I am—almost literally—a child of the Cold War. I first went to Russia at the age of eight weeks, courtesy of my diplomat parents, in 1950, when Josef Stalin was still at the height of his power, hurling verbal thunderbolts against evil imperialists. Childhood memories include watching military parades in Red Square, being shadowed by the KGB, and waiting for nuclear war to break out during the Cuban missile crisis. I still associate certain colors and smells with Soviet communism, just as I vividly recall the startling reawakening of the senses triggered by the journey back to the other side of the “Iron Curtain.” In one way or the other, I have been thinking about the Cold War all my life, either as a boy growing up in places like Moscow and Warsaw, or as a journalist covering the collapse of communism, or as a historian poring over documents prepared for leaders like Churchill and Truman, Kennedy and Khrushchev, Reagan and Gorbachev.
The present book completes a “Cold War trilogy.” I began at the end, relating the extraordinary story of the fall of the Soviet empire in Down with Big Brother (1997). In my last book, One Minute to Midnight (2008), I examined the peak of the Cold War, the moment when the world stood on the edge of nuclear annihilation in October 1962. Six Months in 1945 describes how it all started, focusing on the history-shaping events that transformed World War II allies into Cold War rivals. Together the three books are intended to capture the arc of the defining ideological conflict of the twentieth century, spanning the division and reunification of the European continent over a forty-four-year period.
A project such as this would not have been possible without a lot of help and encouragement along the way. I have my parents to thank for introducing me to Russia and eastern Europe and setting me on the path to becoming a reporter and a writer. I am grateful to various employers, particularly The Washington Post, for sponsoring my reporting behind the Iron Curtain, culminating in a five-year stint in Moscow between 1988 and 1993. My understanding of the Cold War has been greatly enhanced by time spent at outstanding American universities, including Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Michigan. Most recently, I am indebted to the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the U.S. Institute of Peace, both in Washington, D.C., for supporting my research through fellowships and grants.
One of the joys of researching narrative history is the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of your characters, imagining yourself gazing down from the ceiling as they make momentous decisions. Sometimes you want to applaud, at other times you shake your head at their blunders and miscalculations, but always you are fascinated. In one guise or another, I have visited most of the places described in this book, from the Livadia Palace in Yalta and Cecilienhof in Potsdam to the Kremlin in Moscow and the White House in Washington. I am grateful to William Drozdiak, Gary Smith, and the late Richard Holbrooke for helping to arrange a fellowship at the American Academy of Berlin that permitted me to explore the sites described in the last four chapters of this book. Ulrike Graalfs and Stephanie Buri organized visits to the Babelsberg residences of Stalin and Truman, in addition to the Soviet military museum at Karlshorst, site of the Nazi surrender in May 1945. While I was in Berlin, I also spent a wonderful day along the Elbe, tracing the routes taken by the American and Soviet frontline units that met near Torgau during the final weeks of World War II.
The archival trail has taken me from the Bundesarchiv in Berlin to the Churchill Archives in Cambridge, England, to the National Archives in London to the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, and the FDR Library in Hyde Park, New York. Closer to home, I have also spent long and happy hours in the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress, and the Military History Institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It is impossible to list everyone who helped me by name but I would particularly like to single out Sam Rushay of the Truman Library, David Keough of the Military History Institute, John Haynes of the Library of Congress, and Allen Packwood of the Churchill Archives. My talented and hard-working research assistant at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Oleksandr Chornyy, helped me track down documents relating to the ill-fated mission of American airmen in Poltava held in the archives of the Ukrainian security services.
I have greatly benefited from bouncing ideas off fellow Cold War enthusiasts and friends, including Marty Sherwin, David Holloway, Melvyn Leffler, Ronald Suny, Masha Lipman, and Sergei Ivanov. Tom Blanton and Svetlana Savranskaya of the National Security Archive have been an invaluable source of encouragement and support, as with my previous books. I have fond memories of our visit together to the Stalin museum in Gori, which features the railway carriage that carried the Soviet dictator to Yalta and Berlin. Rick Atkinson has provided invaluable expertise on the final battles of World War II. Avis and Celestine Bohlen shared memories of their father, Charles Bohlen, one of the characters in this book. I am grateful for the hospitality and friendship of our neighbors, Paul and Stephanie Taylor, as well as David and Anita Ensor, kindred spirits from the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.
My namesake and distant cousin, known in our family as the “false Michael Dobbs” but better known as the author of the hit television series House of Cards, has patiently forwarded e-mails intended for me but sent to him. He will be pleased to know that I now I have my own Web site, www.coldwartrilogy.com, through which readers can get in touch with me directly. In addition to a shared interest in exploring our Irish roots, Michael and I share a fascination with Winston Churchill. I am grateful to my brother Geoffrey Dobbs, founder of the hugely successful Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka, for bringing us together to talk about Churchill through the eyes of a fiction and nonfiction writer. While on the subject of family, I must also mention my talented niece, Rachel Dobbs, who has helped me create social media networks to promote my Cold War books. And of course, my mother, Marie Dobbs, who first went to Moscow in 1947 as a wide-eyed young Australian and stayed a good deal longer than she ever intended. My understanding of Russia in the immediate postwar period is shaped in considerable part by conversations with her and my late father.
A special debt of gratitude goes to Knopf, the publisher of my three Cold War books. My first editor at Knopf was the legendary Ashbel Green, publisher of Andrei Sakharov and Milovan Djilas. Andrew Miller has proved a more than worthy replacement for Ash, a source of much excellent advice and meticulous attention to detail. Andrew Carlson and Marc Chiusano shepherded the book through production with the help of production manager Lisa Montebello, production editor Maria Massey, designer Maggie Hinders, and copy editor Sue Betz. I thank Jason Booher for the wonderful jacket (reminiscent of his best-selling hit with One Minute to Midnight) and Michelle Somers for her help with the publicity. My former Washington Post colleague, Gene Thorp, has done an excellent job with the maps. I am grateful, as always, to my agent Rafe Sagalyn, who has steered me in the right direction countless times, along with a host of other former Washington Post reporters.
Most of all, I am grateful to my wife, Lisa, and children for making this all possible and putting up with my obsessions and frequent absences. This book is dedicated to my son, Joseph Samuel, named after his Irish grandfather and his Russian-Jewish great-grandfather. With a heritage like that, the world is open to him.