Product Description

Published to mark the 50th anniversary of the commencement of the Berlin airlift, this book describes how, from June 1948 to midsummer 1949, Berlin was blockaded by the Russians and relied on the massive Allied airlift to su rvive.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #358422 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 472 pages

Review
A first-rate history of the post-WW II confrontation that pitted the UK, US, and (albeit to a minor extent) France against the USSR in the cockpit of Berlin. The Tusas (The Nuremberg Trial, 1984) provide a meticulously documented account of how the victors almost immediately began quarreling over the spoils of their hard-fought war against the Nazis. These conflicts reached a climax in mid-1948, when the Soviets (using a dispute over currency as an excuse) halted highway, rail, and riverine access to Berlin. The Western allies responded with an ad hoc airlift that ultimately beat the blockade and kept their sectors of the divided city supplied, if barely, with the necessities of life. Here, in addition to providing informative perspectives on the contending powers' diplomatic maneuvers, the Tusas offer a wealth of dramatic detail on the workaday efforts of the air and ground crews who conducted round-the-clock operations for the better part of ten months. Covered as well is the resilience of beleaguered Berliners able to joke that their plight would have been worse if Anglo-American forces sustained the siege and Russians the airlift. By the time the transport impasse was more or less resolved in the fall of 1949, upwards of 2.3 million tons of food, fuel, and other goods (including a goat for Welsh fusiliers pining to replace a lost mascot) had been flown into Berlin. As the Tusas make clear, the airlift was a risky business at best from the start. Machines and men took a beating, and many lives were lost. Luck was with the West, though. Mild weather helped keep the air bridge open during normally harsh winter months, and, the authors point out, the game proved worth the candle. Among other outcomes, the aerial ferry system contributed greatly to the creation of NATO and Germany's federal republic; in the meantime, Berlin endures as an independent enclave behind the iron curtain. An impressive, consistently engrossing audit of a consequential Cold War campaign and its implications. (Kirkus Reviews)

Synopsis
Published to mark the 50th anniversary of the commencement of the Berlin airlift, this book describes how, from June 1948 to midsummer 1949, Berlin was blockaded by the Russians and relied on the massive Allied airlift to su rvive.

Customer Reviews

too detailed
Ok that may sound bad but that was my initial thought here. It took me three attemts to get to grips with the text. If I'm honest it would have been better titled something like 'political life in post war Berlin'. It is however very thorough in its treatment of the subject. Unfortunately the accounts of the lift itself bring nothing new to the table.