Fresh and unique take of the Berlin Airlift - a beautifully written and textured portrait of a city under siege. This fascinating new book tells the forgotten story of a group of airmen who had spent WW2 dropping bombs on Berlin, who risked their lives in 1948-9 instead dropping chocolate bars from the sky, and how a group of German citizens looked to the skies not with dread and hatred but with hope and admiration. Through this deeply human lens, Dr Pearson gives crucial historical insight into how lasting new battlelines were formed; the Berlin Airlift wrote the playbook of the Cold War and it still influences Western thinking and diplomacy with Russia to this day. 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. AUTHOR: Dr Joseph Pearson was born in Canada, studied at Middlebury College in Vermont and has a doctorate in Modern History from the University of Cambridge. He taught at Columbia University and currently lectures at the Barenboim-Said Academie and New York University in Berlin. He is the author of My Grandfather's Knife (The History Press) and Berlin (Reaktion Books), a portrait of the city in which he now lives and works. 30 b/w illustrations
About the Author :
Dr JOSEPH PEARSON was born in Canada, studied at Middlebury College in Vermont and has a doctorate in Modern History from the University of Cambridge. He taught at Columbia University and currently lectures at the Barenboim-Said Akademie and New York University in Berlin. He is the author of My Grandfather’s Knife (The History Press) and Berlin (Reaktion Books), a portrait of the city in which he now lives and works.
Review :
‘Joseph Pearson's The Airlift is a thrilling portrait of the Berlin Airlift as seen through the eyes of those who lived through it, from pilots to photographers and ordinary citizens. Pearson weaves together his meticulous new research and his in-depth interviews with a prodigious gift for storytelling. This is history that unfolds like a great documentary film - I could not put down this book!’
Praise for the author:
‘Literary non-fiction at its best’ - NORMAN OHLER, author of Blitzed
‘Astonishing detective work’ JULIA BOYD, author of Travellers in The Third Reich
‘Historian Joseph Pearson masterfully offers a close reading of the metropolis in all its brutal immediacy’ - PATRICK DONAHUE, Bloomberg News
‘Joseph Pearson has discovered a unique and exciting way of telling history’ - PETER MANSBRIDGE, author of Off The Record
'Pearson takes an illuminating, up-close look at the Berlin Airlift and the kicking off of the Cold War. Through probing interviews with those who were present, Pearson reveals how the airlift, more than just a successful propaganda campaign by the Westerners, was a viscerally felt moment of political realignment, which engendered doubt among some Americans (who didn’t want to ally with former Nazis) and hope among Berliners (who wanted to rehabilitate their image in the West). This adds complexity to a major historical turning point.'
A revisionist scrutiny of a humanitarian mission. Pearson reminds readers that three years after their defeat, Germans were still hungry and their cities in ruins. The dawn of the Cold War through a gimlet eye.
'These stories of real people help bring the crisis to life, giving the reader a real feeling for what it was like to be there.'
'Blending archival depth with narrative grace, the author dismantles comforting myths of heroism and exposes the uneasy transactional alliances that shaped the era.'
