The Collapse
The Collapse

Author: Mary Sarotte

Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)

Published: 2014-10-07

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0465064949

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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.

Tunnel 29
Tunnel 29

Author: Helena Merriman

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2021-08-24

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 1541788826

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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.

The Man Who Built the Berlin Wall
The Man Who Built the Berlin Wall

Author: Nathan Morley

Publisher: Pen and Sword History

Published: 2023-09-30

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1399088858

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The first ever English language biography of Erich Honecker, covering his entire life and career. In The Man Who Built the Berlin Wall, Nathan Morley brings to life the story of the longtime leader of the German Democratic Republic. Drawing from a wealth of untapped archival sources – and firsthand interviews with Honecker’s lawyers, journalists, and contemporary witnesses – Morley paints a vivid portrait of how an uneducated miner’s son from the Saarland rose to the highest ranks of the German Communist Party. Having survived a decade of brutality in Nazi prisons, Honecker emerged as an ambitious political player and became the shadowy mastermind behind the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, a crucial moment in twentieth-century history. Although frequently on the verge of being relegated to obscurity, he managed to overthrow strongman Walter Ulbricht at the height of the Cold War and reigned supreme over the GDR between 1971-1989. However, by 1980, the Honecker honeymoon was on the wane as a decade of economic and social difficulties blighted the GDR. Then, as tumultuous changes swept through the Soviet bloc, everything in and around him collapsed in 1989. His health, his certainties, his ideology, his apparatus of power, and his beloved SED party. Terminally ill, he was literally kidnapped from Russia to answer for his crimes in a Berlin court. A controversial figure, Honecker’s notorious philandering, his difficult relationship with his wife Margot, penchant for porn, addiction to hunting, and gilded lifestyle at a forest settlement north of Berlin are all brought into sharp focus. Although haunted by the fall of the Berlin Wall, Erich Honecker died in 1994, still believing the GDR was the envy of the world.

The Tunnels
The Tunnels

Author: Greg Mitchell

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2016-10-18

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 1101903864

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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.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall
The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Author: William F. Buckley (Jr.)

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2004-03-22

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13:

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William F. Buckley Jr. reflects on the event that marked the fall of Communism in Europe The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was the turning point in the struggle against Communism in Eastern Europe. The culmination of popular uprisings in Hungary, Poland, and East Germany, the Wall's fall led inexorably to revolutions in Czechoslovakia and Romania, the reunification of Germany, and, ultimately, the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself. In this book, American conservative pioneer and National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. explains how and why the Cold War ended as it did-and what lessons we can draw from the experience. Writing with his legendary wit and insight, he brings to life Communism's last gasp, showing how Reagan's hard-nosed foreign policy and Gorbachev's reforms undermined Warsaw Pact dictators, emboldened dissidents, and finally made the dream of freedom a reality in Eastern Europe. Written by one of America's most erudite and influential political thinkers and writer. Includes a new foreword by Henry Kissinger marking the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Berlin Wall Hailed as "eloquent [and] immensely readable" (Baltimore Sun), this account "celebrates the tenacity of the human spirit and the will to achieve freedom" (Publishers Weekly). Sure to delight conservatives, annoy liberals, and enlighten everyone who reads it, The Fall of the Berlin Wall is William F. Buckley Jr. at his inimitable best.

The Wall Jumper
The Wall Jumper

Author: Peter Schneider

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1998-11

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 9780226739410

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In the Wall Jumper, real people cross the Wall not to defect but to quarrel with their lovers, see Hollywood movies, and sometimes just because they can't help themselves—the Wall has divided their emotions as much as it has their country.

Checkpoint Charlie
Checkpoint Charlie

Author: Iain MacGregor

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2019-10-24

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1472130561

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'As convoluted and deadly as the plot of a novel by John le Carre, but all too real' Daily Mail, Must Reads 'With a gripping narrative and vivid interviews with those on all sides whose lives were directly affected by that grim symbol of the East-West divide that poisoned Europe for almost half a century, [MacGregor] has made an important contribution to the history of our times' Jonathan Dimbleby 'Captures brilliantly and comprehensively both the danger and exhilaration that I and other reporters, soldiers, and people experienced intersecting with the wall - a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the Europe we have inherited' Jon Snow A powerful, fascinating, and ground-breaking history of Checkpoint Charlie, the legendary and most important military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the United States and her allies confronted the USSR during the Cold War. As the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approaches in 2019, Iain MacGregor captures the mistrust, oppression, paranoia, and fear that gripped the city throughout this period. Checkpoint Charlie is about the nerve-wracking confrontation between the West and the Soviet Union that contains never-before-heard interviews with the men who built and dismantled the Wall; lovers who crossed it; relatives and friends who lost family trying to escape over it; German, British, French, and Russian soldiers who guarded its checkpoints; CIA, MI6 and Stasi operatives who oversaw secret operations across its borders; politicians whose ambitions shaped it; journalists who recorded its story; and many more whose living memories contributed to the full story of Checkpoint Charlie. A brilliant work of historical journalism, Checkpoint Charlie is an invaluable record of this period.

What Was the Berlin Wall?
What Was the Berlin Wall?

Author: Nico Medina

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2019-09-24

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 1524789674

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The Berlin Wall finally came down in 1989. Now readers can find out why it was built in the first place; and what it meant for Berliners living on either side of it. Here's the fascinating story of a city divided. In 1961, overnight a concrete border went up, dividing the city of Berlin into two parts - East and West. . The story of the Berlin Wall holds up a mirror to post-WWII politics and the Cold War Era when the United States and the USSR were enemies, always on the verge of war. The wall meant that no one from Communist East Berlin could travel to West Berlin, a free, democratic area. Of course that didn't stop thousands from trying to breech the wall - more than one hundred of them dying in the attempt. (One East Berliner actually ziplined to freedom!) Author Nico Medina explains the spy-vs-spy politics of the time as well as what has happened since the removal of one of the most divisive landmarks in modern history.

The Berlin Wall and the Intra-German Border 1961-89
The Berlin Wall and the Intra-German Border 1961-89

Author: Gordon L. Rottman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2012-10-20

Total Pages: 123

ISBN-13: 1782005080

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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.

Berlin 1961
Berlin 1961

Author: Frederick Kempe

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2011-05-10

Total Pages: 816

ISBN-13: 1101515023

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In June 1961, Nikita Khrushchev called Berlin "the most dangerous place on earth." He knew what he was talking about. Much has been written about the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later, but the Berlin Crisis of 1961 was more decisive in shaping the Cold War-and more perilous. It was in that hot summer that the Berlin Wall was constructed, which would divide the world for another twenty-eight years. Then two months later, and for the first time in history, American and Soviet fighting men and tanks stood arrayed against each other, only yards apart. One mistake, one nervous soldier, one overzealous commander-and the tripwire would be sprung for a war that could go nuclear in a heartbeat. On one side was a young, untested U.S. president still reeling from the Bay of Pigs disaster and a humiliating summit meeting that left him grasping for ways to respond. It would add up to be one of the worst first-year foreign policy performances of any modern president. On the other side, a Soviet premier hemmed in by the Chinese, East Germans, and hardliners in his own government. With an all-important Party Congress approaching, he knew Berlin meant the difference not only for the Kremlin's hold on its empire-but for his own hold on the Kremlin. Neither man really understood the other, both tried cynically to manipulate events. And so, week by week, they crept closer to the brink. Based on a wealth of new documents and interviews, filled with fresh-sometimes startling-insights, written with immediacy and drama, Berlin 1961 is an extraordinary look at key events of the twentieth century, with powerful applications to these early years of the twenty-first. Includes photographs