"This article [examines] ... recent disclosures about Soviet decionmaking towards Germany in the period from Stalin's death in March 1953 until Beria's arrest in late June of that same year. Many historians and political scientists have wondered if there might have been a chance during this short period to reunify Germany more than thirty years before Gorbachev came to power"--Page 1.

This new study casts fresh light on the roles of Harold Macmillan and Nikita Khrushchev and their efforts to achieve a compromise settlement on the pivotal Berlin Crisis. Drawing on previously unseen documents and secret archive material, Kitty Newman demonstrates how the British Prime Minister acted to prevent the crisis sliding into a disastrous nuclear conflict. She shows how his visit to Moscow in 1959 was a success, which convinced Khrushchev of a sincere effort to achieve a lasting settlement. Despite the initial reluctance of the French and the Americans, and the consistent opposition of the Germans, Macmillan’s subsequent efforts led to a softening of the Western line on Berlin and to the formulation of a set of proposals that might have achieved a peaceful resolution to the crisis if the Paris Conference of 1960 had not collapsed in acrimony. This volume also assesses Khrushchev’s role, which despite his sometimes intemperate language, was to secure a peaceful settlement which would stabilize the East German regime, maintain the status quo in Europe and prevent the reunification of a resurgent, nuclearized Germany, thereby paving the way for disarmament. This book will be of great interest to all students of post-war diplomacy, Soviet foreign policy, the Cold War and of international relations and strategic studies in general.

This is the first comprehensive biography of Lavrentii Beria, Stalin's notorious police chief and for many years his most powerful lieutenant. Beria has long symbolized all the evils of Stalinism, haunting the public imagination both in the West and in the former Soviet Union. Yet because his political opponents expunged his name from public memory after his dramatic arrest and execution in 1953, little has been previously published about his long and tumultuous career.