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Dan Connors

The Berlin Wall and other failures of modern fear and intimidation.

Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall


"Behind every barrier, there is always a way to break through."


Do walls every do any good? There's been much debate here in the USA about building a wall on the border with Mexico. Walls seem like a temporary political solution to a more pressing problem.


The story of one of the most famous walls in history, The Berlin Wall, is detailed in Tunnel 29 by Helena Merriman. (The tunnel gets its name from the 29 East Germans that were able to escape in a daring operation.) Ms. Merriman is a journalist and podcaster, and she spent a long time interviewing people involved with this story. She then used her information to weave a fascinating story about how and why the wall was built, and how it was overcome.


The Berlin Wall was begun in the dead of night in August of 1961 as a deterrent to keep citizens of East Germany, a repressive, communist state, from emigrating to West Germany, a democratic one. It separated families, businesses, and an entire city and became a vivid symbol of the cold war between the US and USSR. It eventually spanned some 100 miles around West Berlin and was guarded by officers with guns 24/7,


Though the East German government claimed the wall was to protect itself from spies and saboteurs, its main purpose was always to keep East German citizens from defecting to the West. The guns and towers were pointed towards the East.


Tunnel 29 tells the story of several individuals and how they dealt with the wall. One person ends up being a spy for the Stasi, or East German secret police. Another ends up in prison for aiding a botched tunnel attempt. And the main character, Joachim, uses his connections in West Berlin to find a cellar from which to dig a tunnel to the East and rescue people who wanted to escape.


I found it fascinating that the tunnel diggers were somehow aided by the NBC broadcasting network, who paid for many of their supplies as long as they got to film the results. I had never heard this story before. The NBC worked with the tunnel crew in secret and produced a documentary that you can still watch today.


The people who tried to escape to the West exhibited enormous bravery in the face of very real dangers. Many died in the attempts. And many risked it all to help them. It is an inspiring story and makes me wonder what the leaders of East Germany were hoping to accomplish. By 1989 the people had had enough, and the wall came down, as did the authoritarian regime that built it.


Walls rarely work in the long term. China invested centuries and many lives to build its Great Wall, Genghis Khan breached it several times and toppled Chinese dynasties. In Northern Ireland walls were built between Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods, and now they are being dismantled. And in the USA, we have the Mexico wall, which is too long to reliably defend. People can go over, under, and through it with enough willpower, plus there are many other ways to enter the US besides one border.


Walls are at best a short-term solution. But without a plan to deal with what's on the other side, they eventually fail. For some people, they are an example of security theater- things that make us feel secure, but actually provide little real protection. I highly recommend this book both for its stories and its significance in world history.


While Joachim Rudolph and the others were digging a secret tunnel underneath the Berlin Wall, they had to be as quiet as possible. “The border guards have listening devices that they put on the ground and when they hear sounds of digging, they're known to open these holes and throw in dynamite.


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