Tunnel 29
The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall
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4.3 • 4 Ratings
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A "riveting" (Wall Street Journal) book tells the unbelievable true story of an escape tunnel under the Berlin Wall--the people who built it, the spy who betrayed it, and the media event it inspired.
In September 1961, at the height of the Cold War, 22-year-old Joachim Rudolph escaped from East Germany, one of the world's most brutal regimes. He'd risked everything to do it. Then, a few months later, working with a group of students, he picked up a spade... and tunneled back in.
The goal was to tunnel into the East to help people escape. They spend months digging, hauling up carts of dirt in a tunnel ventilated by stove pipes. But the odds are against them: a Stasi agent infiltrates their group and on their first attempt, and dozens of escapees and some of the diggers are arrested and imprisoned. Despite the risk of prison and death, a month later, Joachim and the other try again and hit more bad luck: the tunnel springs a leak. After several attempts, run-ins with a spy and secret police, and some unlikely financial aid from an American TV network, they finally break through into the East, and free 29 people.
This is the story of their great escape, the NBC documentary crew that filmed it, and the U.S. government's attempts to block the film from ever seeing the light of day. But more than anything, this is the story of what people will do to be free.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Based on a BBC podcast, Merriman's intriguing yet uneven debut history focuses on Joachim Rudolph, a young East German who, in 1962, helped 29 people escape to West Germany through a tunnel he dug underneath the Berlin Wall. Merriman details Rudolph's war-torn childhood; teenage participation in anti-Soviet demonstrations, where he witnessed East German tanks crushing fellow protesters; escape to West Germany by crawling overnight through a field; and planning and digging of the tunnel with a group of coconspirators ("hours hacking into clay... pulling out small handfuls at a time"). Fleshing out the story's Cold War context, Merriman also describes President Kennedy's delayed reaction to the wall's construction, East Germany's use of informants to stop the exodus to the West (Rudolph's first attempt to help refugees escape was thwarted by the Stasi), and NBC's agreement to fund construction of the tunnel in exchange for documentary footage. Unfortunately, the overwrought narrative style distracts ("And so Joachim joins the ranks of fatherless German children and a seed of anger blooms in his stomach that he doesn't yet know what to do with"), and the brief chapters, which shift viewpoints abruptly, sacrifice depth and clarity for the sake of action. This Cold War history doesn't quite live up to its potential.
