Vít Smetana's review of my On the Edge of the Cold War: American Diplomats and Spies in Postwar Prague makes several ominous claims but says little to indicate what the book is primarily about.1 It is a study of the political crisis in postwar Prague from the point of view of the U.S. embassy, focusing on the U.S. diplomatic and intelligence personnel who served at the Schönborn Palace from the end of World War II to roughly 1949. The activities of Harry Truman, Iosif Stalin, Winston Churchill, and other big players or their respective aides, such as George C. Marshall or George F. Kennan or Vyacheslav Molotov, are not my topic. My objective was to look at the escalating early stages of the Cold War as they appeared on the frontline between the two opposing blocs, not in the distant command posts in Washington, Moscow, and Western Europe.
The...