As the title says, what does this monument represent? This year marks the 60th Anniversary of the Berlin airlift. What piqued my interest in this was that I spoke to someone who had no idea this had happened. I thought to myself either we aren’t teaching history very well anymore or I spend too much time watching the History channel on Cable TV. Go figure.
A little history:
The airlift started on June 24th 1948 and the soviet blockade finished on May 11th 1949, with the airlift officially ending on 30th September 1949.
The amount of Supplies shifted: 2,326,406 tons of food and supplies on 278,228 total flights to Berlin to supply over two million people in the Western allied sectors of Berlin.
The Reasons?
Simply put, the Russians blocked all road, rail and canal routes into Berlin in an attempt to force the US, UK and France to relinquish west Berlin. This was in response to the Marshall plan; which was to revitalise the economy in the Allied sectors of Germany, while the Russians preferred that Germany remain as economically depressed as it was, however it was realised how important the German economy was to the rest of Europe which was suffering decline and so the Marshall plan replaced the Morgenthau plan. It really was the start of the cold war.
More information can be found here.
The monument? It is the Berlin Airlift Monument in Berlin-Tempelhof, displaying the names of the 39 British and 31 American pilots who lost their lives during the operation. Similar monuments can be found at the military airfield Wietzenbruch near the former RAF Celle and at Rhein-Main Air Base.
Just wanted to add a comment. The background above to the monument is of course correct. When I studied German we went to Berlin, among other places, and an anecdot told by a guide is that the nickname of the monument is “Die Hungerharke”. Translates into, well you have guessed, “The Hunger hand”. This points to the situation for the Berliners. Despite the massive air lift with everything from powdered egg to charcoal for heating, it was necessary to impose rationing of food. So the hand of the hungry can be one interpretation of the monument over one of the periods when uncertainty must have plagued the citizens in a time when the war after all didn’t seem to be over.