For aficionados of big-time decision making, Harrington's is a gripping book. If it were a Sean Connery movie, it would not be an action thriller (James Bond), but an agonizing tale of high-stakes uncertainty (Red October). Notwithstanding Harrington's “embarrassing caveat” (p. 2) that he lacks the necessary languages to do full justice to the agony, Harrington firmly grasps the matrix of ends and means that entangled the adversaries. Naturally, the book's strength resides in its analysis of the dynamic from the Anglo-American side. Here, Harrington repeatedly glimpses something significant in what might have seemed a routine or redundant document. As a result, his book abounds with wisdom, historical good judgment, and attention to the telling detail.

What is most telling is how the contemporaries were able to bring to a point exactly what it was that they were not willing to decide. For the Western powers, this meant postponing a choice between war and withdrawing from Berlin. Attempting to buy time, policy makers waited uneasily for “something to turn up” (p. 299). Meanwhile, their advisors blew hot and cold as to which side was likeliest to seek a face-saving way out.

Asking first why Anglo-American planners failed to prioritize access to Berlin during wartime negotiations, Harrington concludes that the premise of this question contravened all their presumptions. Envisioning that military personnel would move around routinely, planners neither expected nor understood the implications of long-lived zones. Nor was access conceived in terms of civilian sustenance, which was expected to come from the surrounding territory, as guided by the four-power agreements for the whole country. Occasional moves by individual planners to think specifically about the city in a different way never made headway because they seemed too hypothetical and lay too far outside what were thought to be pragmatic expectations.

The airlift itself, copious evidence shows, was slipped into rather than decided upon. It was an expedient, not a strategy expected to break the blockade. Its risks included its probable inadequacy; its explosive potential should a plane be shot down; and its diversion and exposure of air resources, impairing nuclear capacity in case of war. Especially for the last reason, much of the military, fearing drift, vulnerability, and unpreparedness, counseled withdrawal. At the very least, these voices pressed for a clear policy in anticipation of the airlift's failure. If war was going to be an option, then they wanted to be able to plan for it. But despite the legendary Truman/Bevin decisiveness, the civilian leaders dithered. Put more kindly, they showed greater “tolerance for ambiguity” (241) than did their military advisors. Where the leaders proved decisive was not in determining to stay in Berlin, but in refusing to precipitate a choice among unpalatable contingencies. By prioritizing patience over planning, they deferred to the unknown and hoped for the best.

Where else they proved decisive was in prioritizing the status of the London Program—the economic, institutional, and ultimately political merger of the three Western German zones—over the fate of Berlin. In effect, Harrington suggests, Stalin miscalculated by banking that the city's vulnerability weighed enough to the West that it would sacrifice the London Program rather than sacrifice Berlin. European revival and integration, most planners were by now convinced, required prioritizing the London Program. The consequential question then became whether losing Berlin might itself damage the Program so much that a failed airlift should require a resort to force.

In the meantime, for thousands of pilots, engineers, and auxiliary personnel, making the airlift succeed was the task at hand. Here, too, Harrington moves readers from simple legend to complex reality. Noting both the creditable and the quirky, he nimbly navigates through records that demonstrate not only the pluckiness of the Berliners and the “can-do” spirit of the Western operational forces but also false starts, bottlenecks, morale issues, language barriers, turf battles, operational disagreements, and rigorous yet adaptive implementation practices. He considers how serendipity, structural factors, and human attitudes converged: for example, not only did the unusually mild winter lower how much coal needed to be airlifted, it also encouraged Berliners’ sense that the immediate corner had been turned, and reinvigorated their pre-blockade perception of a secular upward trend. Animatedly describing the details of implementation, Harrington manages to convey both the dreariness and the drama inherent in a situation of deprivation, improvisation, meticulousness, and doubt.

The lessons of the crisis, Harrington concludes, were different from the ones often drawn during the Cold War. Rather than demonstrating that toughness paid off, the crisis showed that restraint was the ally of good fortune. Rather than firm, “stalwart leadership” (p. 299), what Truman provided was a capacity to reserve judgment. Truman deferred his options, but not because he discerned what might constitute propitious timing or better alternatives. His administration's practice of “running risks for interests it might not be willing to fight for” struck many insiders as “dangerous and irresponsible” (p. 241). Instead, it proved providential. Had contingency planning been more vigorous, it might have generated momentum for more precipitous courses. As in most crises, impaired vision and calculated risk accompanied decision making; and contrary to legend, the outcome of this crisis was as reliant as any on the unforeseen.

Linguistically unable to engage not just Russian but also most East German sources, Harrington reasonably surmises rather than demonstrates Soviet goals and strategies along the way. But his explanation for why the Soviets eventually backed down, that the completion of preparations for a West German state had rendered the blockade pointless, would seem to require giving greater credit to Western resolve and clarity of priorities than Harrington grants. Harrington then misleadingly concludes that the crisis produced a modus vivendi on partition that “removed Germany and Berlin as causes of East-West conflict for a decade” (p. 292). He does not mention the unresolved status of the East German state even in Soviet thinking; plans for German rearmament and a Euro army and the resultant Soviet notes offering reunification and neutrality in 1952; Lavrenti Beria's plan one year later to trade the East German state for genuine détente; or the “web of linkages” (Marc Trachtenberg) that settled the second Berlin crisis (1958–1963), put tacit limits on West German rearmament, and paved the way for Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik. To be sure, none of these matters are Harrington's subject. But they fit uneasily with his contention that the events of 1949 rendered the German problem dormant.

By reorienting the first Berlin crisis within a variegated context of historical contingency, Harrington succeeds in removing anachronisms, humanizing the actors, and stripping away simplistic myths. The resultant complexity suggests a fuller picture of Truman, Bevin, and their advisors. Nevertheless, one might well conclude that the leaders emerge not diminished but more circumspect. If the rhetorical legacy was that firmness trumped restraint, the practical legacy was much more balanced, as John Kennedy later also demonstrated in Cuba.

Harrington's is a thoughtful and thought-provoking book. In many ways, it is a tour de force. It is certainly “must” reading for devotees of Cold War Berlin, and not just academic ones. But its implications may not be as starkly revisionist as Harrington claims. Part of the reason lies in the resonance already enjoyed by Harrington's earlier work. Another part of the reason lies in the historiography that has emerged from Soviet and East German sources. But perhaps the most important reason lies in the critical engagement this book is bound to exact from its readers. In the end, what is important about this book is that it sets the bar high, asks important questions, and compels careful thought about the answers. Few authors and few readers will ask for more.