And Great Was Its Fall

Rarely in history are the battle lines so clearly drawn for so long, the opposing philosophies so much in tension, and the defenses so simultaneously practical and metaphorical. Buckley's account, at 192 pages, gives a readable, succinct account of the rise, as well as the fall, of one of the strangest walls in the history of defensive works -- a wall designed to keep people in instead of out. He includes some interesting history of Berlin and post-WWII Germany as well, mostly for context. That history includes plenty of colorful characters, like Wolfgang "Tunnel" Fuchs, who spent thirteen years of his life as a full-time "escape helper" assisting East Germans trying to get across (or under, or through) the wall into freedom. Whether it was forged identity cards, routes through the sewer systems, or his numerous successful tunnels, he was determined to bring his countrymen on the other side into freedom. The high water table meant there was always mud, but that just lent color to the already mythic moment of escape. As Fuchs put it:

I must say that the most beautiful feeling was for me to see when the people came crawling out of the tunnel, on their knees from East Berlin like mice. I can never forget. The marks of their kneeprints in the tunnel floor looked like the ripples on a beach left behind by the receding tide. It does not matter what may become of me, I will never forget that. That is beautiful and that is happiness.

--pages 98-99.

Before his "retirement", Fuchs perfected one more method of ferrying refugees from the east:

Fuch's last effort was the "Supercar." Its secret has not been revealed, but . . . it was "a large American vehicle that could be subjected to the most rigorous search including virtual demolition at a frontier post." Its hiding place "was most uncomfortable and cramped for the person within." The car made a number of successful runs before it and its owner both retired. Fatigue and material necessity. The Superman Escape Angel put the car away in an undisclosed location in West Germany and took up the trade of pharmacist to make a living for his family, looking, for once, to his own concerns.

--pages 100-101.

But tyranny finds it hard to hang on, and at last the wall came down, yeilding "to a human spirit that took a half century but, finally, effected the liberation of the whole of that part of Germany that made its way from the Democratic Republic of Germany, to the democratic republic of Germany." Page 192.