Download or read book The Collapse written by Mary Sarotte and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Berlin Wall s End written by Timothy Garton Ash and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A selection from The Magic Lantern, Timothy Garton Ash’s classic first-person history of the Revolution of ’89 and the end of the Cold War—an on-the-ground glimpse of the fall of the Berlin Wall. “In the beginning was the Wall itself.” So writes matchless chronicler and observer Timothy Garton Ash on the strange life and stranger death of the Wall that divided two worlds. Garton Ash takes the reader with him as he walks through the Wall and across no-man’s land in early November of 1989, where as recently as that February a man attempting to cross had been shot dead. But November 9 ushers in a new world. Garton Ash introduces us to the East Berliners lining up for the “greeting money” offered at banks; the newfound wanderers looking for the ferry to England; and the chaotic, intoxicating political atmosphere sweeping through the reunited city. This is a vivid and enduring picture of a defining moment in history, when a wall came tumbling down. An eBook short.
Download or read book Tunnel 29 written by Helena Merriman and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book After the Berlin Wall written by K. Gerstenberger and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-11-21 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty years after its fall, the wall that divided Berlin and Germany presents a conceptual paradox: on one hand, Germans have sought to erase it completely; on the other, it haunts the imagination in complex and often surprising ways
Download or read book After the Berlin Wall written by Hope M. Harrison and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelatory history of the commemoration of the Berlin Wall and its significance in defining contemporary German national identity.
Download or read book Stasiland written by Anna Funder and published by Odyssey Editions. This book was released on 2015-10-29 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stasiland tells true stories of people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of people who worked for its secret police, the Stasi. Internationally hailed as a classic, it is ‘fascinating, entertaining, hilarious, horrifying and very important’ (Tom Hanks) and ‘a heartbreaking, beautifully written book.’ (Claire Tomalin). East Germany was one of the most intrusive surveillance states of all time. One in 7 people spied on their friends, family and colleagues. In ‘the most humane and sensitive way’ (J.M. Coetzee) Funder tells the true stories of four people who had the extraordinary courage to refuse to collaborate with the Stasi, and the price they paid. She meets Miriam Weber, who was imprisoned at 16 after scaling the Berlin Wall. She drinks with the legendary “Mik Jegger” of the Eastern Bloc who was ‘disappeared’. And she finds former Stasi men who defend their regime long past its demise, and yearn for the second coming of Communism. Stasiland won the Samuel Johnson Prize for best non-fiction published in English in 2004. It was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the W.H. Heinemann Award, the Index Freedom of Expression Awards, The Age Book of the Year Awards, the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award and the Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (Innovation in Writing). It is read in schools and universities in many countries, and has been adapted for CD and the stage by The National Theatre, London.
Download or read book THE WALLS OF BERLIN written by Stephen Barber and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2013-10-27 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a vast range of material – from the first films of Berlin in the 1890s, to the city's impact on contemporary digital art – WALLS OF BERLIN examines how Berlin's walls form apertures that mediate their preoccupations and manias, damage and scars, non-erasable inscriptions and outlandish markings, fractures and fissures, strata and outgrowths, veerings and oscillations across time, corporeal traces and residues, sexual obsessions, and revelatory urban vanishings. In a rich cultural history of the city's memories and its acts of oblivion, Stephen Barber probes many of its overlooked but most illuminating spaces and sites inflected by art and film – alongside the visual, textual and sonic presences that inhabit them.
Download or read book Berlin Now written by Peter Schneider and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-08-05 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "longtime Berliner's ... exploration of the heterogeneous allure of this vibrant city. Delving beneath the obvious answers--Berlin's club scene, bolstered by the lack of a mandatory closing time; the artistic communities that thrive due to the relatively low (for now) cost of living--Schneider takes us on an insider's tour of this rapidly metamorphosing metropolis, where high-class soirees are held at construction sites and enterprising individuals often accomplish more without public funding--assembling a makeshift club on the banks of the Spree River--than Berlin's officials do"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The Berlin Wall written by Frederick Taylor and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-08-02 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Fall of the Berlin Wall written by 50minutes, and published by 50Minutes.com. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keen to learn but short on time? Get to grips with the history of the Berlin Wall in next to no time with this concise guide. 50Minutes.com provides a clear and engaging analysis of the fall of the Berlin Wall.When the Berlin Wall was built unexpectedly in 1961, it divided the city for 28 years, separating families and friends for almost three decades. The Wall was a symbol of the divisions in Germany and Europe that followed the Second World War as well as a reminder of the stringent Communist regime. The fall of the wall was, therefore, cause for huge celebration: families were reunited, East Berliners were finally free of the strict communist regime and the biggest symbol of the East-West divide had collapsed. In just 50 minutes you will: • Understand why the Berlin Wall was built and what its purpose was • Learn about the events leading up the fall of the Berlin Wall and how a miscommunication caused it to fall a day early • Analyse the impact that the wall had on Berlin, Germany and the whole of Europe and why its collapse was so significant ABOUT 50MINUTES.COM | History & Culture 50MINUTES.COM will enable you to quickly understand the main events, people, conflicts and discoveries from world history that have shaped the world we live in today. Our publications present the key information on a wide variety of topics in a quick and accessible way that is guaranteed to save you time on your journey of discovery.
Download or read book The Fall of the Berlin Wall written by Nigel Kelly and published by Capstone Classroom. This book was released on 2006 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the Berlin Wall as the focus, traces the history of the Cold War, from the Russian Revolution in 1917 through World War II, and finally to the destruction of the Wall.
Download or read book The Tunnels written by Greg Mitchell and published by Crown. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Berlin Since the Wall s End written by John Alexander Williams and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the nearly nineteen years since the destruction of the Wall that divided East from West Berlin, Germans have struggled with the challenges of reunification. The task has been daunting—unifying two countries with a common language but mutually hostile political and economic systems. Contrary to the optimistic predictions of 1989/1990, reunification has aggravated many of Germany’s problems within the larger context of globalization. Berlin, divided epicenter of the Cold War, Germany’s largest city and the capital since 1999, has been forced to confront the challenges of reunification with particular urgency. This book presents the work of six scholars who met at Bradley University’s annual Berlin seminar in June, 2006 to discuss the recent past and the future prospects of the German metropolis. Two broad concerns--society and historical memory--emerged during the seminar and are reflected in these scholars’ writings. The first section of the book assesses how Berliners have reunified the city through urban planning and social, economic and cultural policies. These chapters also speak to pressing contemporary issues of immigration, citizenship and cultural diversity. The essays in the book’s second part trace how historical memory has been shaped and politically contested in German culture, both in the divided nation and since 1989. Berlin Since the Wall’s End casts light on a metropolis that has been scarred, but not destroyed, by the upheavals of recent history.
Download or read book 20 Years since the Fall of the Berlin Wall written by Elisabeth Bakke and published by BWV Verlag. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HauptbeschreibungOn 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall was opened, signalling the beginning of the end of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. By 1990, free elections had been held in most countries in the region. Forty - in some cases fifty - years of communism had come to an end. However, the 'revolutions' of 1989 were not uniform processes: the starting points were different, the trajectories were different - and outside Central Europe even the outcomes of the transitions from communism were different. The fall of communism also caused the Soviet empire to crumble, and the Soviet Union itself fell apart in December 1991 - as did Czechoslovakia in 1993, and Yugoslavia in a gradual process that was to last from 1991 to 2008. This book originated in a conference held in Oslo 11-13 November 2009, arranged by the E.ON Ruhrgas scholarship programme for political science, and commemorating the 20th anniversary of the 'revolutions' in Central and Eastern Europe. The 16 chapters take stock of developments after 1989, with special emphasis on the causes and effects of the transitions, including the processes of state unification and separation that followed in the wake of the 'revolutions'. The book is divided into four main parts: regime transitions from communism; state unification and separation; party system continuity and change since 1989 (in Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland); and on the effects of German unification on external and internal German relations. The geographical scope thus varies from chapter to chapter, but the main emphasis is on Germany and its closest Central European neighbours.Elisabeth Bakke is Associate Professor at Department of Political Science, University of Oslo. Ingo Peters is Associate Professor at Department of Political and Social Sciences, Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, Freie Universitnt Berlin."
Download or read book 30 Years since the Fall of the Berlin Wall written by Alexandr Akimov and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-01-08 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year 2019 marks 30 years since the fall of the Berlin wall. This symbolic event led to German unification and the collapse of communist party rule in countries of the Soviet-led Eastern bloc. Since then, the post-communist countries of Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe have tied their post-communist transition to deep integration into the West, including EU accession. Most of the states in Central and Eastern Europe have been able to relatively successfully transform their previous communist political and economic systems. In contrast, the non-Baltic post-Soviet states have generally been less successful in doing so. This book, with an internationally respected list of contributors, seeks to address and compare those diverse developments in communist and post-communist countries and their relationship with the West from various angles. The book has three parts. The first part addresses the progress of post-communist transition in comparative terms, including regional focus on Eastern and South Eastern Europe, CIS and Central Asia. The second focuses on Russia and its foreign relationship, and internal politics. The third explores in detail economies and societies in Central Asia. The final part of the book draws some historical comparisons of recent issues in post-communism with the past experiences.
Download or read book Wall Disease The Psychological Toll of Living Up Against a Border written by Jessica Wapner and published by The Experiment, LLC. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We build border walls to keep danger out. But do we understand the danger posed by walls themselves? East Germans were the first to give the crisis a name: Mauerkrankheit, or “wall disease.” The afflicted—everyday citizens living on both sides of the Berlin wall—displayed some combination of depression, anxiety, excitability, suicidal ideation, and paranoia. The Berlin Wall is no more, but today there are at least seventy policed borders like it. What are they doing to our minds? Jessica Wapner investigates, following a trail of psychological harm around the world. In Brownsville, Texas, the hotly contested US-Mexico border wall instills more feelings of fear than of safety. And in eastern Europe, a Georgian grandfather pines for his homeland—cut off from his daughters, his baker, and his bank by the arbitrary path of a razor-wire fence built in 2013. Even in borderlands riven by conflict, the same walls that once offered relief become enduring reminders of trauma and helplessness. Our brains, Wapner writes, devote “border cells” to where we can and cannot go safely—so, a wall that goes up in our town also goes up in our minds. Weaving together interviews with those living up against walls and expert testimonies from geographers, scientists, psychologists, and other specialists, she explores the growing epidemic of wall disease—and illuminates how neither those “outside” nor “inside” are immune.
Download or read book Checkpoint Charlie written by Iain MacGregor and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2019-10-24 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: '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.
