ABSTRACT
The Outpost narrative of heroic West Berlin defending democracy shored up support among both Americans and Berliners in the crisis that prompted the 1948–1949 airlift. The third chapter reassesses the emergence of this narrative, explaining its genesis and the popular themes on which it drew. It pays particular attention to the comprehensive efforts to popularize the narrative – a task in which the remigré network enlisted considerable resources from the American Cold War foreign policy establishment. Prestige projects in Berlin such as the founding of the Free University, events such as the inauguration of the American-cast Freedom Bell, and media outlets such as RIAS and the highbrow cultural magazine Der Monat all indicate the magnitude of the effort to popularize the narrative. This chapter seeks to outline the political benefits that the narrative entailed in Berlin, Germany, and the United States. Furthermore, it identifies the narrative's popularizers and the strategies they employed.
