Word: airlifts
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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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...
...Russians were clearly eager to end the Berlin blockade. The fact that the bold, persistent Berlin airlift-and Berliners' dogged courage-had brought them to this point was a notable cold war victory for the West. But there was far more than that behind the Moscow statement...