Stalin lifted the Berlin Blockade on May 12, 1949, and lost the argument he had been making for 318 days. The airlift had worked: by April 1949 it was delivering roughly 12,000 tons a day, more than the pre-blockade land routes had ever managed, and it was clear that the West would not be starved out of Berlin. The concession bought Stalin almost nothing — the Federal Republic of Germany was proclaimed eleven days later, and within five months the German Democratic Republic followed.
Four factors pushed the Politburo to concede. First, the airlift’s success had destroyed the Soviet claim that the West could not sustain Berlin. By April 1949, daily deliveries were running at about 12,000 tons, well above the pre-blockade level. Second, world opinion had turned against Moscow. Even some Western communist parties, including the French, were distancing themselves from the blockade. Third, the impending signature of the North Atlantic Treaty on April 4 meant that the West was about to formalize what the blockade had been meant to prevent. Fourth, Stalin wanted a summit on Germany. Lifting the blockade bought him the right to demand one.
The deal was struck in private negotiations in New York between Jacob Malik, the Soviet UN ambassador — the Western delegations. The public terms were simple: the Soviets lifted the blockade; the West suspended — but did not cancel — its plans for a West German state pending a Council of Foreign Ministers meeting.
In practice, the Western pledge to suspend was theater. The Federal Republic’s Basic Law had already been drafted, new state was proclaimed on May 23, 1949, eleven days after the blockade ended. The Soviets responded by founding the German Democratic Republic in October 1949. The crisis had not been resolved; it had been institutionalized.
The longer treatment of the airlift and the blockade, and the next chapter in the same city — the building of the Berlin Wall — are covered in their own dedicated articles.