CHECKMATE IN BERLIN

THE COLD WAR SHOWDOWN THAT SHAPED THE MODERN WORLD

GILES MILTON

John Murray, 416pp, £25

Milton’s book covers events between the Yalta conference in February 1945 to the breaking of the Soviet blockade of West Berlin in May 1949. Craig Brown, in the Mail on Sunday, called it ‘a wonderfully clear and digestible account’. He found that ‘the devastation wrought on Berlin by the Russians is vividly described... in a series of sharp vignettes’, such as the slaughter of an ox in the abandoned zoo, with starving citizens ripping out its tongue. ‘After repeatedly being outwitted by America and Britain, Stalin cut off all food and fuel in 1947, leaving Berlin effectively under siege for the next 323 days. Milton’s account of the breaking of the siege is as gripping as any thriller.’

Times reviewer Roger Boyes agreed that it was ‘expertly told... through the eyes of the chiefs of the Kommandatura – the heads of the four Berlin zones of occupation. All were logistics experts, rough and ready problem-solvers. The most completely realised is Frank “Howlin’ Mad” Howley, an American colonel who had run the smashed port of Cherbourg after the D-day landings in June 1944 and had gone on to organise the feeding of five million Parisians after its liberation... This is a book full of heroes, but Frank Howley takes the starring role. Milton has spun a good yarn about a gifted man who followed his gut.’ For Jake Kerridge, writing in the

Daily Telegraph, it was ‘a sparkling, Le Carré-esque history’ and ‘the triumph of the book is its depiction of the men who ran things on the ground in Berlin, who in Milton’s hands turn out to be figures hardly less compelling than Churchill and Stalin... Thoroughly entertaining.’