The British had been quietly arming gendarmes, the so-called B-Gendarmerie, since 1945 and discussed the creation of a proper Austrian military in 1947. The Americans feared that Vienna could be the scene of another Berlin Blockade. They set up and filled emergency food dumps, and prepared to airlift supplies to Vienna while the government created a backup base in Salzburg. The American command secretly trained the soldiers of an underground Austrian military at a rate of 200 men a week. The B-Gendarmerie knowingly hired Wehrmacht veterans and VdU members; the denazification of Austria's 537,000 registered Nazis had largely ended in 1948.