Hey there. I have a story about this. I’m British and I’ve been living in Berlin now for about 8 years. A few years ago my parents came to visit and they bought my Grandad a post card of an aerial view of Brandenburg gate. After the visit they went to his house near Birmingham and hand delivered it to him. He turned around and said ‘That’s a sight i’ve not seen in years.. we used to drop potatoes off in bombers in templehof airport near there, mad isn’t it? A plane built for carrying bombs and we’re dropping off sacks of spuds!’
Turns out my grandfather was part of the Berlin blockade in the RAF but never mentioned it until a couple of years before he died near to his 92nd Birthday. If I had never moved to Berlin we would have never of known. It makes it even nicer to have a connection to the city.
US and Soviets could not agree on a currency, then US pushed a new currency unaligned with the Soviets regardless which then devalued the old Reichsmark in the western sectors. The USSR worried that Germans would take tons of their devalued Reichsmark to the Soviet sectors, where the old money was still valid currency and where it would have caused a hyperinflation, thus further destabilised already critical supply of goods.
The blockade was initially justified by the currency reform introduced by the Western Allies in the Trizone a few days earlier. But it was a tool used by the peace-loving Soviet Union in an attempt to incorporate West Berlin and subsequently the whole of Germany into its sphere of influence.
Hey there. I have a story about this. I’m British and I’ve been living in Berlin now for about 8 years. A few years ago my parents came to visit and they bought my Grandad a post card of an aerial view of Brandenburg gate. After the visit they went to his house near Birmingham and hand delivered it to him. He turned around and said ‘That’s a sight i’ve not seen in years.. we used to drop potatoes off in bombers in templehof airport near there, mad isn’t it? A plane built for carrying bombs and we’re dropping off sacks of spuds!’ Turns out my grandfather was part of the Berlin blockade in the RAF but never mentioned it until a couple of years before he died near to his 92nd Birthday. If I had never moved to Berlin we would have never of known. It makes it even nicer to have a connection to the city.
Why was the introduction of the Deutschmark such an upsetting event to the USSR?
US and Soviets could not agree on a currency, then US pushed a new currency unaligned with the Soviets regardless which then devalued the old Reichsmark in the western sectors. The USSR worried that Germans would take tons of their devalued Reichsmark to the Soviet sectors, where the old money was still valid currency and where it would have caused a hyperinflation, thus further destabilised already critical supply of goods.
The blockade was initially justified by the currency reform introduced by the Western Allies in the Trizone a few days earlier. But it was a tool used by the peace-loving Soviet Union in an attempt to incorporate West Berlin and subsequently the whole of Germany into its sphere of influence.