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Join History Book Club for a great deal on THE BERLIN WALL
As the Berlin Wall recedes into the past except for a few sections in Berlin and souvenir pieces in people's homes, its critical role in the history of the Cold War and of modern Germany could easily diminish in the thinking of current and future generations. This carefully researched and well-written account of it is very welcome indeed. The author provides a good survey of the historical background of the city of Berlin in a manner that orients without tiring the reader. Of great help for understanding what followed is Taylor's excellent account of the actions of the Soviets in the weeks they controlled the whole city before the three Western Powers came to take over their sectors. The author also offers helpful accounts of the lives of key actors on the Berlin scene: Walter Ulbricht, Erich Honecker, Erich Mielke, Karl Reuter, and Willy Brandt. Those who crave an introduction to the reality of control in the former East German state will be intrigued by the special settlement created for its leaders outside Berlin where they could be safe from their own people while constantly under the watchful eyes of the self-anointed dictator.
Taylor's useful account of the 1948-49 blockade and of the 1953 uprising and subsequent developments prepares for the problem Ulbricht faced as his people left the country in huge numbers. The way Kim Il Sung badgered Stalin into letting him invade South Korea, so Ulbricht badgered Nikita Krushchev into letting him build the wall to halt the steady drain. This reviewer once suggested that eventually the German Democratic Republic would come to resemble Mesa Verde National Park with the members of the controlling Socialist Unity Party playing the role of Park Rangers, showing tourists the ruins of the real existing Socialism. The Wall was to preclude that, and Taylor carefully recounts how preparations for this project were kept so secret that its implementation caught all by surprise. There would be no war over this monument to failure, but a joint visit by Vice-President Lyndon Johnson and General Lucius Clay rebuilt the morale of West Berlin's inhabitants.
A remarkable feature of Taylor's account is his success in integrating personal narratives and experiences into the recording of events in the fateful days of August 1961 and in the following years. We see individuals trying to escape in the first days and the repeated escape projects later. In the 1960s and 1970s, small changes follow the dramatic visit of President Kennedy as the East German state sells antiques and prisoners out of jail to acquire hard currency. The opening of the border to Austria by the Hungarian government in 1988 set off the collapse of the East German system. The new Soviet leader, Michael Gorbachov, would not order the Red Army to put down the demonstrators in 1989 the way it had in 1953. Furthermore, the East German leaders discovered that, unlike the Chinese, they could not bring regiments from distant provinces into the cities to put down a population that had been so militarized that the country's soldiers could not be depended upon to shoot down their own families. Reunification followed the dismantling of the Wall, but the collapsed state was 40 years behind and still loses many of its young even as major efforts attempt to bring it forward. 512 pages • 6" x 9" • 16-page b&w photo insert
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