An Inclusive Litany

7/22/98

The Boston Globe remembers one of the pivotal events of the Cold War, April 21, 1998:
But what else were we doing? The Berlin Airlift was a far more ambiguous event than we allowed ourselves to believe. If we were feeding people, we were also erecting the structure of a deadly Cold War competition. Stalin's complaint was that the British and Americans were resurrecting the German economy and nation less out of humanitarian motives than to serve as a bulwark against the Soviet Union.... The Berlin Airlift ended all chance for East-West compromise.