page_title: Cold War (1947–1953)
section_title: Berlin Blockade
hierarchical_section_title: Cold War (1947–1953) / Containment / Berlin Blockade
caption_attribution_description: English: Berliners watching a C-54 land at Berlin Tempelhof Airport, 1948.
context_page_description: The Cold War (1947–1953) is the period within the Cold War from the Truman Doctrine in 1947 to the conclusion of the Korean War in 1953. The Cold War emerged in Europe a few years after the successful US–USSR–UK coalition won World War II in Europe, and extended to 1989–91. In 1947, Bernard Baruch, the multimillionaire financier and adviser to presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Harry S. Truman, coined the term “Cold War” to describe the increasingly chilly relations between two World War II Allies: the United States and the Soviet Union.
  Some conflicts between the West and the USSR appeared earlier. In 1945–46 the US and UK strongly protested Soviet political takeover efforts in Eastern Europe and Iran, while the hunt for Soviet spies made the tensions more visible. However historians emphasize the decisive break between the US–UK and the USSR came in 1947–48 over such issues as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Blockade, followed by the formation of NATO in 1949.The Cold War took place worldwide, but it had a partially different timing outside Europe.
context_section_description: After the Marshall Plan, the introduction of a new currency to Western Germany to replace the debased Reichsmark and massive electoral losses for communist parties in 1946, in June 1948, the Soviet Union cut off surface road access to Berlin. On the day of the Berlin Blockade, a Soviet representative told the other occupying powers  "We are warning both you and the population of Berlin that we shall apply economic and administrative sanctions that will lead to circulation in Berlin exclusively of the currency of the Soviet occupation zone."
  Thereafter, street and water communications were severed, rail and barge traffic was stopped and the Soviets initially stopped supplying food to the civilian population in the non-Soviet sectors of Berlin.  Because Berlin was located within the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany and the other occupying powers had previously relied on Soviet good will for access to Berlin, the only available methods of supplying the city were three limited air corridors.
  By February 1948, because of massive post-war military cuts, the entire United States army had been reduced to 552,000 men.  Military forces in non-Soviet Berlin sectors totaled only 8,973 Americans, 7,606 British and 6,100 French.  Soviet military forces in the Soviet sector that surrounded Berlin totaled one and a half million men. The two United States regiments in Berlin would have provided little resistance against a Soviet attack. Believing that Britain, France and the United States had little option other than to acquiesce, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany celebrated the beginning of the blockade. Thereafter, a massive aerial supply campaign of food, water and other goods was initiated by the United States, Britain, France and other countries. The Soviets derided "the futile attempts of the Americans to save face and to maintain their untenable position in Berlin." The success of the airlift eventually caused the Soviets to lift their blockade in May 1949.
  However, the Soviet Army was still capable of conquering Western Europe without much difficulty. In September 1948, US military intelligence experts estimated that the Soviets had about 485,000 troops in their German occupation zone and in Poland, and some 1.785 million troops in Europe in total. At the same time, the number of US troops in 1948 was about 140,000.
caption: Berliners watching a C-54 land at Tempelhof Airport (1948)
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