The Berlin Airlift

Representatives of the Allied nations met in Yalta near the end of the war. They discussed what would be done to punish Germany for starting the war. The Allies came to an agreement when Germany surrendered in the spring of 1945. They called their plan the Potsdam Agreement. They immediately put their plan into action.

The first thing the Allies did was to divide the country of Germany into four sections. Each of the sections was placed under the supervision of a different Allied country. The United States, the Soviet Union, France, and Great Britain each controlled a section.

The capital of Germany is Berlin. It was also divided into four sections. The city itself was inside the section controlled by the Soviet Union. The Soviet section was in the eastern part of Germany. It wasn't too long before the Soviet Union started to dispute the rules that had been agreed to at Potsdam. Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union had already declared that an iron curtain existed between his country and the Allies to the west.