The Airlift. Victories, Myths, and the Berlin Blockade - Joseph Pearson

Berlin, 1948-9. Airmen who had spent the Second World War dropping bombs on the city now risked their lives dropping chocolate bars; German citizens looked to the skies not with dread and hatred, but with hope and admiration. Through a deeply human lens, this fascinating new book investigates how lasting new battlelines were formed in the war-torn city.

This is not a standard military history; The Airlift uses extensive archives and interviews to interweave everyday characters'' tales into an extraordinary story. They include an American pilot crashing in Soviet territory, a Jewish photographer struggling to reconcile with the Germans, the 17,000 women who built Tegel Airport, Cambridge University actors performing in the ruins for British intelligence, Hollywood star Montgomery Clift filming at Tempelhof airport, and a Berlin girl trying to outrun the boys reaching for chocolate.

By uncovering untapped sources in both German and Anglo-American archives, Dr Pearson gives a unique and textured portrait of a city during the Cold War’s first major conflict through the lives of real individuals. The Berlin Airlift wrote the playbook of the Cold War, and it still influences Western thinking and diplomacy with Russia to this day.