The Berlin Wall had existed for my entire life. It was a symbol of failure for communism. It was a symbol of evil.
The 1960's View
As a kid, I learned of it from my older brother in only that way that older brothers can teach you something. He elaborately described how East German soldiers would machine gun anyone who tried to cross, trying to create as much fear in me as possible. My mind envisioned searchlights and sentry towers with snarling men shooting anything that moves… bloodied bodies laying at the foot of the wall… left to frighten away anyone else foolish enough to try to escape.
My imaginings were correct, except for the snarling. My brother must have based his story to me on this short documentary.
The 1970's View
As I became a teenager, the Berlin Wall became a metaphor and part of pop culture. This is exemplified in the 1977 release of the Sex Pistols one and only studio album. It opens with the song “Holidays in the Sun.”
The narrator in the song is living in a collapsing Britain and imagines himself going over the Berlin Wall from West to East. It has lyrics that are simultaneously disconcerting and humorous. Excerpts:
Now I’ve got a reason, it’s no real reason, to be waiting at the Berlin Wall.
I’m looking over the wall and they’re looking at me.
I wanna go over the Berlin Wall before they come over the Berlin Wall.
I wanna go over the Berlin Wall. Please don’t be waiting for me.
It would seem that the West was conceding.
The 1980's View
But, elections matter. Margaret Thatcher is elected Prime Minister in Britain in 1979 and Ronald Reagan is elected President of the United States in 1980. Pursuing free market policies, the Western economies recover. Confident, the West pushes back against Soviet adventurism. During the 80’s, it is the East that flounders and needs a restructuring (Perestroika).
Ronald Reagan visits Berlin in June 1987 and gives a speech known for the challenge, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” But, if you watch this video, the much more powerful substance of the speech precedes the famous sound-bite.
Reagan describes in plain language the facts of how freedom had rejuvenated West Germany after the war. Listen to him talk about the businesses, the city life, and the culture that West Berlin came to demonstrate. That success was known in the East, particularly East Berlin from West German television. Communist leaders had to use force to keep people living under an obviously failed system that couldn't deliver anything like the prosperity and happiness that a free West enjoyed.
But, the good news is that the children of communism no longer had the will to use the amount of force that is required to keep the population captive and controlled. Gorbachev was not Stalin. Egon Krenz was not Erich Honecker.
The 1989 View
In January 1989, East German leader Erich Honecker said, "The Wall will be standing in 50 and even in 100 years, if the reasons for it are not yet removed." With the collapse of communism and the evil that it required, the reasons were in fact removed. The Wall was down 10 months later.
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E. Magill
T.S.
old new lefty
rwnutjob
Max Frank
thatsright
Salon.com
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