The Berlin crisis and the Allied response

Fifty years after the erection of the Berlin Wall, NATO has released hundreds of formerly classified documents that shed light on how the Alliance and its member states managed the fallout of that event and the wider crisis surrounding Berlin. A key concern of France, the United Kingdom and the United States, and of the Atlantic Alliance as a whole, was to keep access to West Berlin free under all circumstances, while avoiding tensions from escalating into a wider conflict. To this end, the three Western Allies, as well as NATO, began to develop contingency plans and other measures.