In this episode, I am joined by Ian Buruma to talk about life in Berlin during the Second World War. Rather than focusing on the regime at the top or the battles fought far from the city, we look at how ordinary people experienced daily life as war, repression, bombing, and fear increasingly shaped everything around them.
Our conversation centres on what it meant to survive in wartime Berlin, how behaviour and attitudes changed over time, and how the city moved from uneasy normality to catastrophe after Stalingrad and as the Red Army approached. We also discuss the experience of forced labourers in the city, including Ian's father, who was among the hundreds of thousands trying to stay alive under brutal conditions.
Ian is the author of Stay Alive: Berlin 1939–1945, which looks at life in the German capital from the outbreak of war to its collapse in 1945, focusing on how ordinary people coped as survival gradually became the central concern.