the beginning of the Berlin Blockade, a Soviet campaign months in the planning and meant to choke the Western enclaves of the city into submission. For at least the first few weeks, it seemed the Soviet gambit might work, with the rest of the world watching and waiting for Berlin to capitulate. Instead, Western air force commanders hastily organized an extraordinary airlift effort. Over the next eleven months, the three airfields in Berlin’s western sectors became the busiest air terminus in the world as American and British military transport planes flew over a quarter of a million relief
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