Checkmate In Berlin by Giles Milton
Nov. 23rd, 2025 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Berlin was in ruins when Soviet forces fought their way towards the Reichstag in the spring of 1945.
Berlin’s fate had been sealed four months earlier at the Yalta Conference. The city, along with the rest of Germany, was to be carved up between the victorious powers - British, American, French and Soviet. On paper, it seemed a pragmatic solution; in reality, it fired the starting gun for the Cold War.
Rival systems, rival ideologies and rival personalities ensured that Berlin became an explosive battleground. The ruins of this once-great city were soon awash with spies, gangsters and black-marketeers, all of whom sought to profit from the disarray.
For the next four years, a handful of charismatic but flawed individuals - British, American and Soviet - fought an intensely personal battle over the future of Germany, Europe and the entire free world.
Giles Milton is a writer and best-selling historian. This very readable and informative book explores Berlin between 1945 and 1950 sets out how the agreement between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference set the seeds for the Berlin Blockade and the Cold War. Extensively footnoted and drawing on personal papers from Colonel Frank Howley it’s particularly good on the specifics of governing and everyday life in post-war Berlin.
I picked this up because having studied World War II for A Level History, I’ve always been interested in what happened in Germany in the post-war period, but did not know a great deal about the origins of the Cold War or the Berlin Blockade. I had heard of a number of Milton’s other books and knew they had a good reputation, but this is the first work of his that I’ve read.
The spine of this book comes from the personal papers of Colonel Frank Howley who served first as deputy commandant and then as commandant of the American sector in Berlin and was also the leading American representative on the Kommandatura, although the personal papers and diaries of other people are also used. Milton takes a narrative approach, starting with the Yalta Conference in February 1945 and then tracking through the taking of Berlin by the Soviets (which makes for difficult reading at times - specifically the rapes carried out indiscriminately by the Soviet troops) and establishment of the Allied sectors and how Stalin then sought to undermine the other Allies.
Because the book draws so heavily from personal papers, there is a great sense of the personalities involved here. Howley in particular comes across as a remarkably capable and driven man with a gift for logistics and who understood the threat coming from the Soviets before it was accepted by the US government. He was clearly a man who was unafraid of having a fight and I particularly enjoyed the personal animosity between him and his Soviet counterpart General Kotikov, who had carried out a campaign to initially charm the British representatives Brigadier Hindle and Lieutenant Colonel Hays before taking a harder and more aggressive line. Also good are the sections on the arrival and activities of Walter Ulbricht, the German Communist sent by Moscow to agitate for control of the city and who later became the East German leader.
However there is very little on the French side of things here (in part because France had not been part of the original agreement and were only granted sections out of the British part of Berlin) and virtually nothing on the reaction of their representatives to what was going on. More critically for me is that there is nothing here explaining why Roosevelt and Churchill made the original agreement with Stalin dividing up Berlin and specifically whether - and if not, why not - anyone had picked up on the fact that the city was surrounded by Russian territory and considered what the impact of that would be if things went south. In a similar vein, I was left confused as to why US and UK policy was to continue to try and make things work with Stalin even as it was becoming obvious that he was behaving more aggressively. In the case of the UK I could understand this given how war-shattered the country was, but that doesn’t seem to have been the case with the US and although President Truman had an election and domestic policy to contend with, I wanted some explanation on why the State Department was so slow to accept the danger - specifically given the warnings that were coming from Howley and others.
That said, there is a lot here that is fascinating. Milton does particularly well at showing the deprivations heaped on Berliners as the Allies sought to rebuild the city’s infrastructure and how that contrasted with the luxuries claimed by the Allied commanders and their families - the details on how well the Allied commanders ate and drank was, at times, nauseating when read with modern eyes. Also good is the detail on how the UK and US sought to combat the eventual Soviet blockade - the skill of the pilots combined with the planning involved in organising the flights is a hell of a feat and one that Milton does full justice to. I was a little confused at times as to how the Kommandatura worked in practice and I wish there had been a little more on Hinde and Hays as they do get a little lost in the overall Howley narrative and become little more than bit players (which may well have been how it worked in practice but, as a Brit, I wish there had been more to understand why).
I know that Milton has previously written about Churchill and - inevitably - he looms large here. I was pleased to find that Milton is not overawed by him, pointing out (with evidence) where Churchill failed - including by failing to read his briefs and giving away positions that shocked Eden and left Britain scrambling. Stalin, in contrast, is more of a gnomic figure here - I wanted to understand what drove his change in position and why he was so keen to push things and take the gamble on winning, but equally understand that without access to all of the relevant documents, much of the reasoning comes down to speculation.
All in all and complaints aside, I came away from this book feeling that I had more of a grasp over what happened in Berlin and how the Cold War got started and would definitely check out Milton’s other books on the strength of this one.
The Verdict:
Giles Milton is a writer and best-selling historian. This very readable and informative book explores Berlin between 1945 and 1950 sets out how the agreement between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference set the seeds for the Berlin Blockade and the Cold War. Extensively footnoted and drawing on personal papers from Colonel Frank Howley it’s particularly good on the specifics of governing and everyday life in post-war Berlin.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
Berlin’s fate had been sealed four months earlier at the Yalta Conference. The city, along with the rest of Germany, was to be carved up between the victorious powers - British, American, French and Soviet. On paper, it seemed a pragmatic solution; in reality, it fired the starting gun for the Cold War.
Rival systems, rival ideologies and rival personalities ensured that Berlin became an explosive battleground. The ruins of this once-great city were soon awash with spies, gangsters and black-marketeers, all of whom sought to profit from the disarray.
For the next four years, a handful of charismatic but flawed individuals - British, American and Soviet - fought an intensely personal battle over the future of Germany, Europe and the entire free world.
Giles Milton is a writer and best-selling historian. This very readable and informative book explores Berlin between 1945 and 1950 sets out how the agreement between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference set the seeds for the Berlin Blockade and the Cold War. Extensively footnoted and drawing on personal papers from Colonel Frank Howley it’s particularly good on the specifics of governing and everyday life in post-war Berlin.
I picked this up because having studied World War II for A Level History, I’ve always been interested in what happened in Germany in the post-war period, but did not know a great deal about the origins of the Cold War or the Berlin Blockade. I had heard of a number of Milton’s other books and knew they had a good reputation, but this is the first work of his that I’ve read.
The spine of this book comes from the personal papers of Colonel Frank Howley who served first as deputy commandant and then as commandant of the American sector in Berlin and was also the leading American representative on the Kommandatura, although the personal papers and diaries of other people are also used. Milton takes a narrative approach, starting with the Yalta Conference in February 1945 and then tracking through the taking of Berlin by the Soviets (which makes for difficult reading at times - specifically the rapes carried out indiscriminately by the Soviet troops) and establishment of the Allied sectors and how Stalin then sought to undermine the other Allies.
Because the book draws so heavily from personal papers, there is a great sense of the personalities involved here. Howley in particular comes across as a remarkably capable and driven man with a gift for logistics and who understood the threat coming from the Soviets before it was accepted by the US government. He was clearly a man who was unafraid of having a fight and I particularly enjoyed the personal animosity between him and his Soviet counterpart General Kotikov, who had carried out a campaign to initially charm the British representatives Brigadier Hindle and Lieutenant Colonel Hays before taking a harder and more aggressive line. Also good are the sections on the arrival and activities of Walter Ulbricht, the German Communist sent by Moscow to agitate for control of the city and who later became the East German leader.
However there is very little on the French side of things here (in part because France had not been part of the original agreement and were only granted sections out of the British part of Berlin) and virtually nothing on the reaction of their representatives to what was going on. More critically for me is that there is nothing here explaining why Roosevelt and Churchill made the original agreement with Stalin dividing up Berlin and specifically whether - and if not, why not - anyone had picked up on the fact that the city was surrounded by Russian territory and considered what the impact of that would be if things went south. In a similar vein, I was left confused as to why US and UK policy was to continue to try and make things work with Stalin even as it was becoming obvious that he was behaving more aggressively. In the case of the UK I could understand this given how war-shattered the country was, but that doesn’t seem to have been the case with the US and although President Truman had an election and domestic policy to contend with, I wanted some explanation on why the State Department was so slow to accept the danger - specifically given the warnings that were coming from Howley and others.
That said, there is a lot here that is fascinating. Milton does particularly well at showing the deprivations heaped on Berliners as the Allies sought to rebuild the city’s infrastructure and how that contrasted with the luxuries claimed by the Allied commanders and their families - the details on how well the Allied commanders ate and drank was, at times, nauseating when read with modern eyes. Also good is the detail on how the UK and US sought to combat the eventual Soviet blockade - the skill of the pilots combined with the planning involved in organising the flights is a hell of a feat and one that Milton does full justice to. I was a little confused at times as to how the Kommandatura worked in practice and I wish there had been a little more on Hinde and Hays as they do get a little lost in the overall Howley narrative and become little more than bit players (which may well have been how it worked in practice but, as a Brit, I wish there had been more to understand why).
I know that Milton has previously written about Churchill and - inevitably - he looms large here. I was pleased to find that Milton is not overawed by him, pointing out (with evidence) where Churchill failed - including by failing to read his briefs and giving away positions that shocked Eden and left Britain scrambling. Stalin, in contrast, is more of a gnomic figure here - I wanted to understand what drove his change in position and why he was so keen to push things and take the gamble on winning, but equally understand that without access to all of the relevant documents, much of the reasoning comes down to speculation.
All in all and complaints aside, I came away from this book feeling that I had more of a grasp over what happened in Berlin and how the Cold War got started and would definitely check out Milton’s other books on the strength of this one.
The Verdict:
Giles Milton is a writer and best-selling historian. This very readable and informative book explores Berlin between 1945 and 1950 sets out how the agreement between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference set the seeds for the Berlin Blockade and the Cold War. Extensively footnoted and drawing on personal papers from Colonel Frank Howley it’s particularly good on the specifics of governing and everyday life in post-war Berlin.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
