In comparison, the Kabul venture doesn’t quite resemble the Berlin Airlift, where food was flown into West Berlin, rather than people being flown out.
But as a model for humanitarian and political recovery, the rescue operation — which took place when Mr. Biden was just a child — isn’t bad. The city of Berlin had been divided between the West and the East since the end of World War II and tensions were mounting. When the Soviet Union blocked food, electricity and other resources from reaching West Berlin by land, the United States and Britain took to the skies to bring in material by plane.
The two countries managed to get just under 300,000 flights to Berlin in the 11 months from June 24, 1948 to May 11, 1949, and the Foreign Office record states that “at the height of the campaign, one plane landed at Tempelhof Airport every 45 seconds”, until recently the main air hub of Berlin.
Harry S. Truman, the president who led the now-famous airlift, was re-elected in his midst, though not by many — something Mr. Biden must have noticed. But history has been kind, describing the Cold War-era airlift as one of the largest emergency humanitarian efforts. It helps that the Soviet Union finally collapsed, 40 years after the airlift ended, and Germany became both united and free.
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Mr Biden called the Berlin airlift on Sunday to explain his decision to use the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, which was created after the Berlin crisis to ensure commercial aircraft could be used in times of emergency. It has been invoked only rarely, usually to move troops to the Persian Gulf. But this is a very different kind of mission.
“The comparison is largely correct,” said Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian, who wrote about the efforts of the 20th century in his book “The Conquerors.”
“In both the Berlin airlift and the effort to take refugees out of Afghanistan, American humanitarian values and impulses are shown great for the rest of the world,” Mr Beschloss said. “The difference between the two is that in 1948 we flew food and other supplies to Berliners endangered by the Soviets to show that America would keep its promise to guarantee freedom in Berlin.”
