Britain, the Berlin blockade and the cold war

Abstract

The role played by Britain in the conduct of East-West relations during the formative period of the cold war, from 1945 to 1950, is only now beginning to receive the detailed scholarly attention which the subject merits by virtue of its importance and which the release of the official papers makes possible. In the vast and still rapidly growing literature on the origins of the cold war, attention is focussed on the principal protagonists, the United States and the Soviet Union, virtually to the exclusion of all other actors. To the extent that Britain does feature in accounts of the cold war, it is usually treated not so much as an actor in its own right but as an appendage to the United States. Thus it is generally recognized that the withdrawal by Britain of aid to Greece and Turkey in the early weeks of 1947 forced America to assume the lead in the containment of the Soviet Union, but the continuing British impact on Western policy is all too frequently underrated. The tendency to ninimize the part played by Britain in the containment of the Soviet tUnion becomes much more pronounced in respect of the period following America's assumption ot the leadership of the free world with the enunciation of the Truman Doctrine and the launching of the Marshall Plan. It is my view, elaborated elsewhere, that Britain under the leadership of Ernest Bevin played a much more significant and decisive role in organizing the Western world for the postwar struggle for power in Europe than is commtonly believed. The aim of the present article is to highlight the nature of that role by focussi ig on a single cold war crisis, the crisis precipitated by the Soviet blockade of the Western sectors of Berlin in 1948-9. In retrospect it is clear beyond any shadow of doubt that this was the most critical crisis of the cold war. The stakes coulI hardly have been greater. As Bevin perceived at the time, the future of Germany, the future of Westelrn Europe and the future of the precarious postwar international order all hung in the balance. The Berlin crisis was not only critical, it was also an unusually long crisis, lasting eleven months, and a highly complex one, requiring actions at the political, diplomatic, legal, military logistical and propaganda levels. As one of the four occupying powers of Germany, with its own sector in Berlin, Britain acL ively participated, alongside America and France, at all these different levels. That America was the leading actor in management of the crisis on the West:ern side is not in question.2 All that is argued here is that for good or bad Britain played a significant role, far more significant than is usually recognized, in forging the overall Western policy of firmness in dealing with the Soviet challenge and that this role can now be usefully re-examined with the help of the documentary record made available by both the British and the American governments.3 Four aspects of the Berlin crisis