In Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, The Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth, Iain MacGregor captures the horror and disbelief of a city suddenly and seemingly permanently split in two, with relatives trapped on opposite sides and attempted escapees shot on sight.
Between 1961 and 1989, the Berlin Wall marked the front line of the Cold War. No part of its expanse was more symbolically or logistically important than Checkpoint C, which became Checkpoint Charlie in the NATO phonetic alphabet. An iconic white hut on the Allied side (specifically the American Sector) faced off against a deadly no man's land and hulking East German fortifications. Before the Wall's construction, each year hundreds of thousands of citizens--primarily young, educated professionals--had been escaping the German Democratic Republic (GDR) into West Germany. GDR leader Walter Ulbricht pushed his Soviet masters for a permanent solution. Once the Wall went up, Checkpoint Charlie became the only access point for Allied troops entering or leaving East Berlin.
Checkpoint Charlie chronicles the history of the Berlin Wall, and Checkpoint Charlie in particular, largely through eyewitness accounts. Beginning in 1961, with the overnight erection of barbed-wire barriers and a standoff between Soviet and American tanks at Checkpoint Charlie, MacGregor (To Hell on a Bike--Riding Paris-Roubaix, The Toughest Race in Cycling) traces the Wall's grim history through recollections of dismayed West Germans, GDR defectors, American and British military personnel, foreign journalists and spies. Checkpoint Charlie is available in time for the 30th anniversary of the bungled GDR press conference that led to thousands of East Germans crossing--and eventually destroying--the Berlin Wall. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer