The border between East and West Germany was closed on 26 May 1953. On 13 August 1961 crude fences and walls were erected around West Berlin: the Berlin Wall had been created. The Wall encircled West Berlin for a distance of 155km, and its barriers and surveillance systems evolved over the years into an advanced obstacle network. The Intra-German Border ran from the Baltic Sea to the Czechoslovak border for 1,381km, and was where NATO forces faced the Warsaw Pact for the 45 years of the Cold War. This book examines the international situation that led to the establishment of the Berlin Wall and the IGB, and discusses how these barrier systems were operated, and finally fell.

A “constantly captivating…well-researched and often moving” (The Wall Street Journal) history of Checkpoint Charlie, the famous military gate on the border of East and West Berlin where the United States confronted the USSR during the Cold War. In the early 1960s, East Germany committed a billion dollars to the creation of the Berlin Wall, an eleven-foot-high barrier that consisted of seventy-nine miles of fencing, 300 watchtowers, 250 guard dog runs, twenty bunkers, and was operated around the clock by guards who shot to kill. Over the next twenty-eight years, at least five thousand people attempt to smash through it, swim across it, tunnel under it, or fly over it. In 1989, the East German leadership buckled in the face of a civil revolt that culminated in half a million East Berliners demanding an end to the ban on free movement. The world’s media flocked to capture the moment which, perhaps more than any other, signaled the end of the Cold War. Checkpoint Charlie had been the epicenter of global conflict for nearly three decades. Now, “in capturing the essence of the old Cold War [MacGregor] may just have helped us to understand a bit more about the new one” (The Times, London)—the mistrust, oppression, paranoia, and fear that gripped the world throughout this period. Checkpoint Charlie is about the nerve-wracking confrontation between the West and USSR, highlighting such important global figures as Eisenhower, Stalin, JFK, Nikita Khrushchev, Mao Zedung, Nixon, Reagan, and other politicians of the period. He also includes never-before-heard interviews with the men who built and dismantled the Wall; children who crossed it; relatives and friends who lost loved ones trying to escape over it; military policemen and soldiers who guarded the checkpoints; CIA, MI6, and Stasi operatives who oversaw operations across its borders; politicians whose ambitions shaped it; journalists who recorded its story; and many more whose living memories contributed to the full story of Checkpoint Charlie.

East Germany's film monopoly, Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft, produced a films ranging beyond simple propaganda to westerns, musicals, and children's films, among others. This book equips scholars with the historical background to understand East German cinema and guides the readers through the DEFA archive via examinations of twelve films.

Although surveillance hit the headlines with revelations by Edward Snowden that the National Security Agency had been tracking phone calls worldwide, surveillance of citizens by their governments actually has been conducted for centuries. Only now, with the advent of modern technologies, it has exponentially evolved so that today you can barely step out your door without being watched or recorded in some way. In addition to the political and security surveillance unveiled by the Snowden revelations, think about corporate surveillance: each swipe of your ID card to enter your office is recorded, not to mention your Internet activity. Or economic surveillance: what you buy online or with a credit card is recorded and your trip to the supermarket is videotaped. Drive through a tollbooth, and your license plate is recorded. Simply walk down a street and your image is recorded again and again and again. Where does this begin and end? In all levels of social structure, from the personal to the political to the economic to the judicial, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Surveillance, Security, and Privacy uncovers and explains how surveillance has come to be an integral part of how our contemporary society operates worldwide and how it impacts our security and privacy Key features include: Approximately 450 signed entries from contributors around the globe Further readings and cross-references conclude each article to guide students further as they explore a topic A Reader's Guide organizes entries by broad thematic areas

A broad-ranging history of defectors from the Communist world to the West and how their Cold War treatment shaped present-day restrictions on cross-border movement. Defectors fleeing the Soviet Union seized the world's attention during the Cold War. Their stories were given sensational news coverage and dramatized in spy novels and films. Upon reaching the West, they were entitled to special benefits, including financial assistance and permanent residency. In contrast to other migrants, defectors were pursued by the states they left even as they were eagerly sought by the United States and its allies. Taking part in a risky game that played out across the globe, defectors sought to transcend the limitations of the Cold War world. Defectors follows their treacherous journeys and looks at how their unauthorized flight via land, sea, and air gave shape to a globalized world. It charts a global struggle over defectors that unfolded among rival intelligence agencies operating in the shadows of an occupied Europe, in the forbidden border zones of the USSR, in the disputed straits of the South China Sea, on a hijacked plane 10,000 feet in the air, and around the walls of Soviet embassies. What it reveals is a Cold War world whose borders were far less stable than the notion of an "Iron Curtain" suggests. Surprisingly, the competition for defectors paved the way for collusion between the superpowers, who found common cause in regulating the spaces through which defectors moved. Disputes over defectors mapped out the contours of modern state sovereignty, and defection's ideological framework hardened borders by reinforcing the view that asylum should only be granted to migrants with clear political claims. Although defection all but disappeared after the Cold War, this innovative work shows how it shaped the governance of global borders and helped forge an international refugee system whose legacy and limitations remain with us to this day.

Why do empires build walls and fences? Are they for defensive purposes only, to keep the ‘barbarians’ at the gate; or do they also function as complex offensive military structures to subjugate and control the colonized? Are the colonized subjects also capable of erecting barriers to shield themselves from colonial onslaughts? In Empires and Walls Mohammad A. Chaichian meticulously examines the rise and fall of the walls that are no longer around; as well as impending fate of ‘neo-liberal’ barriers that imperial and colonial powers have erected in the new Millennium. Based on four years of extensive historical and field-based research Chaichian provides compelling evidence that regardless of their rationale and functions, walls always signal the fading power of an empire.

The traces of the Cold War are still visible in many places all around the world. It is the topic of exhibits and new museums, of memorial days and historic sites, of documentaries and movies, of arts and culture. There are historical and political controversies, both nationally and internationally, about how the history of the Cold War should be told and taught, how it should be represented and remembered. While much has been written about the political history of the Cold War, the analysis of its memory and representation is just beginning. Bringing together a wide range of scholars, this volume describes and analyzes the cultural history and representation of the Cold War from an international perspective. That innovative approach focuses on master narratives of the Cold War, places of memory, public and private memorialization, popular culture, and schoolbooks. Due to its unique status as a center of Cold War confrontation and competition, Cold War memory in Berlin receives a special emphasis. With the friendly support of the Wilson Center.

When the borders between East and West Berlin closed overnight in August of 1961, families and friends were suddenly split by concrete and barbed wire. Couples found themselves marooned on opposite sides of a divided city. In 2002 Kurt Hilst and Anna Robinson are assigned to begin piecing together documents found after the East German police began shredding documents after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. They encounter and follow two couples whose lives were changed forever by one of the most dramatic events in modern history in August 1961—the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall. They uncover a deeper story of a fragmented country, fragmented relationships, and of four people trying to put the pieces back together. The Puzzle People is a story of love, heroism, and the ultimate divide—murder.

The Mississippi River played a decisive role in the American Civil War. The Confederate fortifications that controlled the lower Mississippi valley were put to the test in the lengthy Federal campaign of 1862-63. Vicksburg was a fortress city, known as the 'Gibraltar of the Confederacy', whose capture was seen as the key to victory in the war. This book explores the fortifications of the river valley, focusing on Vicksburg and its defences which boasted a network of forts, rifle pits and cannon embrasures surrounding the city, a well as examining the strengths and weaknesses of the fortifications when under siege. Also examined are numerous other fortified strongholds, including New Orleans, Port Hudson, New Madrid, and forts Henry and Donelson, all lavishly illustrated with full-colour artwork and cutaways.

The techniques of European warfare were transformed during the 15th and 16th centuries by the use of gunpowder and by substantial progress in the effectiveness and destructive power of artillery. The series of conflicts in the 1640s, known collectively as the English Civil War, was the first in the British Isles that reflected this new reality. Sieges that aimed at isolating and reducing fortified places became the dominant instrument for prosecuting the war and protective fortifications were vital, for both the besieged as well as the besieger. This title describes how both the Parliamentarians and the Royalists made use of new fortification techniques throughout the course of this conflict.