Along with bad press, the Berlin Blockade came at enormous local cost to the Soviets, as one resident of the city at the time, Peter Sichel, quickly perceived. “Up until then, Berliners saw the Americans as occupiers,” he said. “Better behaved than the Red Army maybe, but still occupiers, and they resented us for it. The blockade changed that. They saw that we were all in this together, that we were trying to keep the city alive, and so we went from this relationship of considerable animosity to them seeing us as their allies. This was specific to Berlin—it was much less true in other parts of
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