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2.0 out of 5 stars
When The Wall Came Down reads like a magazine article., July 20, 2009
This review is from: New York Times When the Wall Came Down: The Berlin Wall and the Fall of Soviet Communism (Hardcover)
Serge is a very competent journalist, but alas, he never rises above mere reporting.
The book begins on November 9, 1989. Serge is at a hotel in West Berlin. He was suddenly surprised to see Viktor, his translator from East Germany, show up at his hotel room!
That is a gripping, exciting, something huge is happening right now story! Unfortunately, it's the only one in the book.
I wanted to read a story from Hans who said - I work as a plumber in East Berlin. It's so hard to get the parts I need. And the Stasi are so paranoid! Every time I work in a basement, they think I'm digging a tunnel! Who has the time to dig a tunnel?
And Lydia who said - My brother escaped in the trunk of a 1968 Mustang, thanks to a kind hearted diplomat. This was my first chance to see him in 5 years! And his wife and their darling baby girl! I never expected this much happiness to come in my lifetime!
This is what he does cover:
* The formation of Germany as a country in 1871.
* World War One
* The hyper-inflation of the 1920s
* The horrors of World War Two, starring those über bad guys, the Nazis
* The Yalta Conference where Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who was terribly ill at the time) wimped out and gave Eastern Europe to Josef Stalin and the godless, oppressive, factory stealing communists
* The cold war and the incredibly oppressive Stasi, the East German secret police.
* And obviously the events running up to, including and just after the fall of The Berlin Wall
He put this cool to know historical factoid in his book: There were 90,000 secret police working for the Stasi, plus 175,000 paid informants. With a population of 17 million people, that works out to one spy for every 64 people. They kept files on 4 million East Germans, nearly a quarter of the population.
Kudos for all the splendid pictures he put in his book! There's one of a blonde, teenage girl from East Germany proudly showing her passport as she walks to West Berlin for the first time.
But his writing is strangely distant from the events he witnessed. The man was right there in West Berlin on November 9th! All he had to do was talk to the people around him, East and West Berliners, and take notes, but nooooo. Except for Viktor, these personal stories that would have taken this book to a higher level, are missing, absent, vacant, not present or accounted for.
I watched a documentary that showed the East Berliners gathered at one of gates on November 9th. They had heard Günter Schabowski, one of the East German communist big wheels, say on television that travel restrictions would be lifted that night, but actually the date was three days hence.
The guards had standing orders to shoot anyone who tried to escape. Hundreds, then thousands of people gathered at the checkpoints. They told the guards they had the right to go to West Berlin now! The crowd kept growing and pressing forward. The tension kept building! Something had to give!
Finally the guards threw open the gates! Go ahead, have a nice walk. Thousands of East Germans walked into West Berlin for the first time in their lives! Thousands of West Berliners came out and met them. They talked, hugged and drank champagne, wine and beer. After a few hours, the East Berliners walked home.
The next day Mikhail called the guards and told them, "You did right! You shouldn't shoot at Germans for wanting to speak with other Germans."
Well done, Mikhail!
But that's not in this book.
The actual book is 72 pages. Then he added some news articles and a few interviews with various people who are knowledgeable about Germany. It's a competent book in terms of covering the main events and Serge was very thorough about the history angle, but he didn't dive into the exciting, touching or heart warming stories from people who were just outside his hotel room.
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