At first the Western Allies seemed impotent in the face of such outrages carried out by their occupation partners—they registered protests with the Soviet administration but otherwise did nothing. However, by early 1947, as it became impossible to deny that Berlin and Germany were fast becoming prime battlegrounds in the emerging Cold War, the Western powers started taking measures to protect “their” Germany. On January 1, 1947, the Americans and British fused their zones economically into “Bizonia” (France, intent upon keeping Germany divided and weak, kept its zone separate). Now the Soviets were prevented from drawing much-needed reparations from the western zones. A few months later, George C. Marshall, the new American secretary of state, announced his famous plan for European economic recovery, the “Marshall Plan,” in which he pointedly included western Germany. Thus if the Soviets in 1946/47 were bringing down (in Winston Churchill’s famous phrase) an “iron curtain” across Europe, the Western powers were drawing some lines of demarcation of their own.
General Lucius D. Clay
The Soviets bitterly protested the Western initiatives as violations of the Potsdam Agreement and as steps toward the formal division of Germany. Stalin’s aspiration at this point was not to see Germany officially divided but to win control over all of it. Hence the Soviets retaliated in the most effective way they could: by interfering with traffic into Berlin. Claiming “technical difficulties” on the rail lines, they restricted the number of freight trains allowed to pass through their zone, thereby exacerbating the food shortage. In early 1948, with their Berlin garrisons feeling the pinch, the British and Americans launched a small airlift with a few planeloads of supplies, a preview of the much larger lift to come. Although the Kommandatura continued to meet during this crisis, Robert Murphy, political adviser to the American military government, reported that agreement had become impossible “even on the most routine questions.” General Clay sensed “a feeling of new tenseness in every Soviet individual with whom we have official relationships.” He feared that war might come with “dramatic suddenness.”
Yet heightened tensions with the Russians in Berlin did not prevent the Western powers from taking further steps to ensure the political and economic viability of western Germany. In early June 1948 they instructed German officials in the Western zones to draft a constitution for a new federal state “best adapted to the eventual reestablishment of German unity at present disrupted.” They also announced that they would begin formulating an “Occupation Statute” to define relations between themselves and the new western German government. Finally, on June 18, the Western military governments announced that a new currency, the Deutsche mark, would replace the inflated Reichsmark as the accepted medium of exchange in their zones. The new Westmarks were not designated for use in Berlin, but when the Soviets tried to impose an East-based currency on the entire city, the Americans, having secretly flown in loads of Deutsche marks in case they might be needed, started issuing the new bills on June 24. Since eastern money was still accepted in the western sectors, Berlin now had competing currencies to go along with its competing ideologies. The Westmarks had a large “B” for Berlin stamped on them, while the Soviet-issued bills bore thumb-sized coupons stuck on with potato glue. No sooner had the Russians introduced their “wallpaper marks” (so named by the Berliners) than their representative on the Kommandatura, Major General Alexander Kotikov, stalked out of the Allied body, allegedly in response to the equally abrupt departure of his American counterpart, Colonel Frank Howley. Now even the pretense of cooperation was gone.
The battle of the bills turned into a full-scale battle for Berlin because the Soviets, citing additional “technical difficulties,” stopped most road traffic coming into Berlin from western Germany on June 18, the day the deutsche mark was launched in the western zones. On June 24, they halted barge traffic as well, and they curtailed deliveries of electrical power and coal from the eastern sectors to the West. In the following weeks they also established checkpoints along their sector in Berlin to monitor (but not prevent) the passage of goods and people. The Western powers, it seemed, were about to pay dearly for their failure to guarantee free access to Berlin in early summer 1945, when they still had troops in the Soviet zone.
While the currency imbroglio provided the immediate backdrop for these dramatic measures, it was not the central issue behind the blockade. The Soviets hoped to use their stranglehold over Berlin to force the Allies to rescind their plans for a West German government, which Moscow resolutely opposed. The Soviets also wanted to regain the right to extract reparations from the western zones. These were the immediate goals; down the line they hoped to show the Western powers that it made no sense for them to stay in Berlin at all, deep within the lair of the Bear.
Colonel Howley labeled Russia’s decision to impose a blockade “the most barbarous in history since Genghis Khan reduced conquered cities to pyramids of skulls.” His comment was quite hyperbolic, ignoring as it did some rather more barbarous decisions of recent vintage. Moreover, contrary to one of the more cherished myths of the Cold War, the Soviets did not even attempt, much less accomplish, a total land-blockade of West Berlin in 1948/49. Not only did they neglect to seal off the western sectors of the city from the Russian sector, but they also allowed West Berliners to obtain food and other goods from the surrounding countryside. With Westmarks Berliners could purchase hard-to-get items at special “Free Shops” in the Russian sector—precursors to the famous “Intershops” of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) era. Postal deliveries between western Germany and Berlin continued to function unimpeded, allowing Berliners to receive boxes of food from their friends and relatives in the West. Until September 1948 a steady stream of trucks carrying all manner of goods passed into the western sectors from the Russian zone. Industrial firms close to the Russian sector continued to get electrical power from the eastern grid, and some western factories tapped into the S-Bahn lines, which drew current from the East. If this was a blockade, it was one of the leakiest blockades in history.
The reason for all the leaks was simple: the Soviet sector in Berlin was no less dependent on trade with the West than the western sectors were on trade with the East. Manufactured goods from the West were important to the eastern economy, and the introduction of the Westmarks created an insatiable demand for hard currency in the Soviet zone. Politically the Russians might talk tough, but economically they could not afford to stand on their own. Their tactic of building a barricade and simultaneously undermining it was emblematic of the fundamental structural weaknesses in the Soviet empire that would remain in place until its collapse.
For all its holes, however, the Soviet blockade certainly presented added hardships to the 2.1 million people living in the western sectors of Berlin. After all, many of them were still digging out from the rubble, still contending with poor food and chronic shortages. There was also the fear that the blockade might prompt the Western Allies to pull up stakes and leave, allowing the Soviets to reoccupy the entire city. No wonder Berliners cheered when Ernst Reuter called upon the world to help Berlin “in the decisive phase of the fight for freedom.”
The Western Allies were in something of a quandary about how to respond to this appeal. Official Washington was caught off guard and full of trepidation. George Kennan, head of the State Department’s policy planning staff, recalled: “No one was sure how the Russian move could be countered, or whether it could be countered at all. The situation was dark and full of danger.” France wanted to see what action its partners might take before doing anything itself. Only Britain adopted an unequivocal stance immediately. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin announced that Britain would neither abandon Berlin nor back away from plans for a separate West German state.