The Berlin Blockade; A Study in Cold War Politics: A RAND Corporation Research Study

xiv, 423, [1] pages. Includes Acknowledgments, Introduction, Appendix A: Notes on Source Material; Appendix B: Chronology of Events; Bibliographical Notes; Index; Map of Germany, 1948-1949, Showing Zonal Boundaries, Air Corridors, and Airlift Bases; and Map of Greater Berlin, Showing Sector Boundaries and West Berlin Airfields. Name of previous owner written inside front free endpaper. DJ is price-clipped, worn, soiled, and repaired with tape. Sticker at bottom of title page. The author was at the time this was written a research scientist with the RAND Corporation. He later gained world renown for articulating the concept of "The Third Person Effect." This account of the Berlin Blockade is based on interviews with German and Allied leaders, observers who had personal knowledge of the blockade, on the accounts of life in the besieged city provided by several hundred Berliners, and on official documents from Berlin, Bonn, Moscow, and Washington. 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.…