Dan Snow's History Hit - How Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt Divided Berlin

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

Berlin’s fate was sealed at the 1945 Yalta Conference: the city, along with the rest of Germany, was to be carved up between the victorious powers - American, British, French and Soviet. On paper, it seemed a pragmatic solution. In reality, once the four powers were no longer united by their common purpose of defeating Germany they wasted little time reverting to their pre-war hostility toward each other.Writer and historian Giles Milton joins Dan on the podcast to share the story of the race to seize Berlin in the aftermath of World War II. They discuss how rival systems, rival ideologies and rival personalities ensured that the German capital became an explosive battleground.Giles Milton's new book is called Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World.Produced by Hannah WardMixed and Mastered by Dougal PatmoreIf you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hey everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. We're all talking at the moment about Russian blockade of Ukraine. They're not letting ships to and from the coast of Ukraine, strangling its trade, its industry. We're talking about NATO, why it exists, should it exist, should it have expanded, who's in it, who's out of it. And so I thought we'd do a little episode on Russian aggression in the past, Soviet aggression in the past, around Berlin. But Hitler's former capital, the occupation of Berlin by the Western allies and the Russians, led to great friction between them and helped to cause a breakdown in relations that would lead into the Cold War. We've got Giles Milton on the podcast. He's written a book about Berlin. You've heard him on the podcast a

couple of years ago talking about it. He's now back. I thought we'd get him on. We'd talk about it in view of some of the more recent developments. The birth of NATO, the West, and Russia feels like something we should be talking about. If you wish to go back and listen to other podcasts or watch hundreds of history documentaries, you've got hundreds of history documentaries. It's like Netflix for history, by the way. You've got History Hit TV, named by Vogue as one of the best subscription services in the world. Unexpected plaudit from Vogue there. Didn't see that one coming. History Hit TV is going from strength to strength.

Tens of thousands of people subscribing. People listening to podcasts throughout the ads. People watching history documentaries on there. Lots more titles being added all the time. Please click on the link in the notes of this podcast. It'll take you right to History Hit TV. And you get two weeks free if you sign up today. So please head over there and do that.

But in the meantime, here's Giles Milton talking about Berlin and the coming of NATO. Enjoy. Giles, great to have you back on the podcast. Thanks for having me on. Delighted to be here. We've interviewed in many places. We've been in the flesh. I've interviewed you while sitting in a field in Wiltshire drinking beer. We've done many of these interviews. It's very pleasant to have another one. Talk to me about Yalta at the beginning of 1945 in the Crimea. It all feels a bit more resonant than the last time we talked.

And the great warlords were busy dividing up the post-war world. Yeah, it's 1945, February, and the big three, that is Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, they're meeting in Yalta. The war is coming to an end and they know they're going to win it. And basically they meet up to thrash out a new world order. They're dividing up the spoils, basically. Who's going to get what? And they sit down round a table and they decide what to do. And one of the key things they've got to decide is what to do with defeated Germany. And they decide they're going to split Germany into two separate parts. The Soviets are going to get the east of Germany

and the Western allies, that's the Americans, the British and the French, are going to get the west part of Germany. And they also decide to do exactly the same thing with Berlin, the capital, the defeated capital of the Third Reich. It is also going to be split into two constituent parts, with the Soviets getting the east and the Western Allies getting the western sectors of the city. But you only have to look at a map to realise there is one big potential problem for the future here.

And that is that Berlin sits squarely inside the eastern Soviet occupied area of Germany. And so if this wartime alliance goes sour, if things go wrong, if they fall out with Stalin, well, it would be quite easy for him to cut off the sectors of Western Berlin and leave the Allied garrisons high and dry inside the city and unable to get access to any food, any supplies, any munitions. They'd be completely isolated. We talk about sectors and occupation. Was it ever imagined that they would be two separate countries with different political systems and governments for the most of the rest of the 20th century? Absolutely not. Another important thing at Yalta was that they decided that this wartime alliance

that had worked so well, they were going to try and continue it into the post-war period. So Stalin was going to remain an ally of the West. And just listen to this. This is one quote from Churchill, and I think it says a lot. He said at Yalta, he said, it's no exaggeration or compliment of a florid kind. He said, when I say that we regard Marshall Stalin's life as most precious to the hopes and hearts of us all, we feel we have a friend whom we can trust, and I hope he'll continue to feel the same about us. So there really is this great desire, this willingness,

for the big three to remain on good terms as allies into the post-war period. And certainly from Churchill and Roosevelt's point of view, they could never have envisaged that what they've decided at Yalta is going to end up with the forming of two separate and hostile countries. At Yalta, we've got a bizarre diplomacy going on between them. Churchill felt he was getting a bit elbowed out the way, and it's true that Roosevelt and Stalin seem to be going particularly well, particularly talking about the lemon tree. This is rather wonderful, yeah.

Roosevelt wanted to mix martinis, and he said, have a really good martini. You need lemons, fresh lemons, and there weren't any fresh lemons available in Yalta at the time. The next day, he wakes up, opens his bedroom door, and there's an entire lemon tree covered in lemons sitting in the corridor outside. Stalin's had it specially dug up, uprooted and shipped in from Georgia so that the president would have his lemons. There's lots of lovely little anecdotes like that. Churchill, of course, many people felt he was

under par. He was not performing very well, partly because, as one of his aides noted, he was drinking bucketfuls of Caucasian champagne. And maybe that slightly affected his performance when it came to diplomacy. So they decide they're going to divide up Germany. They still trusted Stalin at this point, didn't they? They really did. They could see no reason why this was going to go wrong. They really believed everything that had been promised at Yalta. But one massive change had taken place between the Yalta conference and the Soviets taking Berlin. And that was that the Red Army had stormed through most of Eastern Europe. And by the time it came to May 1945, the Red Army and Stalin was in control

of a massive swathe of territory, you know, all of the Eastern European countries, all of the eastern part of Germany. So this gave Stalin an immensely powerful position, you know, bargaining position, if you like. The Western Allies, the Western armies were still miles from Berlin. So the Soviets had this window of opportunity to come into the capital to basically loot, ransack and sadly rape when they were there. They had two months of doing this before the Americans and Brits would arrive in the capital to claim their share of the western sectors of the city. Was it the behaviour of the Red Army in Eastern Europe, the atrocities, the asset stripping of East Germany that was already

underway, did that help to destroy the kind of trust and amity that existed between the wartime allies? I think the Americans and Brits were pretty horrified when they heard the stories of what had been done, particularly to the Berlin women. You know, we're talking over 100,000 Berlin women were certainly raped, possibly many, many more. But also, they were so shocked when they moved into their western sectors of Berlin, the American sector, the British sector, to sort of claim their bits of the city. And they discovered that absolutely everything had been looted. So when they went into the factories, there was nothing left at all. When they went into the houses they intended to live in, everything had been stolen. It was quite astonishing that the Red Army had just gone

through and taken absolutely everything that was movable and shipped it back to Moscow. And who are the key people involved in this early diplomatic jostling? Yeah, so you've got the four sectors of Berlin which require four commandants. Possibly the most colourful character of all is the commandant of the American sector, who is called Colonel Frank Howling Mad Howley. And basically, the Americans sort of parachute this cowboy into their sector of Berlin. He's an amazing character. He's so dynamic. He inspires fanatical loyalty from his men. He realises from really from the minute he arrives in Berlin, he says, I came to Berlin thinking the Germans were our enemies, but I realised very quickly

that the Soviets were now our enemies. He looks at the state of the sector that he inherits and realises, my God, they've just gone through this and looted everything. So he's the sort of key character in the American sector. And then the Brits have this wonderful character called Brigadier Robert Looney Hind, who's an eccentric character, who's a product of British India. Like so many of the Brits who come into the Western sectors of Berlin, he's a product of the Raj. And he wants to rule his sector sort of rather like a cricket umpire. He's a very decent chap. And he wants to take the Soviets at face value at first and believe that they're good chaps. And he too realises quite soon that this ain't going to work, that these

are not gentlemen he's dealing with. And he's going to have to find a rather different way of running his sector. And initially, are the sectors, is there going to be a barbed wire between them? We know about the Berlin Wall eventually, but did you know if you were leaving one sector and entering another? You did. I'm sure a lot of listeners will be familiar with those signs, you know, you are now leaving the American sector. So wherever there were crossing points, there were signs up, so you did know which sector you were in. But in the early days, in 45 and early 46, you could still cross from sector to sector quite easily. Although there were numerous problems with drunken soldiers straying into other sectors and then pulling out their pistols and unleashing a few bullets.

You know, so there was violence, there were fights, there were brawls, invariably involving too much alcohol. So already you could see the potential for complications in this divided city. Who's the sort of Russian commander? Their key figure is this chap called General Alexander Kotikov. He's been placed there by Stalin. He's a highly effective character, and his job really is to try and kick the Western Allies out of Berlin as a precursor to kicking the Western allies out of Western Germany as well. From day one, Colonel Howley and General Kotikoff are at each other's throats. They realise that this is a battleground and they are the two key figures. Colonel Howley describes Kotikoff as the

epitome and quintessence of the evil doctrines that Moscow preaches. He says he was a big bulky man with flowing white hair, icy blue eyes and a mouth like a petulant rosebud. His mind turned on and off automatically with switches operated in the Kremlin. Now these four commandants they will meet in a body called the Commandatura. This is a body that is trying to run the city as a whole. Although it's got its four sectors, they need some sort of central body that discusses rationing, denazification, reparations, all those issues that concern all four partners. And this body, the Commandatura, is going to become a bear pit. This is where they are going to be at each other's throats, notably Colonel Howley and General Kotikoff.

How important are these relations between people on the front lines and the people having cigarettes with each other at the barbed wire and these generals getting drunk with each other? And how much is it just in the hands of the Kremlin and the Pentagon and Whitehall? Well, that's really interesting because you have a big difference between what's happening in the capitals and what's happening on the ground. So both Whitehall and Washington are really determined to try and keep this relationship with the Soviets going. They want to keep it on a friendly footing. But Colonel Howley from day one has realised that this isn't going to work. So he's trying to change policy in Washington. He's desperate to convince Truman, who's the new president after the death of Roosevelt, to convince him that these

guys can't be trusted, that it's impossible to deal with them, that they're essentially, they're gangsters, and that they need to be treated as gangsters. And at first, Washington will not listen to Howley. They don't want to hear what he's saying. But Howley, ultimately, he's going to be proved right. And ultimately, the entire Western policy, both in Washington and in Whitehall, foreign policy will do a complete U-turn because Howley has been spot on. General Kotikoff, Stalin and all in the Soviet camp simply can't be trusted. So it does matter. What's going on at the coalface is affecting policy back in the imperial capital.

It very much is so. And I mean, it's also perhaps worth just giving a little portrait of the city at this time. It's a city in total ruins, you know. It's had no gas, no electricity, no running water. There's very little food. It's awash with gangsters, with ex-Nazis, with pimps, there's corrupt soldiers selling off booty and loot. There's black marketeers. This is a dangerous city, a very volatile city. And so it's very difficult for these commandants. They're trying to see a way through a very, very unstable environment that they're working in.

Is it a sliding slope or do they have this moment when they suddenly meet as adversaries rather than as allies? By 1946, it becomes apparent that this is not going to work, this arrangement, that it's impossible for the two different sides to work together. There's an election in which the communists do disastrously. And so gradually, the city sort of naturally begins to split into two separate parts. And you're going to end up eventually with two separate police forces, with two separate city administrations. And while that split is taking place on the ground inside Berlin, you also have the same thing happening in Washington and Whitehall,

this realisation that, hold on, lads, this isn't going to work anymore. And so by the spring of 1946, there were several key things that happened then, which convinced Truman and Attlee in Britain that a completely different tack is needed when dealing with the Soviets. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. I'm talking about Berlin, Russia and the West. More coming up. Have you ever thought about sex in ancient Rome? Perhaps you've pondered over the origins of civilisation. Or maybe you've had restless nights contemplating where Alexander the Great's lost tomb might be. I know I have. If so, we've got the perfect remedy. It's the Ancients on History hit. The Ancient History Podcast. We've got interviews with remedy. It's the Ancients on History hit, the Ancient History podcast.

We've got interviews with leading experts on all of the above and so much more. So why not give the podcast a listen? Subscribe to the Ancients on History hit wherever you get your podcasts. To be continued... rarely the best of friends. Murder, rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. What about the old warlord Churchill, who is thrown out of office in 1945, and then makes that very famous intervention and describes an iron curtain? Was he being hyperbolic at that point?

Yeah, this is a sort of key moment. This happens in the spring of 1946. Churchill, as you say, he's out of office. He goes to America at the invitation of President Truman. He makes a speech, a famous speech in Fulton, Missouri. This is, yes, his Iron Curtain speech, where he says those famous words from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended over Europe. This at the time was unbelievably explosive because the Western allies were still trying to cling on to this relationship with Stalin at that time.

And basically what Churchill does, he's just chucked a massive stick of dynamite into this relationship. Newspapers across North America and Europe really criticise Churchill for saying this. But within a very short space of time, Churchill is proved right. There's one other key event that happens just in the aftermath of that speech, which is a Soviet defector from the Soviet embassy in Canada defects with news that the Soviets had been running a massive spy operation in North America. They've infiltrated America's nuclear program. And suddenly it's realised, the sort of collective gasp in both

Washington and Whitehall, it's, my God, we've been had here. And this is the point really where everything begins to change and where we can see this wartime friendship alliance is suddenly ripped apart. And it really is focused on Berlin, where, of course, the two parties are living side by side. With your knowledge of Berlin itself and the slow calcification of these boundaries between the different sectors, when does that become realised in concrete and steel? Well, it becomes increasingly dangerous throughout 1947 and the early months of 1948 to cross between the boundaries. The police checks become much

more intense. It becomes more dangerous to cross into the Soviet sector. By the end of 1947, there is a clear split in the city of Berlin. Those in the West are already living very different lives, much freer lives, freedom of expression. They have access to goods being brought in from Western occupied Germany. So by the time of the formal split, when the Soviets cut the road and rail links into West Berlin and create this siege situation in West Berlin, by that stage already, it's become clear that Berlin has split into two completely rival factions. And when does it become impossible to travel between them? That's not for another 10 years or so.

What's extraordinary, you have this blockade of the Western sector, so nothing can get into the Western sectors by land, so by road or by rail. And yet people can still cross into the Soviet sector. And indeed, during the blockade, where there was very little food in the Western sectors of Berlin, the Soviets tried to encourage Berliners from the western sectors to come over to register for rations in the eastern sectors. They say, hey, come over here and we'll give you more food than the Americans and Brits can supply you with. But once you were registered in the eastern sector, you'd sort of thrown in your lot with the Soviets. So very,

very few western Berliners were prepared to sign up to the Soviet system, if you like. They were to remain in the Western sectors in incredibly difficult situation with very few supplies, with almost no fuel, with no electricity or gas. You know, this was an extreme blockade with 2.4 million Berliners having access to only what could be flown in by air, you know, on the American and British Dakotas. And then the blockade, the coming of blockade, that's a step, only one step from war really. So that's incredibly hostile. How's the blockade come about? This is a very, very dramatic moment. There's a complete fallout in the Kommandatura, particularly between Howley and Kotikov.

Kotikov storms out of this meeting of the Kommandatura. A few days later, the Soviets announce this dramatic news that they are cutting all road and rail links from Western-occupied Germany into Berlin. Suddenly, we have a siege. We have two and a half million Berliners and garrisons of 25,000 American and British troops who have absolutely no access to any food, supplies, munitions or anything. It's a bit like you imagine a medieval castle pulling

up the drawbridges. They can't get anything into the city. There is only one way to get supplies in and that is by air. The Americans' Colonel Howley, he is banking on the fact that the Soviets won't dare shoot down their planes. He doesn't know that they won't, but he's going to take a gamble. And this gamble proves to be correct. So the only way into the city is by air. But imagine supplying two and a half million people by air. You need an absolute minimum of four and a half thousand tons of food every day flown into Berlin to keep the population from starving. A Dakota of the time could carry two and a half tonnes. So this is going to take hundreds and hundreds of planes landing every sort of 90 seconds into Berlin's two airports

from Western Germany to keep the city alive, to keep Berliners from starvation. And did anyone believe this would be possible? I mean, really nothing like this had been tried before. Well, people tried it before. Goering tried it at Stalingrad, but it was unimaginable it would work. Well, it's interesting you mentioned Stalingrad, because Stalin himself looked back at Stalingrad and said, the Western allies are never going to be able to do this. It was believed to be sort of logistically impossible to do this. But actually, in a time of crisis, it's always good to call on the services of a good old British boffin. And this is exactly what happens in Berlin.

There is a chap called Air Marshal Reginald Waite, and he's a mathematical genius. He's never seen leaving home without a trusty slide rule. And he begins to work out that with two airports in West Berlin and eight airports in the western sectors of Germany, it is just about feasible to keep the city alive. If you have planes flying in on five different levels round the clock, every 60 seconds they're landing into the city, you can just about do it. And so he proves that it can be done. And the Americans, you know, gun-ho as ever, they call in the services of General Tunnage Tunner.

This is a real character who has been in charge of flying munitions into China to Chiang Kai-shek during the war, flying this airlift over the Himalayas into China. He's proved that you can pull off an airlift. And he is now put in charge of the Berlin airlift. And he's determined that he is going to beat the Soviets at this game. You know, it's very resonant. We're talking about this. I say this on the pod every week at the moment. So apologies, people listening. But whether it's the Russians blockading southern Ukraine, now the Ukrainian coast,

and the gigantic mobilisation of the lift capacity of the West, the US in particular, and bringing supplies to Ukrainians. It feels this is a logistics, heavy lift is an essential part of modern war and diplomacy. That's absolutely right. Nothing like this had ever been undertaken before. It required the Americans to bring in planes from everywhere they could, from, you know, Hawaii, Honolulu, Alaska. They were all poured into Western Germany, the Brits likewise. They pulled in all their planes from British India, fromolulu, Alaska, they were all poured into Western Germany, the Brits likewise. They pulled in all their planes from British India, from the colonies, from dependencies all across the world. This was a massive effort, the like of which had never been done before. It's an amazing story. At the end of it, the Soviets quietly backed down. Did they just, I'm asking because I'm interested in the future, did they just sort of declare victory and just

quietly reopen things? What was the choreography of them backing down? Actually, it was all done rather quietly. I mean, this was a humiliating climb down from Stalin's point of view. And the West played their cards quite well. They didn't want to be too triumphalistic. But don't forget, there's other important major events taking place in the corridors of power behind the scenes. The powers of the West are quietly forming NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, to ensure basically that the Soviets will never have the upper hand in Western Europe. And this is really a key moment that is born out of the airlift, out of the Berlin blockade, out of everything that's happened. The West has suddenly, it's been a wake-up call to them

that they can no longer trust the Soviets and that they need to form some sort of defensive pact that means that the Soviets will never try anything like this again. Well, the forming of NATO and exactly who's in NATO, who's not, has become quite the issue of 2022. So as ever, history is very relevant. And Dan, I should tell you one last thing. I was looking again today at Colonel Howley's memoirs and listen to what he says at the end of his memoirs. These were written in 1949. He says, Russia will attack us without hesitation when she judges the time and conditions are right. He goes on to say, we must be prepared to defend our position all over the world, we must never allow Russia even a 50-50 chance of successfully using force against us. I mean, how prescient are those words? Wow. Amazing. Amazing. Sends shivers down your spine. It does. Giles, that's amazing. Thank you for coming back on. Tell us, is your

book out in paperback now? It is. It's just out in paperback, available at all good bookshops. Hooray. What's it called? It is called Checkmate in Berlin, the First Battle of the Cold War. Lovely. Thanks for coming back on, man. Thank you very much. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs,

this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thanks, folks, you've made it to the end of the country, all work out and finish. Thanks, folks. You've made it to the end of the episode. Congratulations. Well done, you. I hope you're not fast asleep. If you did fancy supporting everything we do at History Hit,

we'd love it if you would go and wherever you get these pods, give it a rating, five stars or its equivalent. A review would be great. Thank you very much indeed. That really does make a huge difference. It's one of the funny things the algorithm loves to take into account. So please don't ever do that. It can seem like a small thing, but actually it's kind of a big deal for us. I really appreciate it. See you next time.