The Soviet authorities continued to operate competing institutions in West Berlin for the remainder of the blockade. The Eastern sector of Berlin, under Soviet administration, had its own government, its own press, and its own version of events. West Berliners who crossed into the Eastern sector could read newspapers describing the airlift as an American provocation and the blockade as a Soviet defense of legitimate interests. This alternative narrative coexisted with the daily experience of airlift aircraft landing every minute or two at Tempelhof.
The divide that began with the blockade deepened after it ended. The formal establishment of the German Democratic Republic in October 1949 institutionalized the division. The subsequent construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 made it physical. The city that Gail Halvorsen had flown over in 1948, dropping candy on children who watched from the airport fence, was eventually divided by concrete and wire for twenty-eight years.
The candy drops did not cause any of this. They were a small act of human connection within a large historical process that neither Halvorsen nor the children at the fence could control or fully understand. But they happened in a specific place at a specific moment, and the place and moment mattered.
## The British Role
American accounts of the Berlin Airlift, including most popular histories, tend to center on the American effort. This is understandable given that three-quarters of airlift flights were American, but it understates the British contribution and can mislead readers about how the operation actually worked.