Except, while there was an airlift of supplies, there was no Berlin blockade.
In the National Archives at Kew, I found documents from 1948 showing, in the Foreign Office’s words, “the blockade of Berlin is NOT a siege” and that “movement in and out of Germans is possible all the time”, for example to obtain food. A press campaign, however, pushed for “a massive and sensational story of air power applied to humanitarian ends”. The US secretary of state, George C Marshall, argued via telegram to “utilize to the utmost present propaganda advantage our position”, “stressing [Soviet] responsibility for … threatened starvation of civilian population”. The story was so effective, it became a cold war myth that stuck. In the UK, teenagers still learn for their GCSEs that Berlin was blockaded by Stalin and risked starvation.
Blockades and sieges are different things. As is allowing the movement of population but not of coal/food.
Yes, yes, I know he’s a noted historian and I’m not. But I’d suggest that his findings are a little less revisionist than he’s saying they are.
Who is ‘he?’
“he” appears to be Joseph Pearson – see Guardian/Wikipedia.
Well I’m guessing the historian is pro Palestinian/ Ultra Left wing so you have to try and explain away things like the Nazi Soviet pact. The rehabilitation of Stalin could be the next project.
The explanation will be “how dare you?!”.
I.e. no explanation at all, just an attempt at suppression.
It’s worked fairly well; the number of people who think Stalin fought with the US and Britain and against Nazi Germany is pretty high. As opposed to (of course) Stalin turning to us when Germany attacked.
Tim – on another topic – can the Code Monkey resurrect the posts from November 2nd and 3rd?
allowing the movement of population but not of coal/food.
I was in Berlin in the early 70s. I heard from people who lived through that period. Movement of people in & out of the city was severely restricted. The Russians were making the use of the corridor as difficult as possible. Obstructionist.
Exactly.
The assumption here is that Berliners would have gone on ‘Hamsterfahrt’ to obtain food.
Freight traffic and the roads were blocked. The only way in or out was by train.
True the Allies used the blockade to its full propaganda value, but considering the number of pilot casualties and that the RAF redirected nearly all transport aircraft from Imperial routes, showed that this was a serious business.
Stalin was savvy enough to realise that shooting down the aircraft would have turned the Cold War very hot in a matter of days.
This is the problem with history. There’s not much real, direct use of it, so it’s full of idiots and propagandists.
There absolutely was a blockade. Stalin wanted the allies to abandon certain parts of Germany and could cut them off. So he did.
Was there also a huge propaganda thing to it? Yes. You had a situation where Stalin was not only being a cunt, but he lost big. The US Airforce were bringing in more freight than land before the blockade. You’re going to take advantage of the situation and be all “America fuck yeah” and bring lots of people to your side. It fostered strong German-US links.
We in the west used to play dirty – and during the cold war, we were good at it. Nowadays, we leave grey-zone tactics and hybrid warfare to Russia, which is winning the disinformation war. Europe’s pride in playing by the rules might just be democracy’s achilles heel.
Is this retarded tankie aving a laugh? Europe is so hostile to democracy and their own legitimate citizens, even the Russians are laughing at them. “The rules” have been chucked to imprison and ban their political opponents.
Do GCSEs do post-WW2 stuff? From my experience “history” was stuff before the 20th century. 1950s is more current affairs. How on earth is events from when people now still living were actually alive “history”?
Berlin airlift was 48. But the number of people who remember the 50s is getting pretty small now. The bits I remember, I was hardly an active participant. So for most people, this would be “history”.
As for what history they teach for GCSE, who knows? Doubt if it’s actually history in the sense of what happened when.
I did up to 1939 for history O level in the late 1980s. By that metric GCSEs should be teaching the 60s and 70s by now. No idea if they are mind.
For someone to have been alive during the Berlin airlift, they must be at least 77 years old.
For them to remember much of it and anything other than maybe “we good, they bad”, they would have to be about a decade older. And a fair percentage of those have memory problems.
Yes, it’s history by this point by your definition of “beyond living memory”.
It’s true that pre-1900 would definitely be beyond the memory of anyone living; that’s 125 years ago, which is older than the (possibly fraudulent) age of the oldest human.
Yeah, I think it’s an age thing amongst the older commentariat. Unwilling to admit for most people we are part of history.
The kids at school now have grandparents too young to remember the Berlin Air Lift.
That is exactly the history we should be teaching. Close enough that it still has an effect today, but not so recent that tempers fray still.
No mention of Berlin Air Lift on the curriculum
https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/history/gcse/history-8145/specification/specification-at-a-glance
Have you ever tried the game of “What did you once believe but now think is wrong”?
I used to assume that when the USSR dissolved the flow of Moscow Gold would reduce so far that the bought-and-paid-for lefties would shut up. Maybe I was wrong simply because I hadn’t guessed that new funding sources would be developed.