Tunnel 29
The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall
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4.6 • 32 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
He escaped from one of the world’s most brutal regimes.Then, he decided to tunnel back in.
In the summer of 1962, a young student named Joachim Rudolph dug a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Waiting on the other side in East Berlin were dozens of men, women, and children—all willing to risk everything to escape.
From the award-winning creator of the acclaimed BBC Radio 4 podcast, Tunnel 29 is the true story of this most remarkable Cold War rescue mission. Drawing on interviews with the survivors and Stasi files, Helena Merriman brilliantly reveals the stranger-than-fiction story of the ingenious group of student-diggers, the glamorous red-haired messenger, the Stasi spy who threatened the whole enterprise, and the love story that became its surprising epilogue.
Tunnel 29 was also the first made-for-TV event of its kind; it was funded by NBC, who wanted to film an escape in real time. Their documentary—which was nearly blocked from airing by the Kennedy administration, which wanted to control the media during the Cold War—revolutionized TV journalism.
Ultimately, Tunnel 29 is a success story about freedom: the valiant citizens risking everything to win it back, and the larger world rooting for them to triumph.
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.
