With this study, Mark Fenemore turns to Berlin between 1948 and 1963 as the “barometer for the wider cold war” (1). He joins a vibrant field of Berlin early Cold War history—evident in studies by Paul Steege, Katherine Pence, Paul Betts, Jennifer Evans, Monica Black, Scott Krause, and Stefanie Eisenhuth, among others—which has highlighted the role of local actors and the specificity of place. Fenemore argues that rather than being merely pawns in a superpower Cold War, the population of Berlin, through myriad small “ant-like” and dramatic actions, “decided the fate of the cold-war battle for Berlin” (1, 15).
The author frames the city as a frontier-town, examined through critical border studies, thus adding to existing literatures on Grenzgänger and Germany as a Cold War border region. What is the merit of such an approach? Fenemore suggests it can aid in understanding how the border and frontier “helped to shape identities and meanings, which together formed novel mindscapes” (4). He is particularly interested in the political strategy of brinkmanship, that is, the calculated provocations across the border. Underlying his approach is Ronald Reagan's premise that “a state that cannot control its border is not a state” (27, 216). Waged as a “war of nerves,” he argues, this brinkmanship around the border intensified Berliner emotions, had implications for the legitimacy of each regime, and determined the outcome of Berlin's Cold War.
The book follows a roughly chronological organization, beginning in 1948. In chapter 1, the border is depicted as a “very flimsy, incoherent and intangible dividing line,” running through buildings, streets, markets, and administrative zones (27). Berliners refused to accept it, and the four Allies fought over it, using violence, cunning, and Wilhelmine cadaster records alike. Berlin appears as the Cold War's “Wild-West frontier,” complete with mounted West Berlin police units and US Cavalry, whereby “instead of Indian attacks, the twentieth century cowboys faced incursions by Soviet patrols and Eastern German police” (31). In chapters 2 and 3, the author examines enclaves and exclaves, such as Steinstücken and the S-Bahn system, and shows how they offered “opportunities for transgression” (60).
In chapters 4 and 5, the author turns to policing and an Allied-sanctioned paramilitary buildup of Berlin police. He studies protests and policing activity around the Freie Deutsche Jugend meeting in 1950, the World Youth Conference in 1951, and the street protests of June 17, 1953. Here Berlin's Cold War history contains violent, intimate combat, with “no real winners, only losers” (119). Chapters 6 and 7 examine economic and cultural rivalries, evident in everyday shopping and smuggling, the Berlinale film festival, and cross-border partying. Berliners on either side used the divergent offerings to their advantage, while Eastern and Western Allies oscillated between encouraging and deploring such crossings. Fenemore traces how Western politicians eventually came to foster permeability so as to allow a highly subsidized, glittering capitalism to “entice and attract,” while the German Democratic Republic's (GDR's) political leadership came to criminalize border crossers (152, 160).
Chapters 8 and 9 turn to espionage and kidnapping, “the apotheosis of illegal and anti-democratic ruthlessness” (212). Berlin in the 1950s appears as bustling with secret agents, while in everyday encounters “people now denounced their enemies, competitors and annoying neighbors to the Stasi rather than the Gestapo” (187). The author traces motivations and biographies of professional agents, kidnappers, and their victims. In response to fears of kidnappings, West Berlin political leaders would call for a more strictly controlled border (212). In the final chapter, the author turns to 1961 and the building of the Berlin Wall. He argues that through years of “hustling and bustling, evading and smuggling,” Berliners had challenged the sovereignty of the GDR, thereby “spurring and legitimating Khrushchev's decision to opt for a radical solution” (219). He then traces the first years of activity around the Berlin Wall, including the death of Peter Fechter in 1962. The conclusion iterates the importance of the border for Berliners and the impact of ordinary Berliners on the border's permeability.
Mark Fenemore has made an important contribution to the study of the Cold War in Berlin as a set of practices, performances, and experiences around a border. Readers seeking a history of mentalities based on close analysis of sources such as opinion polls, Eingaben, rumors, and urban myths will not find it here. Those interested in the larger historiographic debates about Cold War German angst and emotions should turn to Frank Biess's work. Readers seeking a historicizing of some of the concepts deployed, such as “Frontstadt” or “cold war,” or an in-depth analysis of different media's role operating in a divided market might also look elsewhere. As Muriel Blaive has reminded us, “cold war” in itself is a distinctly Western concept. Indeed, the book often takes a “Western” perspective, complete with scenes of smuggling, chases, and showdowns, and attention to the protagonists’ performance in these. Moreover, what the reader will find is a richly researched work that captures the paradoxical, conflicting histories with Berliners in this “war of nerves” (237) both frightened and confident, challenging and reinforcing the divide. It is also a book that convincingly bridges the historiographic divide between readings of the Cold War as primarily a discursive-cognitive landscape and those that focus on tangible arsenals and armies facing one another.
Arguably, the book's most significant contribution is its inquiry into policing of the border region. It can be read alongside studies by Gerhard Haupt and Klaus Wagenhauer, who analyze postwar policing as part of histories of violence and masculinity spanning the war/postwar divide. Likewise, the reader may relate this book to studies on East German policing (oddly missing from the discussion and bibliography) by Thomas Lindenberger, Richard Bessel, and Alf Lüdtke. They have examined order and policing mentalities across regime and temporal divides and have asked about complicity and Herrschaft as social practices. Readers may also recall Paul Steege's work on border-sector violence whereby Berliners on all sides “both wittingly and unwittingly became complicit in crafting the border regime” (Paul Steege in Sarat et al., Performances of Violence [2011], 159). There are differences in emphasis. Where Fenemore emphasizes local agency in determining the outcome of a variety of Cold War “battles” (15), Steege and others stress popular “complicity” and “collaboration” in everyday performances of “ordinary violence” (Steege, 140, 159). It is worth contemplating the difference.
That Mark Fenemore's book is of utmost relevance is beyond question. Fenemore's writing on policing pushes readers to reflect on the role of selective recruitment, training, equipment, and political rhetoric, which made it possible for police units to treat protesting citizens and border-crossers as enemies. The study also highlights the importance of investigating the history of border regions and interactions in these. In this story, borders are central to the production of mentalities. And finally, most timely, this book reminds us of the importance of studying the power of brinkmanship and political strategies of escalation.
