cover image Battleground Berlin: Diaries, 1945-1948

Battleground Berlin: Diaries, 1945-1948

Ruth Andreas-Friedrich. Paragon House Publishers, $18.95 (261pp) ISBN 978-1-55778-191-8

In this sequel to Berlin Underground: 1938-1945, Andreas-Friedrich, a German publisher and resistance worker, recalls daily life in Russian-occupied Berlin. Germany was no sooner rid of one tyrant, she complains, than it became subject to the despotism of its ``liberators,'' among them Soviets intent on avenging the devastation wrought by the Nazis. Some features of the Allied occupation come as a shock: fascists and non-fascists alike survived the harsh winter of '46 on little more than soggy bread, with two hours of electricity a day and no running water. Moreover, according to Andreas-Friedrich, medical reports confirm that half the women in Berlin were raped, many repeatedly, by the occupying forces. In a somewhat elliptical fashion made further confusing by a stilted translation, the author also documents the vastly complicated German political situation (the book would have been well served by an introduction) and the lowering of the Iron Curtain as the Allies fashioned a Cold War wrestling-mat from the rubble of postwar Berlin. (Sept.)