It never happens at a good time.

The pipe bursts at midnight. The heater quits on the coldest night. Suddenly, you're overwhelmed. That's when HomeServe is here. For $4.99 a month, you're never alone. Just call their 24-7 hotline and the local pro is on the way. Trusted by millions, HomeServe delivers peace of mind when you need it most. For plans starting at just $4.99 a month, go to homeserve.com.

That's homeserv.com.

Not available everywhere.

Most plans range between $4.99 to $11.99 a month your first year.

Terms apply on covered repairs.

This country is at war with Germany.

We shall go on to the end.

I remember the sheets of flame which came up and almost blinded us from our guns.

When we think about Berlin during the Second World War, we often picture the heart of the Nazi regime. But Berlin was also a city of millions of ordinary people trying to get through each day as war, repression and eventually destruction closed in around them.

My guest today is in Buruma, author of Stay Alive, Berlin 1939, 1945.

His book looks at life in the city from the outbreak of war to its collapse in 1945,

showing how daily life changed, slowly at first, then catastrophically after Stalingrad as bombing, fear, and the

approach of the Red Army turned survival into the central concern.

Berliners stopped saying goodbye and they said, stay alive.

This is not a story of battles or strategy, but of behaviour, compromise and endurance under dictatorship.

It's also personal, as Ian's own father was among the hundreds of thousands of forced labourers

trying to survive in wartime Berlin.

Welcome, Ian.

I wonder if our starting point is actually to look at Berlin in 1939.

So before September 1939, Berlin has been socially and politically run by the Germans, by the Nazis, sorry, not by the Germans, by the Nazis.

Had the Nazis reshaped the capital in some way?

...