At Checkpoint Charlie, US and Soviet Tanks Faced Each Other at Point-Blank Range
At Checkpoint Charlie, US and Soviet tanks faced each other at point-blank range. AP Ppoto/Kreusch 92 AIR FORCE Magazine / September 2011 Showdown in BerlinBy John T. Correll any place was ground zero for the The First Crisis from the 1948 confrontation—Walter Cold War, it was Berlin. The first Berlin crisis was in 1948, Ulbricht, the Communist Party boss in Awash in intrigue, the former when the Soviets and East Germans East Germany. capital of the Third Reich lay 110 attempted to cut the city off from the Ulbricht, handpicked for the job by miles inside the Iron Curtain but outside world. However, three air the Soviet Premier, Joseph Stalin, was was not part of East Germany. corridors into Berlin, each 20 miles charmless, intense, and dogmatic, but IEach of the four victorious powers in wide, remained open. The Americans a good administrator and a reliable en- Europe in World War II—the United and British responded with the Berlin forcer of Soviet hegemony. Stalin had States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Airlift, which sustained West Berlin visions of a unified Germany as part Union—held control of a sector of the with food, fuel, and other supplies from of the Soviet sphere of influence, but city, which would be preserved as the June 1948 to September 1949. Ulbricht had so antagonized the popu- future capital of a reunified Germany. Some senior officials in the US De- lace the Communists had no chance of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev partment of State had favored abandon- winning free elections. called it “the most dangerous place in the ing Berlin.
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