This book explains how and why Berlin became the symbolic capital of the Cold War. Paul Steege anchors his account of this emerging global conflict in the terrain of a city literally shattered by World War II. By focusing on what happened 'on the ground' in Berlin, the book shows how ordinary people mattered for the development of a global Cold War that dominated world affairs for four decades and offers an interpretive framework with which to reevaluate international conflict in the present.