Coal for Berlin – and not only for the blockade

Coal was the most-transported good during the airlift, and it was also the most important. Discovering that this was the case led the three Western powers to redesign their strategy for stocking the city with coal. At the beginning of the 1950s, the Allied Control Council once again expanded the size of the Berlin storage facilities to ensure the city’s survival for up to 6 months if a new blockade should occur. Naturally, large quantities of food were stored, but coal was still the most common good – a total of almost 760,000 tons. Added to that were 80,000 briquets.

These stockpiles, which were designated “Senate Reserves”, were not done away with until after German Reunification in 1990.