The Berlin Airlift: What Biden could learn from Harry Truman

Notwithstanding his protests regarding NATO expansion, Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine has been rooted in his fear of a democratic Ukraine evolving in a Western direction. Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea followed the ouster in Kyiv of his one-time protege, President Viktor Yanukovych. Mass protests had followed Yanukovych’s reneging on an association agreement with the European Union. Russian support for the breakaway insurgency in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region soon followed.

Putin had hoped that his full-scale invasion “would deal a decisive blow to Ukraine’s dreams of European integration and force the country permanently back into the Kremlin orbit,” in the words of Michael John Williams of the Atlantic Council — a crucial step in his effort to recreate a Greater Russia insulated from Western democracy.

In response, the Biden administration has performed a delicate balancing act. In fits and starts, America and its European allies have provided the material support necessary to sustain Kyiv and its army, while avoiding the tipping point of a shooting war between Russia and NATO.

That strategy recalls another occasion when the U.S. cobbled together a campaign to resist Kremlin aggression: the Berlin Airlift, which commenced seventy-five years ago this week.

In 1948, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin shared fears similar to Putin’s, and they centered on a divided postwar Germany. In March of that year, the European Recovery Act, which funded the Marshall Plan, was passed by Congress. That same month, Britain, France and the Benelux nations endorsed the creation of a West German government that would participate in the U.S.-led recovery program. 

On June 11, the Senate passed the Vandenberg Resolution, which authorized the U.S. to enter into a mutual security pact with the West Europeans, a declaration that began the path toward the 1949 NATO Treaty. Stalin now saw his regime’s chance to hold sway over a reconstituted Germany slipping away.

But in the end, it was a perceived act of financial warfare that spurred a Russian response. Inspired by proposals from Ludwig Erhardt, director of economic policy for the U.S. and U.K. occupation zones, on June 18, 1948, the Allied military governments authorized the replacement of the near-worthless prewar Reichsmark with a new hard currency, the “west mark” (later called the Deutsche mark). To avoid a provocation, West Berlin was not included in the rollout.

The Soviets responded by immediately introducing their own “Ostmark” in East Germany, and in all of Berlin, including the Allied zone. The Allies declared on June 23 they would circulate west marks in West Berlin. That step was too much for Stalin. On June 24, the Russians cut off West Berlin from all rail, road and water traffic, putting over two million residents under siege.

The importance of West Berlin was more symbolic than strategic. Located 110 miles inside East Germany, it lacked significant industrial assets, and was no longer a seat of government. In 1945, Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower chose to avoid sacrificing American lives in a push to the German capital, leaving it to the Russians while consolidating Allied positions in the Ruhr, Rhine Valley and Bavaria.

There were influential policy voices who believed withdrawal from an indefensible Berlin enclave might be the best available option. They included the Joint Chiefs and the CIA. But letting Stalin drive the Allies out of Berlin would be seen as a first step in expelling them from all of Germany. “We stay in Berlin,” declared President Harry Truman, “period.”

General Lucius Clay, military governor of the U.S. zone, began flying vital supplies into the city on June 26. Two days later, Truman authorized a full scale airlift, termed “Operation Vittles.” Some doubted whether the effort could be sustained, particularly when the winter months approached. Air Force brass opposed the heavy allocation of aircraft required. On several occasions, Clay actually proposed sending what would be a hopelessly outnumbered American armored column to force open up the single highway to the city. 

Truman chose to stay on the middle course, and the scale of the airlift grew exponentially. At its height, one plane landed every 45 seconds at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport.

Over 15 months, allied aircraft transported more than 2.3 million tons of supplies on 280,000 individual flights. While tales of candy dropped into the hands of Berlin children are stuff of the airlift’s legend, there was one commodity critical to maintaining the city’s survival: coal, which represented 65% of all tonnage shipped during the campaign.

By the spring of 1949, Stalin saw fit to back down, and the blockade was ended on May 5.

Truman’s decisiveness and moderation led to a clear victory in the first U.S.-Soviet standoff of the Cold War. But it also bequeathed an ironclad territorial commitment to his successors. West Berlin, an occupied territory that was never incorporated into West Germany, was placed irrevocably within the NATO defense perimeter. 

Today, the logistics-only support for Ukraine provided by the Biden administration and its allies has been premised on the reality that the country’s frontiers lie outside the NATO defense perimeter. But, like the airlift, that support has delivered results well in excess of what was predicted by naysayers.

And regardless of how the current fighting comes to an end, more explicit Western security guarantees for Kyiv appear inevitable. Meeting last week with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Biden stated that he was “open” to the notion of fast-tracking Ukrainian membership in the alliance.

Like Berlin in 1948, Ukraine and the Zelensky regime have assumed a heroic symbolism on the world stage. A day might well come when a U.S. president is compelled to say “We stay in Kyiv. Period.”

Paul C. Atkinson, a former executive at The Wall Street Journal, is a contributing editor of the New York Sun.