Germany commemorates Berlin Airlift

Germany marked the 60th anniversary of the start of the Berlin Airlift yesterday, celebrating an unprecedented undertaking that likely saved the city from falling to the Soviets and helped mend German-American wounds from World War II.

Often called the first battle of the Cold War, the airlift pitted the US and the Soviets against one another for the first time and set the tone for the decades to come.

"I find the courage with which this operation was carried out truly admirable," German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said at a ceremony at the US Army Airfield in Wiesbaden, from which many of the flights originated.