"This is a social history of Berlin's black market during World War II and the post-war period, looking at both its participants and their practices, the macroeconomic context in which the market operated and the everyday strategies that were deployed by individuals to navigate the market. Malte Zierenberg reveals the black market to be a complex structure, which is on the one hand a geographical space but on the other hand represents a conceptual category within an economy"-- "This book puts the illegal economy of the German capital during and after World War II into context and provides a new interpretation of Germany's postwar history. The black market, it argues, served as a reference point for the beginnings of the two new German states"--