Nikolai Starikov is a famous Russian public intellectual and nationalist historian.

I think some of you may have heard on more than one occasion about how that bloodthirsty tyrant Stalin set up a blockade of West Berlin in 1948 and how the freedom-loving nations organized the Berlin airlift to circumvent it. But today we’ll let you in on what really happened.

After Stalin refused to get sucked into the draconian Bretton Woods Agreement and then Churchill gave his famous speech in Fulton, MO, the West began squeezing the USSR on all available fronts. The most convenient site for this was the vanquished country of Germany.

Immediately after defeating the Nazis, the Allies agreed to split Germany into three occupation zones: Russian, British, and American. But the country itself was in no way divided by borders – this was united Germany but without any semblance of state power within its own borders other than the military authorities of the occupation. Berlin was sliced up in a similar way. The city had been stormed by Soviet troops, but as agreed, the USSR allowed the Allied forces to enter the German capital. On June 5, 1945, the Berlin Declaration was adopted, which announced the assumption of supreme authority in Germany by all the powers that had conquered the Nazis. Later, at the insistence of Charles de Gaulle, the French also lopped off their own chunk of German territory – they were given the Saar region to occupy and were also allocated a sector of Berlin. There were now four occupation zones. Then, on Aug. 30, 1945, a governing body was established – the Control Council – through which the Allies could work together and that held supreme power in that occupied country. On Jan. 1, 1946, trade began between the Soviet and British zones. For a while everything went smoothly – due to the fact that the USSR had not yet refused to recognize the supremacy of the Federal Reserve’s dollar …However, once that Rubicon had been crossed, things started to heat up.

March 5, 1946 – the date of Churchill’s speech and the beginning of hostile overtures from the West.

Aug. 6, 1946 – American General Lucius Clay makes an announcement in Stuttgart about the impending unification of two zones of occupation.

Dec. 2, 1946, the US and Great Britain sign an agreement in New York to merge their zones of occupation. An entity with the odd name of Bizone emerges on the map of Europe.

Jan. 1, 1947 – all trade between the Bizone and the other zones is now to be conducted in the dollars of the Federal Reserve. And what currency had been used to trade with the Soviet zone throughout all of 1946? Reichmarks. The USSR has no dollars and the Germans have even less access to them. What is the reason for demanding that trade be conducted only in dollars? It means that the choice is either to submit or to cease all trade between the two halves of Germany.

March 12, 1947 – President Truman delivers his Truman Doctrine speech before Congress and the Cold War officially begins.

June 5, 1947 – the famous Marshall Plan is adopted.

Feb. 23 – March 6, 1948 – the London Six-Power Conference is held, attended by the US, UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, at which a separate decision is made to create a German state within the confines of the three occupation zones.

Thus, the US and UK undertook to split Germany into two states. In response, the USSR withdrew from the Control Council on March 20, 1948and it immediately ceased its work. The West no longer needed a governing body to oversee all of Germany. They were forging a new German state.

But then something quite interesting happened. Between June 20 and 21, 1948, a monetary reform was carried out in the three Western occupation zones that looked quite a lot like highway robbery. The Reichsmark that Hitler had used was replaced by the Deutschmark. Each German was permitted to exchange 60 Reichsmarks at a rate of 1:1. Forty marks could be exchanged immediately, and another 20 two months later. Half of their savings could be exchanged at a rate of 1:10, while the second half was frozen until a later date when it could be exchanged at 1:20. But pensions, salaries, payments, and taxes were recalculated in the new currency at a 1:1 rate.

Legal entities faced an even sadder fate. All businesses were allocated 60 marks for each employee. All government debt that was owed in the old Reichsmarks was zeroed out without any compensation! As result, approximately 2/3 of bank assets, which had been invested in government bonds, were now worthless. And all this happened in one fell swoop – like a well-planned military operation. German marks were secretly printed in the US and put into circulation without warning.

Now let’s consider this situation for a moment. What do you think happened in a country where a new currency was introduced in one half, while the old currency continued to be used in the other half? The Germans had been offered the opportunity to exchange their savings at a rate of 1:10 or 1:20, so what would be the logical next step for them to take? They tried to spend their old marks anywhere that that money was still being accepted. In other words – in the Soviet zone of occupation. And that’s exactly what happened. The Germans rushed to transform their old Reichmarks into goods in the “eastern” zone. They vacuumed up everything on the store shelves, focusing only on getting rid of their money. In light of this outrageous situation, what was the Soviet administration supposed to do? They had to seal up the borders of their zone and try to stem this flood of money, otherwise the economy would collapse – no goods would be left in the stores at all. And this was precisely what the West was counting on: inciting a riot and then provoking the USSR into a “bloody crackdown on popular protests.”