The Berlin wall

‘[Berlin] was, at the time, politically turbulent, emotionally charged, and unceasingly eventful. I have sought to capture the drama of that traumatic moment, as well as to tell the story of the Wall, and of the circumstances that led up to and grew from the construction of that gruesome monument to human discord.’ Grim and forbidding, the Wall snaked through the city of Berlin like the backdrop to a nightmare. Tears have been shed here, curses uttered, threats snarled, blood spilled, lives snuffed out. The Berlin Wall was an awkward thing, outlandish and unloved, a barrier planted clear across the middle of the largest city between Paris and Moscow. It was the most dramatic example of the political architecture of modern times. Norman Gelb, writing before the Wall came down, tells how the Wall grew from the confusions of the post-war years. How the Soviet Union and the Western powers shared an uneasy occupation of the capital city of their humbled wartime enemy, and how the Berlin Wall set the stage for the Cold War. He describes the grim episodes on the way towards the final division of the city — the Berlin blockade, the bloody East Berlin workers’ uprising, and the mass migration westward of East German refugees through Berlin. He shows how this humiliating exodus, which threatened the stability of the entire Soviet East European empire, could be stopped only by the building of the Berlin Wall. The story is one of power politics and global brinkmanship, of hawks and doves, of brilliant calculation and an intelligence failure of dazzling proportions. It is about the confrontation over Berlin between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev — two of the most exciting political personalities — and about how the building of the Wall graduated into a nuclear showdown between the superpowers. Norman Gelb was there on that August night when Berlin was broken in two, and his personal experiences help define the tragedy of the divided city. Though it represented failure to both sides, the Berlin Wall dissected one of the great cities of Europe, enfolding and quarantining the only island of political freedom to survive behind Communist lines. Praise for The Berlin Wall ‘A solid documentary history, told in fine style.’ – Kirkus Reviews ‘nicely evokes the mood of the city and the face-off between Moscow and Washington that many feared might lead to war. He switches deftly between the grand dramas that were played out in Washington and Moscow and the fears and not inconsiderable heroism of the Berliners themselves.’ – New York Times Praise for Scramble ‘We now have an accurate account It is the first one to get it right’. — Group Captain Dennis David ‘Deftly combining interviews, speeches, news reports, military communications and occasional unobtrusive narrative, Gelb presents a many-sided picture of war that reflects the feeling of the battle’ — New York Times Praise for Dunkirk “Norman Gelb demonstrates in Dunkirk how productive it is to focus on an individual operation or battle … Dunkirk is both a good adventure read and an instructive case study yielding modern lessons.” — John Lehman, Former Secretary of the Navy, The Wall Street Journal “Norman Gelb finds fresh angles … Dunkirk stands as an exemplar of the perils of vacillation and the possibilities of action.” — The New York Times Book Review Norman Gelb (b.1929) was born in New York and is the author of seven highly acclaimed books, including Scramble, Dunkirk, and Less Than Glory. He was, for many years, correspondent for the Mutual Broadcasting System, first in Berlin and then in London. He is currently the London correspondent for New Leader magazine.