Who was Joseph Stalin and what was his strategy in the blockade of Berlin?
Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union, and, after a terrible four years of Nazi invasion and occupation, managed to push the Germans back all the way to Berlin. Germany and Berlin were divided among the British, American, French and Soviets, the Soviets having the largest portion of the city. Stalin wanted all of Berlin to unite, becoming the capital of the Soviet sector of Germany. To this end political parties in Berlin were infiltrated by communists, hoping for a unified Berlin vote for unification. But, when the American, British and French zones announced that they were uniting their zones into a federal republic and that they were instituting currency reforms – creating the West German Deutsche Mark – Stalin felt he had to act. He hoped that by closing the land routes through the Soviet sector to West Berlin, they population would starve and then demand unification with East Berlin. He thought that as the Germans were unable to supply Stalingrad during WWII, then the Western
