Working in a Strange and Secretive Society, Leaving the Whirligig: London and Elsewhere, June 1948 to 1949

At the end of the European war in May 1945, the victorious Allies divided Germany into four ‘Zones of Occupation’, but Berlin – though deep inside the Soviet zone – was also quartered, into four ‘Sectors of Occupation’. Geography alone made it difficult for this arrangement to work, quite apart from Soviet insistence that US, British or French access to Berlin was a privilege, not a right; that supplies of food, fuel, medicines, clothing and manufactures for the three Western sectors must all come from the Western zones; and that free movement of people or goods between the Western and Eastern divisions of Germany or Berlin could not be permitted.