The Berlin Blockade was an attempt in 1948 by the Soviet Union to limit the ability of the United States, Great Britain and France to travel to their sectors of Berlin, which lay within Russian-occupied East Germany.
In June 1948, the simmering tensions between the Soviet Union and its former allies in World War II, exploded into a full-blown crisis in the city of Berlin. Alarmed by the new U.S. policy of giving economic aid to Germany and other struggling European nations, as well as efforts by the Western Allies to introduce a single currency to the zones they occupied in Germany and Berlin, the Soviets blocked all rail, road and canal access to the western zones of Berlin. Suddenly, some 2.5 million civilians had no access to food, medicine, fuel, electricity and other basic goods.
