The Secret Hotline to Moscow: Donald Maclean and the Berlin Crisis of 1948

Abstract

Donald Maclean was a talented and respected senior official who worked at the British Embassy in Washington from May 1944 until 1 September 1948. Unknown to his contemporaries, he was one of ‘Stalin’s Englishmen’.¹ His secret role was to provide the information that his Soviet ‘control’ requested and to keep the Soviets informed of western developments. This chapter will assess what effect Maclean’s espionage had upon British and American relations with the Soviet Union during the Berlin blockade, the first acute confrontation of the cold war. Policy-makers and academics have drawn some of the ground rules of crisis management from this experience, but overlooked the presence of Maclean, who gave the Soviets a secret and clear view into the inner circles of Anglo-American diplomacy.²