Download or read book Berlin on the Brink written by Daniel F. Harrington and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2012-06-24 with total page 635 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin blockade brought former allies to the brink of war. Britain, France, the United States and the Soviet Union defeated and began their occupation of Germany in 1945, and within a few years, the Soviets and their Western partners were jockeying for control of their former foe. Attempting to thwart the Allied powers' plans to create a unified West German government, the Soviets blocked rail and road access to the western sectors of Berlin in June 1948. With no other means of delivering food and supplies to the German people under their protection, the Allies organized the Berlin airlift. In Berlin on the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, and the Cold War, Daniel F. Harrington examines the "Berlin question" from its origin in wartime plans for the occupation of Germany through the Paris Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in 1949. Harrington draws on previously untapped archival sources to challenge standard accounts of the postwar division of Germany, the origins of the blockade, the original purpose of the airlift, and the leadership of President Harry S. Truman. While thoroughly examining four-power diplomacy, Harrington demonstrates how the ingenuity and hard work of the people at the bottom—pilots, mechanics, and Berliners—were more vital to the airlift's success than decisions from the top. Harrington also explores the effects of the crisis on the 1948 presidential election and on debates about the custody and use of atomic weapons. Berlin on the Brink is a fresh, comprehensive analysis that reshapes our understanding of a critical event of cold war history.
Download or read book The Berlin Airlift written by Barry Turner and published by Icon Books. This book was released on 2017-10-05 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed historian Barry Turner presents a new history of the Cold War's defining episode. Berlin, 1948 – a divided city in a divided country in a divided Europe. The ruined German capital lay 120 miles inside Soviet-controlled eastern Germany. Stalin wanted the Allies out; the Allies were determined to stay, but had only three narrow air corridors linking the city to the West. Stalin was confident he could crush Berlin's resolve by cutting off food and fuel. In the USA, despite some voices still urging 'America first', it was believed that a rebuilt Germany was the best insurance against the spread of communism across Europe. And so over eleven months from June 1948 to May 1949, British and American aircraft carried out the most ambitious airborne relief operation ever mounted, flying over 2 million tons of supplies on almost 300,000 flights to save a beleaguered Berlin. With new material from American, British and German archives and original interviews with veterans, Turner paints a fresh, vivid picture the airlift, whose repercussions – the role of the USA as global leader, German ascendancy, Russian threat – we are still living with today.
Download or read book To Save a City written by Roger G. Miller and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2008-04-21 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following World War II, the Soviet Union drew an Iron Curtain across Europe, crowning its efforts with a blockade of West Berlin in a desperate effort to prevent the creation of an independent, democratic West Germany. The United States and Great Britain, aided by France, responded with a daring air logistical operation that in fifteen months delivered almost three million tons of coal, food, and other necessities to the people of Berlin. Now, drawing on rare U.S. Air Force files, recently declassified documents from the National Archives, records released since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the memories of airlift veterans themselves, Roger G. Miller provides an original study of the Berlin Airlift. The Berlin Airlift was an enterprise of epic proportions that demonstrated the power of air logistics as a political instrument. What began as a hastily organized operation by a small number of warweary cargo airplanes evolved into an intricate bridge of aircraft that flowed in and out of Berlin through narrow air corridors. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, a stream of airplanes delivered everything from food and medicine to coal and candy in defiance of breakdowns, inclement weather, and Soviet hostility. And beyond the airlift itself, a complex system of transportation, maintenance, and supply stretching around the world sustained operations. Historians, veterans, and general readers will welcome this history of the first Western victory of the Cold War. Maps, diagrams, and more than forty photographs illustrate the mechanical inner workings and the human faces that made that triumph possible.
Download or read book The Berlin Airlift written by Michael Burgan and published by Capstone. This book was released on 2008 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the hardships West Berlin residents faced during a period in which Western Allies (United States, United Kingdom, France) attempted to deliver aid to a city devastated by war and political turmoil. The success of the airlift kept Berlin free from total Soviet occupation until the eventual reunification of Germany. Features include journal entries, letters, and personal interviews.
Download or read book The Berlin Airlift and the Making of the Cold War written by John M Schuessler and published by . This book was released on 2022-06-15 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For eleven months that spanned 1948 and 1949, cargo aircraft from the air forces of the western Allies carried out one of the most extraordinary feats of peacetime military power projection in history: ferrying supplies to the city of Berlin, then under Soviet blockade. By spring 1949, the Berlin Airlift, initially considered unlikely to succeed, had convinced the Soviets that their efforts to force a solution to Berlin's future were badly miscalculated. The city became a symbol of the escalating division of Europe into competing blocs in a new Cold War order. This largely improvised military action had exerted unforeseen influence on the post-World War II world. The Berlin Airlift and the Making of the Cold War brings together historians and political scientists to explore the origins, course, and impacts of the Berlin Airlift after seventy years. Here, scholars and authorities on the Airlift, its logistics, the great power competition involved, and the position of Berlin within a divided and occupied Central Europe discuss not only the Airlift itself but also the critical role the operation played in shaping the physical and mental landscape of Cold War confrontation in Europe. The Berlin Airlift was just one of a series of decisions and events that shaped the Cold War across a global stage. It was a pivotal moment in the story of how Germany and its people experienced recovery and rebuilding after 1945. This book offers fresh insights into the legacies and lessons of the Airlift in theoretical and historical context.
Download or read book Daring Young Men written by Richard Reeves and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-04-03 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early hours of June 26, 1948, phones began ringing across America, waking up the airmen of World War II—pilots, navigators, and mechanics—who were finally beginning normal lives with new houses, new jobs, new wives, and new babies. Some were given just forty-eight hours to report to local military bases. The president, Harry S. Truman, was recalling them to active duty to try to save the desperate people of the western sectors of Berlin, the enemy capital many of them had bombed to rubble only three years before. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin had ordered a blockade of the city, isolating the people of West Berlin, using hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers to close off all land and water access to the city. He was gambling that he could drive out the small detachments of American, British, and French occupation troops, because their only option was to stay and watch Berliners starve—or retaliate by starting World War III. The situation was impossible, Truman was told by his national security advisers, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His answer: "We stay in Berlin. Period." That was when the phones started ringing and local police began banging on doors to deliver telegrams to the vets. Drawing on service records and hundreds of interviews in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, Reeves tells the stories of these civilian airmen, the successors to Stephen Ambrose’s "Citizen Soldiers," ordinary Americans again called to extraordinary tasks. They did the impossible, living in barns and muddy tents, flying over Soviet-occupied territory day and night, trying to stay awake, making it up as they went along and ignoring Russian fighters and occasional anti-aircraft fire trying to drive them to hostile ground. The Berlin Airlift changed the world. It ended when Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade, but only after the bravery and sense of duty of those young heroes had bought the Allies enough time to create a new West Germany and sign the mutual defense agreement that created NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And then they went home again. Some of them forgot where they had parked their cars after they got the call.
Download or read book Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot written by Margot Theis Raven and published by Sleeping Bear Press. This book was released on 2013-08-15 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A True Story of the Berlin Airlift and the Candy that Dropped from the Sky. Life was grim in 1948 West Berlin, Germany. Josef Stalin blockaded all ground routes coming in and out of Berlin to cut off West Berliners from all food and essential supplies. Without outside help, over 2.2 million people would die. Thus began the Berlin Airlift, a humanitarian rescue mission that utilized British and American airplanes and pilots to fly in needed supplies. As one of the American pilots participating in the Airlift mission, Lt. Gail S. Halvorsen helped to provide not only nourishment to the children but also gave them a reason to hope for a better world. From one thoughtful, generous act came a lifelong relationship between Lt. Gail and the children of Berlin. This is the true story of a seven-year-old girl named Mercedes who lived in West Berlin during the Airlift and of the American who came to be known as the Chocolate Pilot. Artist Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen's evocative paintings illuminate Margot Theis Raven's powerful story of hope, friendship and remembrance. About the Author: Margot Theis Raven has been a professional writer working in the fields of radio, television, magazines, newspapers, and children's books for thirty years. She has won five national awards, including an IRA Teacher's Choice award. Ms. Raven earned her degree in English from Rosemont College and attended Villanova University for theater study, and Kent State University for German language. Ms. Raven splits her time living in Concord, MA, Charleston, SC and West Chesterfield, NH. About the Illustrator: Born in the Netherlands, Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Holland. He immigrated to the United States in 1976, and years later he became a children's book illustrator. Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot is Nick's ninth children's book with Sleeping Bear Press.
Download or read book Airlift to America written by Tom Shachtman and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the long-hidden saga of how a handful of Americans and East Africans fought the British colonial government, the U.S. State Department, and segregation to transport to, or support at, U.S. and Canadian universities, between 1959 and 1963, nearly 800 young East African men and women who would go on to change their world and ours. The students supported included Barack Obama Sr., future father of a U.S. president, Wangari Maathai, future Nobel Peace Prize laureate, as well as the nation-builders of post-colonial East Africa -- cabinet ministers, ambassadors, university chancellors, clinic and school founders. The airlift was conceived by the unusual partnership of the charismatic, later-assassinated Kenyan Tom Mboya and William X. Scheinman, a young American entrepreneur, with supporting roles played by Jackie Robinson, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The airlift even had an impact on the 1960 presidential race, as Vice-President Richard Nixon tried to muscle the State Department into funding the project to prevent Senator Jack Kennedy from using his family foundation to do so and reaping the political benefit. The book is based on the files of the airlift's sponsor, the African American Students Foundation, untouched for almost fifty years.
Download or read book The Berlin Airlift written by Ann Tusa and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.
Download or read book Berlin Airlift written by John Provan and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many books, pamphlets & reports have been written about the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49. These have ranged from the almost encyclopaedic British Air Ministry publication to short leaflet summaries. They have been concerned primarily with the truly impressive statistics, & some have concentrated almost exclusively on the aircraft. But none has seemed to approach this historical event from the viewpoint of its historical perspective. John Provan & Ron Davies have now cooperated in this Paladwr Press book to try to compensate for this past shortcoming. The first part of the narrative explores the political & economic circumstances that led to the crisis of May 1948, & it also takes a look at the situation as it probably appeared to the Soviet Union. To have a capitalist enclave within its jealously (& military)-guarded sphere of influence must have seemed something of an imposition in Muscovite eyes. On the other hand, many readers may be surprised to realize that Berlin is only 30 miles from Poland. And--again to remember perspectives of time, as well as of place & motivation--how many recall that the Airlift was launched only three years after the end of the Second World War? In addition to picture-descriptions of all the transport aircraft, U.S. & British, military & civilian, involved in the Airlift, this book has delved into the problems of logistics, on the ground as well as in the air & has not forgotten the human aspects, for example, the famous exploits of the Candy Bomber & the Camel Caravan. Here is a book that, in addition to being a useful reference to one of the great events of transport aviation history, should delight the eye; & even, here & there, amuse. For without a sense of humor, the Berlin Airlift would have been a grim experience for all the participants.
Download or read book The Candy Bombers written by Andrei Cherny and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-04-17 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of the great narrative storytellers, Andrei Cherny recounts the exhilarating saga of the unlikely men who made the Berlin Airlift one of the great military and humanitarian successes of American history. “What an exciting, inspiring, and wonderfully-written book this is....Each page has lessons for today, and it is also a thrilling narrative to read.”—Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Steve Jobs The Candy Bombers is a remarkable story with profound implications for our own time. Cherny tells the tale of the ill-assorted group of castoffs and secondstringers who not only saved millions of desperate people from a dire threat, but also won the hearts of America’s defeated enemies, inspired people around the world to believe in America’s fundamental goodness, avoided World War III, and won the greatest battle of the Cold War without firing a shot. With newly unclassified documents, unpublished letters and diaries, and fresh primary interviews, The Candy Bombers takes readers along as American pilots, with only a few small rickety planes, manage to feed and supply West Berlin completely by air for nearly a year; as Harry Truman exploits the very real threat of war to win an upset reelection campaign; as America’s first secretary of defense descends into madness in the midst of a dangerous military crisis; and as a lovesick American pilot shows that acts of basic human kindness can send powerful ripples through the course of history.
Download or read book The Berlin Airlift written by John Grehan and published by Air World. This book was released on 2019-05 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fate of the free world hung in the balance. Stalin's Soviet Union sought to drive the Western democracies from Germany to continue the communist advance across Europe. The first step in Stalin's scheme was to bring Berlin under Soviet control. Berlin was situated deep inside the Soviet-occupied region of the country, but the German capital had been divided into two halves, one of which was occupied by the Soviet Union, the other, in separate sectors, by Britain, France and the USA. Stalin decided to make the Allied hold on West Berlin untenable by shutting down all the overland routes used to keep the city supplied. The choice faced by the Allies was a stark one - let Berlin fall, or risk war with the Soviets by breaking the Soviet stranglehold. In a remarkably visionary move, the Allies decided that they could keep Berlin supplied by flying over the Soviet blockade, thus avoiding armed conflict with the USSR. On 26 June 1948, the Berlin Airlift began. Throughout the following thirteen months, more than 266,600 flights were undertaken by the men and aircraft from the US, France, Britain and across the Commonwealth, which delivered in excess of 2,223,000 tons of food, fuel and supplies in the greatest airlift in history. The air-bridge eventually became so effective that more supplies were delivered to Berlin than had previously been shipped overland and Stalin saw that his bid to seize control of the German capital could never succeed. At one minute after midnight on 12 May 1949, the Soviet blockade was lifted, and the Soviet advance into Western Europe was brought to a shuddering halt.
Download or read book The Berlin Airlift written by Robert Jackson and published by HP Trade. This book was released on 1988 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes how Berlin was supplied by the West when all road and rail links between the city and the West were severed by the Soviets in 1945.
Download or read book German Air Force Airlift Operations written by Generalmajor a. D. Fritz Morzik and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2017-06-28 with total page 724 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Germany’s imaginative employment of transport aircraft in World War II produced as many innovations as Germany’s use of tanks. Indeed, like the tank, the transport aircraft was closely associated with the Blitzkrieg concept. This relationship was advantageous at the outset of the war, but it became dangerous as the war dragged on and German armies outran their surface supply lines in North Africa and Russia. Then ground commanders began to think of air transport as the means of supply. The history of this trend is one of the main themes of this study, which was first published in its English translation in 1961. Some of the questions embodied in this theme—How much air transport is enough? Under what conditions is an air-supply operation feasible? What are the prerequisites for a successful airlift to encircled ground forces? What are the advantages and limitations of the glider?—are as vital and controversial today as they were during World War II. Generalmajor a. D. Fritz Morzik, who began his military career as a non-commissioned officer in the German Air Service in World War I and ended it as Armed Forces Chief of Air Transport in World War II, is especially well-qualified to write the present study. His long career, spanning two world wars, and his experience with both civilian and military transport aircraft testify to the breadth of his practical knowledge.
Download or read book Berlin In The Balance written by Thomas Parrish and published by Da Capo Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 1998 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Telling the full, gripping story of the opening battle of the Cold War, Parrish employs sources from all sides. Through newly available documents, readers learn how Soviet leaders imposed the blockade and then backed down. Photos. Maps.
Download or read book Berlin Candy Bomber Special Edition written by Gail Halvorsen and published by Cedar Fort Publishing & Media. This book was released on 2023-07-10 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin Candy Bomber is the story of how two sticks of gum and one man's kindness to the children of a vanquished enemy grew into an epic of goodwill‚-spanning the globe and touching the hearts of millions in both Germany and America. In June 1948, Russia cut off the flow of food and supplies to Berlin. The Americans, joined by the English and French, began a massive airlift to bring sustenance to the city and thwart the Russian siege. Gail Halvorsen was one of hundreds of U.S. pilots involved in the airlift. While in Berlin, he met a group of children standing by the airport watching the planes. He was impressed to share two sticks of gum with them, and he promised to drop candy the next time he flew to the area. The next day he wiggled the wings of his plane to identify himself and then dropped several small bundles of candy, using parachutes crafted from handkerchiefs. Local newspapers picked up the story. Suddenly, letters addressed to ""Uncle Wiggly Wings"" began arriving as the children requested candy drops in other areas of the city. Enthusiasm spread to America, and candy contributions came from all across the country. The blockade and airlift ended in 1949, but the story of the Candy Bomber lives on-a symbol of human charity, and the candy drops have continued into a new century.
Download or read book Candy Bomber written by Michael O. Tunnell and published by Charlesbridge Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "World War II was over, and Berlin was in ruins. US Air Force Lieutenant Gail Halvorsen knew the children of the city were suffering. They were hungry and afraid. The young pilot wanted to help, but what could one man in one plane do?"--Dust jacket flap.
