The Berlin Airlift and the Birth of the New World Order (Part 2)
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 11 May 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
May 12, 1949. After eleven months under Soviet blockade, the people of West Berlin flood into the streets to celebrate. The lights are back on. The autobahn is open. The siege is over.
But just months earlier, West Berlin seemed doomed.
Surrounded deep inside Soviet-controlled territory, more than two million Berliners are suddenly cut off from food, fuel, electricity, and supplies after Joseph Stalin seals the city’s borders. Many fear the Western Allies will abandon Berlin altogether. Instead, American and British leaders gamble on something unprecedented: supplying an entire city by air.
In this episode, how the Berlin Airlift became the largest sustained airlift in history—and the first major showdown of the Cold War. Along the way: the flamboyant American commander known as “Howlin’ Mad” Howley, Soviet attempts to break the city’s spirit, pilots landing in near-zero visibility every few minutes, and the high-stakes crisis that helped create NATO and reshape the postwar world.
Special thanks to Giles Milton, author of Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World.
You can find the rest of the books we used to research this episode at historythisweekpodcast.com.
Transcript
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| 0:30.7 | The History Channel, original podcast. History this week, May 12th, 1949. |
| 0:38.3 | I'm John Earl. |
| 0:42.3 | It's the party of a lifetime. |
| 0:48.3 | After 11 long months under blockade, the people of West Berlin are finally free to come and go as they please. |
| 0:56.0 | Train service is restored, the Autobahn reopens, and food, fuel, and supplies flood back into the city. |
| 1:04.0 | And Berliners are celebrating all of it. West Berlin mayor Ernst Reuter has declared today a public holiday. |
| 1:14.0 | Outside town hall, he addresses a cheering crowd of 300,000. The blockade is ended, he declares. |
| 1:23.0 | Berlin will always remain Berlin. |
| 1:32.5 | Joining Reuter on the grandstand is an American officer. |
| 1:36.3 | His jet black hair is combed high in a buffand. |
| 1:39.0 | His ears stick out like sails. |
| 1:42.8 | The Soviets call him the Beast of Berlin. |
| 1:46.0 | His troops call him Howling Mad Howley. His business card, if he has one, reads Brigadier General Frank Howley. |
| 1:51.0 | And if anybody asks, he might just be the man who saved the city. |
| 1:56.0 | Today, the Soviet Union cuts off West Berlin. |
| 2:01.6 | How did the Western Allies manage to supply a major city with the largest sustained |
| 2:06.4 | airlift in history? |
| 2:08.6 | And how did the Berlin crisis lead to the post-war order as we know it? It's June, 1945. |
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