Imagine a Cold War without the Berlin Wall – that iconic symbol of a stark ideological divide adorned in the covers of books by every major spy thriller writer from John le Carré to Joseph Kanon. A divided Berlin has been emblematic of the Cold War (1945-91). In this context, one cannot help asking a counterfactual often asked in the past – what if the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, had opted to push east and race the Soviets to Berlin?
In the spring of 1945, as Hitler’s Third Reich lay in ruins, Eisenhower made a fateful decision: to halt American and Allied forces at the Elbe River and allow the Soviet Red Army to take Berlin.
Had Eisenhower pushed for Berlin, the Cold War might still have occurred, but it would have been a different conflict. A united Germany, neutral or aligned with the West, would have weakened Soviet power in Europe. Berlin, without its iconic wall, would not serve as the stark symbol of ideological rivalry.
The nature of Postwar Europe would have been profoundly altered. The Cold War would have swung in a way favourable to the West, or perhaps its inception may have been prevented altogether.
The absence of Berlin as a flashpoint could have led to fewer tensions in Europe, and NATO’s formation might have shifted in focus.
What prevented Eisenhower from ordering the dash to Berlin? In his thrilling classic ‘The Last Battle’ (1966), author Cornelius Ryan shows how Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin cleverly outmanoeuvred Eisenhower diplomatically, convincing the Allied Supreme Commander that Berlin was not worth the cost. Through a campaign of misdirection, Stalin minimized the military significance of Berlin, presenting it merely as another urban battleground while emphasizing other military priorities.
Eisenhower, pragmatic by nature, thought it prudent to avoid a bloodbath in Berlin and focus on defeating the remaining German armies across central and southern Europe. Another factor in Eisenhower’s decision to forego Berlin was the intelligence, later revealed to be exaggerated, suggesting that Hitler, along with remaining SS units and German divisions would make a last stand in his ‘Alpine Redoubt’ bastion. As it turned out, the Allies found no well-organized Nazi stronghold and Hitler, far from fleeing to the Austrian Alps, remained holed in his Berlin bunker, awaiting the end.
In a noted book-length essay, Eisenhower and Berlin, 1945: The Decision to Halt at the Elbe (1967), historian Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower’s official biographer, critiqued Ryan’s work by underscoring that the general saw no value in sacrificing American lives for symbolic prizes like Berlin.
However, if Eisenhower had ordered the armies of Field Marshal Montgomery and Gen.Omar Bradley to take Berlin, the post-war landscape would have looked very different. This does not mean the Cold War would vanish. But the intensity of the Cold War, that characterized postwar Europe, would have been channelized in other regions, such as the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa (where it eventually did with great intensity and loss of life).
That said, Stalin’s paranoia about Western intentions, evidenced by his brutal consolidation of power in Eastern Europe, would still persist. Moscow would still desire a buffer zone, likely seeking control over Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. However, with Berlin in Western hands, Stalin’s expansion might have been less aggressive, and the tension between East and West more political than militarized.
Eisenhower’s pragmatic decision to halt at the Elbe had profound implications for the postwar order. The question of whether a bolder approach might have significantly altered the geopolitical landscape of the 20th century is now an academic one.
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