BERLIN BLOCKADE

The first major crisis of the cold war was over differences in Germany which led to the Berlin Crisis of 1948-49, when Stalin blockaded all routes into West Berlin.This action taken by Stalin was as a result of his fears over the city.One of Stalins fear was that the West wanted to speed up the recovery of Germany, which had been devestated by war and was facing serious shortages of food and fuel.However the Soviet Union disaprroved of this idea and wanted to secure itself from future attacks as it had been invaded by Germany twice in 1914 and 1941 during WW2.Therefore it wanted to keep Germany weak and refused to allow its own zone to trade with other zones.Another fear from Stalin included the fact that Berlin was in the heart of Soviet controlled east Germany.Although Western allies had access to their zones Stalin did not want allies inside Berlin as he realised that the affluent, capitalist way of life would be on a show to people in the East.Western countries on the otherhand were determined…