Category: Reviews by Bill Smith

What most of us have forgotten about the Berlin Wall and the Cold War, or never knew, would fill a book. And here is that book: Tunnel 29. 

At times it seemed like the Cold War, an ideological and economic conflict between the US and the USSR, focused on Berlin, the capital of Germany. It was indeed the point of closest friction between the communist and capitalist worlds from 1945 to 1989. At the end of World War 2, Germany was divided into four zones, each to be administered by one of the major Allied Powers. Berlin, located 100 miles inside the Soviet Zone, was similarly divided, creating a boundary through the middle of a densely populated urban area, following and dividing streets, alleys, the river, and arbitrary lines. In the early days, movement of people and municipal services was relatively open across the zones of Berlin.

That ended abruptly in 1961 when the communist government of East Germany decided to stop the outflow of people and talent to the West. Overnight, the boundary became real, first with barbed wire and soon with a concrete wall, and eventually with a 100-meter kill strip in front of the Wall. The Wall was also enforced by the Stasi, a secret police organization that recruited informants that informed on friends, family, neighbors and strangers.

Yet the pressure for East Berliners to move west continued. Family and relatives were on the other side. So were better jobs, better consumer goods, and political freedom. Human ingenuity worked tirelessly on means of escape: forged papers, hiding in cars and trucks, and tunnels.

In Tunnel 29, Helena Merriman gives us an intimate view into the digging of one of these tunnels – well, actually two. Researching escape projects after 50 years surely limited her choices, but she found Joachim Rudolph, a key member of this tunnel team, who had detailed recall of this project. From his memories she is able to take us inside the tunnel, appreciate the student engineering the diggers used to construct the 120-meter tunnel, remove the dirt, brace the structure and locate the terminal point. She retells the flooding that led the diggers to try an alternate tunnel, then revert to the first location after the sub rosa cooperation of the West Berlin water authorities cured the flooding. Yes, the tunnel was dug from West Berlin into East.  The excellent Stasi documentation let her trace and tell the story of Siegfried, a Stasi agent who infiltrated the project in order to report on it. She lets us see the organizing of the 29 East Berliners who would escape through the tunnel and the almost comedic work of Ellen Sesta on escape day, bringing the 29 to the tunnel opening in an East Berlin apartment. It is a tale of courage, fear, risk, circumstance, and determination. 

Oh yes, and it was all documented by NBC TV News. Reuven Frank was new to TV journalism and needed a story. Joachim’s project needed resources and money.  As we noted in our group’s discussion, you couldn’t get away with such an improbable tale in fiction. But it really did result in an award-winning TV documentary. It provided a great case study for discussion of journalistic ethics.

The thorough documentation of this particular escape allowed follow-up of the participants as they rebuilt their lives in West Germany. Some thrived in the capitalist world; others did not fare so well. Our group found this story compelling in its own right, but appreciated its extra dimensions of Cold War history, TV journalism, communist societies, and the role of walls today.

— Bill Smith

One book can lead to another. When our group recently read River of the Gods, by Candace Millard, some members commented how little knowledge they had about African history. Zeinab Badawi’s book provided an antidote. We came away with a much better appreciation of the size and diversity of Africa’s geography, the breadth and depth of its history, and its economic and cultural potential. 

Professor Badawi, president of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, and with roots in Sudan, wrote the book she wished she had when she was young, a relatively complete comprehensive history of the continent, told from an African viewpoint. Most available work on Africa comes from an outside perspective, usually European or American. Badawi’s academic credential gave her access to colleagues across Africa who gave local input to her extensive research for this book.

The format follows a geographic loop around Africa, beginning in Egypt, moving through Sudan and Ethiopia, across North Africa, circling through West Africa, and finishing in Southern Africa. For each region, Badawi gives a basic chronology, with names and dates of kingdoms, cities, artistic highlights, and wars. Each regional discussion is personalized by picking out one or two people (men and women) with noteworthy accomplishments of leadership. She tells these stories from available evidence, sometimes writings, but more often tradition, jewelry, sculpture, artistic work, and architectural remains. The book includes photos of some of these items, but we thought more maps would also be helpful.

A few chapters leave the geographic loop to explore the slave trades from an African perspective – both the Atlantic trade we know, and the less-familiar Arab trade to the Middle East and India. Her focus is on the costs to Africa of the loss of so much human potential and the lingering angst of the involvement of so many Africans in those trades. The book closes with a survey of successes and failures during the post-colonial independence period and an optimistic look into the future of the continent as new generations gain leadership with more internally developed confidence and capability. 

— Bill Smith

The book’s subtitle points to its main themes: “A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War.” It is a full saga, though compressed into about five months, with plenty of each of those themes.

The election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 began a swirl of events in the North and in the South. In the swirl are successive state secession conventions, polarization of views, and Lincoln’s formation of his cabinet and the long train trip from Springfield to Washington. By April 1861, hostilities have begun. 

Along the way we meet a remarkable array of characters. Familiar characters include Lincoln and incoming Secretary of State William Seward, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis; less familiar are people like Sen./Gov. James Hammond of South Carolina, the secessionist Edmund Ruffin, the diarist Mary Chestnut, Abner Doubleday in military service rather than baseball context, and Allan Pinkerton of detective fame. 

Larson takes us back into the decades leading up to 1860 to show the intensification of attitudes for and against slavery and how the hubris of those extreme viewpoints built on each side. Ultimately the extreme abolitionists could not reconcile slavery with union, those on the other side could not reconcile union with slavery, and all discounted the eventual cost of war. 

The heartbreak took many forms. Those in the middle ground were dragged to extreme positions by lack of familiarity with other regions, and by political bungling that drove people to opposite extremes. For example, John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry pushed southerners to extreme defense of slavery, while South Carolina’s belligerence to Fort Sumter solidified northern union support. There were many examples of bungling as events built between the election and the inauguration on March 4. Did Lincoln need to enter Washington incognito? How could the battleship Powhatan be dispatched on two different missions? How many telegrams were misinterpreted or summarized to suit a political position? (Telegrams were a relatively new communication technique in 1860, and like e-mails today, lack tone of voice and body language that help convey accurate meaning. They were also subject to interception, non-delivery, and other problems. Letters and messengers were slower, but usually more secure). Decisions, like resupplying Fort Sumter, were delayed past the time when they could have made a difference.

Heroism was shown most clearly in Major Robert Anderson, commandant of Fort Sumter, which was strategically located to control access to the Port of Charleston.  He was given ambiguous orders and incomplete information, and inadequate garrison troops and supplies to actually defend the fort. He understood the political implication of surrender, and used judgment and tact to delay his surrender until mid-April, after secession decisions had been made. With 491 pages of text, the book packs a lot of information, but Larson delivers again as a superb story-teller. He gives us a page-turning narrative that holds the attention and still respects the historical record (there are 51 pages of bibliography and notes). The saga provided lots of grist for our discussion, from the depictions of slave markets to artillery techniques, planter society and mentality, and how political positions can be polarized. Even the history-reluctant members of our group enjoyed this saga.

— Bill Smith