A divided city: the Big Three fall out in post-war Berlin

When did the Cold War start? Not when the second world war ended. There were many differences between the Soviet Union and its western allies, but they did not then seem insuperable. It was not obvious that the post-war world would be divided by ideology. On the contrary, the victorious United Nations hoped for an era of peace. The Americans planned to pack up and leave Europe as soon as possible.

The future of Germany had been decided before a single Allied soldier had crossed onto German soil. Meeting at Tehran in November 1943, the Big Three — Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin — had agreed that defeated Germany would be under military rule, divided into three zones of occupation, one each for America, Britain and Russia. Later France would be admitted to this triumvirate. The same principle was to be applied to Berlin. But the former capital of the mighty Nazi empire would be marooned deep in the Soviet sector, an island in a Soviet sea.

Giles Milton, the author of Nathaniel’s Nutmeg and Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, is a skilful storyteller. His latest book, vivid and pacy, chronicles the first four years of the Berlin occupation through the first-hand accounts of the individuals involved. One stands out: Colonel Frank Hawley, deputy commandant and then commandant of the American sector, a combative, rumbustious Texan, who defied his more cautious superiors by adopting a policy of ‘aggressive neutrality’ towards his Soviet counterparts.

By the spring of 1945 Berlin was in ruins, pulverised by bombing and artillery bombardment. Occupying Allied soldiers were stunned by the devastation. If this were not enough, the Russians had looted everything they could carry, even stripping out the plant that controlled the water and electricity supply.