The Berlin Wall: and the Inner-German Border 1961-89

By Gordon Rottman

The border between East and West Germany was closed on 26 May 1953. On 13 August 1961 crude fences and walls were erected around West Berlin: the Berlin Wall had been created. The Wall encircled West Berlin for a distance of 155km, and its barriers and surveillance systems evolved over the years into an advanced obstacle network. The Intra-German Border ran from the Baltic Sea to the Czechoslovak border for 1,381km, and was where NATO forces faced the Warsaw Pact for the 45 years of the Cold War. This book examines the international situation that led to the establishment of the Berlin Wall and the IGB, and discusses how these barrier systems were operated, and finally fell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781782005087

Gordon Rottman

Gordon Rottman lives outside of Houston, Texas, served in the Army for twenty-six years in a number of “exciting” units and wrote wargames for Green Berets for eleven years. He’s written over 130 military history books, but his interests have turned to adventurous young adult novels—influenced by a bunch of audacious kids, Westerns owing to his experiences on his wife’s family’s ranch in Mexico, and historical fiction focusing on how people lived and thought—history does not have to be boring. His first Western novel, The Hardest Ride, garnered three writing awards and was a USA Today and Amazon best seller.

Reviews for The Berlin Wall

[shrike58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Having been faced with the problem of penetrating the the frontier defenses of the DDR in his prime as a soldier, the author is in a position to give you a close analysis of how these installations were built, outfitted and manned; this includes an examination of the frontier troops who had the lugubrious duty of keeping their fellow citizens sealed within the embrace of the East German state.