The Berlin Crises
Through a succession of crises, writes Philip Windsor, including those of the Airlift and the Wall, the West has for seventeen years maintained an apparently untenable position in Berlin.
Berlin has been at the centre of international tensions ever since 1945. For seventeen years this problem has been one of the two or three that could bring about another world war.
On two occasions, in 1948 and 1958, the Western powers have had to face the risk of war in order to remain in Berlin, and there have been only four years during which Berlin was not the cause of an immediate crisis.
Even in this period, between 1954 and 1958, nobody believed that the volcano was extinct and, after the Hungarian revolt, the Berliners themselves knew that it would again erupt at any moment.
But the meaning of this perennial crisis has changed from year to year. The crisis of the airlift was different from that of Khrushchev’s ultimatum of 1958, and Khrushchev’s crisis, in turn, was not the same as Ulbricht’s in 1961. Berlin in its time has played many parts, and a continuous history could only be misleading. The appearance of continuity arises not from the motives of Russian policy in Berlin, but from the reactions of the Western powers.
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