What if there had been no Berlin Airlift in 1948?
In 1948, Josef Stalin decided he'd had enough of the power sharing arrangement in Berlin, and that he'd use his control of surrounding Eastern Germany to assert direct Soviet control over the former German capitol. This would make it much more difficult for the allies to influence and potentially destabilize East Germany from Berlin itself, and would give the Soviet Union a much better base for potential further advances into Western Europe. So, all Western aid and support into Western Berlin was shut down, the highways and railways closed, using Soviet military might, and electric power and gas were shut off. Two million West Berliners were at risk for starvation, in the dark.
US President Harry Truman -- who is still worshipped as a God in Germany for this, actually -- decided he'd use Western air power to supply the Berliners, and demonstrate the air power of the Western allies, at the same time. He mounted an unprecedented show of air power, supplying comfortably all the inhabitants of West Berlin exclusively from the air, with Western air power. And, in so doing, he saved the inhabitants of Berlin from submission to Stalin and the USSR.
What if old Harry Truman hadn't done this?
Clearly, West Berlin would have fallen, and all Berlin would have been securely in the Soviet block. This would have made all of East Germany much more secure from Western influence -- no need for a Berlin Wall, at all. And, as such, the USSR would have been on a much firmer footing in Western Europe, as a whole. Remember, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall that led to the collapse of the USSR. No need for a Berlin Wall, how much longer does the USSR last, and how much farther does the USSR get, to total world domination?
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