Berlin Diary (1941)* * * *

Berlin Diary (link to book at Amazon)
At 21 in 1925, William Shirer left the States to work as a foreign journalist in India and Europe. 1933 he took off a year to be a beach bum in a little village in Spain with his wife, but the dollar took a hammering, their saving took a beating, and Shirer had to quickly get a job. He worked in Paris for a few months, at a reporting job that bored him to tears, but then in early 1934, he landed a better job in Berlin. Thus it came to be that he spent 7 years in Berlin covering the rise of Hilter and the early years of WWII when Germany was celebrating one incredible victory after another. This 'diary' is not about himself, but his commentary on the events around him and on which he was reporting. As a foreign correspondent of a major U.S. radio company, he reported at the center of the major events happening at the time. Later Shirer would write many books about Nazi Germany, the most famous being The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. But Berlin Diary is before all that, written in the moment and full of the uncertainty and tension that comes with not knowing how things will turn out and not knowing exactly what is happening (each side, Axis and Allies, are putting their spin on their news and official reports).

This inside-American view of the rise of Hitler and Germany would be fascinating on its own sake. But what was really gripping about this book is that is was published in April 1941 -- at the height of German power. Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Holland, Belgium, France have all fallen to Germany. Britain is being bombed and it is not at all clear that she can win against the superior German army and air force. Shirer did not know how it would all turn out when he published this shortly after his return from Berlin in December 1940. It is easy when thinking about WWII to think that 'oh, yeah, Germany took over Austria and then invaded Poland..yada..yada' as if it were obvious this would happen and that Germany would be so successful. But from reading Shirer's journal, you are reminded how incredible and NOT clear these events were. Hitler was playing a game of bluff -- threatening war to get countries to just roll over and play dead. As each piece of territory was taken over, the German war machine gained strength until Hitler no longer had to bluff but could just drop the hammer.

Reading this diary, I felt like it was all happening right now. Each evening I was eager to read to find out what had happened that day. My husband and step-son were amused when I would shuffle down-hearted into the kitchen; 'What's wrong?' they would ask. 'Poland has been invaded. They are getting slaughtered.' I would reply in all seriousness. The funny thing is that while reading Shirer's book it did feel real -- well, it is real though it happened 75 years ago. By reading his diary, I experienced in a small way the emotions and shock that Shirer felt watching these incredible events unfold.

Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, 2006)* * * *

The Lives of Others (link to DVD on Amazon)
Of all the communist states, East Germany had the most elaborate and insidious secret service. It is said (by wikipedia) that 1 in every 50 East German citizens was collaborating with the Stasi (the East German secret police). It was a world in which people had to be afraid of everyone -- even their friends, family and children. The most innocuous comment or joke could land you in trouble -- not necessarily prison, no in this world the hammer was more subtle. A black mark on your folder affected your ability to work in a non-menial job, to get a decent apartment, to get your children into school.

In 1985, I was studying in West Berlin and I spent my free weekends in East Berlin. If you were never in the eastern bloc during this period, it is perhaps hard to imagine what it was like. Grey oppression. That was the overwhelming feeling and look of the place. One night, I stayed past the curfew for foreigners and rode the subway through the night and into the next morning. I watched the other riders, who stared fixedly at the floor. They could tell that I was a foreigner. Then around 2am, the subway thinned out and it was just me and one other man. He looked like he was maybe a writer or a university professor. He came over and sat next to me. He clearly wanted to talk but was very nervous. Of all my many trips to East Germany, this was the only time someone had the nerve to say anything to me. He leaned close and asked where I was from. I told him I was an American studying in West Berlin. He asked to look at my passport. I handed it to him and watched as he fingered the stamps showing everywhere I had traveled. I knew he was forbidden to travel and I felt self-conscious. He looked to be in his 50s so he would have been in his early twenties when the Berlin Wall was built. Did he have friends or family from whom he was separated in West Berlin? Probably. He glanced again over his shoulder, leaned forward and whispered in my ear, "Don't believe what they tell you about East Germany. We are not free and this isn't a Socialist utopia." I had no idea what to say to this completely unexpected remark. The moment was like a scene out of some art movie -- the florescent lights of the subway flickering, the sound of the subway rushing through the underground, and a gray-coated German intellectual trying to educate a young naive American student. Thing was that my first visit to East Berlin had banished any question about the eastern bloc being a Socialist utopia from my young, liberal mind. This was a world where posters proclaimed things like “To do everything for the welfare of the people – that is the meaning of Socialism!”, next to these really depressing looking factories and next to shops that held nothing of value. It was a world where I was reminded forcibly of the cliche "A lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth". I waited for him to say more. Was he serious? But just whispering this heresy seemed to have terrified him. He handed back my passport and got off the subway.

This world of fear is the one in which Lives of Others is set. Lives of Others begins, appropriately, in 1984. The premise is simple: surveillance of possible dissidents or defectors. Our protagonist, Captain Gerd Wiesler, is an expert on surveillance, interrogation, and reading the body language of others. From a series of scenes exemplifying his proficiency in each area, it becomes clear that with a life devoid of vibrancy, Wiesler lives vicariously through his subjects. We meet Wielser in a university classroom. Approached by an old classmate, Lt. Colonel, Wiesler is assigned to monitor the playwright Georg Dreyman. Once again, the next several steps are straight forward. The Stasi execute a sting operation in which Dreyman's apartment is given the complete works: microphones in the light switches and electrical sockets. Setting up a roost in the attic of the apartment complex, Wiesler and his assistant (Udo) monitor the activity below, typing by the light of a solitary, metal lamp. With lighting from the below and to the side, Wieslers face is cast into long shadows of what is, perhaps, obsession. In the interest of not giving too much away (as the plot is rather unremarkable), suffice it to say that as Wiesler roosts in the attic, the drama unfolds below. The differece between love and sex are at the heart of this drama. Dreyman is in love with the actress Christa-Maria, but a high ranking minister, Hempf, lusts after her as well. Using what can only be described as oozing charm and his political position, he forces her to engage in demeaning and compromising positions. Thus, Christa-Maria is suspended between her allegiance to Dreyman and herself and the malignant interests of the minister. All the while, Wiesler sits and listens as tensions come to a head, waffling in his sympathies for one party or the other, like a vapid viewer of some tv soap-opera. His sympathies take him so far as to physically reach out to Christa-Maria. The remainder of the film plays out this initial setup. The big question is, will Wiesler be caught--by his superiors or Dreyman. With love, sex, betrayal, and compassion what more could any lover of psychological spy thrillers want? Certainly, this was one of the most engrossing films that I watched in 2007 and is further validated having won the 2007 Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

---

Written jointly by EEH and Kaja
Rented on Netflix.

A Woman in Berlin (1954)* * * * *

A Woman in Berlin (link to book at Amazon)
A Woman in Berlin is the diary of Marta Hillers who was living in Berlin when it fell to the Russian Army. The diary starts as she is sitting in a bomb shelter to avoid the nighttime bombing raids by the Americans. During the day, they can hear the Russians over the horizon. It is 3 more days before the Russians will make it to their part of town. This diary records what she saw in her small part of Berlin during the two months starting just before Berlin fell. Marta Hillers (who published this anonymously but it is well-known who is the author) was a 34-year old journalist. An orphan from WWI, she lived as a free-spirit. A modern woman. A traveler. She had studied in Paris and had visited Russian, back in her youthful days as a coffee-house red-sympathizer before she became disillusioned after visiting Russia. She had a working command of Russian, which would change her experience during the Russian occupation (it's unclear if it was a positive or negative).

I had approached this book with trepidation. I knew that during the fall of Berlin, there was an orgy of mass rape and that estimates are that 50% of all women were raped. As I opened the book, I braced myself for horror. The book wasn't anything like that. Yes rape is a big part of this book; the author herself loses track of the number of booted soldiers that force their way into her bed. But unlike in Prussia, most women were not getting raped AND beaten. It was happening to all women, and the Berlin women quickly developed a gallows humor about it. Marta relates how every visit to friends quickly found the women huddled together discussing 'So, how many...'. Just like women huddle together and tell birthing stories. When one relates a particularly unpleasant encounter, the rest wince and can commiserate with their own unpleasant encounter.

After one particularly uncouth rapist, the author decides she's had it and that if she's going to have forced intercourse with Russians 2-3 times a day, at least she is going to have it with only 1 Russian of her own choosing. So she goes out to find an officer. Her plan is a bit vague on how this is going to work, but she figures if she gets an officer boyfriend, he will somehow keep the others at bay. She manages to find one, and thus her apartment (actually not hers but a widow who she is living with) becomes a gathering spot every evening for a group of Russian officers of various levels. Endless late nights of drinking and discussing politics (followed by ... with her officer). She is amazed at the diversity of men -- they come from all over Russia and represent very different backgrounds. At some point, she realized that she has become a willing participant and ponders whether she has become a whore. She provides sex; the Russian visitors provide food. However, the alternative is starvation. So she is practical about it. A number of other women in her building have similar arrangements.

In the second month of the diary, the Russian Army leaves from her part of town. Gone are the Russian visitors. Gone is the food. Back to potatoes and nettles. She joins a number of forced labor call-ups. A day of rubble clearing. A week dismantling a factory and loading it on a train to Russia. I have often wondered how the Germans (esp women) could rebuild Berlin so fast after the war. I had imagined that the women must have been shattered by their experiences. Some were. But this book gives insight into the many women who were not. Who somehow coped and focused on the work to be done and not on self-pity. As one woman comments, "Life goes on..."

The Fall of Berlin * * *

The Fall of Berlin is the follow-up book by the author of Stalingrad: the Final Siege. TFOB starts as the Russians cross the German border in East Prussia. For those who are spotty on their post-WWI geography (meaning 99.999% of us), Prussia was is in the Baltics (meaning up by Lithuania) and extended across modern day northern Germany (formerly East Germany), Western Poland, parts of Lithuania, and far southwestern Russia (parts it annexed after WWII from Germany). Much of the first third of the book is about the invasion of Prussia and the attempts by civilians to escape. This was especially interesting to me because I know someone who's mother and grandmother were among those civilians. About 1/4 million civilians were trapped in Konigsberg at one point, completely surrounded by the Russian Army. My friend's mother was trapped there and was among those that crossed the ice of Frisches Haff (a bay) on foot to reach a small spit of land that the Germans still held. From there they walked into Germany through a thin corridor of German-held land to East Germany. Later after the Germans surrendered, they escaped from East Germany to the West.

The Germans civilians in Prussia were understandably terrified of the Russians. They had been inundated by propaganda about how the ruthlessness the Russians and the horrors they would do against Germans. But soldiers who had been on the Eastern Front knew that the Russians would be driven by revenge -- rather than ruthlessness per se. One Berliner recalled being on a subway when an old soldier announced how Berlin would be flattened if the Russians won, "If they win, they will do to us what we did to them." As it was, the Germans of East Prussia were still unprepared for the fury of revenge. The first target as the troops came were women. The book contains many first-hand accounts that any woman spotted was gang-raped by 10 to 40 soldiers at a time. Deliberate shooting of civilians seems to have been rare, however lines of fleeing refugees were repeatedly straffed by aircraft and run over by tanks. I think to understand in part what the Russians did when they came into East Prussia, you have to understand what the German Army did to Russia. The German Army carried out a policy of living off the land (meaning taking food, shelter, firewood, etc from civilians), laying siege to cities, and Slavic cleanings. Slavs were considered an "inferior race" and there was widespread killing of civilians. t is estimated that 11 million Soviet Union civilians were killed during WWII! In addition, the out-matched Russian Army suffered horrific casualties (like 50% or so). Russian POWs were sent to concentration camps and suffered the same fate as Jews; as the Russians came into Poland, they discovered these concentration camps with Russian POWs. I'm not trying to justify their actions, but rather show the context in which they occurred.

The second half of the book covers the race to Berlin and the downfall of Berlin. Surprisingly this part of the book was not terribly interesting (for me). Lots of space is devoted to troop movements (yawn). You don't get a sense from the book about what the civilians in Berlin went through. This is surprising since there were many diaries published from that period. For some reason, this part just seemed a bit mechanical. Basically, the sense you get from the book is that Berlin fell without much of a fight in the city proper and then people started getting on with their lives. That's hard for me to believe. The city was reduced to rubble and the depression among the people must have been extreme. My next book is "A Woman in Berlin" which is a diary from the 9 days of the battle. I expect that this book will give a different picture.