Berlin Airlift [Paperback]

Ann Tusa (Author), John Tusa (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 22, 1998

In summer 1948, the Russians occupied all of Eastern Europe. Behind Russian lines, the Allied-controlled part of the great city of Berlin stood as the lone Western outpost in a sea of Communist occupation. Then the Soviets closed all Allied traffic through their zone, sealing off the food and supply routes on which the city relied. A vast air armada streamed from Western airfields to supply the hard-pressed Berliners with food and necessities. For over a year the Americans led a gigantic—and successful—effort to keep an entire city alive in the face of Soviet hostility. This is a story of individual heroism and high brinkmanship politics, of daily life under appalling circumstances and great achievements against all odds.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Berlin airlift, the climax of the first major Cold War crisis, began in 1948 when the Soviets, attempting to force the Allies out of Berlin, imposed a blockade on communications between the American, British and French occupation zones and the conquered city. The Americans and British countered by flying in sufficient food, coal, medicine and raw material to enable the Berliners to survive the 11-month siege. Aside from the details of the operation itself ("a saga of inadequate equipment and sheer slapdashery"), the British authors provide a clear explanation of how the Four Powers came to occupy the city and why it was vital to each of them, describing the initial collective shock experienced by the Western allies when, soon after the 1945 fall of Berlin, the they received their first experience of Soviet intimidation. The book is also a richly detailed tribute to the American and British aircrews and mechanics who kept the "air bridge" in operation against heavy odds, and to the fortitude of the Berliners, who remained cheerfully defiant of the Soviets throughout the ordeal. Photos. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This solid study details the drama of the Berlin blockade and airlift, a major Cold War crisis. The Tusas reexamine the breakdown in diplomacy caused by the inability of Washington and Moscow to agree on Germany's future in 1948. The book is also a new look at the way the West kept Berlin's 2 million residents supplied. Heroes include pilots, leaders like General Lucius D. Clay, and the Berliners, who kept alive a hope of freedom on 1500 calories a day. Berlin Airlift shows how the West held the line without war. Yet, a long-term solution to the issue of divided Germany still eludes us, as it did then. This important work belongs in any collection with holdings in contemporary history and politics.
- Ray Walser, U.S. Military Acad., West Point, N.Y.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 474 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (July 22, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885119585
• ISBN-13: 978-1885119582
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #508,159 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Berlin Airlift from a British Perspective, October 2, 2005

By 

Roger D. Launius "Historian" (Washington, D.C., United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Berlin Airlift (Paperback)

Anniversaries typically spark the reconsideration of historic events in all manner of popular ways, from reenactments to ceremonies to historical publications. The fortieth anniversary of the Berlin Airlift in 1988 was no exception. Ann and John Tusa's "The Berlin Airlift" was one of many publications about the episode originally appearing as a result of that anniversary. It asserts that the Berlin Blockade represented a titanic struggle between two blocks of nations with divergent ideologies that nearly plunged the world into another major war. More important, however, it concentrates on the intensely human experience of the crisis, describing the problems and successes of the personalities involved. Throughout, in words and pictures, it creates vivid images of the crisis for a largely popular audience.

The blockade of Berlin marked the first direct confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union in the post-World War II era. The United States, France, and the United Kingdom responded to the Soviet siege with an ingenious means of maintaining the allied presence in a city cut-off from the rest of Western Europe without provoking combat. American and British fliers operated a complex shuttle service between western Germany and Berlin for some fifteen months between June 1948 and September 1949, hauling more than 2.3 million tons of supplies to the better than two million inhabitants of Berlin. This sustenance allowed the western allies to maintain their presence and influence in the city, if only by their fingernails, while diplomats worked on a settlement.

Ann and John Tusas' book presents the events of the Berlin blockade and airlift as an epic struggle between nations. Written from a decidedly British viewpoint--John Tusa is a journalist with the BBC-"The Berlin Airlift" contains a rousing story of individual heroism and high drama. It reads like a classic western, with good guys (the western allies) and bad guys (the Soviets and communist Germans), and anecdotes about how these two forces clashed. Like any good western, the ending was predictable as the Americans and their allies ultimately defeated the Soviets.

"The Berlin Airlift" will be of more interest to non-specialist readers than to students of Berlin Airlift historiography, although those knowledgeable about many aspects of the crisis will still benefit from the Tusas' descriptions of the British contributions to the airlift. The authors thoroughly researched British records and analyzed that aspect of the story, a particular area that has been slighted in previous studies of the crisis, and they present their findings better and with more verve than any earlier work. The position of the British government in the crisis; the development, organization, and, operation of the British task force flying airlift missions; and the British role in negotiating the lifting of the blockade are well documented in "The Berlin Airlift."

There are, however, several flaws which make "The Berlin Airlift" less useful than I would have liked. First, the authors take more than 150 out of a total of 379 pages of text to get to the actual blockade of Berlin. While this prefatory material deals with the Berlin question and general relations between the two power blocks that confronted each other at Berlin in 1948-1949, it seems excessive when measured against the size of the whole book. I would have anticipated a more expeditious handling of earlier foreign relations and a greater emphasis on the airlift itself. Second, no clear picture of the American side of the airlift can be gained from reading the Tusas' book. The organization of the 1st Berlin Airlift Task Force, the agent managing the American effort, receives short shrift; as does the unique operational approach developed to order airlift flow. Almost nothing about Major General William H. Tunner, the American commander who more than anyone understood the possibilities and especially the limitations of airlift and organized the operation for the success it achieved during the winter of 1948-1949, is included in "The Berlin Airlift." Brigadier General Joseph Smith, who initially commanded the Airlift Task Force and oversaw the early success of the operation, is not even mentioned. The Tusas offer no discussion of any sophistication about the pattern of operations, the nature of logistics and maintenance, command and control, force structure, and C-54 acquisition from outside of Europe to augment the airlift fleet. From an operational perspective, this books discussion of the American airlift effort is at best superficial. Indeed, the book should have been retitled to indicate that it dealt largely with the British aspects of the airlift.

Finally, the scholarly apparatus of this book, while present, proves next to useless. A mere five pages of bibliography, omitting some of the most interesting and useful works on the subject, were used as the basic references for the book. Even worse, the chapter notes are especially confusing because they have no page numbers for any published sources. Since the majority of the references are for published works this shortcoming is particularly troublesome. No one will be able to reconstruct the thought processes of the authors as they review the text, and I must ask, was that the intent in omitting them? To the credit of the Tusas, however, they have mined the Public Records Office in the United Kingdom and have, as their chapter notes demonstrate, offered several new insights relative to British participation in the airlift based upon these records.

"The Berlin Airlift" certainly has its strengths and weaknesses. It will not replace W. Phillips Davison's "The Berlin Blockade: A Study in Cold War Politics" (1958) and especially Avi Shlaim's "The United States and the Berlin Blockade, 1948-1949" (1983), both outstanding analyses of this foreign policy crisis. But this work does package the basic story in a readable format that will be useful to a general audience. Especially interesting, "The Berlin Airlift" demonstrates how military airlift can assist foreign policy execution. The unique capabilities of air transport in a non-combat environment were a fundamentally important realization of the experience. Since then military airlift, proven a viable option in the Berlin crisis, has been used with increasing frequency.