Format:
x, 321 Seiten, 16 ungezählte Seiten
Edition:
First American edition
ISBN:
0812912187
Content:
Kennedy vs. Khrushchev. And in the middle, in the very heart of Europe, Berlin, a gateway to freedom for thousands of East Germans. When on an August night in 1961 a barbed wire wall was erected cutting the city in half, the world moved toward war. Norman Gelb explores the whole story of the Berlin Wall, from its genesis in the Allied Armies' race for Berlin through the completion of the ninety-nine-mile wall that has been a geopolitical fact for twenty-five years. Relying on sources ranging from public figures like Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, and then-mayor of Berlin Willy Brandt to the diaries and reminiscences of Berlins, he renders not only the operatic public drama – the soldiers, the diplomacy, the decisionn-making process in Washington, the psychologies of Kennedy and Khrushchev, the tanks snout-to-snout in the streets – but also the anonymous story of blockade runners and citizens cuaght in the storm of world events. Beginning with the occupation, he brings the drama to life – the airlift, the flood of refugees that forced the Soviet hand, the threats of war that followed the historic night of the building of the Wall, and the West's reluctant accommodation with the Soviet Union. The story of the Berlin Wall is more than just an account of the splitting of a city. Played out in Washington, Moscow, London, and Paris as well as in Germany, it is a story of power politics and nuclear brinkmanship. Norman Gelb combines incident, personality, and analysis in a forceful narrative of the world at the edge.
Note:
Literaturverzeichnis: Seite 305-306
,
Enthält ein Register
Language:
English
Keywords:
USA
;
Berlinfrage
;
Sowjetunion
;
Geschichte 1958-1962
;
Berliner Mauer
;
Geschichte 1961-1962
