Cold War City

A History of West Berlin

David E. Barclay

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: History
• Print ISBN:
  9780691290959
  9780691159256
• Subtopic: German History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691291314
• Index: History

The untold story of West Berlin, the island city deep inside the Soviet bloc that withstood the decades-long confrontation between the USSR and the West

Located more than one hundred miles behind the Iron Curtain, West Berlin served as a stage on which the confrontation between nuclear-armed superpowers played out across nearly five decades. Portrayed in the West as an island of freedom in a totalitarian sea, it increasingly came to be seen by some as a bleak enclave without a future, yet the city also embodied a remarkable openness to alternative lifestyles and radical forms of cultural experimentation. Cold War City is a definitive history of West Berlin that takes readers from the end of the Second World War to the withdrawal of Allied troops in 1994.

Drawing on substantial new research in archives on both sides of the Atlantic, David Barclay vividly describes how some of the most dramatic events of the Cold War took place in and around West Berlin, including the perilous crises that culminated in the building of the notorious Berlin Wall in 1961. A product of the postwar division of Germany, the city was a roiling ideological battleground comprised of American, British, and French sectors. Barclay shows how it became a distinct political and cultural entity despite its connections to the West and he sheds light on the Cold War as a lived experience for West Berliners and the city’s Allied occupiers.

A nuanced portrait of a city that came to symbolize the divided postwar world, Cold War City locates the history of West Berlin at the flashpoint between grand geopolitics and the daily concerns of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations and Maps
• Abbreviations
• A Note on Terminology
• Introduction
• 1. “A Hell of a Place”: The Occupation of Berlin, 1945–47
• 2. Ernst Reuter and the Invention of West Berlin, 1947–49
• 3. Becoming West Berlin, 1949–58
• 4. The Americanization of West Berlin? Occupation, Culture, and Urban Design, 1948–61
• 5. Intermezzo: Culture and Politics in West Berlin, 1950–63
• 6. The Wall, 1958–66
• 7. Revolutions, 1964–75
• 8. The Four Powers Agree, Sort Of: A Turning Point for West Berlin, 1966–77
• 9. Normality and Niches, 1971–81
• 10. The More Things Stay the Same, the More They Change, 1978–86
• 11. The Beginning of the End, Though Nobody Knew It, 1982–89
• 12. And Then It Was Over, 1989–94
• Epilogue: Legacies and Landscapes of Memory
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix 1: The Boroughs of West Berlin
• Appendix 2: Espionage in West Berlin: A Brief Review
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Illustration and Map Credits
• Index