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AN INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE TIMES * SUNDAY TIMES * TELEGRAPH * SPECTATOR * PROSPECT
''Utterly brilliant . . . Authoritative, lively and profoundly human, it is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand post-World War II Europe'' Julia Boyd
''One of the best young historians writing in English today. . . Well-researched, well-written and profoundly insightful, Beyond the Wall explodes many of the lazy Western cliches about East Germany'' Andrew Roberts
In 1990, a country disappeared. When the iron curtain fell, East Germany simply ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the GDR presented a radically different German identity to anything that had come before, and anything that exists today. Socialist solidarity, secret police, central planning, barbed wire: this was a Germany forged on the f
