This study traces the origins of the Berlin Wall from the eve of World War II to its construction in August 1961. As part of a long-term study of the Wall as an instrument of domestic policy, as a monument of international importance, and as a symbol of the Cold War, Manfred Wilke uses new source material to shed light on a crucial period of German history. This is the first of five books to be published, and the overall project is designed to illuminate the domestic decisions that led to its construction. Using an interdisciplinary approach that highlights “political demands, material execution, and military implementation” (xxv), the project examines these aspects against the backdrop of their international context.

Wilke, a trained sociologist, develops a narrative of the complex domestic and international political decisions, as well as of the intentions behind the building of the infamous Wall. He readily switches from sociological to political to economic analytical approaches that explain the Wall as a necessity for the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to avoid a mass exodus of its people, as a concession from the two superpowers to deescalate the Berlin problem, and as a seemingly inevitable outgrowth of postwar division that, at the same time, reinforced that division.

Divided into three parts, Wilke's book first traces the origins of the Cold War to an unsustainable antifascist wartime alliance whose glue began to come apart the minute Germany appeared defeated and it became clear that the victors would be incapable of reaching a consensus on what Germany's future should look like. This argument is not new, of course, but Wilke's discussion of a defeated, guilt-ridden Germany caught in the crossfire of a polarized, postwar European order makes a compelling case that the physical division of Germany into two halves was almost a foregone conclusion. It seems only reasonable, then, that the emerging leaders of the two states, Konrad Adenauer and Walter Ulbricht, each pursued policies that tied their half of Germany closer to their respective occupational powers. In other words, they sought strength through ideological division at a time when the German population as a whole was not ready to do so.

Though initially intended as a temporary solution, critical turning points in the 1950s further fortified the inter-German divide. Spikes in mass emigration of East Germans across the German-German border—one after the 1953 Berlin uprising, and one resulting from the forced collectivization of agriculture in the late 1950s—precipitated ever-tightening travel restrictions and emigration controls. For Wilke, the 1952 decision of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) to lay the “foundations of Socialism” in the GDR irrespective of developments in West Germany was a turning point that reinforced the break. Sidelining the German question in favor of discussions of the space race, nuclear tensions, and other world events at the Geneva Summit of 1955, the occupying powers shifted their attention away from the German question, thereby sealing its fate as a divided country. Wilke convincingly concludes the first part of his book by showing that the division of Germany was almost preprogrammed, and that German leaders had very little ability to alter this course.

Revisiting the first Berlin Crisis of 1948–1949 through East German and Soviet primary sources, the second part of the book traces shifts in the relationship between the GDR and the Soviet Union from one of occupied and occupier to one of vassal and master. Taking on Hope Harrison's portrayal of “the tail wagging the dog” (Driving the Soviets Up the Wall: Soviet-East German relations, 1953–1961 [2005]), Wilke illustrates how the SED had to shift its posture based on Moscow's wishes and politics. Whereas Stalin used the Berlin issue as a bargaining chip to assert Soviet economic interests in 1948, the post-Stalin regime shifted to a new policy of demanding Socialist realities in East Germany. As a result of Nikita Khrushchev's reassessment of Soviet dictates, which resulted in the Berlin Ultimatum of 1958—the Soviet leader's attempt to resolve the issue by floating a Soviet-East German peace treaty, which would have turned over access to Berlin to the East German authorities—the GDR leadership had to bow to their Soviet masters at the expense of their own interests.

Wilke paints a particularly vivid image of GDR dependence on Moscow in the early 1950s, when the SED announced the establishment (Aufbau) of socialism in East Germany at the 1952 SED party congress, which subsequently escalated East German flight across the Berlin border. Yet, Ulbricht's subsequent pleas for the construction of a wall to stop the draining of vital labor to West Germany fell on deaf ears, as the Soviet leadership focused instead on using Berlin's status and the German question as negotiating tools in its struggle with the United States. While the SED sought to solve its emigration issue, Khrushchev would not allow the construction of a wall as long as his aspirations for a peace treaty that would create a neutral Germany still seemed possible. He only allowed the Wall to be built after the plan for a neutral Germany had failed, and only after reaching an understanding with the Kennedy administration to retain the status quo. Part II concludes, then, that Khrushchev held all the cards in this German-Soviet game over the construction of the Berlin Wall, and that he was the true moving force behind its construction.

The last part of the book highlights clashing views among the leaders of both German states and their respective superpower allies. For Adenauer and Willy Brandt, John F. Kennedy's acquiescence in the construction of the Wall and, with it, the status quo, was just as frustrating as Ulbricht's inability to control transit routes to West Berlin and thus gradually encroach on the rights of Western powers. In the end, Wilke depicts Khrushchev as holding all the strings, from starting the second Berlin Crisis in 1958, to ending it by allowing the Berlin Wall to be built—all the while preserving the status and influence of the occupying powers on both sides of the wall.

Wilke certainly succeeds in using interdisciplinary approaches to depict the critical stages surrounding the construction of the Berlin Wall. While sometimes confusing as a result of chronological jumps and despite repetitive conclusions, this approach offers an in-depth perspective on questions of agency, as well as the necessity of a dividing wall. Many of the conclusions are not new, but the wealth of documentation and the multiperspective analysis based on both German states make this book a valuable addition to the scholarly literature on the Berlin Wall.