Word: airlift
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...racing their cars along the Autobahn (and into the headlines back home). Next day was a school holiday, and the black, red & gold flag of the old Weimar Republic, now the banner of the new West German state, flew everywhere-20,000 flags had been shipped in by Allied airlift. The airlift planes still droned on, piling up supplies for any other rainy days that might lie ahead. Berlin's feeling about the end of the 327-day Russian blockade was shown most clearly as the first train chugged out of the city, bound for the Western zones. TIME...
Berlin's people had been living mainly on the airlift's dehydrated potatoes, powdered eggs, powdered milk, dried vegetables and occasional cans of meat; this week they would get better food, and more of it. The blockade had shut down much of Berlin's industry, thrown 125,000 out of work. There had been only four hours of electricity a day; Berliners had lighted their homes with candles or gone to bed at sunset. The siege's end meant not only more food, more jobs and more light, but a relatively comfortable winter ahead...
...into conversation with Russia's barrel-chested Yakov Malik. From that conversation, the U.S. learned last week, came the series of talks which brought the first break in the cold war in months: the Russians were prepared to abandon the blockade of Berlin. The end of the Berlin airlift, a historic employment of air power as a weapon of diplomacy, seemed in sight...
...fact seemed to be that the Kremlin badly wanted a settlement. The airlift had defeated the Russian blockade, costing the Russians dear in prestige and popularity. It had transported 1,540,969 tons in 310 days, steadily upped its totals in spite of the German winter. Meanwhile the West's counter-blockade had pinched Eastern Germany badly. With the Communists' gigantic triumphs in Asia, they could afford a strategic retreat in Europe without disastrous loss of face...
...over Berlin, the airlift planes still droned...