Next book

CHECKMATE IN BERLIN

THE COLD WAR SHOWDOWN THAT SHAPED THE MODERN WORLD

Entertaining if unedifying fireworks in postwar Berlin.

An account of the stormy Allied-Soviet relations in Berlin after Germany’s 1945 surrender.

Most histories of this period emphasize Allied leaders (Truman, Churchill, Stalin) or generals (Eisenhower, Montgomery). In his latest World War II history, however, Milton moves down the hierarchy to focus on Berlin’s four military governors, especially American colonel Frank Howley and his bitter rival, Soviet general Alexander Kotikov. A civil affairs specialist, Howley impressed superiors in governing and feeding Cherbourg and then Paris before he was promoted to command the American sector of Berlin. On June 17, 1945, his unit moved toward Berlin only to be stopped and harassed at the border of Soviet-occupied Germany. It was not until July 1 that he entered a city stripped bare after two months of Soviet looting, with communists in control of the police as well as road and rail traffic. Howley arrived with written orders to cooperate; however, confronted with Soviet policy aimed at expelling the three Western occupiers, he disobeyed. It helped that, unlike his British and French colleagues, he was both pugnacious and enterprising. Milton devotes two-thirds of the book to shouting matches, political skulduggery, and violent confrontation that might be called “comic-opera” if it weren’t for the Soviet willingness to engage in kidnapping, sabotage, and murder. Perhaps the high note was the 1946 Berlin city council election. Free elections were never a Soviet strength, but they deluged the electorate with food, privileges, propaganda, and promises only to be horrified at their landslide defeat with less than 20% of the vote. Finally exasperated, in 1948 they cut off all supplies, resulting in the iconic Berlin airlift. Many popular histories treat that operation as a dazzling triumph, but Milton’s detailed account reveals that Berliners starved and suffered intensely before Stalin called off the Soviet blockade. The author ends in 1949, with Berlin firmly divided, an outcome acceptable to the West but a persistent drain on the Soviet Union that ultimately contributed to its collapse.

Entertaining if unedifying fireworks in postwar Berlin.

Pub Date: July 13, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-250-24756-8

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: April 28, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021

Next book

HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE

The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...

A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.

Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.

The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017

Next book

BRAVE MEN

The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.

Pub Date: April 26, 2001

ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2

Page Count: 513

Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001

Close Quickview