Berlin Reading and Movie List

Defying Hitler, Sebastian Haffner
This is a great book, unlike anything else I have read on the subject. Written as a personal memoir, he addresses, and has an excellent stab at answering, that persistent question about how people could have let it happen. He also calls to mind the question we all ask ourselves about how we would have acted had we been there. Without in any way comparing the British Labour Party to the Nazis (in particular he makes it clear that the evil of the Nazis was apparent at the time of their rise to power), it is impossible when reading this book not to think about what is happening to civil liberties in the UK today. Haffner makes the point repeatedly that the threats are different every time - that the generals always train their troops to fight the battles of the last war.

A Woman in Berlin, Anonymous

An anonymous diarist tells the same story as Beevor (below), this time, from the point of view of a civilian woman as her city is overwhelmed by the vengeful Soviet armies. Beevor, in fact, quotes her extensively to tell his story from the ground up. Horrendous and optimistic - her story shows that we can cope with a lot more than we might expect. She details the sheer horror of what happened in particular to the women of the city, her strategies for survival and even the gallows humour of the women - seen by the conquerors as booty. Given the utter collapse of the city and total surrender no myth like that of the London Blitz emerges from the destruction of Berlin and yet, reading this, you are overwhelmed with admiration for the spirit of the women of Berlin.

Until the Final Hour, Traudl Junge with Melissa Muller
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Berlin: The Downfall 1945, Antony Beevor
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Stasiland, Anna Funder
After all that focus on Hitler and the Third Reich here is one that looks at more recent history. Meeting both the oppressors and the oppressed she tells a series of stories about life in the East. From stories about attempted escapes, families divided, official decision making rationale right through to the final days of The Wall. What comes over most powerfully is the sheer inhuman and vicious spite of which the East German authorities were capable. While Peter Schneider (below)seems to find some degree of moral equivalence between East and West this book makes it clear just what a nasty place the Democratic Republic really was.

The Wall Jumper, Peter Schneider I really enjoyed this short and whimsical book about The Wall, the divided city and our own internal walls. Told as a series of reported tales of people in the West who found reasons to cross The Wall and others in the East who found ways to get across. The stories are all slightly fantastical though just about plausible. Most of them have some element that you think just couldn't be true. He does mention at one point that The Wall is the only manmade structure that is visible with the naked eye from the moon - this gives you a flavour. I suggested this book to a book group I occasionally attend. They hated it - pretentious, self-indulgent, irrelevant. In the group we are all men in our forties and the suggestion for the following month was 'The Catcher in the Rye'.

The Innocent, Ian McEwanNo Berlin reading list would be complete without a bit of Cold War espionage. I don't usually really 'get' spy novels but this one really grips. I have to say I didn't in any way see the end coming though other people have told me they spotted it early on. The book paints a wonderfully vivid picture of Cold War Berlin with all its inter-superpower intrigues alongside those between the Western allies - all as a backdrop against the hero's loss of political and sexual innocence.

Wings of DesireTo be Reviewed.

Run Lola RunTo be Reviewed.

DownfallTo be Reviewed.