We in the west used to play dirty – and during the cold war, we were good at it.
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 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.
A press campaign, however, pushed for “a massive and sensational story of air power applied to humanitarian ends”.
In the UK, teenagers still learn for their GCSEs that Berlin was blockaded by Stalin and risked starvation. »