Black Market, Cold War Everyday Life in Berlin, 1946}}}1949 [Hardcover]

This book explains how and why Berlin became the symbolic capital of the Cold War.This book is a history of everyday life and explains how and why Berlin became the symbolic capital of the Cold War. Paul Steege anchors his account of this emerging global conflict in the terrain of a city literally shattered by World War II.This book is a history of everyday life and explains how and why Berlin became the symbolic capital of the Cold War. Paul Steege anchors his account of this emerging global conflict in the terrain of a city literally shattered by World War II.This book explains how and why Berlin became the symbolic capital of the Cold War. Paul Steege anchors his account of this emerging global conflict in the terrain of a city literally shattered by World War II. By focusing on what happened 'on the ground' in Berlin, the book shows how ordinary people mattered for the development of a global Cold War that dominated world affairs for four decades and offers an interpretive framework with which to reevaluate international conflict in the present.1. Postwar Berlin: the continuities of scarcity; 2. October 1946: rolling back Soviet power; 3. June 1947: Berlin politics in the shadow of the black market; 4. March 1948: Berlin and the struggle for the Soviet Zone; 5. August 1948: battle lines on the Potsdamer Platz; 6. June 1949: ending the blockade. In this ambitiously conceived and passionately written account of Berlin at the start of the Cold War, Paul Steege provides compelling vindication for the claims of Alltagsgeschichte or the history of everyday life. In addition to the Cold War itself, he illuminates many vital aspects of German history immediately after, including the social history of urban survival, the histories of East German Communism and West German Social Democracy, and the overall dynamics of political reconstruction. He is to be applauded for a brave and original attempt at re-conceptualizing the relationship between grand politics and ordinarylÕ