Introduction

The Soviet blockade of Berlin's Western sectors in June 1948 shocked Berliners and their American occupiers alike. The Soviets responded by blocking the vital coal and grain deliveries from the nascent Federal Republic, popularly known as West Germany, to West Berlin in order to test the makeshift polity's viability. Thus, all at once West Berliners had to come to terms with defeat in a war that had shattered their city and their moral legitimacy, anti-Soviet resentments, and two competing political visions of postwar reconstruction. Berlin has long stood for the Cold War in symbolic terms, but, in a debate dominated by political and diplomatic histories, the symbolic value necessarily obscures the active role played by the city's inhabitants, in effect marginalizing the impact of Berlin's rancorous urban politics. The challenges faced by refugees in exile have been documented ever since opponents of the Nazi regime fled the Reich.