Review of Checkmate in Berlin by Giles Milton
Checkmate in Berlin is a narrative non-fiction book detailing the fate of Berlin following the Allied and Soviet conquest of Nazi Germany in 1945. It begins with the city’s apocalyptic fall and ends with the lifting of the Soviet blockade which surrounded its western sectors in 1949. An epilogue notes the formation of NATO and the UN. Though he died just days before the conquest, America’s Roosevelt supplied much of the materiel (weapons and supplies) for Russia’s campaign against Hitler as well as most of the European and all of the Pacific firepower. It was his dream to set up the UN to…
