European Aviation History

Just before midnight on the evening of June 23, 1948, the electricity network in the Western Sectors of Berlin collapsed without warning. Shortly afterwards, In the early hours of June 24 th , the sole railroad artery into the city from the Western Zone, roughly 100 miles to the west, was closed to rail traffic. At the same time, the autobahns by which the Western Powers moved personnel, goods and equipment to their garrisons in Berlin were shut down and all barge traffic into the Western sectors of the city was brought to a complete halt. The Western Sectors of Berlin were under siege. As the city awoke to a new day, the Russian controlled radio dryly announced to Berliners that: “Due to technical difficulties,” the Transport Authority of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) had been forced to suspend both passenger and goods traffic on the railroad between Berlin and Helmstedt, the latter being the closest point in the British Zone of Occupation. But Berliners r...

  76 Years ago today the Russians fired the first shots in the Cold War. They sought to expel the Western Powers from Berlin by the brutal tactic of cutting off the civilian population from food, power, light, fuel, medicine and all other necessities. O n 24 June 1948, when the Soviet Union abruptly stopped all road, rail and canal traffic to the Western Sectors of Berlin and simultaneously cut off electric power. The impacted districts of the former German capital were located more than one hundred miles inside the Soviet Zone of occupation and were dependent on imports of food, power, medicine and all other necessities of life. The Soviet interdiction of access routes and power supply therefore put the 2.2. million civilian residents of the Western Sectors of Berlin under siege. The target of the Soviet blockade was not, however, those 2.2 million German residents, but rather the 8,500 French, British and American troops representing the Western Allies. The Western...