As 1945 began the greatest conflict in human history was drawing to a close. But with the war in the west almost over, a new question was increasingly being asked. It was one to which Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill and Franklin D Roosevelt all had different answers. What was going to happen next?

In this episode the million-copy bestselling author Giles Milton takes us back to some key moments in 1945. At Yalta on the Crimean peninsula and later in the ruins of Berlin, the shape of the post war world – the world we know today – was beginning to take shape.

What is clear now was not so then. Were the Allies really friends or were, as Churchil worried to Anthony Eden, they hurtling towards a third world war? Arriving in Berlin at the start of July 1945, the US army colonel Frank Howley feared much the same. As Milton explains, it was Howley who saw before almost anyone else that the Germans had ceased to be enemies and the Russians had ceased to be friends.

The characters and stories that feature in this episode of Travels Through Time form part of Milton’s latest book. Checkmate in Berlin: The Cold War Showdown That Shaped the Modern World.

Show notes

Scene One: 4 February 1945. Yalta. Opening of the Crimea Conference

Scene Two: 2 May 1945. Berlin. Yevgeny Khaldei takes a photograph of the Soviet flag being raised over the Reichstag

Scene Three: 1 July 1945. Berlin. Colonel Howley arrives

Memento: A little of the Schliemann Gold

People/Social

Presenter: Peter Moore

Guest: Giles Milton

Production: Maria Nolan

Podcast partner: Ace Cultural Tours

Theme music: ‘Love Token’ from the album ‘This Is Us’ By Slava and Leonard Grigoryan

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