2024/037: Checkmate in Berlin — Giles Milton

2024/037: Checkmate in Berlin — Giles Milton

the most pressing issues facing the city’s traumatised population, including law and order (there was none), Nazis in hiding (there were many) and the challenges of governing a city in which the entire infrastructure had collapsed. [loc. 1706]

I'm coming to rely on Milton for straightforward accounts of historical events, peppered with fascinating anecdotes: Checkmate in Berlin, which deals with the beginning of the Cold War, was no exception. Due to the lacunae in my historical knowledge (not helped by lacklustre syllabi at secondary school, which was mostly local history and The Causes Of The First World War) I was only vaguely aware of the Berlin Airlift, the partition of post-war Berlin, et cetera.( Read more... )