Berlin Blockade

And they said they wouldn't, and they did.

And then Truman turned over to Curtis LeMay and said, how do we feed them? And they had DC-3s and 4s, and the Berlin Airlift worked.

He stood down Stalin.

And then Korea, the Soviet had occupied the northern part, and the United States said, we're going to get out.

During the multinational occupation of Germany post-World War II, the Soviet Union began blockading all land access to the sectors of Berlin under Western control.

In response, the Western Allies organized the Berlin Airlift from June 1948 to September 1949, landing enough airplanes at Tempelhof to supply the inhabitants of West Berlin and defeat the blockade.

Tempelhof Airport ceased to operate in October 2008 and has subsequently been used as a recreational space known

as Tempelhofer Feld.

What were you doing in Germany at the time? What line of work were you in?

Well, I was in the Air Force, and do you remember, you probably, you remember, you read about the Berlin Airlift.

Of course.

I was in air traffic.

Humiliated by American ingenuity and undeterred resolve, the Soviets finally lifted that siege in May of 1949.

The Berlin Airlift saved the city, solidified West Berlin as a symbol of freedom, and showed America would not flinch in the face of Soviet aggression.

63 On March 4, 1841, 68-year-old William Henry Harrison was sworn in as the ninth president of the United States.

To prove his vigor and defy critics who called him too old, Harrison rode to the Capitol without a coat or hat in freezing rain.

A blockade would confront the U.S. president with a choice between the frightening... a military response, and the unthinkable, capitulation.

The logistical demands of a resupply operation over vast distances, with the paltry, which would be fewer than 200, and aged... which would be an average age of mid-50s, U.S. merchant ships would dwarf those of the 15-month Berlin Airlift, which took place from June of 1948 to September of 1949, that did sustain a city with a population one-tenth the size of today's Taiwan.

China cannot mobilize for war secretly.

And an invasion, Freeman says, would rank among the most complex military operations in modern history.

the Cold War major events.

Okay, what was the main purpose of the 1948-1949 Berlin Airlift?

okay yeah go for it

to launch an armed invasion of east berlin nope was it to supply west berlin with food and fuel by air was it to drop atomic weapons on soviet military bases

tried to blockade East Berlin or West Berlin.

And that was the famous Berlin airlift that kept Berlin going during the blockade as all the land routes to West Berlin were blocked by the Soviet Union and East German forces.

And so it has kind of stood as a bastion of freedom, if you will, throughout the Cold War.

It was out there.

And yet when he became president, he was confronted with problems, big problems.

How to end the war, to use or not to use the atomic bomb, what to do about the Berlin Airlift, what to do about Russia acquiring the hydrogen bomb.

He made these decisions courageously.

He was disliked, scorned for them.