Berlin Blockade, The

Berlin Blockade, The (1948-1949), ban on land traffic between West Berlin and West Germany imposed by the Soviet occupation authorities. In 1945 the German capital Berlin was divided into four sectors and the rest of the country into four zones, each separate zone occupied by Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. Berlin was completely surrounded by the Soviet zone, known as East Germany.

By 1948 the Soviet Union had ceased to cooperate with the other three occupying powers. On June 24 that year, in response to the introduction of a new currency, the Deutschmark, in West Berlin and the three zones of West Germany four days earlier, the Soviet authorities imposed a complete ban on road, rail, and canal traffic between the western zones and the capital. On June 26 the British and American air forces began flying supplies to the more than two million residents of West Berlin. Between that day and the lifting of the blockade on May 12, 1949, the Berlin Airlift (or “air bridge”), consisting of 277,728 flights over East Germany, carried 2,110,235.5 tonnes of supplies into the city. Meanwhile, only a few thousand people in West Berlin accepted the Soviet offer of ration cards valid in East Berlin, and the city government was split into separate east and west institutions in September 1948.