Berlin 1948. Almost four years after the war's end, the city is still in ruins, a physical wasteland and a political symbol about to rupture. In the west, a blockaded city is barely surviving on airlifted supplies. In the east, the early days of political reconstruction are being undermined by the compromises of the Cold War. Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer, fled the Nazis for America before the war. But the politics of his youth have now put him in the crosshairs of the McCarthy witch hunts.--