Russia – Great History

The 1991 Soviet Coup

Mikhail Gorbachev was a farmer and later member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He ascended to become secretary of the party Central Committee and was eventually appointed to the Politburo Executive Committee, the highest executive committee within the party and the de facto ruling body of the country. Following the death of Konstantin Chernenko, he was eventually elected President of the Soviet Union and General Secretary of the Committee by the Politburo in 1985.

Gorbachev, unlike his predecessors, realised where the issues of the Soviet Union had come from, as he was the only leader to have been born and grown up after the revolution. Much of government economic policy was centred around a command economy, in which many economic activities were planned centrally by the government, who prioritised machinery and large projects over consumer goods and quality. The inefficiency and bureaucracy of the Soviet economy also began to show. Many Soviet projects involved the government setting a goal and throwing as much money at it until it happened. This meant that less efficient, and thus longer, processes received more funding over the quicker ones, even if they both achieved the same goal.

They also spent far too much on weapons in order to compete with the United States as a superpower whilst also prioritising policies that were “communist” regardless of whether it worked or not. This disregard for pragmatism and solely prioritising ideological loyalty meant mass housing projects had extremely poor living standards, a free healthcare system was notoriously poor and cheaper food came at the cost of an unhealthy diet. Gorbachev was one of the only few to realise this, and began implementing mass reforms, constraining the power of the secret police, known as the KGB, bringing about freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and returning power to the people instead of the tight grip on power at the top. What was important to note was that Gorbachev was not opposed to communism, but instead believed that the Soviet system, established by Lenin, tightened by Stalin and enforced by Brezhnev, was a bastardisation of communism and had become nothing more than a bloated bureaucracy that did not serve the people like the initial ideology was founded upon.

There is plenty of everything: land, oil and gas, other natural riches, and God gave us lots of intelligence and talent, yet we lived much worse than developed countries and keep falling behind them more and more. The reason could already be seen: the society was suffocating in the vise of the command-bureaucratic system, doomed to serve ideology and bear the terrible burden of the arms race.
Gorbachev in his resignation speech

An image of the famous Soviet Apartment Blocs

One of the key steps in delivering his change was replacing the hardline Stalinists in government with those more open to change. One notable member of this group was Boris Yeltsin, the chair of the Communist Party in Moscow. He began improving diplomatic relations with the rest of the world, by opening up foreign investment, opening up trade opportunities and ceasing production of weaponry in order to bring an end to the Cold War, strongly contrasting with American policy of increasing military spending to combat the “evil empire.” He also transformed the Soviet economy from the command economy to a mixed economy, which incorporated more free market elements. Whilst businesses had to make a minimum amount set by the government to give to the state, they could also go above the minimum and sell that for profit.

The government stopped propping up failing businesses and introduced limited private ownership and reduced state control over enterprises. However, this shift from a far-left centralised economy to a left-wing or centre-left mixed economy faced hardships. Whilst many expected this stark change to create a temporary and small economic downturn, the downturn extended much longer than was anticipated. Firstly, Gorbachev overestimated how mismanaged the economy actually was, as when they withdrew funds from failing businesses, wide gaps in the market opened up, leading to rationing of resources and overcrowding of shops and infamous massive queues. In addition, tax breaks combined with increased spending in certain areas led to a massive government deficit. This wouldn’t have been an issue if the transition was faster, but, as Gorbachev stated in his resignation speech, the old system had collapsed too quickly and did not give enough time for the new system to build.

A queue outside a Soviet shop during Gorbachev’s Presidency

Meanwhile, social reforms were improving too. Many in the Soviet leadership believed that democracy should take a more important factor in communism, holding them to account when they were voted out by the people that communism claimed to serve. With the restriction of the secret police, the publishing of government documents and the permission to publish previously banned books an intellectual renaissance was created within the Soviet Union and its client states. However, this did not go the way the government intended. Instead of people seeing the transparency of the government and thinking of ways to fix the communist system, they instead decided to remove communism altogether.

In Poland, a trade union rebellion instigated the first democratic elections in Poland since the 1930s, in which the anti-Soviet liberal Solidarity Citizens’ Committee won a 99 out of 100 seat majority in the Polish Senate. The very notable thing that the Soviet Union did, however, was nothing. Unlike prior revolutions in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the Soviet Union did not strike back against the trade unionists with military force. All of a sudden multiple protests occurred across Eastern Europe in 1989, all of which resulted in democratic elections and the end of communist rule for the first time in nearly 50 years. Most notably Hungary opened up its fenced off border with Austria, allowing the first citizens to cross the Iron Curtain.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany, many other European nations began to reject communism. In Bulgaria, the Communist Party agreed to free elections after mass protests, while in Czechoslovakia the Velvet Revolution saw huge, peaceful demonstrations force the government to resign. In Romania, however, the collapse of communism was far more violent, as armed clashes in the streets led to the overthrow and execution of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, footage that was later broadcasted on TV. Together, these events showed that Soviet control over Eastern Europe had fatally weakened, feeding a wave of anti-communist sentiment that eventually reached Moscow.

By 1991, the reforms had fatally weakened the political foundations of the Soviet state. Mass protest movements across Eastern Europe and within the Union’s own republics had already dismantled Communist rule beyond Moscow’s control. These pressures converged with institutional decay within party leadership. Economic decline, declining faith in Marxist ideology and the erosion of censorship under Gorbachev deprived the Communist Party of its claim to political necessity. When Gorbachev permitted competitive elections in the Republics that made up the USSR in 1990, the Union’s authority was further fractured by creating a dual structure of power. Gorbachev had remained President of the Union, while the Russian Republic elected Yeltsin as its own president, challenging the supremacy of the Soviet state from within.

A photo of Yeltsin after winning the Presidency

This unresolved constitutional conflict culminated in August 1991. A group of senior Party officials, military commanders, and KGB leaders formed an emergency committee and placed Gorbachev under house arrest while he was on holiday in Crimea. Declaring that reforms had endangered socialism and national stability, they announced a state of emergency and attempted to restore central control through force. Tanks entered Moscow and surrounded the Russian parliament building, the “White House,” where Yeltsin and his supporters established a barricade to resist the oncoming army. The coup plotters proved incapable of securing loyalty from either the armed forces or the public. After three days of mass demonstrations, military defections, and administrative paralysis, the coup collapsed. Its failure discredited the Communist Party beyond recovery and destroyed what remained of Soviet authority.

In the weeks that followed, republics including Ukraine and Belarus declared full independence. The Communist Party was banned in Russia, its assets seized, and the Union reduced to a powerless committee. In December 1991, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus formally dissolved the Soviet Union. The Cold War ended not through military defeat, as many had expected, but through political implosion. A system built on ideological unity collapsed when it could no longer reconcile reform with authority, or central control with national self-determination. Unlike the Third Reich, the Soviet Union did not come crashing down in a burning wreck but merely fizzled out.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall

For 26 long and arduous years, the Berlin Wall stayed up. Anywhere between 130-200 people attempted to cross the wall and died trying. Many Presidents and Soviet Leaders came and went, until two very divisive figures showed up.

One of them was Ronald Reagan, a film star turned Governor of California and later POTUS, who had a very tough stance on communism compared to his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. Whilst no-one wanted communism to spread, Reagan was harder on it than most. He advanced technology, especially in the space programme and computers. In order to stop the spread of communism in South America, he actively traded with Iran, who had an embargo due to their war with Iraq who was a US Ally, in order to fund anti-communist militia forces in Nicaragua, in the infamous Iran-Contra affair.

Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness—pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the State, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world. So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.
Ronald Reagan, National Association of Evangelicals, 1983

The USSR believed much of what Reagan was doing was an intentional prep for war. Whilst tensions rose, the unthinkable happened. Leonid Brezhnev died. He was replaced by Yuri Andropov, who also died. He was replaced by Konstantin Chernenko, who also died. He was replaced by Mikhail Gorbachev, who did not die. He believed that the reason the Soviet system was failing was because people were not satisfied with the outcome of their hard work, due to the lack of free speech in the country.

His changes were enacted quickly. People were allowed to criticise the government, they were allowed to enjoy Western pop-culture and food and the media were allowed to interview western politicians, most notably the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. He also began de-escalating the arms race with the West, most notably stopping the production of Intermediate Ballistic Missiles. Where many others in the Eastern Bloc saw reform, Reagan saw an opportunity.

Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. . . . Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar. . . . As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. […] General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
Ronald Reagan, Brandenburg Gate, 1987

Reagan making his famous “Tear down this wall” speech

With all these reforms, many began to question what would become of the Eastern Bloc, an idea that crossed the Prime Minister of Hungary’s mind. He visited Moscow, and asked Gorbachev about reforms he wanted to enact. Gorbachev said that he did not agree with them but would not stop them from happening either.

Many countries in the Eastern Bloc began carrying out free and fair elections, with Poland’s anti-Soviet party winning 99 out of 100 seats in the Senate. Barbed wire began to come down in Hungary and the Iron Curtain was crumbling. One country that did not enact such reforms was Germany, run by hardline Stalinist, Erich Honecker. The still destitute Germans realised that if transport was permitted out of Hungary, then they could get to Hungary and move to the West that way. Tens of thousands practiced this before Honecker stepped in and banned all transport to Hungary. However, the Freedom Fever kept going as the Czech Embassy for East Germany was opened to civilians and political unrest began occurring in East Germany. Honecker was ousted by the Politburo whilst the unrest continued. One target on their minds was the wall.

On November 9th, 1989, in order to quell the chaos, the East German Government held a press conference led by Günter Schabowski, where it was announced that the travel ban from East to West Germany would be lifted. Towards the end of this hectic conference, he was asked when this would take effect he said that “As far as I know, it takes effect immediately, without delay”. This was a mistake. The ban was meant to be lifted the next day. But, the German people had heard what they wanted to hear and, later that day, thousands of Germans came to the wall. The guards, overwhelmed, allowed the people through, whereupon the Berlin Wall was torn down.

The tearing down of the Berlin Wall is considered to be one of the great stepping stones in Eastern European freedom and the downfall of the Soviet Union. Families and friends who had been separated for nearly 3 decades partied into the night. The next year, Germany reunified into one German State.

The Chernobyl Disaster

In 1932, in Cavendish University, J. D. Cockcroft and E. T. S. Walton bombarded lithium with protons from a particle accelerator. The protons caused the lithium atom to split. Many scientists realised that if they continued to split uranium and plutonium atoms, with the protons from one atom splitting another and the process repeating in a process called fission, they could make a new source of energy. Much of this energy was harnessed in Nuclear Power Plants. By 1986, there were 389 power plants, 37 of which resided inside the Soviet Union.

Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was constructed in 1983, with Viktor Bryukhanov, manager of construction of the plant, telling higher ups in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that a test had been conducted in order to ensure the safety of the reactor. However, this was false. Bryukhanov would later defend this saying that completing work ahead of schedule entitled party members to significant bonuses. Despite the lack of the safety check, the plant went into operation.

A photo of the plant before the explosion

Eventually, Nikolai Fomin, Chief Engineer, authorised the test to go ahead on April 25th, 1986 and the test would be performed by the workers of the afternoon shift. However, party officials from Kyiv requested that the test be delayed to late that night, as they did not want citizens to lose power in the middle of the day. Despite the workers of the afternoon shift being debriefed on what to do, the night shift workers were tasked with going ahead with the test instead.

Anatoly Dyatlov, deputy Chief Engineer, was monitoring the test, with the nightshift foreman, Alexander Akimov, and the Senior Reactor Control Engineer, Leonid Toptumov, who was only 25. Toptumov had only been operating the reactor for 2 months before the test, whilst neither Akimov or Toptumov had ever done the test before and weren’t properly briefed, with the test manual being heavily annotated and thus hard to follow. This meant that the two men were relying entirely on Dyatlov, as he was the most experienced in nuclear energy. In order to conduct the test, the reactors power levels had to be reduced to around 700 MW. However, an error was made by Toptumov.

Control rods help moderate the fission reactions, which heat up the water, which spins the turbines that generate the electricity. Toptumov’s mistake was that he had put these control rods in far too deep and the reactor practically went offline. Dyatlov was infuriated at the error but still insisted that the test go through anyway, despite the lack of power that was required to do so. He ordered that the control rods be raised, in an attempt to bring the power back up. The workers did what they were told and raised all but 8 control rods, whilst the minimum amount for safety is around about 30.

Many debate what happened next. Dyatlov claimed that everything was going as planned and part of the test was to press the emergency shut down button. However, many others testified that the power levels began to rise incredibly fast to dangerous levels. Whatever the case may be, what we know for certain is that Akimov pressed the AZ-5 emergency shut down button, which re-inserted every single control rod into the core.

Logically, this was supposed to immediately shut down all power. However, due to cutting cost, the rods were tipped with graphite, which got stuck at the heart of the core due to steam pressure. Graphite, when reacting with the radioactive elements, causes an increase in energy, before the control rods shut it down. The levels of energy rose higher and higher and, with the added steam pressure, the 1000 ton lid of the reactor was blown clean off. Then, once the core was exposed a second, undetermined, reaction occurred, causing and even larger explosion that blew the roof off the factory.

At 1:23 in the morning, the explosion echoed around the nearby city of Pripyat. Decimeters in the plant, that were only capable of detecting 3.6 roentgen per hour, broke due to the overload. The reactor was actually emitting over 15,000 roentgen per hour. Firefighters quickly arrived on the scene, many of whom succumbed to radiation sickness. Once they arrived at Pripyat Hospital, their highly radioactive clothes had to be taken off and we thrown into the basement, where they still rest to this day.

A photo of the firefighters clothes in the basement of Pripyat Hospital

Over 45,000 residents from Pripyat had to be evacuated. Eventually, a large sarcophagus was built over the reactor to contain the radiation, which was replaced by the Chernobyl New Safe Containment in 2016.

Dyatlov was sentenced to 10 years in prison for criminal negligence and failure to comply with the safety regulations of the test. He was released after serving only 4 years due to health concerns and died in 1995, aged 64 of bone marrow cancer, likely caused by his exposure to the plant’s radiation. Tomin, despite attempting to commit suicide multiple times, was also sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was also released from prison early and, as far as we’re aware, he is still alive today, living with his family in Udomlya. Bryukhanov sentenced to 10 years also, for gross violation of safety regulations, creating conditions that led to an explosion, mismanagement by understating the radiation levels after the accident, administrative negligence and sending people into known contaminated areas. He was released for good behaviour in 1991 and died in 2021 from an undisclosed disease, although we know he had Parkinson’s later in life.

Bryukhanov (left), Dyatlov (centre) and Tomin (right), on trial for their negligence at Chernobyl

To this day, the Russian Government still claims that only 31 people died from the disaster, whilst UN estimates claimed that 50 deaths were caused as a direct result of the explosion, with a further 4,000 succumbing to radiation sickness or other illnesses related to exposure such as cancer. Many scientists cite the Chernobyl Disaster as the worst disaster in the history of nuclear energy.

The Soviet-Afghan War

In 1973, Mohammad Daoud Khan overthrew his own first cousin, the King of Afghanistan, establishing an autocratic one party nation. Despite his many economic reforms, similar to those of his cousins, Khan’s foreign policy strained tension with neighbours and factions within his own country. Eventually, Khan was overthrown and killed by the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan lead by Hafizullah Amin in 1978, making Afghanistan a Communist nation.

Insurgent cars arriving at the Presidential Palace, 1978

Soon, the new Communist Afghanistan, with new President, Nur Muhammed Taraki, began facing struggles. They tried to reform women’s rights, mainly to education, make the state more secular and enacted some awful land reforms. Anyone who spoke out about these reforms would be arrested. Soon, uprisings from Islamic Rural areas began occurring and Taraki began losing control of his nation. During the violence, Taraki was killed by Amin, allowing Amin to ascend to power

Meanwhile, Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Union, and the rest of the Kremlin did not trust Amin and decided that in order to secure their next door neighbour, not wanting yet another fundamentalist Islamic country on their doorstep like Iran before it, Amin had to die. On December 27th, 1979, Soviet forces raided the palace, killing Amin, putting a Soviet puppet in his place, Babrak Karmal. Whilst Soviet forces did manage to capture key military forts in cities and urban areas, they were unable to secure the insurgents in the mountainous countryside, who would use the mountainous terrain to wage brutal guerilla warfare. These insurgents were called the Mujahideen. And this was just the ticket, the US needed.

Outside of the Warsaw Pact, the international community strongly opposed the invasion, with many other Communist nations such as China, Muslim majority countries such as Pakistan and many more opposing the occupation. However, no-one was a stronger opponent than the United States, who imposed a trade embargo on Soviet products, boycotted the Olympic Games, which were being held in Moscow that year, and, most importantly funded the Mujahideen.

It was the height of the Cold War, and, after the Iran Hostage Crisis, Jimmy Carter had not won a second term. The new “tough on Communism” Ronald Reagan wanted to limit Soviet expansion as much as possible, whilst also wanting to give the Soviets their own Vietnam.

2/2/1983 President Reagan meeting with Afghan Freedom Fighters in the Oval Office to discuss Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan

We must not break faith with those who are risking their lives—on every continent from Afghanistan to Nicaragua—to defy Soviet-supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth.
Reagan in his 1985 State of the Union address.

Over six years, in Operation Cyclone, the CIA would funnel $3.2 billion worth of weapons, economic help and military training towards the Mujahideen. Pakistan was also a large supporter of the Mujahideen’s efforts against the Soviets, serving as an operational base for the Mujahideen. The British were also a key supplier of finances and weapons, with MI6 assisting from their base in Islamabad.

During the war, atrocities were committed by both sides, with the Soviet Forces engaging in chemical warfare and airstrikes on civilian targets, whilst the Mujahideen brutally tortured captives. These acts forced 4 million citizens to seek asylum and did nothing to help either side.

Soon, the USSR, under the new leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev, realised that there was no winning this conflict. It began to slowly withdraw whilst stabilising a Communist government under their new puppet, Mohammad Najibullah, who, despite his decent reforms, did not help the trust in the communist government. They also restricted direct involvement, only training and funding a new Communist Afghan Army, which ultimately resulted in failure.

The Soviet-Afghan War was an absolute catastrophe for the Soviets. It showed the weakness in the Belly of the Bear, and proved that, with time, the Soviet Union could be defeated. Many historians cite the war as laying the groundwork for the collapse of the Soviet Union, only 2 years after the end of the war. The Communist regime eventually collapsed, thrusting Afghanistan into civil war, with one of the factions of the Mujahideen, the Taliban, taking control of the country in 1996 and were not deposed until 2001 during the War in Afghanistan, starting a terrorist insurgency that would last 2 decades, eventually returning to power in 2021 after the American withdrawal from the country. By many scholars, the Taliban and the rule they imposed over Afghanistan, as well as their insurgency, is currently considered to be one of the greatest enemies to the United States and the world at large

A modern day photo of Taliban Insurgents in Afghanistan

The United States respects the people of Afghanistan […] but we condemn the Taliban regime. […] It is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists. By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder.
George W. Bush addressing Congress

The Cuban Missile Crisis

In 1959, the Cuban communist revolutionary, Fidel Castro with the help of Che Guevara toppled the US Backed military dictator, Fulgencio Batista. He immediately began mass land reforms, giving land taken by the Americans back to the Cuban people, before he aligned himself with Nikita Khrushchev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

A photo of Castro (left) and Khrushchev (right)

Fearing the communism in his own backyard, President Dwight D. Eisenhower cut off all diplomatic relations with Cuba and issued a trade embargo. He also requested, on his way out, that some Jupiter Class Nuclear Missiles be place in Turkey and an invasion would go ahead against Cuba, using 1400 trained CIA Trained Cuban exiles. The next President, the young and charming John F. Kennedy was told that the US involvement could be covered up and that the invasion would cause an anti-Communist uprising in Cuba.

Unfortunately, the plan went awry very quickly, with poorly disguised bombers missing their targets and immediately being identified as American. The invasion was an absolute disaster, with hundreds of American lives being ended and thousands captured.

American Operatives being captured in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs

Sensing weakness from America, Khrushchev took this opportunity to erect the Berlin Wall in August of that same year. Kennedy spoke on the wall in his famous speech, where he said:

[D]emocracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in.
Kennedy speaking in Berlin in 1963

Not long after that, Khrushchev was on his boat in the Black Sea, thinking about the Jupiter Missiles in Turkey. Whilst the missiles weren’t highly effective, Khrushchev still believed the missile’s presence to be an act of aggression. And slowly, an idea began to brew in Khrushchev’s head.

Day 1 – October 16th, 1963

At around 8 in the morning on October 16th, 1962, NSA, McGeorge Bundy arrived at the White House, informing President Kennedy of a photograph taken by a U2 Spy plane over Cuba. The photographs clearly showed Soviet Medium Range Ballistic missiles, with a range far enough to destroy most of the Eastern Seaboard.

Labeled photographs taken by the spy plane

Within minutes, Kennedy gathered his foreign policy team, including Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara, Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, Chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff, General Maxwell Taylor, Speech Writer, Ted Sorenson and ambassador Lewin Thompson. As the crisis developed, the committee would soon become known as the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, or ExComm for short.

They agreed to secrecy and not to let anyone else know about the crisis. However, the secrecy could not really be broken, as no-one really knew specifics. Would the missiles launch and, if so, when? Could there be more missiles? But, amidst the uncertainty and speculation, Kennedy was firm. He could not allow Soviet missiles in Cuba and they had to be removed immediately. There were 4 main options considered, either a limited airstrike on the missile bases, a wider strike which would include other Cuban military facilities, an even larger airstrike which would then be followed up with an invasion or a blockade of Cuba.

Day 2 – October 17th, 1962

They eventually ruled out just the airstrikes, insisting that if an airstrike were to be conducted it must be backed by an invasion, lest Khrushchev send more missiles. However, this was under the pretence that the missiles were not ready to fire, which they, in fact, were. More U2 Spy planes discovered even more sites, with the number now totalling 32 Soviet missiles in Cuba. However, Kennedy had to keep up appearances, having a dinner with the Libyan Crown Prince and supporting Democratic Congressional candidates in Connecticut.

Day 3 – October 18th, 1962

Kennedy decided to take action and had a meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister, Andrei Gromyko, who denied that any Soviet offensive weapons were in Cuba.

As to Soviet assistance to Cuba, Mr. Gromyko stated that he was instructed to make it clear, as the Soviet Government had already done, that such assistance, pursued solely for the purpose of contributing to the defense capabilities of Cuba and to the development of Cuba, toward the development of its agriculture and land amelioration, and training by Soviet specialists of Cuba nationals in handling defensive armaments were by no means offensive. If it were otherwise, the Soviet Government would have never become involved in rendering such assistance.
An excerpt from a memorandum from the meeting with Gromyko

Kennedy was specific to not mention the missiles specifically, but did recall his public warning that he made on September 14th, that in response to any offensive weapons being put into Cuba by the Soviets, there would be the “gravest consequences”

Day 4 – October 19th, 1962

Still attempting to keep up appearances, Kennedy attended campaign events in Ohio and Illinois, whilst the rest of ExComm discussed plans to move forward. During this time, another spy plane managed to capture photos of an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile Site. This would mean that if missiles were to fire from Cuba, the only safe major city in the United States would be Seattle.

A map with the range of the missiles highlighted in red

Day 5 – October 20th, 1962

Kennedy ended up having to lie to the American people so they would not panic, saying he had a cold, in order to return home to Washington instead of continuing his six state tour. After 5 hours of deliberation, ExComm came to the conclusion that a blockade must be enforced. However, they could not exactly call it a blockade, as that would be an act of war, so they very subtly decided to call it a “Quarantine”

Day 6 – October 21st, 1962

The military advisors, fearing their planned invasion would not go ahead, attempted to convince Kennedy one more time of an air strike. However, they could not guarantee that all the missiles would be hit. This was too much of a risk for Kennedy, who decided to go ahead with the quarantine.

Day 7 – October 22nd, 1962

Kennedy contacted Truman and Eisenhower, the two presidents before him, about the situation, before contacting British Prime Minister, Harold McMillan. He then wrote to Nikita Khrushchev before addressing the nation on national television.

This Government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet Military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.

[…]

Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation’s security to constitute maximum peril. Nuclear weapons are so destructive and ballistic missiles are so swift, that any substantially increased possibility of their use or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace.

Acting, therefore, in the defence of our own security and of the entire Western Hemisphere, and under the authority entrusted to me by the Constitution as endorsed by the resolution of the Congress, I have directed that the following initial steps be taken immediately:

First: To halt this offensive build-up, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.

Second: I have directed the continued and increased close surveillance of Cuba and its military build-up. The foreign ministers of the OAS, in their communique of October 6, rejected secrecy in such matters in this hemisphere. Should these offensive military preparations continue, thus increasing the threat to the hemisphere, further action will be justified. I have directed the Armed Forces to prepare for any eventualities; and I trust that in the interest of both the Cuban people and the Soviet technicians at the sites, the hazards to all concerned in continuing this threat will be recognized.

Third: It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.

Fourth: As a necessary military precaution, I have reinforced our base at Guantanamo, evacuated today the dependents of our personnel there, and ordered additional military units to be on a standby alert basis.

Fifth: We are calling tonight for an immediate meeting of the Organ of Consultation under the Organization of American States, to consider this threat to hemispheric security and to invoke articles 6 and 8 of the Rio Treaty in support of all necessary action. The United Nations Charter allows for regional security arrangements–and the nations of this hemisphere decided long ago against the military presence of outside powers. Our other allies around the world have also been alerted.

Sixth: Under the Charter of the United Nations, we are asking tonight that an emergency meeting of the Security Council be convoked without delay to take action against this latest Soviet threat to world peace. Our resolution will call for the prompt dismantling and withdrawal of all offensive weapons in Cuba, under the supervision of U.N. observers, before the quarantine can be lifted.

Seventh and finally: I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations. I call upon him further to abandon this course of world domination, and to join in an historic effort to end the perilous arms race and to transform the history of man. He has an opportunity now to move the world back from the abyss of destruction–by returning to his government’s own words that it had no need to station missiles outside its own territory, and withdrawing these weapons from Cuba–by refraining from any action which will widen or deepen the present crisis–and then by participating in a search for peaceful and permanent solutions.

[…]

My fellow citizens: let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. No one can see precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred. Many months of sacrifice and self-discipline lie ahead–months in which our patience and our will will be tested–months in which many threats and denunciations will keep us aware of our dangers. But the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing.

The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are–but it is the one most consistent with our character and courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of freedom is always high–and Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or submission.

Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right- -not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.
JFK’s address to the nation

Day 8 – October 23rd, 1962

Kennedy signing the authorisation for the quarantine

Kennedy once again wrote to Khrushchev, requesting the stop of all Soviet ships towards Cuba. However, this writing would often take an obscenely long amount of time, with them having to be shipped halfway around the planet, translated, having a response written up, sent back and translated again. Sometimes, messages were not given responses for 12 hours at a time.

Day 9 – October 24th, 1962

Khrushchev wrote back to Kennedy regarding his letter. Whilst he did not actively threaten Kennedy, he also did not say he wouldn’t back down either.

You, Mr. President, are not declaring a quarantine, but rather are setting forth an ultimatum and threatening that if we do not give in to your demands you will use force. Consider what you are saying! And you want to persuade me to agree to this! What would it mean to agree to these demands? It would mean guiding oneself in one’s relations with other countries not by reason, but by submitting to arbitrariness. You are no longer appealing to reason, but wish to intimidate us.
An excerpt of Khrushchev’s letter to Kennedy

The DEFCON level was moved to DEFCON 2, one step short of all out war.

Day 10 – October 25th, 1962

Photos from the missile sites being shown at the UN

Kennedy once again urged Khrushchev to back down, whilst at the UN, United States Ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, verbally attacked Valerian Zorin, Soviet Ambassador to the UN, presenting photos of the missiles.

Stevenson: Mr. Zorin, I remind you that you didn’t deny the existence of these weapons. Instead, we heard that they had suddenly become defensive weapons. But today — again, if I heard you correctly — you now say they don’t exist, or that we haven’t proved they exist. […] Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the U.S.S.R has placed and is placing medium and intermediate range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no? Don’t wait for the translation: yes or no?

Zorin: I am not in an American courtroom, sir, and therefore I do not wish to answer a question that is put to me in the fashion in which a prosecutor does. In due course, sir, you will have your reply. […]

Stevenson: You are in the court of world opinion right now and you can answer yes or no. You have denied that they exist. I want to know […] if I’ve understood you correctly. [shows the photos] These weapons, gentlemen, these launching pads, these planes — of which we have illustrated only a fragment — are a part of a much larger weapons complex, what is called a weapons system. To support this build-up, to operate these advanced weapons systems, the Soviet Union has sent a large number of military personnel to Cuba — a force now amounting to several thousand men. These photographs, as I say, are available to members for detailed examination in the Trusteeship Council room following this meeting. There I will have one of my aides who will gladly explain them to you in such detail as you may require.

Day 11 – October 26th, 1962

A Soviet Freighter was stopped at the quarantine line and was searched for contraband. No such contraband was found and it was allowed to pass into Cuba. Castro sent a letter to Khrushchev, urging him to initiate a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States.

Day 12 – October 27th, 1962

A letter arrived from the Kremlin, requesting that in exchange for removing the missiles from Cuba, Kennedy had to withdraw the Jupiter Missiles from Turkey. Many in ExComm saw this as outrageous, with some even comparing it to Chamberlain’s appeasement before WW2, an appeasement which Kennedy’s father strongly supported. This option is opposed even more when Cuban Anti-Aircraft guns shoot down a U2 Spy Plane, killing the pilot. An American man had been killed because of this, and many military men in ExComm sought war. Kennedy resisted this pressure to invade strongly. Later that night, Bobby Kennedy met with a Soviet Ambassador to negotiate the terms of the missile withdrawal.

Day 13 – October 28th, 1962

The thirteen most tense days in human history were over, as both nations withdrew their missiles from Turkey and Cuba respectively as the world blew a massive sigh of relief. In addition, the United States pledged to never invade Cuba again.

Kennedy was eventually shot in a motorcade in Dallas in November of the next year. Some suspect that Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis undermined the CIA, who many believed ordered his assassination. Khrushchev was ousted from the communist party in 1964 and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev. Khrushchev then died of a heart attack in 1971. A hotline was set up between the two nations via a famous red phone in each of the leader’s offices, to ensure such delays in communication would never happen again. However, the United States and Cuba never sought diplomatic reconciliation until 2016, when Barack Obama became the first President to visit the country since 1928.

President Obama meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro

Many say, to this day, that the Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest humanity ever came to ending the world via nuclear annihilation. Whilst many, at the time, saw the two leaders of the two superpowers as traitors to their people for seeking a diplomatic solution, many today see them as brave men for doing such things and many in the West cite them as some of the greatest leaders of their respective countries.

The Construction of the Berlin Wall

After the end of World War 2, the 4 major powers that defeated the Nazis, the Americans, French, British and Soviets gathered together to discuss the matter of Germany. The powers feared that if Germany were to be reunited, at least immediately, the ideas of Nazism and Fascism could make a rise once more. An idea was proposed, that Germany be divided into West and East as a temporary measure, the West being occupied by the USA, UK and France and the East being controlled by the USSR.

However, soon the question of Berlin came up. Being around 200 miles into East Germany, logic dictated that Berlin fell into the hands of the Soviets. However, whoever controlled the capital practically controlled the country so a subdivision was set up, wherein France, Britain and America made the Western side of Berlin a part of West Germany, whilst the Eastern half was controlled by East Germany.

Soon, this temporary measure became somewhat permanent. The city of Berlin soon became divided into East Berliners and West Berliners. The West promoted the values of the countries occupying such as democracy and liberal market economies whilst the East promoted communism, not just in East Germany but other countries surrounding themselves. Trade from West to East was banned and a practically impenetrable border was made across East Germany and Czechoslovakia.

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia, all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and, in many cases, increasing measure of control from Moscow. Athens alone — Greece with its immortal glories — is free to decide its future at an election under British, American and French observation.
Winston Churchill speaking at a Midwestern College, 1946

Whilst East Germans weren’t strictly allowed to leave East Germany to West Germany, the East Berliners, could simply walk across the road to West Berlin and were allowed to move from there. By 1961, 3.5 million people had followed this practice. This open border posed a problem to the Soviets. The Soviets had been portraying the West as a continuation of Nazism and their citizens were soon finding that wasn’t the case.

Whilst the Western Allies were promoting the reconstruction of Germany after the war, Soviets were extracting resources as war reparations, making the economic situation dire. Many East Berliners sought jobs in the West due to the more stable currency, whilst West Berliners bought products for cheaper prices in the East. Whilst education and healthcare were free in the East, consumer goods, salaries and general freedoms were better in the West, in no small part to the Eastern Secret police, called the Stasi, who would report on and arrest anyone accused of Anti-Soviet behaviour. Eventually, the General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev had enough of the emigration.

On August 13th, 1961, Berliners woke up to a large fence surrounding West Berlin. With 43km (27 miles) across Berlin and a further 112km (69.5 miles) in East Germany, Berlin was permanently divided. Before further construction could continue, some chose to leap over the barbed wire into the West but, before long, the Berlin Wall was fully constructed.

By 1975, large concrete barricades, rising to 3.6m (11ft) in height replaced the fences, with a smooth pipe to prevent climbing on the West Side. 302 watchtowers were set up in a new area called the Death Strip, a 100m (328ft) wide area in between the main wall and a less developed wall on the Eastern side. This area was littered with landmines, guard dogs and spike traps. Families were divided, friends separated and the ultimate symbol of the Eastern Bloc had been built, an authoritarian impassible wall that represented everything the West believed about Communism.

Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was “civis Romanus sum.” Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

[…]

There are many people in the world who really don’t understand, or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass’ sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.

Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us. […] While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it, for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.

What is true of this city is true of Germany–real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. [This] generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with good will to all people.

[…]

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
John F. Kennedy speaking at the Rudolph Wilde Platz in Berlin, 1963

JFK making his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, 1963

The Death of Stalin

By 1953, Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party, had been ruling the country for almost 30 years. Under his tyrannical rule, his paranoia led to him ordering the deaths of 1.2 million people in what was called The Great Purge, with a further 1.7 million dying in work camps called Gulags. It was a fearful time to be a Soviet citizen and no-one was safe from the almost nightly raids of Stalin’s Secret Police, the NKVD, who would arrest anyone even lightly suspected of having anti-Communist sentiment. However, this paranoia lead to stress and this stress soon got to Stalin.

On February 28th, members of Stalin’s Inner circle gathered for a night of drinking at one of his Dachas. The party consisted of Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria, Former Head of the NKVD, Nikita Khrushchev, Moscow Party Head, Georgy Malenkov, Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, and Vyacheslav Molotov, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs. Once the party was over, Stalin retired to his quarters at 4am and the other 4 went home. Stalin requested to not be disturbed. By 11pm, not a sound had been heard from Stalin’s room. His housekeeper went inside, only to find Stalin unconscious on the floor in a puddle of his own urine.

Immediately, members of the Politburo, the leaders of the Central Committee of the Communist Party were called to assess the damage and to see what could be done. Whilst calling a doctor was recommended, they encountered a slight problem. The previous year, Stalin had begun to believe that Jewish doctors were plotting to poison him, which they obviously weren’t. However, he began imprisoning and executing hundreds of Jewish Doctors, which came back around to bite him. The majority of actually good and competent doctors in the Soviet Union were Jewish, meaning that only the bad ones were left. If they managed to call upon a good doctor and Stalin got better, they thought he may see the act as treasonous, so they intentionally called upon the bad doctors that Stalin hadn’t imprisoned.

They gave him a diagnosis. Stalin had suffered a stroke. Ultimately, Stalin died on March 5th of 1953, leaving the Politburo without Stalin’s guidance, while Malenkov assumed the role of acting General Secretary. Whilst many were distraught by this, some saw an opportunity. Out of those, 3 members of the Politburo emerged from the power struggle, all vying for the top job.

Georgy Malenkov – Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union

Malenkov was the natural choice, as he was next in the line of succession due to his position in the party. While he assumed an acting role, this ultimately meant nothing without other party members. Malenkov’s position was fragile, and only needed a little brute force to bring it crashing down.

Lavrentiy Beria – Former Head of the NKVD

During Stalin’s purges, Beria was the man largely responsible for most of the killings, overseeing many of the names on the lists. Many, including Stalin himself, say that Beria was to Stalin as Himmler was to Hitler. He was an unfiltered psychopath, who would use his old position to sexually assault and rape young women, including teenagers and young girls. He knew that in order to gain power, he must ally himself with Malenkov.

Nikita Khrushchev – Moscow Party Head

Khrushchev was seen as very unambitious by many others in the party, who all believed that Stalin only kept him around because he had a good sense of humour. However, Khrushchev knew his reputation and knew that if he kept his head down, he could stay in Stalin’s good books. But, with Stalin gone, he made a quick grasp for power, fearing that he could end up dead if Beria, a long time rival of his, assumed office.

Whilst the preparations were going ahead for Stalin’s funeral, Beria began making moves. He requested of Malenkov that he become Minister of Internal Affairs, which he merged with the Ministry of State Security, an organisation that would become the KGB in 1954. He then replaced the Red Army soldiers in Moscow with his secret police he just created. Many in the committee feared that Beria was attempting to organise a coup. Beria then began releasing millions of political prisoners, reduced lengthy prison sentences and halted mass arrests. Many believe this was done as an attempt to distance himself the Stalin and increase his popularity with the Soviet people.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was an uprising in East Germany. After the uprising, Beria believed that Germany should be reunited, for American compensation. Khrushchev saw this as highly anti-communist so hatched a plot to remove Beria. He began by seeking help from the army and, at a great personal risk, began talks with Georgy Zhukov, head of the Ministry of Defence and a key figure in the Soviet victory at Stalingrad during the war. Eventually, Zhukov joined the plot, and many others in the party began to follow suit, including Malenkov.

A photo of Khrushchev (left) and Zhukov (centre)

On June 26th, 1953, 3 months after Stalin’s death, a Politburo meeting was held. At the meeting, Khrushchev proposed that Beria be dismissed from the party, due to him being anti-communist and a spy for the British. Things escalated very quickly, with Beria yelling, asking what was going on, and, before a vote could be counted, Malenkov pressed a button underneath his desk, whereupon a group of Red Army soldiers stormed the room and arrested Beria. Due to Beria’s men guarding the building, he had to be smuggled out of the Kremlin at nightfall in a truck.

On December 23rd, Beria was brought before a tribunal, where he could not defend himself. He was accused of treason, terrorism and counter-revolutionary activity. Beria, as well as his associates, were sentenced to death that same day. Beria began begging on his knees pleading for mercy, before he was shot and killed by a Red Army General. His remains were cremated and buried in the woods.

Now practically unopposed, Khrushchev ousted Malenkov as General Secretary of the Communist Party and became leader of the Soviet Union by 1956. One of the first things he did as Leader was denounce Stalin in “The Secret Speech”

A photo of Khrushchev at the Secret Speech

The negative characteristics of Stalin [which Lenin noted on] transformed themselves during the last years into a grave abuse of power by Stalin, which caused untold harm to our party.

Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation, and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to prove his viewpoint, and the correctness of his position was doomed to removal from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation.

[…]

Stalin [unlike Lenin] used extreme methods and mass repressions at a time when the revolution was already victorious.

[…]

It is clear that here Stalin showed in a whole series of cases his intolerance, his brutality, and his abuse of power. Instead of proving his political correctness and mobilising the masses, he often chose the path of repression and physical annihilation, not only against actual enemies, but also against individuals who had not committed any crimes against the party and the Soviet Government.
An excerpt from Khrushchev’s speech

Despite his speech exposing the crimes Stalin committed against his own people and the tens of millions killed under his orders, Khrushchev knew that the process of De-Stalinisation would be a long and arduous one but would ultimately be a better path for the Soviet Union than the three decades prior.

The Truman Doctrine

In the aftermath of World War 2, many of the war torn countries, such as France and Poland, began to turn to Communism in order to rebuild. Wanting to expand their influence, the Communist USSR, lead by Joseph Stalin, wanted to expand Communism all across Europe. Meanwhile, the United States opposed this, wanting more countries to embrace free market economies, capitalism and democracy. This lead to tensions rising between the two factions who were once allies against the Nazis. This divide between Western Capitalism and Eastern Communism was no clearer than in Greece.

From 1946-1949, Greece was in a civil war, between the Nationalists, backed by the United States, and the Communists. Whilst Harry Truman, President of the United States, feared that the Soviets may back the Greek Communists, Stalin’s focus was more on Turkey, and seeing if they would become a Communist nation, due to their oil production in Iran needing to pass through Turkish waters, requesting a military base in the country and transit rights through the Dardanelles Strait and the Sea of Marmara. Due to the economic impacts of having the water being Soviet Occupied, the United States sought a democracy in Turkey.

Many people feared that the Soviet Union would have a monopoly over the Mediterranean if Greece and Turkey fell to Communism. Truman chose to take action and addressed Congress with his plan on March 12th, 1947

One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.

The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.
An excerpt from Truman’s speech to Congress

Truman was very careful to not explicitly name Communism or the USSR, but everyone knew what he was talking about. In order to truly combat communism, Truman, with the advise from Senator Arthur Vandenburg, over exaggerated the crisis, to such a degree where it would scare the American people and get them to side against Communism. Many modern historians cite the Truman Doctrine as the declaration of the Cold War.

The Battle of Berlin

April 20th, 1945. On the Führer’s birthday, Nazi Germany is on its last legs. As the Soviet Artillery begins to hammer the city from the east and the Allied forces closing in on the Rhine from the west, it may have just dawned on Adolf Hitler, who had ruled Germany with an iron fist for the last twelve years, that his thousand year Reich may never come to pass.

Soviet Artillery on the outskirts of Berlin

1944 had been a disaster for the German war effort. Italy had become embroiled in Civil War in the aftermath of the deposition of Mussolini the year prior, with the fascist faction being a puppet of Hitler. The war had turned sour and the Fascist only controlled the North by the end of 1944. In the west, the Allies had made a great achievement with the Normandy Landings on D-Day, and had been liberating France all throughout the year. With mass army encirclements across the Eastern Front, the Red Army was breezily pushing across Eastern Europe, uncovering Nazi war crimes along the way.

Bulgaria and Romania had fallen under Soviet control, with Hungary holding out in Budapest as the last bastion of Fascism in Eastern Europe. Hitler, hoping to secure Hungarian oil fields, had focused the last of his armoured reserves onto relieving the defenders of Budapest. However, this had fallen right into Soviet hands. Considering that Hitler had pushed the armoured corps down to the increasingly pressurised Hungarian front, this meant that the Polish front would, hopefully, be a breeze. In just 11 weeks, the Soviet Army captured Warsaw and arrived on the outskirts of Berlin.

Throughout January of 1945, the outgunned Germans were forced into desperate retreat. General Heinz Guderian insisted to Hitler on the need for more armour in Poland. Whilst Hitler claimed that he would send two SS Panzer Divisions, these only ended up on the Hungarian front, leading to mass surrenders on the Polish Front. Meanwhile, propaganda echoed over the radio, implying the incoming apocalypse, comparing the advancing Soviets to the Mongol horde intent on bringing about the death of civilisation, encouraging thousands of Germans to flee west.

However, the problem with the Soviets speedy advance was that it had left Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s flank exposed. He decided not to advance any further onto the capital of the Reich until it was covered. Managing to trap German forces in a northern pocket in Prussia, the new Front line extended from Stettin in the north all the way down to the Czech border.

Despite assurance from the Allies that Berlin would fall into Soviet hands after the war, Stalin was quick to rush the capital, devising an encirclement around the city and a force to push towards the Elba river to meet up with the Allies. The 1st Belorussian Front would be the centre of the thrust towards Berlin, whilst the 1st Ukrainian Front would push from the south towards Potsdam and Dresden and the 2nd Belorussian Front would push from the north in order to prevent reinforcement. Used to open fighting in massive spaces, veterans of the Battle of Stalingrad handed out leaflets regarding the ins and outs of urban combat.

Whilst the German Defence force seemed decent enough, totalling around 760,000 men, with additional tanks, artillery and aircraft, it was nothing compared to the sheer numbers of the Red Army, who had a force of 2.3 million men attacking Berlin. In addition, much of the German defences were made of the Volkssturm, a mass conscripted force of any man between 16 and 60. Much of the army was also comprised of Hitler Youth boys, some even as young as 12. Furthermore, having lost the Hungarian oil fields, they could not rely on their Panzer Divisions or the Luftwaffe for much support.

The battle began on April 16th near Seelow Heights, beginning with barrages from Katyusha Rocket launchers, which lit up the night. One Soviet Soldier described it as being as bright as daylight, with them having to cover their ears to stop them from going deaf. However, due to this mass bombardment, the terrain was significantly more difficult to traverse for the Red Army, not just because of the holes in the ground but also the spotlights, intended to blind the enemy, ended up reflecting in all the smoke, confusing the advancing forces.

A photo of the Berlin Defence force with Panzerfausts at Seelow Heights

The Oder River was becoming another problem in the Soviet Advance, as many who tried to cross it were cut down by the desperate defence forces. Attempting to force a crossing, Zhukov ordered that both tank armies attack simultaneously, causing enormous traffic jams behind the front lines. Upon reaching the heights, the attackers were once more pushed back by concealed artillery divisions and Panzerfausts. Despite these setbacks, the South had eventually broken, and Soviet forces finally had unlocked the gates to the capital city.

As the initial footmen attacked Berlin, Hitler, a shadow of his former self, cowered in the Führerbunker, a secret underground complex buried deep underneath the Old Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Down underneath the city, he was accompanied by Martin Bormann, Personal Secretary to the Führer and Chief of the Party Chancellery, Joseph Goebbels, Gauleiter of Berlin and Reichsminister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, with his family and Eva Braun, the long time lover of Hitler. His last visit to the surface was on his birthday of April 20th, awarding an Iron Cross to a young boy in the Hitler Youth. He was noticeably withered and older, having developed an undiagnosed tick in his right hand.

One of the last photos ever taken of Hitler on April 20th, 1945

Despite this, Bormann and Goebbels remained loyal to the end. Over the next week, he distanced himself from Hermann Göring, former Head of the Luftwaffe, Speaker of the Reichstag and Minister of Prussia, who, upon learning that Hitler had plans of taking his own life, had telegrammed to the Führer requesting leadership of the Third Reich. Viewing this as an act of treason, he expelled him from the party, fired him from all government positions and ordered his arrest. A similar scenario befell Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS, Reichminister of the Interior and Chief of the German Police, who had began peace talks with the Allies in an attempt to focus all effort onto the Eastern Front. Learning of this on April 28th, Hitler reacted to this the same way he did with Göring. Hitler’s paranoia and delusion was slowly catching up to him.

On the front, many soldiers, who had considered deserting, were hanged in the streets. By now, all the remaining forces could do was simply delay the inevitable, as forces cut in from the northeast and southwest. However, Hitler was still hopeful of a mass counter attack by General Felix Steiner, an Obergruppenführer in the SS, which would hopefully encircle the Soviet forces in the city, in a similar vein to what the Soviets had done to them at Stalingrad two years prior.

However, this attack never came, due to the lack of manpower and supplies in Steiner’s army. Upon learning this news on April 22nd, Hitler flew into a “tearful rage”. His delusions of a Thousand Year Reich shattered into a thousand pieces as he officially declared that the war was lost, saying that he would remain in Berlin until the end, whereupon he would commit suicide. It was not long after this that he heard of Mussolini’s execution by the Italian Partisans, whereupon his body was hanged upside down from the roof of a service station where it was spat on by the people he oppressed throughout his rule.

Soon after this, the encirclement was completed, leaving Berlin with around 85,000 men, 40,000 of whom were in the Volkssturm, defending the city. As the Soviets tightened their grip, the last bits of defence were just around the governmental district. Many high ranking Nazis were making plans of escape out of the city before it was too late. In the early morning of April 30th, the Soviet forces managed to capture the Reichstag, the symbolic heart of the German Reich, defended largely by foreign SS legions.

The Soviet flag billowing over the Reichstag

The previous day, Hitler was observed signing his final will and testament by Goebbels and Bormann. It detailed that Hitler would marry Braun as well as all “[he possesses] belongs – in so far as it has any value – to the Party. Should this no longer exist, to the State; should the State also be destroyed, no further decision of [his would be] necessary” except for portraits that he had purchased, which would be given to a gallery in Linz, his home town. It also detailed that he and Braun would soon commit suicide in order to avoid capture.

He detailed that the role of Führer be split into three bodies, the President, which would go to Karl Dönitz, Chief of German Naval High Command, the Chancellor, which would go to Goebbels, and Party Minister of the Nazi Party, which would go to Bormann. He gave an official order, allowing General Helmuth Weidling, who had largely led the defence of the city, to escape Berlin. Hitler then married Braun in a small ceremony, before both were found dead in his study in the Führerbunker in the afternoon of April 30th, Hitler having shot himself with his Walther PPK handgun, and Braun having taken a hydrogen cyanide capsule. Their ashes were cremated in a bomb crater with petrol as the Red Army’s artillery echoed through the streets

Despite this massive loss in morale for the Third Reich, Goebbels rejected Stalins offer for unconditional surrender, reducing the defence to isolated pockets around government buildings. However, eventually seeing the direness of the situation, Goebbels and his wife, Magda, fed cyanide to their six children before they too committed suicide on May 1st just outside the Führerbunker. His body was attempted to be cremated with the petrol left over from Hitler’s cremation, though it only did half a job, leaving the heavily charred body of Goebbels outside the bunker. His body was later taken into Soviet possession. In 1970, the remains were burned, crushed and scattered in the Biederitz River.

Weilding eventually began peace talks, ordering all the men to lay down their arms. The city fell and the German Reich was divided down the middle. By the time that Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Wehrmacht High Command, signed the unconditional surrender of Germany, only fragments of pre-Nazi German land remained a part of the Reich. Due to the new government never repudiating Nazism, Dönitz was never officially recognised as the President of Germany. Keitel was hanged in a botched execution for war crimes, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity and criminal conspiracy on October 16th, 1946. His head hit the trap door rim and it took him 24 minutes to die.

I call on God Almighty to have mercy on the German people. More than two million German soldiers went to their death for the fatherland before me. I follow now my sons – all for Germany.
The last words of Wilhelm Keitel

Many senior Nazis went into hiding, committed suicide or went on trial for their war crimes. Most notably, Bormann made a bid for freedom on May 2nd, eventually giving up and committing suicide on the grounds of Lehrte Station in Berlin. Unaware of this, the International Military Tribunal tried him in absentia at Nuremberg. His remains were not discovered until 1972 and were conclusively proven as his in 1998. His remains were cremated and his ashes were scattered over the Baltic Sea by his surviving family, in order to prevent a potential grave from becoming a neo-Nazi rallying site. His eldest son, Martin Adolf Bormann, openly denounced his father’s Nazi beliefs and Hitler, his godfather, and became a priest and a theology teacher, working on a mission in the Congo and meeting Holocaust survivors in Israel. He passed away in 2013.

Heinrich Himmler was captured by allied forces. After interrogation, he was subjected to a medical exam on May 23rd, including an oral one. Upon declining to open his mouth, he bit into a potassium cyanide capsule concealed in his mouth and died despite efforts to expel the poison from his system. He was buried in an unmarked grave, the location of which remains unknown to this day. His daughter, Gudrun Berwitz, openly associated with neo-Nazi circles and married an official of the neo-Nazi Homeland Party. She passed away in 2018.

Whilst Göring did end up at the Nuremberg trials for the role he played in the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity, he was not given the punishment assigned to him by the tribunal. Before his execution by hanging, he too ingested cyanide and died. His body was displayed on the execution grounds for witnesses before being cremated and his ashes thrown into the Isar River. Edda, his only child, hardly spoke publicly about her father aside from one interview in 1986, where she recalled him fondly. She passed away in 2018

Dönitz was also put on trial at Nuremberg, being found guilty for his crimes against peace. He was sentenced to ten years in prison. Whilst never repenting for his role in Nazi Germany, saying that he “acted at all times out of duty to his nation”, he actively avoided contact with neo-Nazis, even when approached by Manfred Roeder, who still believed him to be the legal leader of Germany, something that Dönitz called ridiculous. Roeder, taking this as a declaration of resignation, declared himself President of Germany and became an active terrorist.

Dönitz died on Christmas Eve 1980 at his home in Aumühle. He was buried without any military honours during a service where no-one was allowed to wear military uniform. Despite this, over 100 people in attendance had earned the Knights Cross in battle during the Second World War. Only Dönitz’s daughter, Ursula, survived the war, who remained very private about her family’s history until her death in 1990.

Weilding was taken into Soviet Custody, where he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for crimes perpetrated during the German occupation of the East. He died of an apparent heart attack in Vladimir whilst in the custody by the KGB in 1955. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the cemetery of Vladimir Central Prison. It is unknown if he had any children

Other high ranking Nazis, not directly involved in the Battle of Berlin also befell similar fates. Albert Speer, Reichminister of Armaments and Munitions and a chief Nazi Architect, was sentenced to 20 years at Nuremberg, attempting to portray his role in Nazi Germany as less significant than his peers, claims that were disproven after his death in 1981, being revealed that he was involved in multiple slave labour programmes across Nazi Occupied Europe. Adolf Eichmann, an SS Obersturmbannführer and key architect of the Holocaust, and Josef Mengele, an SS Hauptsturmführer and head of human experimentation at Auschwitz, both escaped to South America after the war. Whilst Eichmann was captured by Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence Service, and executed in 1961, Mengele lived out his life in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, until drowning after suffering a stroke in 1979.

In their vengeful advance across eastern Europe, thousands of civilian Germans were murdered by the Red Army, including thousands of sexual assaults of women. In all, 40 million people were killed by the Nazis under their regime, 17 million of whom were killed systematically as a part of the Holocaust. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany strictly outlines laws that will prevent a Nazi-like party from ever rising again.

Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing, and pictures and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship.

These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to personal honor.

Art and scholarship, research, and teaching shall be free. The freedom of teaching shall not release any person from allegiance to the constitution.
Article 5 of the German Constitution

Whoever allows content (section 11 (3)) suited to violating the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning or defaming a group defined by its national, racial, religious or ethnic origin, ideology, disability or sexual orientation or individuals on account of their belonging to one of these groups to come to the attention of another person who belongs to one of the aforementioned groups without having been requested to do so by that person incurs a penalty of a term of imprisonment not exceeding two years or a fine.
Section 192a of the German Criminal Code

One of the first meetings of the democratic Bundestag in West Germany, 1949

Casualties

The Greater Germanic Reich – 917,000–925,000
Soviet Union – 361,367
Civilian – 125,000

Liberation of the Concentration Camps

When we went to Nohra, […] we took a day trip into Buchenwald. […]It was just unbelievable to see. You couldn’t—there was so much of it, you couldn’t grasp at all. We just see these people standing, you see the bodies. You see the ashes. You see the ditches. It’s just—I can’t really describe it to tell you, you know, how horrendous it was to see these people treated like animals. You might see even worse than that.
Andrew Kiniry, 45th Evacuation Hospital, describing when the 3rd Army liberated Buchenwald

As the allies advanced from the West and the Soviets from the east, many expected to see the remnants of training camps or POW camps. What they found was beyond their wildest nightmares.

What they found were thousands upon thousands of men, women and children, all on the brink of starving to death, who had been left abandoned in fences like cattle. Not only were these people but specific groups of people. Some were disabled, some were gay, some were slavs. But the most notable among these groups of people were the Jews. The soldiers thought they had seen the worst of it but they were very wrong.

They found large gas chambers, in which the prisoners would be put inside, under the pretence of having a shower to cleanse themselves. Then, Zyklon B, a pesticide, would be poured in through the showers. Deaths could take anywhere between 3 minutes to 30. The bodies were then dragged out and burnt in ovens nearby. The specific targeting of Jews was called Germany’s “Final Solution”, which involved the eradication of the Jewish population from Europe. This was known as the Holocaust, but many Jews today prefer to call it the Shoah.

Over 5.7 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Others killed included 2-3million Soviet POWs, 1.9 million Poles, 1.5 million Romani, 250,000 disabled people, 170,000 Freemasons, 25,000 Slovenes, 15,000 homosexuals, 5,000 Jehovahs witnesses, 7,000 Spanish Republicans as well as countless others. Around half of the Jewish deaths were attributed to the gas chambers, whilst the rest were due to forced labour in the camps, starvation in the camps and ghettos as well as mass shootings, most notably by the Einsatzgruppen, a death squad that tailed the Wehrmacht in their march east.

Upon discovery of the concentration camps, Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, told his men to film the horrors they encountered. The film reels were then compiled into a 1 hour long documentary, shown as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials and the Trial of Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust, after his capture in 1961

Get it all on record now – get the films – get the witnesses – because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened
Dwight D. Eisenhower speaking to his men about the Concentration Camps

Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, George Patton and American forces at Ohrdruf concentration camp, a part of the Buchenwald network

The survivors were liberated, many only to find that their homes had been repossessed. Many Jews sought shelter in Palestine whilst others stayed in Europe, where persecution still occurs to this day. To this day, people still deny these events happened, either that the statistics are overestimates or that such things never occurred and is simply a victim complex made by Jews, despite the countless amount of evidence recorded not just by the Allies and Soviets but by the Germans themselves. Many cite the Holocaust as the greatest humanitarian tragedy in history.