Berlin Blockade

• Division of Germany

  
  

  • Germany split into 4 zones
  • Stalin unhappy with manner of German division, West controlled 2/3 of Germany
• Increasing Tension over Berlin

  • To facilitate German economic recovery, USA and Britain combined their zones to form Bizonia
  • Western zones introduced new currency (Deutsche Mark) to replace old currency that was now worthless
• Berlin Blockade 24 June 1948


  • Stalin imposed blockade on movement into West Berlin, closing all land and water links

  Aim :

  • Force Germans in West Berlin into submission
  • Force Western Powers to abandon plans of unifying the 3 Western zones into a West German state
  • West Berlin became a city without access to any supplies
• Western Responses to Berlin Blockade


  • US and Britain decided to airlift supplies into WB
  • Only way to deliver without being seen as "aggressive"
  • Over next 11 months, planes dropped more than 2.3 million tonnes of supplies into WB
• End of Berlin Blockade


  • Realizing that the Blockade had failed, Stalin lifted the blockade on West Berlin in May 1949
• Formation of NATO 1949


  • Berlin Blockade and communist coup in Czechoslovakia convinced West that the USSR was a real threat
  • West feared Soviet military presence in EE
  • USA and Western European countries formed NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation)
  • Commits USA to the security of Western Europe
  • Promised to come to each other's defence if attacked by external parties
• Warsaw Pact 1955


  • NATO was a threat to USSR security
  • Formed Warsaw Pact with Eastern Europe satellite states
  • Countries pledge to defend each other