Wall’s Fall Galas Symbolize Quest For Freedom

Forty-eight years ago the world woke up one morning to find that the Communist regime that dominated Eastern Europe had erected an outward and visible sign of its wish to impose its rule on the citizens of East Berlin—a concrete wall with guard towers spaced along its length circumscribing a wide area that would come to be known as the “death strip” that contained anti-vehicle trenches and other means of preventing any living thing from approaching or climbing over the wall. While the wall was a small part of the separate and much longer Inner German Border that demarcated the border between East and West Germany, it was the most visible symbol of the Iron Curtain between Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc—East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania, the satellite states unwillingly aligned with Soviet Russia after the Second World War.

The wall was not the first time the Russians, then known as the USSR, had tried to impose their own rule on the former German capital, divided into British, American, French and Soviet zones by the Allies after their victory over Nazi Germany in 1945, in which Germany was divided into East and West Republics. Berlin was entirely surrounded by East Germany, and in June 1948 the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies’ railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under their control. Their intent was to force the Western powers to allow the Soviet zone to start supplying Berlin with food and fuel, thereby giving the Soviets practical control over the entire city. The Allies responded with the Berlin Airlift and after almost a year during which the Allies flew more than 200,000 flights providing 13,000 tons of food daily to Berlin, delivering more cargo than had previously flowed into the city by rail, the Soviets, humiliated, lifted the blockade.

Wounded pride at the success of the Airlift may very well have been one factor that entered into the decision to erect the wall in 1961. Another undoubtedly was the 3.5 million East Germans who escaped from East Germany, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin from where they could travel to West Germany and other Western European countries, before the wall was built. The wall went up in 1961. After it was erected, some 5,000 people attempted to escape over it. Current German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the first person born and raised in the former Eastern zone to occupy the post, set the total of those who died trying to cross the wall at 136, but the exact figure may never be known.

Twenty-two months after the wall was built, then President John F. Kennedy stood before it in West Berlin and declared America’s allegiance with those who sought freedom from Soviet totalitarianism with his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. The speech and Kennedy’s memory are still venerated in Berlin today. What may have been the strongest and most resonant plea for reunification of the divided city, however, was heard in a speech beside the wall at the Brandenburg Gate commemorating the 750th anniversary of Berlin on June 12, 1987. Then President Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev, then Soviet Union Communist Party General Secretary, with “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

The Soviet Union and East Germany condemned Reagan’s speech, but did nothing further to indicate their disapproval. Then after several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on Nov. 9, 1989, that all East German citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans climbed onto and crossed the wall. Parts of the wall were chipped away by the public and souvenir hunters; industrial equipment was later used to remove almost all of the rest. In September 1990, Reagan, no longer president, visited the site and took a few symbolic hammer swings. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on Oct. 3, 1990.

Twenty years after the wall began to crumble celebrations were held in Berlin. On November 9 a “Festival of Freedom” began with an open-air concert conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Hundreds of thousands of people filled street festivals in one giant party. The leaders of all 27 European Union countries, along with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, attended and spoke. Fireworks and a giant domino collapse further commemorated the fall of the wall.

America welcomed refugees from other totalitarian regimes when they attempted to throw off Soviet domination during the 55 years of the Warsaw Pact’s existence— the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and refugees from the Prague Spring of 1968, when reforms instituted by the Czechoslovakian government were brutally crushed by the Soviet Union are two such incidents that come to mind. We saluted the fall of the wall in 1989 and we join with the European Union in celebrating the 20th anniversary of the destruction of the most visible symbol of a political ideology that once enslaved much of the world. Other symbols of other such regimes still exist. We hope someday that we and all our leaders will celebrate their eradication from the minds and hearts of those who suffer under them and from the world, wherever they may be.