The Berlin Blockade turned division into confrontation and led to NATO, two German states and later the Warsaw Pact.
In June 1948, the Western powers introduced a new currency, the Deutschmark, in their zones of Germany. Stalin feared a strong western German state. He cut road, rail and canal links to West Berlin, which lay deep inside the Soviet zone.
The Western powers supplied West Berlin by air for nearly a year. Stalin lifted the blockade in May 1949. The airlift was a propaganda victory for the West, and it showed that neither side wanted to start a shooting war.
In April 1949, the USA, Canada and ten Western European states signed the North Atlantic Treaty. Its Article 5 stated that an armed attack on one member would be treated as an attack on all. This was the USA's first peacetime military alliance.
Germany split into two states in 1949: the Federal Republic in the west in May and the German Democratic Republic in the east in October. The USSR tested its first atomic bomb in August 1949. When West Germany joined NATO in 1955, the USSR formed the Warsaw Pact. Europe was now divided into two armed blocs.
- Berlin Blockade
- June 1948 to May 1949.
- NATO
- Signed 4 April 1949; Article 5 collective defence.
- Two Germanys
- FRG May 1949; GDR October 1949.
- Warsaw Pact
- May 1955, after West Germany joined NATO.
Worked example: Linking Berlin to the alliances
Explain how the Berlin Blockade shaped the Cold War.
- Cause: Western currency reform signalled a separate western German state.
- Event: Stalin blockaded West Berlin; the West answered with an airlift.
- Consequence: Western states formalised their defence through NATO in April 1949.
- Wider result: two German states and, by 1955, two military alliances.
Watch out for this
The Warsaw Pact was formed at the same time as NATO.
NATO was signed in 1949. The Warsaw Pact came in 1955, after West Germany joined NATO.
Check your understanding
What did Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty establish?
- An armed attack on one member would be treated as an attack on all.
- Members must adopt the Deutschmark.
- Members would share all nuclear weapons equally.