Stats

Despite the New Deal, 9.5 million people remained unemployed by 1939.

Would the West back down? Would this be the start of World War III?

President Truman did not take armed action against the Soviets. Instead, he ordered an airlift, a spectacular chain of round-the-clock supply flights into West Berlin—272,000 flights over 321 days, carrying tons of supplies. The airlift was a political as well as logistical triumph, which caused the Soviet Union to lift the blockade. The event was also a vindication of the policy of containment, and in April 1949, it led to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—NATO—a key defensive alliance of the western nations against the communist East.