Soviets Not Totally to Blame for Berlin Wall

THE IRON CURTAIN between the two Germanys has received a fair share of public attention in recent years. The twentieth anniversary celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall constituted a high-profile event back in November of 2009, and the fiftieth anniversary of the erection of the Wall in August of 2011 also registered in the media, particularly in Germany. These recent commemorations have perpetuated long-standing historical patterns: the Berlin Wall was the most visible part of the Iron Curtain and the most widely recognized symbol of Europeâ??s division even during the Cold War, but the Berlin Wall constituted only a small part of the border that divided the two Germanysâ??a point made by Edith Sheffer in this interesting book. Beyond that bustling metropolis, the German-German boundary stretched through nearly 1,400 kilometres of mostly rural terrain, although this part of the European East-West frontier never received the same kind of public attention. Sheffer aims to redress that balance and to examine the emergence, the persistence, and the ultimate collapse of the inter-German boundary along the so-called â??green border,â? far from the political nerve centres of East and West Berlin or Bonn.