The Siege: Could the Berlin Airlift Save the City?

A besieged city requires a number of essentials if the inhabitants are to be kept alive. Clean drinking water is vital, as is sufficient food, fuel, and medication. An acute shortage of food cost thousands of lives during the Siege of Leningrad (1941–44), while a lack of fuel caused extreme deprivation during the 1870 Siege of Paris. A further requirement is the maintenance of morale: If the besieged inhabitants lose faith in their leaders, the will to resist is rapidly undermined.

Western Berlin’s stockpile of supplies was meager indeed in the spring of 1948. The small British garrison had enough food for 37 days, but the population of the city’s Western sectors, some 2.4 million people, could be fed for just 27 days. There would be enough petrol for 10 weeks if it were severely rationed, and coal for perhaps half this time.

American warehouses also contained two hundred tons of condensed milk and a stockpile of powdered milk, emergency supplies that Howley had prudently imported to the city. Yet it was nowhere near enough. Grand historical parallels were uppermost in Howley’s mind in those opening days of the siege. “The cold inhuman minds of the Kremlin had reached a wicked decision, the most barbarous in history since Genghis Khan reduced conquered cities to pyramids of skulls.” Howley knew that the closing of the land routes had marked the end of the Phoney War and the beginning of a battle for survival.

The small British garrison had enough food for 37 days, but the population of the city’s Western sectors, some 2.4 million people, could be fed for just 27 days.

“June 24, 1948, is one of the most infamous dates in the history of civilization,” he wrote, adding that it was the day on which “the Russians tried to murder an entire city to gain a political advantage.” It was conquest by starvation, pure and simple. “There we were, in a land-locked city, trapped in the Bear’s paws.”

Berlin’s situation was different from all previous sieges in one important respect: only the Western half of the city was blockaded, and Berliners could still cross into the Soviet sector. True, there was a marked increase in the number of checkpoints—more than seventy on the main crossing points—and the Communist police were prone to confiscate food and goods, yet the subway lines remained open, and the besieged inhabitants of the West were enticed into the Soviet sector by the promise of extra rations.

The situation seemed hopeless to most of the city’s inhabitants as well as to the Western-allied garrisons. Howley alone harbored a ray of optimism for the showdown to follow. “Although the Reds had succeeded in cutting us off completely by land, depriving us of the...

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