Contains both walking and driving tours of various exploration, allowing the user to determine one-day tour or longer.

"This book covers the U.S. Army's occupation of Berlin from 1945 to 1949. This time includes the end of WWII up to the end of the Berlin Airlift. Talks about the set up of occupation by four-power rule."--Provided by publisher

Although many deaths at the Berlin Wall have been publicized over the years in the media, the number, identity and fate of the victims still remain largely unknown. This handbook changes this by answering the following questions: How many people actually died at the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989? Who were these people? How did they die? How were their relatives and their friends treated after their deaths? What public and political reactions were triggered in the East and the West by these fatalities? What were the consequences for the border guards who pulled the trigger and the military and political leaders who gave them their orders after the East German border regime collapsed and the Wall fell? How have the victims been commemorated since their deaths? By documenting the lives and circumstances under which these men and women died at the Wall, these deaths are placed in a contemporary historical context. The authors, in addition to systematically researching the relevant archives and examining all the legal proceedings and Stasi documents, also conducted interviews with family members and contemporary witnesses.

Vividly describing the conflict between the two superpowers--the U.S. and the Soviet Union--as it played out in Berlin, this book highlights the dramatic events that occurred in the divided city that was the frontier town, the spy post, and the battlefield. It was a time in Berlin that touched the whole world: the blockade, the airlift, the uprising of June 1953, the construction of the Wall, and the fall of the Iron Curtain. Stories of escape and espionage are included in this concise but detailed book which describes key points from 1945 up through the fall of the Berlin Wall.

This highly detailed, absorbing Cold War guide is the ideal companion for anyone wishing to explore the once divided capital of Berlin. Using his in-depth knowledge as a historian and battlefield/historical guide, David McCormack describes in vivid detail the tension and drama of the long standoff between the superpowers which shaped the landscape of both a defeated Germany and Europe for years to come. Meticulous historical research combines with the author's intimate knowledge of Berlin to produce a user friendly guide rich in historical detail. Prepare for a fascinating journey across the Cold War landscape of Berlin as it is today.

The Cold War began in Europe in the mid-1940s and ended there in 1989. Notions of a “global Cold War” are useful in describing the wide impact and scope of the East-West divide after World War II, but first and foremost the Cold War was about the standoff in Europe. The Soviet Union established a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe in the mid-1940s that later became institutionalized in the Warsaw Pact, an organization that was offset by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led by the United States. The fundamental division of Europe persisted for forty years, coming to an end only when Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe dissolved. Imposing, Maintaining, and Tearing Open the Iron Curtain: The Cold War and East-Central Europe, 1945–1989, edited by Mark Kramer and Vít Smetana, consists of cutting-edge essays by distinguished experts who discuss the Cold War in Europe from beginning to end, with a particular focus on the countries that were behind the iron curtain. The contributors take account of structural conditions that helped generate the Cold War schism in Europe, but they also ascribe agency to local actors as well as to the superpowers. The chapters dealing with the end of the Cold War in Europe explain not only why it ended but also why the events leading to that outcome occurred almost entirely peacefully.

Traces the history of the Marshall Plan and the efforts to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism during a two-year period that saw the collapse of postwar U.S.-Soviet relations and the beginning of the Cold War.

Often written during imprisonment in Allied War camps by former German officers, with their memories of the World War fresh in their minds, The Foreign Military Studies series offers rare glimpses into the Third Reich. In this study Oberst a.D. Wilhem Willemar discusses his recollections of the climatic battle for Berlin from within the Wehrmacht. “No cohesive, over-all plan for the defense of Berlin was ever actually prepared. All that existed was the stubborn determination of Hitler to defend the capital of the Reich. Circumstances were such that he gave no thought to defending the city until it was much too late for any kind of advance planning. Thus the city’s defense was characterized only by a mass of improvisations. These reveal a state of total confusion in which the pressure of the enemy, the organizational chaos on the German side, and the catastrophic shortage of human and material resources for the defense combined with disastrous effect. “The author describes these conditions in a clear, accurate report which I rate very highly. He goes beyond the more narrow concept of planning and offers the first German account of the defense of Berlin to be based upon thorough research. I attach great importance to this study from the standpoint of military history and concur with the military opinions expressed by the author.”-Foreword by Generaloberst a.D. Franz Halder.

The appearance of a hastily-constructed barbed wire entanglement through the heart of Berlin during the night of 12-13 August 1961 was both dramatic and unexpected. Within days, it had started to metamorphose into a structure that would come to symbolise the brutal insanity of the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. A city of almost four million was cut ruthlessly in two, unleashing a potentially catastrophic East-West crisis and plunging the entire world for the first time into the fear of imminent missile-borne apocalypse. This threat would vanish only when the very people the Wall had been built to imprison, breached it on the historic night of 9 November 1989. Frederick Taylor's eagerly awaited new book reveals the strange and chilling story of how the initial barrier system was conceived, then systematically extended, adapted and strengthened over almost thirty years. Patrolled by vicious dogs and by guards on shoot-to-kill orders, the Wall, with its more than 300 towers, became a wired and lethally booby-trapped monument to a world torn apart by fiercely antagonistic ideologies. The Wall had tragic consequences in personal and political terms, affecting the lives of Germans and non-Germans alike in a myriad of cruel, inhuman and occasionally absurd ways. The Berlin Wall is the definitive account of a divided city and its people.

This highly detailed, absorbing battlefield guide is the ideal companion for anyone considering visiting the site of Hitler's `Gotterdammerung' in April-May 1945. Using his in depth knowledge as a historian and battlefield guide, David McCormack vividly describes the apocalyptic struggle played out amongst the ruins of a once great city. The author's intimate knowledge of the ground ensures that the Wagnerian climax of the Third Reich is presented in a series of dramatic tableaux which capture the regime's final convulsive death throes. Prepare for a fascinating journey across the Berlin battlefield as it is today. The Berlin 1945 Battlefield Guide: Part Two-The Battle of Berlin-is the essential guide to understanding both Hitler's downfall in Berlin and Stalin's greatest triumph.