The Berlin airlift is a good example of what we once did well – and have since forgotten. The cold war arguably began and ended in Berlin, bookended by the 1948-9 airlift and the fall of the wall in 1989. The former was the largest air relief operation in history. It supplied Berlin when Stalin tried to force out the western allies. In parallel, the west used radio (RIAS, or Radio in the American Sector, a precursor to the CIA-funded Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty), and strengthened soft power with cultural missions such as the British-staged Shakespeare in the rubble, and education through American-run libraries and courses.The biggest western tool, however, was disinformation. The allied airlift cost the equivalent of almost $3bn today, and needed a persuasive narrative to win public support. It’s one that almost everyone still believes today: Berlin was blockaded, its land routes sealed, and women and children were starving.Except, while there was an airlift of supplies, there was no Berlin blockade.In the National Archives at Kew, I found documents from 1948 showing, in the Foreign Office’s words, “the blockade of Berlin is NOT a siege” and that “movement in and out of Germans is possible all the time”, for example to obtain food. A press campaign, however, pushed for “a massive and sensational story of air power applied to humanitarian ends”. The US secretary of state, George C Marshall, argued via telegram to “utilize to the utmost present propaganda advantage our position”, “stressing [Soviet] responsibility for … threatened starvation of civilian population”. The story was so effective, it became a cold war myth that stuck. In the UK, teenagers still learn for their GCSEs that Berlin was blockaded by #Stalin and risked starvation.Was it right to mislead the public in 1948 and 1949? No. Did it win full support in the UK and US? Yes. The airlift even won Harry Truman an unexpected re-election that November....What would playing dirty look like? It would mean acting with the same zeal and guts that helped the west stand up to Stalin – and win....We held back Stalin with a remarkable resilience, and one damn great, if not entirely true, story.
