FROM YALTA TO BERLIN

Smyser (The German Economy, not reviewed) shows eloquently how much the history of the world was shaped by the Cold War struggle over Germany. Much of this story will be familiar, but much will be new, even to close analysts of the period. The Berlin Airlift to defeat the Russian blockade of Berlin in 1948 has been seen, quite rightly, as one of the triumphs of Western policy. But Truman’s decision to assign further aircraft to ensure its success came over the opposition of both the State Department and the Department of Defense. The early suspicions of West Germany by the US, Britain, and France have also been well documented, but they were matched by the Soviet suspicion of East Germany and of its leader, Walter Ulbricht. Historians have noted the ineptitude of Soviet foreign minister Molotov’s diplomacy and its role in creating NATO, but Soviet president Andrey Gromyko was equally inept in rejecting various early initiatives by President Kennedy that would have seriously undercut the Western position in Germany. It was a beginning, writes Smyser, “more like Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in 1938 than like the spirit of King Arthur and the Knights of Camelot.” Kennedy’s famous speech in West Berlin was initially a cautious one, and was rewritten by him on the way from the airport and under the influence of the tumultuous crowds that had turned out to cheer him. Perhaps the greatest revelation is the role played by Yuri Andropov, then head of the KGB, in encouraging Willi Brandt’s Ostpolitik, which included giving Helmut Schmidt, Brandt’s successor as chancellor, advance knowledge of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Equally interesting is the role played by retired East German spymaster Marcus Wolf in telling the Soviets just how badly in debt the East Germans actually were. Smyser’s account clearly substantiates Brandt’s conviction that dÇtente would help erode the Soviet empire. A thoughtful, cogent, and incisive account of a critical period.