This, the is the second volume of DBPO to be produced in electronic format, complements earlier volumes covering East/West relations since the Second World War. This, however, is a cross-series volume focusing exclusively on Berlin. Its documentation is not limited to a single chronological period, but extends over three narrowly defined, but widely separated, moments of Cold War history, 1948-49, 1959-61 and 1989-90, years which highlighted the significance of Germany's divided and occupied capital both as a source and a measure of East-West tensions in Europe. The Berlin airlift, the building of the Berlin wall, and finally its demolition twenty-eight years later, gave material meaning to a global contest often otherwise perceived in terms of ideology and superpower rivalry.These events were set within very different international contexts, and Britain's diplomatic involvement with them was conditioned by the emergence of two German states and the creation and consolidation of the Atlantic Alliance.
Four interrelated themes are nevertheless common to each of the three chapters of the volume: the British Government's insistence, in conjunction with the Americans and the French, on upholding and safeguarding the rights of the four occupying powers in Berlin; British concerns with broader matters of military security in Western Europe as a whole and Germany in particular; the interaction of the four occupying powers with each other; and the questions raised by demographic change, especially population movements from east to west. All of the documents dealing with the events of 1989-90 fall within the 30-year rule and are therefore not yet in the public domain.