Essay Sample: History Of The Berlin Blockade

📌Category: Germany, World
📌Words: 260
📌Pages: 1
📌Published: 09 June 2022

The Berlin Blockade was the first time we saw tension between the major powers since the Second World War. In June 1948, the USSR blocked Berlin from the outside world completely, in an attempt to keep Germany weak, so it was not a threat to Russia. This followed a disagreement on how Germany should be run, the allies pouring money into their land creating a stable economy and the Soviet Union working to keep theirs poor. The final change which triggered the blockade was the introduction of a new currency, the Mark.

The USSR began to deprive the people of Berlin by blocking off the land transportation to West Berlin. People struggled to access electricity, food, coal and other basic essentials, and the only way for them to be provided was through aircraft, so, the Berlin airlift began. For nearly 15 months, the allies transported goods into Berlin through three air corridors, in all delivering approximately 2.5 million tonnes of goods of mostly food and coal.

Not only was this a sign of aggression between the two powers it also promoted the idea of the Western ‘Heroes’ in the eyes of not only Germans but also the rest of the world, the view of Stalin as a tyrant was becoming more widely spread, further adding to the tension as people viewed his leadership as negative, increasing the possibility of conflict. Although this obviously was negative for those living in Berlin, making their daily life a struggle, in my opinion it was by no means the most dangerous point in the Cold War as mass starvation never occurred and most life loss cannot be attributed to the blockade itself, rather natural causes.

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