World News: Berlin
Germans celebrate Berlin Airlift anniversaryOperation considered Cold War's 1st battle
By David Rising
ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 27, 2008
BERLIN – Germany marked the 60th anniversary of the start of the Berlin Airlift yesterday, celebrating an unprecedented undertaking that likely saved the city from falling to the Soviets and helped mend U.S.-German wounds from World War II.
Often called the first battle of the Cold War, the airlift pitted the United States and the Soviets against each other for the first time and set the tone for decades to come.
“I find the courage with which this operation was carried out truly admirable,” German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said at a ceremony at the U.S. Army Airfield in Wiesbaden, from which many of the flights originated.
The airlift's significance wasn't immediately apparent when it began on June 26, 1948.
The future looked bleak to Berliners at the time, said Helmut Trotnow, director of Berlin's Allied Museum. “There was no light at the end of the tunnel, but the airlift brought this light.”
“If it hadn't been for the success of the airlift, history would have looked very different,” he said. “It really is a turning point.”
After the war, zones of Western Germany were handed to Britain, France and the United States to administer, while the Soviet Union was handed the East. Berlin was inside the Soviet sector, but it was also divided among the four powers.
In an effort to squeeze the Western powers out of Berlin, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin blockaded all rail, road and ship traffic into the city in June 1948.
On June 26, the United States and Britain launched “Operation Vittles” – an unprecedented airlift that would supply 2 million West Berliners with food and fuel for 11 months until the Soviets lifted the blockade, and for several months after that in case Stalin changed his mind.
“It changed my life entirely,” retired airlift pilot Gail Halvorsen, who lives in Utah, said at the Wiesbaden event. “We were operating with our former enemies for one common goal: freedom.”
Neither side resorted to force – setting the tone for the Cold War – though 39 Britons, 31 Americans and at least five Germans were killed in accidents.
During the airlift, American, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander and South African pilots flew 278,000 flights to Berlin, carrying 2.3 million tons of food, coal, medicine and other supplies.
In one amazing day – April 16, 1949 – about 1,400 planes carried in nearly 13,000 tons over a 24-hour period. That was an average of one plane landing every 62 seconds.
On the ground in Berlin, ex-Luftwaffe mechanics were enlisted to help maintain aircraft, and 19,000 Berliners worked around the clock for three months to build Tegel Airport, providing relief for the British Gatow and American Tempelhof airfields.
American airlift pilot Bill Voigt remembers that seeing the suffering of the Berliners quickly erased any resentment lingering from the war.
“Regardless of how you felt about the Germans, you had to pay due homage to them for their determination,” Voigt, 87, said on a recent trip to Berlin.
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