if the Western allies withdrew the Deutsche Mark from Berlin. He was totally opposed to the creation of a new state of West Germany, separated from Soviet-controlled East Germany.
However, Stalin had his own problems. Yugoslavia, under the wartime partisan leader Marshal Josip Tito, had since the end of the war adopted an independent line (see MHM 148, October/November 2025). Although Communist, it kept its distance from Moscow, and in the summer the Kremlin expelled Yugoslavia from the Communist international organisation, Cominform, and called on other states to break off relations with the country. Still Tito held firm and refused to be bullied by Moscow.
Meanwhile, the airlift was proving more successful than the US and British military had imagined. Berliners helped to construct a new airport at Tegel in just 90 days, and this eased the congestion at Tempelhof and Gatow. On 18 September, 861 British and American flights brought in 7,000 tons of supplies in a single day. It began to look as though the airlift could continue through the winter after all.
In West Berlin, conditions were hard. Electricity was only available for four hours a day, and everyone had to get used to the bare minimum of rations. On the other hand, morale was high. Crowds often gathered near the airports to watch and cheer as the heavy transport planes flew in. Everyone could see the lengths to which the Western powers were going to support them. And one American pilot, Colonel Gail Halvorsen, achieved international fame by dropping chocolate and candy bars to kids waiting at the end of the runways.
Victory in sight
By December 1948, Allied transport aircraft were flying in an average of 5,500 tons of food, coal, and other essentials every day. Planes were landing at 90-second intervals, and being unloaded and readied for their return flights in record time. Fortunately, the winter of 1948-1949 was relatively mild and, as the airlift continued, it became clear that the Allies had achieved a major propaganda victory. With their technological superiority in the air, they were supplying half a city with much of what it needed to survive. By contrast, the Soviet Union was threatening to starve more than two million Berlin citizens. Internationally, this did not look good for Stalin.
By the spring of 1949, as the weather improved, the quantity of supplies flown in increased to about 8,000 tons daily. On Easter Sunday in April 1949, a new record was set when 1,398 flights brought in 13,000 tons of supplies in one 24-hour period. It was a clear victory for the Western Allies. They had shown determination and capability. They would do what was needed to defend and support West Berlin.
The Kremlin dropped hints that they would lift the blockade if minimum conditions were met. The counter-blockade of east Germany, which was causing considerable pain, had to be lifted and the Council of Foreign Ministers revived. The West responded by sending the hard-line General Clay home. He was happy to depart, saying he needed a break after the tensions of the past year. On 12 May, the West lifted its blockade of east Germany at the same time as the Soviets lifted the barriers on their blockade of Berlin. Flights into Berlin continued for some months, in case the Soviets reversed their policy. In reality, the airlift was over.
Both sides claimed victory – but it was clear that the Western Allies had prevented the Soviets from absorbing West Berlin into their territory. The first major confrontation of the Cold War, although it did not develop into a hot war, had ended with the clear division of Germany which the Soviets had opposed. The new currency and the stand over Berlin had completely divided Germany into two blocs. A federal constitution created a new state of West Germany that was tied to the Western democracies. East Germany would remain a satellite of the Soviet Union.
Berlin would continue to be a point of contention. For now, there was still free movement of Berliners from one side of the city to the other. But this would continue to be a source of aggravation to the Soviets right up to the moment when a Wall was built to physically divide the two halves of the city in August 1961.
C-54 SKYMASTER
Like the C-47, the Douglas C-54 Skymaster was adapted from a civilian airliner, the Douglas DC-4. It was a transport plane powered by four Pratt & Whitney R-2000 engines. It had a crew of four, with a cruising speed of 190mph and a 4,000-mile maximum range, and was first used by the US Army Air Force in 1942. Later versions could carry 49 passengers or 16 stretchers, or 9 tons of cargo. The aircraft was also used to carry President Roosevelt to the Yalta Conference in February 1945, becoming effectively the first Air Force One – although that name was not used at the time.
More than 300 C-54s formed the backbone of the Berlin Airlift. The aircraft was used extensively in the Korean War (1950-1953), too, but was replaced after that conflict by the Douglas C-124 Globemaster. Many C-54s had been converted for civilian use after the Second World War, however, and for many years they were flown by Pan American Airways on transatlantic flights between the US and Europe.
Taylor Downing’s latest book The Army that Never Was: D-Day and the great deception is out now in paperback (Icon Books, £10.99).
In the next issue of MHM: How the Cold War went nuclear: the countdown to the ultimate arms race.
All images: Wikimedia Commons, unless stated otherwise
