The Tunnels: The Untold Story of the Escapes under the Berlin Wall by Greg Mitchell was published by Bantam Press in 2016.
Greg Mitchell is the author of several books and articles, including The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics (2011).
This book about tunnels under the Berlin Wall is divided into 18 chapters which follow a chronological line from February and March 1962 to December 1962.
Chapter 18 is followed by an epilogue, which brings the story up to date; where he tells us what happened to the people who were involved with the tunnels.
At the end of the book there are notes with references, a bibliography, an index, and photograph credits.
What about illustrations?
There are some illustrations in this book, but the number is too low. All illustrations are placed in a block in the middle of the book: photos, maps and drawings are printed on eight pages of glossy paper.
On the front cover, there are two pictures:
** One picture shows the Brandenburger Tor and the Berlin Wall (above)
** The other picture shows a man crawling in a tunnel (below)
On the frontispiece there is a picture which shows the Berlin Wall and the dead zone seen from the eastern side of the wall.
This book is an account of the tunnels that were built under the Berlin Wall. But it is more than that. It is also the story of a documentary film which the US television network NBC shot while one of the tunnels was being built and of the US Government’s attempt to suppress or at least delay the broadcast of this film.
This account is based on a wide range of sources:
(a) Interviews with some of the people who built the tunnels under the wall and with some of the people who escaped through a tunnel.
(b) Primary documents from the US government at the time and from the Stasi archives.
This volume is well-written and well-organized. While reading it, you will get close to Berliners who are digging tunnels under difficult and dangerous conditions.
You will also meet reporters who want to tell the story of these tunnels and members of the US government who want to suppress the story.
For the Berliners who are digging, it is a question of human rights and freedom. For the members of the US government, it is a question of superpower politics.
The diggers wanted to help family and/or friends to escape from the east. That was their perspective.
US President Kennedy had another perspective. He might sympathize with the people who were stuck behind the iron curtain. But he also had to look at the bigger picture.
He was afraid the Soviet Union was going to invade and occupy West Berlin if the story of the tunnels got too much publicity.
The author gives us both perspectives. The reader can make up his or her own mind about the case.
October 1962 was also the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The time when the world was very close to World War Three. This aspect is also mentioned in the book. At one point, members of the US government saw a close connection between Cuba and West Berlin.
If the US decided to invade Cuba and knock out Fidel Castro’s government, in order to get rid of the Soviet missiles, the Soviet Union might retaliate by invading and occupying West Berlin.
As we know now, none of this happened, but at the time, it was a scenario that seemed realistic to some observers.
All names in the book are real. All quotes come from the person who uttered them at the time or they are taken from a written source.
Greg Mitchell has done a great job locating and interviewing people who were involved in the tunnels in 1962. He was lucky that many of them were still alive and willing to talk to him.
Since the author (by his own admission) barely speaks a word of German, he was also lucky that he had someone who could help him talk to people who did not always speak English and who could help him understand documents from the Stasi archives.
I like this book and I want to give it a good rating, but I have to mention two minor flaws:
# 1. The number of illustrations is too low.
Perhaps this is not a big problem. Today, in the age of the internet, every reader can use google to find hundreds of pictures of the Berlin Wall.
# 2. The author uses Fahrenheit when he is talking about temperature.
Fahrenheit is used in the US, but in the rest of the world we use Celsius, so why does the author only give the temperature in Fahrenheit?
There is a whole world outside the US where temperature is measured in Celsius.
I noted three cases:
*** Page 53: “… the temperature in the tunnel did not get much above 55 degrees Fahrenheit.”
In Celsius this is 13 degrees.
*** Page 116: “… a sultry 90-degree day.”
In Celsius this is 32 degrees.
*** Page 257: “… a balmy mid-October afternoon topped 80 degrees.”
In Celsius this is 27 degrees.
Temperature should always be given in both systems - Fahrenheit and Celsius - so every reader has a chance to understand what it means, no matter where in the world he or she lives.
As you can see, there are two flaws, but I am going to consider them as minor. And they will not affect my overall rating of the book. I think this product deserves a rating of five stars (100 percent).
PS # 1. The following item is available online:
Stephanie Kirchner,
“Great escapes? How the Kennedy administration tried to suppress media coverage of Berlin tunnel diggers,”
Washington Post,
19 October 2016
PS # 2. On Amazon there are at the moment more than 200 ratings of this product, more than 100 with reviews.
The average rating is 4.3 stars, which corresponds to a rating of 86 percent.
PS # 3. The Tunnel is the English title of a German historical drama that is loosely based on a true story.
This drama was shown on German television in 2001. The cinema version is ca. 20 minutes shorter than the original. In 2011, the short version was released on DVD with English subtitles.
PS # 4. Die Frau vom Checkpoint Charlie is a historical drama (in two parts) which premiered on German television (ARTE) in 2007.
Run time: 87 + 88 minutes = 175 minutes.
This historical drama about a chapter of the Cold War between East and West is based on a true story.
*****
The Tunnels:
Escapes under the Berlin Wall
by Greg Mitchell
(2016)
Different cover
Different subtitle
*****
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