The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989 [Hardcover]

Frederick Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 29, 2007

The appearance of a hastily-constructed barbed wire entanglement through the heart of Berlin during the night of 12-13 August 1961 was both dramatic and unexpected. Within days, it had started to metamorphose into a structure that would come to symbolise the brutal insanity of the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. A city of almost four million was cut ruthlessly in two, unleashing a potentially catastrophic East-West crisis and plunging the entire world for the first time into the fear of imminent missile-borne apocalypse. This threat would vanish only when the very people the Wall had been built to imprison, breached it on the historic night of 9 November 1989. Frederick Taylor's eagerly awaited new book reveals the strange and chilling story of how the initial barrier system was conceived, then systematically extended, adapted and strengthened over almost thirty years. Patrolled by vicious dogs and by guards on shoot-to-kill orders, the Wall, with its more than 300 towers, became a wired and lethally booby-trapped monument to a world torn apart by fiercely antagonistic ideologies. The Wall had tragic consequences in personal and political terms, affecting the lives of Germans and non-Germans alike in a myriad of cruel, inhuman and occasionally absurd ways. The Berlin Wall is the definitive account of a divided city and its people.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Walls, like those of Hadrian and Maginot, do not have a good reputation, and Taylor (Dresden) has written a superb narrative of the rise and fall of the monstrous one that scarred Berlin between August 1961 and November 1989. Walls, too, are more than merely bricks and mortar (or, in the 100-mile-long Berlin version's case, anti-vehicle crash obstacles, unclimbable barriers, barbed-wire fences, self-activating searchlights and heavily armed border guards), and one of Taylor's major themes is the Berlin Wall's significance in the global power politics of the Cold War. According to Taylor, Kennedy, Macmillan and de Gaulle were not decisively opposed to the division between East and West Germans. Berlin, in truth, was a dangerously volatile potential flashpoint, and while the erection of the wall was brutal and oppressive to those caught behind or trying to get over it, it stabilized Europe and symbolized the differences between capitalism and communism. Reagan, however, emphasized the rights of the trapped and challenged Gorbachev to tear it down. The Kremlin, ironically, was undone by its own creation. Taylor's enthralling story, combined with impeccable research and its rich human interest, makes this as dramatically gripping as any of the spy thrillers that used the wall as a backdrop. 16 pages of b&w photos, map. (June 1)
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From Booklist

On August 13, 1961, Berliners from both the western and Soviet sectors awoke to find their city divided by a barbed wire barrier. Within weeks the barrier would be converted into a wall, and eventually other obstacles and guard towers would be added. The effect was devastating, as families were divided, friendships severed, and East Berliners forced to live in a virtual prison state for 28 years. Symbolically, the wall presented a physical manifestation of the division of Europe; it also served as a brutal reminder of the tyranny and failures of communism. Yet, as Taylor eloquently illustrates, the wall served the purposes of both the Eastern bloc and the major Western powers. For the fragile East German state, the barrier stopped the intolerable drain of the best and brightest citizens; for the Americans and other Western powers, the sealing off of the Soviet-controlled sector provided a measure of stability and predictability in their relations with the Soviet bloc. Taylor provides a fascinating and often heartbreaking account of both the human costs and the geopolitical effects. Freeman, Jay
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 512 pages
• Publisher: Harper (May 29, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060786132
• ISBN-13: 978-0060786137
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.3 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #766,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Well-Constructed Analysis of the Icon of the Cold War, June 13, 2007

By 

John Bennett (Hayle, Cornwall) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989 (Hardcover)

Having read Frederick Taylor's fast-moving and extremely informative 'Dresden,' I was looking forward to his latest book on that icon of the Cold War - the Berlin Wall. I was not disappointed.

The story of the Wall is not quite as linear as that of Dresden, in which events moved inexorably towards the horrific fire-bombing. Rather, there are three acts: the lead up to the construction of the Wall in 1961; the Wall years; the endgame, 1989.

From the start, the book builds with excitement as it is becomes clear that GDR leader Ulbricht, supported by Security Secretary Honecker, will prevail against the preference of (the surprisingly rational) Khrushchev and be allowed to imprison his own people (who were fleeing in huge numbers). Amazingly, all this was not clear to Western security services.

At the beginning of the 'Wall years' there is a slowing of pace as West Germany and the world come to grips with what has happened right under their noses, and in defiance of the four-power Potsdam Agreement. But it doesn't take long for the excitement to rise again with the escape attempts and the first death. The unravelling of Soviet power that leads to the eventual dismantling of the Wall seems, in the end, to be a closing chapter of the Second World War rather than of the Berlin Wall itself.

Taylor's strength as a historian and storyteller is his ability to weave a great deal of minutely researched detail into a highly readable, very accessible tale. The book taught me an astonishing amount, even though I lived through much of this saga. But it was a pleasure, never a chore.

This book is highly recommended for those who wish to more fully understand a frightening period of recent history.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars History at its best, September 28, 2007

By 

John E. Drury "jedrury" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989 (Hardcover)

Frederick Taylor distinguished himself in his previous book "Dresden." He repeats that distinction in this fascinating, informative book on the Berlin Wall. Deep research and a facile writing style make this book a highly informative and interesting read which moves effortlessly from specifics like escape attempts and stories of the dead to a well written overview ending which he entitles "the theft of hope" for the East Germans. His carefully concealed contempt for Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker never slides into a polemic. Taylor even allows a trace of humor or maybe farce describing Lyndon B. Johnson's 1961 visit to Berlin who sees Willy Brandt's fine shoes and demands to shop for a pair for himself on Sunday.

Taylor, obviously fluent in German, joins the ranks of other fine English historians, all knowledgeable in German, who have recently written superb histories about Germany and European affairs; Max Hastings' "Armageddon," Ian Kershaw on Hitler, Richard Evans' books on the rise of Nazism, Antony Beevor on the battles of Stalingrad and Berlin, and Adam Zamoyski on Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna.

These are all fine histories which obviously come about by the access to records, previously unavailable, before the fall of the Wall.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jaunty History and 101 Movie Scripts, January 28, 2010

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989 (Hardcover)

Frederick Taylor's breezy - and sometimes cheesy - anecdotal history of the German Democratic Republic makes excellent armchair reading, as long as the reader avoids the risk of considering it authoritative. Notice, please, that I've already dismissed Taylor's disingenuous title; "The Berlin Wall" is not simply an account of events from 1961 to 1989. It's a broad interpretation of the whole history of Germany, from the rise of Prussia, through the World Wars, to the central matter of the book, the "brief life and unlamented death" of East Germany, the GDR. Obviously too huge a topic, even for a 500 page book, but Taylor is less committed to responsible historiography than to entertaining journalism, and it's as the latter that this book should be read.

Taylor's first-chapter overview of German history involves the reader in some risk. If you are reasonably informed about modern European history, the risk is that you'll become enraged at Taylor's flippant simplistic account and hurl the book through a window. If you are NOT at least moderately informed, the risk is far more serious, that you might be persuaded by Taylor's cleverness to consider his account adequate. It isn't.

However, once Taylor gets to the point -- that is, to the division of post-war Germany into East and West, and more particularly to the bizarre 'career' of the GDR as a communist society -- the book gets better, the research more apparent and more plausible... and the anecdotes more amusing. And when he finally narrates "Operation Rose", the clandestine construction of 'The Wall' in 1961, followed by case after case of courageous resistance and thrilling escape, Taylor is in his element as a journalist. There are truly 101 blockbuster movie scripts to be found in The Berlin Wall, some of them tales of individual heroism, some of them sad parables of greed and hypocrisy.

Straddling The Wall, nevertheless, there's the far more significant story, as Taylor acknowledges, of the Cold War decades, during which neither Germany, East or West, could pursue its own development apart from the interventions of the Superpowers. As Taylor reports, the reunification of Germany was not a welcome prospect for England, France, or Russia. Both Germanies were, in a sense, front-line pawns and puppet states, at least as perceived from 'behind', and the aspirations of the Germans themselves would continue to be thwarted by global considerations right up until the sudden denouement -- metaphorically, the Fall of the Wall. Taylor's reportage focuses on the Eastern half of this story, the tortuous relationships between the Soviet occupiers and the GDR-to-be. This is material that will be new to most Western readers, based on studies of archives that only become accessible quite recently. Taylor's thesis, stating it simply, is that the GDR was doomed to implode, to self-destruct, because of its inherent economic weaknesses, made more fragile by the ideological rigidity of its leadership.

Taylor is at pains throughout his account of the GDR to "give the devil his due", that is, to credit the chief figures -- Ulbricht, Krushchev, Honecker -- and most of the lesser figures, with not only some degree of political ability but also with 'the courage of their convictions'. They were ideological fanatics, perhaps, but sincere idealists as well. Idealists, Taylor's portrayal would suggest, make the worst tyrants. Nothing that resulted from even the most noble-sounding ideology in the communist states, of course, justified and palliated the repression and stagnation that Taylor describes as the norm of the decades of dictated idealism under Ulbricht and Honecker.

Taylor is also careful not to give the devil more than his due. In his analysis, the collapse of the GDR, i.e. the Fall of the Wall, and indeed the end of the Cold War resulted more from the inherent internal shortcomings of Soviet/GDR statism than from any performances by Western or American leaders. Taylor is British himself, so one ought not to be surprised if he is less respectful of American pretensions, and of the American Presidency, than American readers normally presume. JFK, in Taylor's account, is unattractively venal and opportunistic, though he proves stronger in the end than his wiliest adversaries expected. LBJ, as limned by Taylor, is a buffoon of Texan proportion, a vulgar ambitious pol whose real significance in the events in Europe was chiefly inadvertent and counter-productive; if anything, Taylor would have it, LBJ's Vietnam and subsequent American global adventurism gave 'credibility' to GDR anti-capitalist, anti-American propaganda, thus prolonging the survival of East Germany as a communist experiment.

Taylor is more careful in his treatment of Ronald Reagan, though scarcely more respectful. There are many, Taylor concedes disingenuously, who credit Ronald Reagan's fervid anti-communism with hastening the collapse of the USSR, the end of the Cold War, the Fall of the Wall... And then Taylor proceeds to ignore Reagan completely, to depict the precise 'local' pressure of events in the GDR and in the other countries of the Warsaw Pact that in fact took the Americans and the rest of the West as much by surprise as the 'old guard' of communism. The Wall was demolished, Taylor more than implies, by the will of the people on both sides of it.

Then, when the Wall is rubble, when chunks of authentic Wall concrete are sold as souvenirs? Taylor's brief assessment of the 'success' of German reunification, which concludes the book, is realistically grim. The ordinary folk of the GDR, as he sees it, lost and lost again. "Ostalgia" (nostalgia for the idealism of the Old Left egalitarian communism, sorry sham that it was) is a real phenomenon in Germany today, as I observed for myself in November of 2009, when I was in Berlin for the 20th anniversary 'celebration' of the Fall of the Wall.

Taylor's great strength in this book is his snappy anecdotal style, his ability to 'script' history in terms of vivid personalities. His weaknesses are his too-apparent partisanship in analyzing the ideological conflicts of the Cold War Era, and his willingness to let a vivacious anecdote serve in lieu of cautious scholarship.