Berlin: the flash-point of the Cold War, 1948-1989: David Williamson explains why events in Berlin twice threatened to unleash a third world war

Without Germany's defeat in 1945 and the succeeding power vacuum in central Europe in which the former members of the Grand Coalition be opposite toed each other eyeball to eyeball, the chilled War would not have occurr in the acute form that it did. At the Yalta discourse it had been agreed that Germany should be divided into four baldrics each administered by one of the victorious powers. Sovereignty passed collectively to the Four Powers, who, it was envisaged, would regulate Germany through the Control Commission based in Berlin, which was itself divided into four sectors. Disagreements intensified, however, and a united