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The Berlin blockade was a diplomatic crisis and military operation during the cold war precipitated by the Soviet Union's blockade of the city of Berlin from June 18, 1948, to May 12, 1949, and the subsequent relief effort launched by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France to provide provisions for the western half of the city. The Berlin blockade was one of the first major diplomatic crises of the cold war. The Western Allies' ability to provide for the city proved to be a major diplomatic victory and ensured the creation of a pro-Western West German state. However, it also ensured the division of Germany and Berlin for the next four decades.

The diplomatic struggle over Berlin in 1948-49 had its origins in the final months of World War II and the agreements made among the Allied powers over the division of postwar Germany. Germany's capital, Berlin, although deep within the proposed Soviet zone, would also be divided into four sectors of occupation. Although each power would be given sole control of its respective zone, an Allied Control Council based in Berlin would be assembled to coordinate and plan policy for all of Germany. These plans were made under the assumption that the occupation of Germany would be temporary and that Germany would be reunified relatively soon after the war's end. Critically, the agreements were also made under the assumption of continued inter-Allied cooperation.

Within days of Nazi Germany's defeat, the Soviets undertook efforts to ensure the dominance of sympathetic German communists in their zone, especially in Berlin, which the Soviets claimed was an integral part of their zone. Their overall aim was the reunification of a pro-communist German state, a goal that placed it at odds with the Western Allies. In 1946 the Soviet Union sponsored the forced merger of the German Communist Party and the Social Democrats (SPD) of its zone into the Socialist Unity Party (SED). Censorship of the press was instituted and members of noncommunist parties were frequently arrested in the Soviet zone. In Berlin agitators working for the SED frequently disrupted the meetings of the democratically elected city council. In 1946 the election of the Social Democrat Ernst Reuter to the office of lord mayor of Berlin was vetoed by the Soviets. However, the Soviets were unable to gain control of Berlin outside their zone or the rest of Germany.

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