Calls for solidarity as Germany remembers the Berlin Airlift

On the 75th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift on Sunday, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius hailed the Allies' robust stance against Soviet intimidation, and called for international solidarity in the present day too.

"The airlift showed how important it is to do the right thing," Pistorius told a ceremony at the Berlin Airlift Memorial in the German capital.

"If our partners had just shrugged their shoulders or argued that the costs were too high and the risks too great, Berlin would very probably have been finished," he said of the resistance to Moscow's blockade of the city in 1948-49.

Sunday's event bore particular poignancy amid international support for Ukraine as it battles to repel a more than two-year-long invasion by Russia.

In response to the introduction of a stable currency, the Deutschmark, in the West of Germany as part of attempts to rebuild the economy under a capitalist system, the Soviet Union blocked access to the western sectors of Berlin and massively restricted the supply of electricity and gas.

However, with more than 270,000 flights, the United States, Britain and France managed to supply of West Berlin with food, fuel and raw materials. Moscow ended the blockade on May 12, 1949.

Without the airlift, the capital would not be "the city of freedom, cosmopolitanism and tolerance" of today, Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner said.

The ceremony brought together members of parliament from Berlin, the German Bundestag and the European Parliament, as well as numerous veterans and eyewitnesses of the events 75 years ago.

"We Germans in particular have benefited greatly from partnerships and assurances of common security in the past," said Pistorius.