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The German Wall
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Download or read book The Collapse written by Mary Sarotte and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the night of November 9, 1989, massive crowds surged toward the Berlin Wall, drawn by an announcement that caught the world by surprise: East Germans could now move freely to the West. The Wall—infamous symbol of divided Cold War Europe—seemed to be falling. But the opening of the gates that night was not planned by the East German ruling regime—nor was it the result of a bargain between either Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It was an accident. In The Collapse, prize-winning historian Mary Elise Sarotte reveals how a perfect storm of decisions made by daring underground revolutionaries, disgruntled Stasi officers, and dictatorial party bosses sparked an unexpected series of events culminating in the chaotic fall of the Wall. With a novelist’s eye for character and detail, she brings to vivid life a story that sweeps across Budapest, Prague, Dresden, and Leipzig and up to the armed checkpoints in Berlin. We meet the revolutionaries Roland Jahn, Aram Radomski, and Siggi Schefke, risking it all to smuggle the truth across the Iron Curtain; the hapless Politburo member Günter Schabowski, mistakenly suggesting that the Wall is open to a press conference full of foreign journalists, including NBC’s Tom Brokaw; and Stasi officer Harald Jäger, holding the fort at the crucial border crossing that night. Soon, Brokaw starts broadcasting live from Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, where the crowds are exulting in the euphoria of newfound freedom—and the dictators are plotting to restore control. Drawing on new archival sources and dozens of interviews, The Collapse offers the definitive account of the night that brought down the Berlin Wall.
Book Synopsis Behind the Berlin Wall by : Patrick Major
Download or read book Behind the Berlin Wall written by Patrick Major and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2010 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 13 August 1961 eighteen million East Germans awoke to find themselves walled in by an edifice which was to become synonymous with the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. Patrick Major explores how the border closure affected ordinary East Germans, from workers and farmers to teenagers and even party members, 'caught out' by Sunday the Thirteenth.
Book Synopsis The Berlin Wall and the Intra-German Border 1961-89 by : Gordon L. Rottman
Download or read book The Berlin Wall and the Intra-German Border 1961-89 written by Gordon L. Rottman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-20 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The border between East and West Germany was closed on 26 May 1953. On 13 August 1961 crude fences and walls were erected around West Berlin: the Berlin Wall had been created. The Wall encircled West Berlin for a distance of 155km, and its barriers and surveillance systems evolved over the years into an advanced obstacle network. The Intra-German Border ran from the Baltic Sea to the Czechoslovak border for 1,381km, and was where NATO forces faced the Warsaw Pact for the 45 years of the Cold War. This book examines the international situation that led to the establishment of the Berlin Wall and the IGB, and discusses how these barrier systems were operated, and finally fell.
Book Synopsis Driving the Soviets up the Wall by : Hope M. Harrison
Download or read book Driving the Soviets up the Wall written by Hope M. Harrison and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin Wall was the symbol of the Cold War. For the first time, this path-breaking book tells the behind-the-scenes story of the communists' decision to build the Wall in 1961. Hope Harrison's use of archival sources from the former East German and Soviet regimes is unrivalled, and from these sources she builds a highly original and provocative argument: the East Germans pushed the reluctant Soviets into building the Berlin Wall. This fascinating work portrays the different approaches favored by the East Germans and the Soviets to stop the exodus of refugees to West Germany. In the wake of Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviets refused the East German request to close their border to West Berlin. The Kremlin rulers told the hard-line East German leaders to solve their refugee problem not by closing the border, but by alleviating their domestic and foreign problems. The book describes how, over the next seven years, the East German regime managed to resist Soviet pressures for liberalization and instead pressured the Soviets into allowing them to build the Berlin Wall. Driving the Soviets Up the Wall forces us to view this critical juncture in the Cold War in a different light. Harrison's work makes us rethink the nature of relations between countries of the Soviet bloc even at the height of the Cold War, while also contributing to ongoing debates over the capacity of weaker states to influence their stronger allies.
Download or read book Tunnel 29 written by Helena Merriman and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: He escaped from one of the world’s most brutal regimes.Then, he decided to tunnel back in. In the summer of 1962, a young student named Joachim Rudolph dug a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Waiting on the other side in East Berlin were dozens of men, women, and children—all willing to risk everything to escape. From the award-winning creator of the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 podcast, Tunnel 29 is the true story of this most remarkable Cold War rescue mission. Drawing on interviews with the survivors and Stasi files, Helena Merriman brilliantly reveals the stranger-than-fiction story of the ingenious group of student-diggers, the glamorous red-haired messenger, the Stasi spy who threatened the whole enterprise, and the love story that became its surprising epilogue. Tunnel 29 was also the first made-for-TV event of its kind; it was funded by NBC, who wanted to film an escape in real time. Their documentary—which was nearly blocked from airing by the Kennedy administration, which wanted to control the media during the Cold War—revolutionized TV journalism. Ultimately, Tunnel 29 is a success story about freedom: the valiant citizens risking everything to win it back, and the larger world rooting for them to triumph.
Book Synopsis A Wall of Our Own by : Paul M. Farber
Download or read book A Wall of Our Own written by Paul M. Farber and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-02-17 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin Wall is arguably the most prominent symbol of the Cold War era. Its construction in 1961 and its dismantling in 1989 are broadly understood as pivotal moments in the history of the last century. In A Wall of Our Own, Paul M. Farber traces the Berlin Wall as a site of pilgrimage for American artists, writers, and activists. During the Cold War and in the shadow of the Wall, figures such as Leonard Freed, Angela Davis, Shinkichi Tajiri, and Audre Lorde weighed the possibilities and limits of American democracy. All were sparked by their first encounters with the Wall, incorporated their reflections in books and artworks directed toward the geopolitics of division in the United States, and considered divided Germany as a site of intersection between art and activism over the respective courses of their careers. Departing from the well-known stories of Americans seeking post–World War II Paris for their own self-imposed exile or traveling the open road of the domestic interstate highway system, Farber reveals the divided city of Berlin as another destination for Americans seeking a critical distance. By analyzing the experiences and cultural creations of "American Berliner" artists and activists, Farber offers a new way to view not only the Wall itself but also how the Cold War still structures our thinking about freedom, repression, and artistic resistance on a global scale.
Book Synopsis After the Berlin Wall by : Hope M. Harrison
Download or read book After the Berlin Wall written by Hope M. Harrison and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory history of the commemoration of the Berlin Wall and its significance in defining contemporary German national identity.
Download or read book After the Wall written by Jana Hensel and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2008-03-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jana Hensel was thirteen on November 9, 1989, the night the Berlin Wall fell. In all the euphoria over German reunification, no one stopped to think what it would mean for Jana and her generation of East Germans. These were the kids of the seventies, who had grown up in the shadow of Communism with all its hokey comforts: the Young Pioneer youth groups, the cheerful Communist propaganda, and the comforting knowledge that they lived in a Germany unblemished by an ugly Nazi past and a callous capitalist future. Suddenly everything was gone. East Germany disappeared, swallowed up by the West, and in its place was everything Jana and her friends had coveted for so long: designer clothes, pop CDs, Hollywood movies, supermarkets, magazines. They snapped up every possible Western product and mannerism. They changed the way they talked, the way they walked, what they read, where they went. They cut off from their parents. They took English lessons, and opened bank accounts. Fifteen years later, they all have the right haircuts and drive the right cars, but who are they? Where are they going? In After the Wall, Jana Hensel tells the story of her confused generation of East Germans, who were forced to abandon their past and feel their way through a foreign landscape to an uncertain future. Now as they look back, they wonder whether the oppressive, yet comforting life of their childhood wasn't so bad after all.
Download or read book The German Wall written by Marc Silberman and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-04-11 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary volume addresses the consequences of the fall of the Berlin Wall, from the revitalizing effect it had on Germany to the new challenges of integrating socially and politically old and new minorities, and forming a new European identity. It also considers how the fall was represented by the media.
Book Synopsis The Berlin Wall and the Intra-German Border 1961-89 by : Gordon L. Rottman
Download or read book The Berlin Wall and the Intra-German Border 1961-89 written by Gordon L. Rottman and published by Osprey Publishing. This book was released on 2008-02-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Berlin Wall and the Inner-German Border (IGB) were built to halt the flow of refugees from East Germany to the West. From August 13, 1961, over 96 miles of crude fences and more sophisticated walls were erected around West Berlin. Border defenses ran 858 miles from the Baltic to the Czechoslovakian border, cutting villages in two, running through buildings, and intersecting roads and railways. Gordon L Rottman, who became familiar with both sides of the border while posted to Germany, examines the international situations that led to the creation of the Berlin Wall, discussing how the barrier systems functioned and their significance in the Cold War. Covering the erection of the barriers, how they evolved, defensive devices and the role of the checkpoints, this book also describes how ordinary people attempted to overcome these physical and political obstacles in their quest for freedom. Gordon Rottman writes,"In 1980 I found myself in a long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) company. After 2 years of training we were assigned as the V Corps LRRP company: our mission in the event of a Soviet invasion of West Germany was to insert our 21 five-man reconnaissance teams inside East Germany, establish "hides" overlooking autobahns and other highways, and report the movements of the second operational echelon, the follow-on forces behind the initial assault forces. This required us to know a great deal about what it was like inside East Germany. We began an intense study of the IGB, and in the process I was able to visit the border, learn its ways, and find out how to penetrate it."
Book Synopsis Don't Need No Thought Control by : Gerd Horten
Download or read book Don't Need No Thought Control written by Gerd Horten and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2020-06-05 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fall of the Berlin Wall is typically understood as the culmination of political-economic trends that fatally weakened the East German state. Meanwhile, comparatively little attention has been paid to the cultural dimension of these dramatic events, particularly the role played by Western mass media and consumer culture. With a focus on the 1970s and 1980s, Don’t Need No Thought Control explores the dynamic interplay of popular unrest, intensifying economic crises, and cultural policies under Erich Honecker. It shows how the widespread influence of (and public demands for) Western cultural products forced GDR leaders into a series of grudging accommodations that undermined state power to a hitherto underappreciated extent.
Book Synopsis The Path to the Berlin Wall by : Manfred Wilke
Download or read book The Path to the Berlin Wall written by Manfred Wilke and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2014-04-01 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long path to the Berlin Wall began in 1945, when Josef Stalin instructed the Communist Party to take power in the Soviet occupation zone while the three Western allies secured their areas of influence. When Germany was split into separate states in 1949, Berlin remained divided into four sectors, with West Berlin surrounded by the GDR but lingering as a captivating showcase for Western values and goods. Following a failed Soviet attempt to expel the allies from West Berlin with a blockade in 1948–49, a second crisis ensued from 1958–61, during which the Soviet Union demanded once and for all the withdrawal of the Western powers and the transition of West Berlin to a “Free City.” Ultimately Nikita Khrushchev decided to close the border in hopes of halting the overwhelming exodus of East Germans into the West. Tracing this path from a German perspective, Manfred Wilke draws on recently published conversations between Khrushchev and Walter Ulbricht, head of the East German state, in order to reconstruct the coordination process between these two leaders and the events that led to building the Berlin Wall.
Download or read book Stasiland written by Anna Funder and published by Odyssey Editions. This book was released on 2015-10-29 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stasiland tells true stories of people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of people who worked for its secret police, the Stasi. Internationally hailed as a classic, it is ‘fascinating, entertaining, hilarious, horrifying and very important’ (Tom Hanks) and ‘a heartbreaking, beautifully written book.’ (Claire Tomalin). East Germany was one of the most intrusive surveillance states of all time. One in 7 people spied on their friends, family and colleagues. In ‘the most humane and sensitive way’ (J.M. Coetzee) Funder tells the true stories of four people who had the extraordinary courage to refuse to collaborate with the Stasi, and the price they paid. She meets Miriam Weber, who was imprisoned at 16 after scaling the Berlin Wall. She drinks with the legendary “Mik Jegger” of the Eastern Bloc who was ‘disappeared’. And she finds former Stasi men who defend their regime long past its demise, and yearn for the second coming of Communism. Stasiland won the Samuel Johnson Prize for best non-fiction published in English in 2004. It was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the W.H. Heinemann Award, the Index Freedom of Expression Awards, The Age Book of the Year Awards, the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (Innovation in Writing). It is read in schools and universities in many countries, and has been adapted for CD and the stage by The National Theatre, London.
Download or read book German Comedy written by Peter Schneider and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1992-10 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tour of Germany after reunification provides anecdotes of the West German people, an East German baker, Bavarian yodelers, Stalinist functionaries, and Western capitalists
Download or read book The Tunnels written by Greg Mitchell and published by Crown. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thrilling Cold War narrative of superpower showdowns, media suppression, and two escape tunnels beneath the Berlin Wall. In the summer of 1962, the year after the rise of the Berlin Wall, a group of young West Germans risked prison, Stasi torture, and even death to liberate friends, lovers, and strangers in East Berlin by digging tunnels under the Wall. Then two U.S. television networks heard about the secret projects and raced to be first to document them from the inside. NBC and CBS funded two separate tunnels in return for the right to film the escapes, planning spectacular prime-time specials. President John F. Kennedy, however, was wary of anything that might spark a confrontation with the Soviets, having said, “A wall is better than a war,” and even confessing to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, “We don’t care about East Berlin.” JFK approved unprecedented maneuvers to quash both documentaries, testing the limits of a free press in an era of escalating nuclear tensions. As Greg Mitchell’s riveting narrative unfolds, we meet extraordinary characters: the legendary cyclist who became East Germany’s top target for arrest; the Stasi informer who betrays the “CBS tunnel”; the American student who aided the escapes; an engineer who would later help build the tunnel under the English channel; and the young East Berliner who fled with her baby, then married one of the tunnelers. The Tunnels captures the chilling reach of the Stasi secret police as U.S. networks prepared to “pay for play” but were willing to cave to official pressure, the White House was eager to suppress historic coverage, and ordinary people in dire circumstances became subversive. The Tunnels is breaking history, a propulsive read whose themes still reverberate.
Download or read book Born in the GDR written by Hester Vaizey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The real life stories of eight East Germans caught up in the dramatic transition from Communism to Capitalism by the fall of the Berlin Wall - and what they feel about life after the Wall.
Download or read book The Berlin Wall written by R. G. Grant and published by Raintree. This book was released on 1998 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses the history of the Berlin Wall from its building, through life with tensions this barrier created, to the destruction of the wall and life afterwards.
