Corral." That day, American and Soviet tanks faced off at Checkpoint Charlie for 16 hours. The Soviets called off the blockade in 1949.ĭid you know? On October 22, 1961, a quarrel between an East German border guard and an American official on his way to the opera in East Berlin very nearly led to what one observer called "a nuclear-age equivalent of the Wild West Showdown at the O.K. This effort, known as the Berlin Airlift, lasted for more than a year and delivered more than 2.3 million tons of food, fuel and other goods to West Berlin. Instead of retreating, however, the United States and its allies supplied their sectors of the city from the air. In 1948, a Soviet blockade of West Berlin aimed to starve the western Allies out of the city. The Russians began maneuvering to drive the United States, Britain and France out of the city for good. The existence of West Berlin, a conspicuously capitalist city deep within communist East Germany, “stuck like a bone in the Soviet throat,” as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev put it. This four-way occupation of Berlin began in June 1945. The Soviets took the eastern half, while the other Allies took the western. They split the defeated nation into four “allied occupation zones”: The eastern part of the country went to the Soviet Union, while the western part went to the United States, Great Britain and (eventually) France.Įven though Berlin was located entirely within the Soviet part of the country (it sat about 100 miles from the border between the eastern and western occupation zones), the Yalta and Potsdam agreements split the city into similar sectors. As World War II came to an end in 1945, a pair of Allied peace conferences at Yalta and Potsdam determined the fate of Germany’s territories.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |