Customer Reviews

Wall: The inside story of divided Berlin

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4 star:		(1)
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I read this book early in 1990. I recall it as a "can't put down book". But, I had experienced the WALL in July,1989, also visited East Berlin. I was in the Army NG in 1961 when the wall went up and worried about being federalized and all of us fighting yet, again, another War in Europe. We all know the outcome, but after visiting both Berlin's I finally understood what it meant to be FREE. Again from memory, Peter Wyden wrote the book before the wall came down, in it he stated that Wall would stand for a long time. Don't hire Peter Wyden as a prophet or seer. However, you should read the book.

This scholarly work, carefully footnoted and annotated, is a must for Berlin Wall mavens and all historians. I can't emphasize enough the irony of the timing of the publishing of this book...literally weeks before the Wall fell. Mr. Wyden apparently decided not to publish a second edition with an epilogue as the whole world found out on Nov 9-10,1989.

This book is a definite must-read. No one could have predicted the fall--Mr. Wyden simply said that it would eventually happen.

At times, the author seems to get carried away with personal annecdotes and rather needless discriptions of acquaintances, when he could have nearly just as easily excised them entirely, or substituted them with more interesting facts/accounts. Also, unless, I am mistaken, he never discusses the massive costs that were necessary to man and maintian the Berlin wall and DDR border.

He does, however, manage to include many wide-ranging details of the wall and life in the DDR. Of course, the genesis of the wall is given, as well as many of the escape attempts. The apropriate politicians are characterized. There's a discussion of espionage. Much psychology is discussed: everything from the Western German public's evaluation of reunification over the decades to the crazy people who actually went East. Three of the more interesting topics include televison, the privitization of the escape industry, and the wall's automated death machines, first conceptualized for concentration camps but never built until they were used to guard the German-German border.

While the author did not exactly predict the tearing down of the wall, he seems to have left the possibility open.

Overall, I think this is an interesting and worthwile book, not only for anyone interested in the Berlin Wall or the DDR but also for those interested in Eastern Europe or Communism.

I actually purchased and read this book for the first time a number of years ago. I decided to mess around with my Amazon account and saw I could leave a review so I thought I'd say a few things on this outstanding book.

Since living in Germany both as a soldier and civilian for much of the 1990's I've always enjoyed reading books on Cold War history. The history of Berlin has particularly been a topic I enjoyed and I have many books on my book shelves on the subject.

This book caught my eye and I bought a used copy which was all that was available at the time. As one of the other reviewers said it was most certainly the type of book that is hard to put down. The stories of real-life people and families and the things they went through to leave the east are edge-of-your-seat reading.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of the Berlin wall and the people affected by it.