Berlin 1948 - A vanquished city of rubble - sliced into sections by the Allies, and set deep behind Russian lines. A city of old women, black marketeers and sleazy cabarets in ruin. In the British sector was Squadron Leader Michael Harrison, a war hero who had helped to bomb Berlin into fragments. He hated the Nazis who had killed his sister and her children. But he was doing his best to ensure that food and fuel was somehow brought in to save the surviving Berliners. In the Russian sector was young Lili Leicht, German, middle-class daughter of a university professor and now living in the ruins of her former home, trying to prevent her grandfather and two young brothers from dying of malnutrition. Her mother had been killed by British bombers. As the tensions in the smouldering city grew worse, so Michael and Lili slowly fell in love. A love which surmounted all the prejudices and hatreds of war and offered a hope of a more understanding future.