Word: berlin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...every four of West Berlin's workers is jobless: a total of 250,000. At the beginning of the blockade the total was 50,000; at the end, 150,000. In five months of "peace,"' 100,000 more have lost their jobs. Why is this...
...Half of Berlin always lived from the city's service functions as the capital of the Reich; the other half from its concentrated industry. The capital disappeared in the defeat; 85% of the factories were grabbed by Russia...
Most West Berliners today "trade with the enemy." They turn in their hard West marks at six to one for soft Soviet marks, then buy in East Berlin. A gaunt worker, castigating the Reds, growled about "die Schweine" (the pigs), but he had just got a haircut in the Soviet sector. "Berliners value freedom," a German paper editorialized, "but they can do little with it. They have only the hungry freedom of the unemployed...
...mind and heart in Berlin's raw, garish ruins were fixed on sheer survival. During the next four years the Germans pushed through poverty to positive goals, to a fierce fight for freedom. Today, in a humdrum autumn of pointless peace, hope has departed and "normalcy" takes the shape of nothingness...
...Russians were by no means going out of business in Berlin. Bit by bit, in the weeks since the blockade was lifted, Communism in Berlin had been wearing a friendlier falseface...