The Wall: the People's Story [Paperback]

The means by which the author, Christopher Hilton, weaves the political developments of the Berlin Wall with poignant anecdotes from Berliners as a consequence, makes the book both fascinating and very human.

The book's structure works well in communicating the various personal accounts of the cross section of people interviewed. The method of inserting the escapee bulletins as punctuation throughout each chapter illustrates the fact that these events were happening simultaneously and helps to keep the pace of the book going. What also becomes apparent is that these particular accounts, the author chose to highlight, were really the tip of an incredibly large iceberg. However the amount of research is not only exacerbating but seems to flow through the book with great ease as one (the reader) flits from story to story and back again.

It is self-evident that the author comes from a journalistic background as words are treated as a precise commodity with little room for waffle...

The book is an excellent read for anyone interested in the history of the Berlin Wall and the effect it has had on the people of the city.

It should appeal both to those who have prior knowledge of the subject and those who are interested for the first time.

Neil Robert Wenman

East Germany had been impoverished by Stalin's war reparation taxes until his death in 1953, so East Berliners had to sit by and watch as West Berlin was rebuilt under the Marshall Plan. During this time, the temptation to emigrate to the West became too strong for many people but in those days it was not so difficult. The queues to leave grew longer every day until, in 1961, as many as 1,500 people per day were crossing over, half of them under 25. Ulbricht, a committed Communist well before WWII, could see the future of East Germany disappearing down the road to the West and after consultation with Krushchev, closed the border on August 13th, 1961. Construction of the first of four versions of the wall began almost immediately along with the issuing of orders to "shoot to kill".

The West responded by allowing it to happen. Realistically, there was not much else they could do. If, in desperation, East Germany moved on West Berlin, that would have been totally unacceptable to the West and would likely have led to nuclear war. Allowing the wall to be built was really the lesser of two evils and the arrival of the Soviets on the scene actually stabilised the situation. What a lot of people don't realise is that the wall was actually built around West Berlin, thus isolating it further, to keep East Germans "in".

But it really the people's story which is the focus of the book. Using first-hand accounts of escapers, families of would-be escapers, border guards and public officials from both sides, Hilton paces the whole story really well and punctuates it with examples of the tragic consequences of attempted escapes.

The result is a book with far more impact than would otherwise be the case were he less even-handed. The stories are those of desperate people, willing to risk everything to negotiate it. They are stories mostly of tragedy and in the end, relief. That the wall was an abomination needs no prologue and indeed, in his first chapter, Hilton opens thus;

"Looking back on it, the mixture of madness and dreams seems logical, with each step leading inexorably to the next but, even so, dividing a major European city by a wall and for twenty-eight years killing anyone who tried to cross it without the right papers still stretches credulity and probably always will; but this is what happened to Berlin and this is what happened to ordinary human beings who lived and died with it."

Having read that opening, it truly is amazing that this monstrous chapter in modern history really only ended fourteen years ago. For anyone who has been there recently, it is even more astonishing. One could be excused for thinking that, in many ways, WWII did not end until 1989.

Aside from some silly spelling errors, almost unheard of in this day of word processors, the book wants for very little and is highly recommended.

The wall affected your emotions in words its hard to find. The cruelty of it, the contrast of West and East etc. What Hilton has done is to find the words.

I crossed to the East for a day and felt touched by it. Hilton recounts stories from both sides of the divide, lives broken, and lives lost by a regime now forgotten over 28 years.

Hilton's approach is to tell the tale from the viewpoint of many different personal accounts whilst at the same time telling the history of how the wall came to be and how it suddenly collapsed.

He also scratches the surface at the end of the book around how hard it is for West and East to come together again after 20 years but as he concludes the book "thats another story altogether".

A must for anyone with an interest.