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out of the city. SPD politician Ernst Reuter, soon to be mayor of West Berlin,
addressed a crowd at the Gesundbrunnen football field, promising that Berlin would
“fight with everything we have”. In the end the greatest weapon proved to be American
and British support when on June 26, 1948, they began the Berlin airlift , flying supplies
into the city to keep it alive against the odds for almost a year (see p.124).
The 1950s: the birth of two Germanys
Within six months, the political division of Germany was formalized by the creation
of two rival states. First, the British, French and American zones of occupation were
amalgamated to form the Federal Republic of Germany (May 1949); the Soviets followed
suit by launching the German Democratic Republic on October 7. As Berlin lay deep
within GDR territory, its eastern sector naturally became the o cial GDR capital.
However, much to the disappointment of many Berliners, the Federal Republic chose
Bonn as their capital. West Berlin remained under the overall control of the Allied
military commandants, although it was eventually to assume the status of a Land (state)
of the Federal Republic.
Political tension remained a fact of life in a city that had become an arena for
superpower confrontations. he Soviets and GDR communists had not abandoned the
idea of driving the Allies out of Berlin, and mounted diverse operations against them,
just as the Allies ran spying and sabotage operations in East Berlin. In this cradle of
Cold War espionage , the recruitment of former Gestapo, SD or Abwehr operatives
seemed quite justifiable to all the agencies concerned. On one side were Britain's SIS
(based at the Olympic Stadium) and the American CIA, which fostered the Federal
Republic's own intelligence service, the Gehlen Bureau, run by a former Abwehr
colonel. Opposing them were the Soviet KGB and GRU (based at Karlshorst), and the
GDR's own foreign espionage service and internal security police. he public side of
this rumbling underground war was a number of incidents in 1952. An Air France
plane approaching West Berlin was fired upon by a Russian MiG; and East German
authorities blocked streets leading from West to East Berlin and expropriated property
owned by West Berliners on the outskirts of the eastern sector.
The economic miracle and the Berlin Wall
hroughout the 1950s important events took place in West Germany under Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer. Foremost among them was the so-called “ economic miracle ”, which
saw West Germany recover from the ravages of war astonishingly quickly and go on
to become Europe's largest economy. Although West Berlin's economic recovery was
by no means as dramatic as that of West Germany, the city did prosper, particularly
in comparison to East Berlin. Marshall Plan aid and West German capital were
transforming West Berlin into a capitalist showcase, whereas the GDR and East Berlin
seemed to languish, partly the result of the Soviets' ruthless asset-stripping - removing
factories, rolling stock and generators to replace losses in the war-ravaged USSR. he
death of Stalin on March 5, 1953 raised hopes that the situation in Berlin could be eased,
but these were soon dashed. In the eastern sector, the communists unwittingly fuelled
smouldering resentment by announcing a ten percent rise in work norms on June 16,
leading to a widespread uprising that was brutally suppressed (see p.120).
August 1961
June 1963
The tension between East and West culminates in
the building of the Berlin Wall.
US President John F. Kennedy visits West Berlin,
delivering his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.
 
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